There’s a new not a meme! Hear! Hear! Rose Farina asks us if in our Second Life’s we have manners. Not the ‘tell your Xcite not to talk to channel 0′ manners, but when you tell someone you will do something or be somewhere for something do you show up? Are you generally polite to other players you don’t know? Do you feel free to blast others because of the anonymity factor? Do you belong to the group who says if you can’t say anything nice don’t say anything at all group? Feel free to rant, vent or rave about your view on this subject.

My in-world manners

I think I am an overall friendly and polite avie, but of course, I can be mistaken. *grins* I try to help ‘teh n00bz’ asking me questions and once in a while I even slip them 200L$ so they can start uploading textures - although I think most of them spend it on tipping strippers anyway. If I say ‘RTFB’ or ‘Read the Fucking Blog’ I leave out the ‘fucking’ and add the permalink to the blogpost they can find the answer and a message that they should first read that one and then ask me when there are any questions left.

As for abusing the power of anonymity, I realise all to well I have none of that. When registering this blog’s URL with my real name, I kissed that - imho, overvalued possession - goodbye. Which means I threat people like I would do in First Life, except if ’stepping out of character’, like with the seriously ‘disclaimered’ SLelections. Do note that I do not shoot my First Life friends, and that there are some other minor differences, but those differences all originate from the different nature of the Second Life metaverse compared to the First Life one.

When IM’ed or e-mailed with a question, suggestion or just a simple ‘hello’, I try always to answer with (different versions) of one of the following replies:

• Hi to you too + optional text. (On the simple ‘hello’.)
• Yes, of course, …
• Yes, but later… (mostly followed by ‘mail that to me, please)
• No, sorry, I do not have the time/I do not think this to be in my field of interests/…
• Maybe, can you send me some more information?
• No, but maybe you could ask/talk to/… *insert avie name here*

If I do not reply, your IM must have slipped through or was not noticed before a crash. Feel free to remind me of replying to you. ;)

As I do try to reply - be it shortly or not - to all IM’s I receive, one of the most annoying things is people who do not do the same. If someone states in his or her profile that there is a better way to contact them, I’ll use that one, but if they do not, I expect them to reply to IM’s.

To work around the capped of delivery of messages, create an e-mail account and let Second Life deliver your off line received messages to that account by changing the settings here. You shall still not receive them in-world, but you shall get all IM’s in email and can reply to them by email or later when in-world and using search for the person who has send the IM.

Also in Second Life, the Golden Rule applies: ‘Do not do to others that which would anger you if others did it to you.’ (Socrates)

My VintFalken.com Blog

Again, I think of myself as having a ‘decent style’ on my Second Life blog too. What I consider basic (SL) blog etiquette:

• Respect copyright: If you want to use copyrighted material - and we can assume that anything found on the net that isn’t clearly annotated as being in public domain or under CC license actually ‘belongs’ to someone and is thus copyrighted - ask the original creator of the material - be it text, pictures, … - if you may reproduce that content and how they wish you make clear that it is their content and not yours.
• Respect CC and attribution: When using CC material, give a decent attribution with it. Clearly noting it was not your content and a link back to where the original content is and people can contact the original creator. Not obliged, but certainly polite is to let that person know that you liked what he is creating and that you are using his/her content.
• On the CC non-commercial license: If you are running adsense, other ads or affliate links the page reproducing the content, clearly, you are not a non-commercial blog and you should ask before reproducing content licensed under CC non-commercial.
• If someone tipped you on something, gave you a great idea or ran a story before you, do the polite thing and give them the deserved credit. You want them to do the same for you, no?
• Share knowledge: Do not just say ’see what I have’, but also add ‘here you can find it too’. Do not just say ‘look what I can do’, also add ‘if you want to give it a try, this is how you start’. Believe me, people will appreciate this.
• Do not ‘thrash’ something or someone without a reason. You can say you dislike a certain person or service, but do share why you dislike it. Contacting the person behind the avatar or service first and telling him about your dislikes may do wonders too.
• For Christ and Linden God’s sake, aggregate the full feed of your blog! If only given a partial feed of your blog, I shall not conclude you want me to read what you have to say, I shall conclude you just want me to click your site for adsense revenue or whatever. Of course, I shall stop reading those tiny bits of what you had to say and never visit your site again.
• Allow anonymous comments: you publish a blog in a way that allows everybody with internet access to read it. (Well, except for some people in China maybe.) So, you should also allow everybody who wants to to comment. You can still moderate comments - or moderate all that include an URL, as I do -, install Askimet and/or Captcha, but at least accept them. One of the most frustrating things is reading a blogpost, liking it/wanting to add something only to find out you can not comment. If you are on Blogger, realise that not all of us want Blogger ID’s. I dislike the platform and thus shall not create an account there. Period. *ponders about open ID*

Also for (SL) Bloggers rules: ‘Also in Second Life, the Golden Rule applies: ‘Do not do to others that which would anger you if others did it to you.’ (Socrates)

Multitasking, my biggest sin.

