The Best Stuff Always Happens When I’m AFK
Ever come back from an AFK moment and find your chat window filled with some absolutely FANTASTIC comments? Those laugh-out-loud moments that you had a great follow-up for, only they’re now ten minutes old and the moment is lost?
I’m experiencing this now, going through my blog list. I’ve spent so much time at work / planning this blog (then scrapping the elaborate plans for a quick-n-dirty, get-it-started approach), that I totally missed some great moments out there.
Such is the case at Broken Toys, where Scott posted “True Transcripts From My Second Life Visit.”
Me: “So, part of this tour is for you to prove to me that Second Life isn’t completely a rancid pit of cyber.†Her: “It is so totally a rancid pit of cyber.â€
I swear, I was interested in Second Life from a developer’s / educator’s standpoint. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Since I knew this would involve content creation (a paid account) I cleared the addition of yet another MMO with Jenn. I presented my very businesslike reasons, she approved. I made a character and started exploring.
My second login coincided with downtime for the tutorial island, so I was tossed in with the sharks. A near-naked and VERY friendly prostitute stopped to give me a hand uhhh… help me out. It was about that time that Jenn, reading on her computer, said, “Wired has an Article on Second Life… It’s about… Sex.” (there have been so many sex related wired articles since I can’t remember the specific one) I nervously adjusted the monitor a little more away from her and answered innocently, “Really? Umm… well, with player-created content, the darnedest things happen…”
Just then, a whole group of bondage-themed avatars went by.
Ultimately, it wasn’t the “cesspit of cyber” that caused me to log on less… it was the “cesspit of cyber” combined with a really unfortunate name selection.
See, I was going to keep “chase” as a first name, from my CoH self, but had to select a last name from the long list provided in the game. None seemed particularly interesting, but I eventually gravitated to the two Scottish-sounding names. My first choice (McDonnaugh) locked up on registration and was listed as “taken” when I went through a second time, so I took the other Mc.
Let me tell you, you do NOT want to be in a cesspit of cyber with the name “Chase McCann.” People take it as a request… or a challenge.
And so ended another promising venture into virtual worlds.