Viewer to a Kill

So I was driving the other day and split a newbie in two. I felt bad, of course. I had just bought those tires, and now I had to get all that newbie blood off of the grooves for fear my car would start acting like a newbie: running into walls, jerking back and forth, overusing gestures and asking women, "were u from?"

I haven't read much about this from any other SL'er, but the new viewer is making me want to strangle some puppies. Thanks to the latest batch of improvements, which includes generally outpacing what my computer can keep up with (and automatically readjusting my settings to "piss poor", I believe it is) and having people materialize as a cloud of vaper (a wiiiiiiiiiild improvement over the greyness of strangers, eh?) for 1 second to about 5 minutes, I now crash more frequently than John McCain over Vietnam. This has curbed my shopping sprees severely - I have only bought one new dress in a fortnight, which is a personal record - as well as taking a great deal of the fun out of my traditional activity of plonking a random word in the search engine and exploring to my heart's content. Even transporting can give me that frozen-moment-in-time feeling just as the Second Life Crash Notice arrives in the middle of my screen.

The other day, though, I was happily united/reunited/introduced to the one and only Olivia Hotshot. Olivia and I met, of all places, on flickr and had been bandying about some chuckles and observations for a few months, it seems. Finally, we met in-world and she was even more frustratingly lovely and kind in virtual person as she is in her flickr photo account. Still, I did have to take a break at one point, as I crashed in the middle of a balloon ride. How embarrassing is that? It's like crapping oneself on a date with a handsome rogue of good breeding. "Sorry, be right back..."

When I get irritated by such things, I tend to seek out newbies and - well, not pick on them, exactly - but pass on my irritation to them. In most cases, honestly, I do like to chat up new folks to SL because they are, for the most part, the nicest people. They haven't learned to be right bitches and bastards yet. But those aren't the ones I seek out. I seek out the ones who read about hot sex on SL from CNN or the BBC and show up with their muppet faces and wooden cock attachments looking to rub one off in time to watch the news. They are easy enough to spot (see Cock, Big Wooden, Attachment Of), so I sort of get in their sights and then mercilessly rip them to pieces. Usually, this takes the form of correcting their grammar, but sometimes, I simply deride them with cruel and intense laughter. Of course the best way to make these morons get stuck in the mud of their own logic, is to chide them with, "Do I want to fuck you? Are you serious? Would *YOU* fuck you? Not likely. So why would anyone else want to?"

Yeh, I'm not the nicest person at times...

RL and SL: Escapism or Extension?

In some ways, Second Life is a simple form of escapism, a way to explore one's more adventurous or dark corners - at least that's the more accepted psychology behind it. I suspect at times that, instead of escapism, SL actually commands one to be oneself - only to the nth degree, as if the virtual world lends license to make oneself into a caricature of oneself. A 3-D parody, if you will.

I would be hesitant to completely dismiss the 'escapism' theory, but I would put forward that escapism blends too easily with rationalization.

I have a good mate on SL called Beth who, in real life ("RL"), is seeing a married bloke and has been seeing him for several years. The two of them share anniversaries and money, like a real couple, only without the 'real' or the 'couple' bits. In RL, her man often begs off seeing her, as he has a real family to attend to. As in any relationship borne out of deception, there are trust issues galore. Is he seeing someone else? Will he find someone new? Is he telling the truth? As a veteran of that kind of arrangement, I know you can't get past trust issues. If the foundation of a relationship is a betrayal, then one can hardly hope for anything not tainted by some sort of distortion.

Beth and her man are on SL as well. They owned a club for a while, even (his idea, her money - which seems to be a trend). I visited there once at the behest of another girl, Candy, who was a dancer there. Beth's man, who was also present, almost immediately instant-messaged me, hoping he and I could spend some, ahem, quality time together.

Months later, Beth and I had a cup of virtual coffee and she told me she was concerned about her man seeing someone else behind her back. I was sympathetic, as she was quite upset, but I really just wanted to shake her and say, 'what do you expect, really?' Beth is a sweet girl and a kind soul, but somewhere along the way, she found it acceptable to be The Other Woman. Her bid to the The Main Woman in SL doesn't seem to have been too successful. Anyway, she asked for my help, and I suggested I simply talk to her man and see if he makes a move, and then take pictures of whatever followed. She didn't go for that - she didn't want to anger him. I think, rather, she didn't want it proven that she's dating a jerk. No girl does, really, certainly if such a revelation would involve witnesses.

Beth wanted me to chat up this mysterious other woman, and I agreed. I went to her island, or sim, but never saw her apart from a guy who Beth suspected was an alternative avatar of her man. Bit complicated, eh? So I haven't talked to the woman - and am unsure if I will. The cuts in RL have bled into SL, and there's little relief I could offer.

And then I look at me. How much is my SL persona just a continuation, or cartoon, of my real self? And how do I like being my own parody?