I’m a heavy multitasker when in Second Life, often switching between the multiple IM conversations in the Second Life client, my feed reader, my browser, Photoshop, … . Often that leads to me totally ignoring main chat and replying to IM’s belated. Bear with me, please! If you notice I do not respond to something in main chat, IM me. If we are IM’ing and you feel offended by my slow replies, tell me so. I will either quit the other things I am doing or will say we can continue the conversastion later.

Tags: behaviour, not a meme, sl blogs, SLetiquette, vint falken
Categories: Vint Falken, not-a-meme
5 Comments »

Ok, I was planning on ‘reviving’ the SL-not-a-meme thingie ever since I shortly met Shockwave and we talked on this (she’s doing fine, btw), but things have been busy. But as it seems posting something positive would be a nice deversion from all the ongoing sh*t and as because of the ‘25 groups max limit’ I couldn’t accept Dolmere’s kind group invatitaion yesterday after a great gig that reminded me of Einsturzende a bit, here we go:

Not-a-meme #17: State Thy Groups!

Why? Because the groups a person is in is what I first notice when watching their SL profiles: having ‘Free xxx club’ and such things in your group list does not help if you want to talk to me! Because I want to make a good impression too. Because I think an avie’s group memberschips tells a lot about that avie. And because I’ve decided that any group I don’t want to tell about here or that I can’t think of a good reason for as to why I’m a member of that will have to go. Because then I can accept Dolmere’s invite! ;)

Manor House
Hmmmm. Not the slightest clue as to why. Only a vague memory of someone offering me membership for not forgetting an event that I can’t remember. That I didn’t go to anyway.

555 staff
Dalien’s (land rezz thingie) group. That’s a keeper! ;)

Caffeine Gardens
Raul Crimson and the art gallery. Membership to be able to hang photographs upon the wall. *reminder, hang photographs upon the wall*

CodeRed Lounge
Rather silent lately, but who says CodeRed Lounge says CodeBastard Redgrave, so I’m keeping that one too.

Das Waffenamt
Invites for Friday night WWII music events and updates on new uniforms. Furzi’s, tanks and lot’s of talk. Wouldn’t want to miss that! SLurl somewhere in the side bar.

FACE
Haven’t heard from *geeh, name slips my mind* Jean Paul for a while. Must check on that. If nothing interesting is going on anymore, the group goes.

Fast Cars
Reminds me of he- who’s- name- shall- not- be- mentioned- ever- again- by- me. Out it goes!

Flickr: Second Life [Mature]
Not seen much action from this one either.

Friends of Rejeanne’s
Told you we’d be friends! ;)

GIRLS and GUNS
This does not need any more information, does it?

HK Estates
My skybox, my boss, Zhivago, …

Mardes huurders
For my shop at the ‘Belgie’ sim.

N30 VIP Users Group
Should delete it because way to much group chat spam/annoying messages. RTFM!

Pardise Lost…
Work. ;)

PSST
SLprofiles.com party people… Needed to get in at an event. Not needed anymore.

Queen’s Volunteer Punishment Corps
Zoe, Veyron, … . W00t! I get my most used tag from that one: ‘Propaganda Mistress’. Although we need to work on our girl mercenary group some more.

Rezz Dev, Rezzable & Rezzable Creators
RaR, intersting and promising initiatives and a sandbox with 14k prims left. *grins*

Second Life Bloggers
Speaks for itself.

Sex Estate Management
Sandbox. Kept it up to now, as I found the group name hilarious. It’s not funny anymore.

Sister Act!
Read the Sister Act! clubhouse’s rules. You’ll understand. ;)

Super Fun Happy Club
I do not want to miss out on that final party!

The Paine Principle Group, LLC
Supporting the mantourage. Rather silent group, though.

The WAB
The Wack Attack Barrack. Belgian digital label in Second Life.

Now, as Not-a-meme’s are meme’s too, I want to here from someone new to the SLBloggers group: Timothy, from Bella if she’s back from that well deserved holiday, from Kean Kelly as we have some groups in common and from Gideon, as I like to keep an eye on what kind of guys Veyron hangs out with. ;)

And Dolmere? You may send that group invite as I have plenty of room again! ;) PS. Is forcing your skeleton baby to play the bass whilst you are flying allowed by child labour law? :D

Listing (and cleaning out) their group memberships:

Kean Kelly
Dalien Talbot
Dolmere Talamasca
Erbo Evans
Loki Popinjay
Timothy Lilliehook
Alexander Burgess
Rosa Farina
Zoe Connolly
DesertWolf Longstaff
Triste Bertrand
Dinee
Looker Lumet
Danielle Furguson
Tameryn Banshee
Wrath Paine
Bella March
…

Tags: groups, not a meme, vint falken
Categories: Vint Falken, not-a-meme
27 Comments »

Jacek Antonelli has posted the Not-a-Meme challenge #15: Make a new friend in SL. Here goes my response:

Actually, I add people to my friends list almost every day. Most of the time it’s just to make contacting them more easily (business cards don’t allow you to see if the avie is currently residing in-world) and for being able to TP them. But once in a while, I just _know_ I’m going to talk more often to that avie. Be it that he or she is interesting, kind and has a good sense of humor or an interesting take on ‘the SecondLife’. The lady added most recently to my friends list is such a person. May I present to you: the lovely and very talented Rejeanne Cannoli.

How did we meet?

She contact me in-world for taking her photograph. I wasn’t online at the time, so the first place I became aware of her existence, was in my inbox. ;)

What did we talk about up to now?

SL-photography, prim skirts, scripting, sexual transmittable diseases, living in a bi-lingual country and not speaking french that well. ;)

Will we meet again?

Yes, I really hope and think so! She sounded like a very interesting lady avatar that is very well-spoken and can actually teach me a thing or two about the SecondLife. Even if the ‘let’s exchange skills in stead of L$’ project does not go through, I’m sure we can still engage in good conversation.

And about my clothing in this picture, let me state one thing very clearly: I did not give up on being the Neko of the Reich and total SecondLife-world domination! I do am doing a lot of stuff involving the Hospital lately, and thus decided to dress a bit more appropriate before people will start to call me ‘Fraulein Mengele’.

Categories: Portrait, Second Life, Vint Falken, not-a-meme
8 Comments »

I was flattered when Dolmere Talamaska asked me if I wanted to do the not-a-meme -lucky number- #13 challenge. At the same time we were talking a bit about how our ‘meta-blogs’ differ from real blogs. Personally I think we are more open and honest - about our 2nd lifes that is - on our meta-blogs. I’m rather sure that in first life Zoe wouldn’t tell her complete friends circle that she is actually a BDMS mistress and neither would tell Tiessa all her collegues that she owns absolutely no underwear that covers her butt.

But we still keep secrets, don’t we? Not only most of us keep our first live identities hidden, but also in second life there are things that we _just don’t tell_. So for this not-a-meme challenge, I challenge you to reveal some of those secrets. Do confess! Which secrets, you say?

• A secret about your second life. Something you’ve kept hidden from the rest of us until now. Something only a few intimate Avie-friends, or maybe even no one knows about. I want to hear about meta-sins. I want to hear stories of betrayal, about alts and being just a mean meta-person.
• A challenge for you to reveal a minor glimps of what kind of person you are in first live. Do you slaughter animals for a living? Do you always forget to keep the red and white laundry seperated? Do you have peanuts for breakfast? Do you feel like murdering the kids sometimes? It’s ok. You can tell us. We won’t judge you.

Here are mine:

Second Life

I have a lousy memory as it comes to names and that combined with avies constantly changing their looks, was a pole dancer’s worst nightmare. So I started taking notes. Writing down general information about the age, location, work, hobbies, … of the persons I was chatting with. When conversation ended, I noted a quick summary of what it was about, so I had something to start conversation with next time. So it actually looked like I cared. In 75% of the cases, I didn’t care at all. Not even a little bit.

That’s been a long time now and most of the person I ‘had on file’, I do not chat with anymore and are already long time removed from my friends list, but still, I think it wasn’t a very ‘nice’ thing from me to do.

First Life

I’ll even give you two glimpes in my first life. This selfportrait - which I took less then a year ago - and the fact that I do think there exists no better breakfast than peanuts. Except maybe for the daring combination of really black chocolate and an energy drink. And that that’s probably not helping me to gain the weight I so need to gain. And so want to gain. The weight that I probably don’t do enough effort for. (Yeah well. Besides that, there’s still ‘whois’. :d)

The Dutch word for ‘a meme’ is ‘een stokje’ and we have the habbit of tagging people that we feel should certainly answer the meme. I know this is a not-a-meme, but I must confess I’m ‘vewwy, vewwy, vewwy’ curious about Mygdala’s, Torley’s and Alidar Moxie’s darkest secrets. So consider yourselfs tagged anyway. ;)

And for the avies that speak dutch, take a look at ‘Secret Second Live‘. Tagline: ‘Stttt… can you keep a secret?’ and it’s sort of a PostSecret but about SL - and without all the lovely pictures. It’s the usual stuff - Is having a partner in SL that my first life partner doesn’t know about a sin? I gained six kilo’s since playing SecondLife. Transgender stuff. Being popular in SL but not in first life. I’m catholic in real life and a hooker in SL., … - but still interesting and sometimes even scary - I lost my job because of my SecondLife addiction.’ - to read. Anybody up for a PostSecretSL? ;)

Avies who took the challenge (on their blogs):

Dakota Buck - Secrets and Confessions (Yeeey! She’s back!)
Dolmere Talamasca
Meratalk
Aenea Nori
Rose Farina
Tiessa Montgolfier
Zoe Connolly
Wrath Paine (Who claims not to have secrets!)
Shockwave Plasma (Finally! ;))
Torley ‘Watermelon’ Linden
Kieres Tzara
Alyia Coanda

In the comments: (*points at the comments*)

Alexander Burgess
Andromega Volare (Stupid SL secret, btw!)
Tiana Meriman
Mygdala
Looker Lumet (Just a little bit, though.)
Veronique K
Coyote Pace

Tags: confession, second life, secret, SLsecret
Categories: Vint Falken, not-a-meme
28 Comments »