I've considered making a change but … instead i created a folder & filter and I've gotten pretty good at knowing if it's worth the click by reading the description. Also, I just don't get to everything … w/o guilt ;p

I do find the "as it happens" useful … even tho there are more emails … scrolling to view all the items is seldom needed. So, it is possible to make at a glance decisions.

Enjoy have fun,
Marilla <– first became interested in SL after reading about some autistic "chick" LOL … then i had to wait a year to afford a decent pc!

"As soon as I see this, I know from experience they are going to have it wrong … wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong." <– YES YES YES YES! You nailed it, and I don't understand why they waste their time and confuse readers by providing such sketchy and inaccurate accounts.

Nowadays though, the word "expert" is often meaningless. In the book The 4-Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss has a funny section about being a "perceived expert" and how easy it is to attain credibility within a few weeks. There's an upside and a downside to it, the downside being these "authorities" who are actually scammers, con artists, and not-useful loudmouths make many fake claims and dump on the clutter pile of non-info that is out there.

This is why within scanning the first few sentences of an article about Second Life, I'll almost certainly know if it has refreshing insights or is just regurgitating myths and fallacies from other badly-baked "articles". I do find humor in some the lack of quality, but could do without it.

More people should speak candidly about their childhood insecurities leading to part of why they're being so incomplete today. Some would say, "Oh, that's not professional", but "professional", like "expert", is a word that means so many different things and is largely useless in a practical sense unless you trust the person who's claiming to be one.

Thanks for getting on your soapbox, good to know how you feel!

@Ener: Seeing both inside and outside of Linden Lab has definitely helped me to put some threads together. One of Second Life's most powerful assets is getting us nearer to "emotion transfer" across remote distances, since we can share experiences even if we're thousands of miles apart.

@Princess: You're very welcome. I gotta use "dumbasses for the masses" more. I was watching George Carlin recently and that sorta inspired me.

@Crap: Glad to see what you blogged about this, on a related note! Thanx also for sharing your experiences… good gosh, that's awful. I know some great journalists who I wouldn't lump in the mediocre cloud, but sadly, encountering the suck which lies within that cloud is all-too-common. No more "hear ye, hear ye" for them — and no wonder those bad "professional" journos are so fearful of amateur bloggers, accusing them of not having "standards". Well, to that, I say being earnest is far more important than ego-dross!

@Botgirl: MESSAGE RECEIVED. THANK YOU.

@Delicious: Yup, and baseball is just a game with a stick and a ball. Yet look how many sports writers take it so seriously! Careers are built up around any field of great interest. Presently, we laugh at many advertisements for products/services in earlier eras, be it the 1800s or even the 1980s (all that big hair).

What a great comment that more ignorant journalists should read, and take to heart, before writing further blather about Second Life.

@Pandora: I agree that the learning curve needs to be much more of a gentle hill than a sharp ascent, and there's much improvement to be done. (There always will be.) I have a particular affinity for when little changes make a big difference, and there should be some marked "first-time experience" improvements within this quarter.

@Dumisani: I find it a shame when there are Residents who are quite understandably upset (I sympathize) but viciously attack Linden Lab. That just makes things worse, and is useless. People more often than not spout about their problems without considering the views of others — emotion often blindsides us from the bigger picture AND finer details. I get frustrated with problems too, and I look for ways to get them fixed faster… or at least workarounds. If something's within my immediate power to change, I tend to hop on it right away, and if not, I may be able to let the right Lindens know.

@Isadora: You're SO welcome, thanks a lot for letting me know!

Looking back on this will all be very intriguing. Thanks for sharing your stories!

I love this post and the comments that encouraged it, especially ener's. indeed we are beyond our physical selves when we engage in our Second Life. Those who say to get an RL simply doesn't get our need to go beyond RL. Every evolved being won't mind something like SL as long as it engages and improve the psyche and the mind.

To have been allowed to be a part of this world has profoundly changed my life, as I discovered a whole tranche of creative ideas within myself that has led to a rediscovery of coding, a rediscovery of animation and 3D art born from the days when I plonked about with my Amiga computer, and generally a new appreciation for reefs and conservation and the whole concept of education through entertainment, all uniquely encompassed by the world of Second Life!

So despite moments of frustration the reality remains that SL made a lasting junkie out of me, and come what may, I am more excited today than I was as a noob. Hmmm, actually I find I am more a noob today than when I first started playing, as SL has all these layers for creativity that only time reveals Keep up the great blog.

The Spirit of Second Life® itself, Torley Linden, recently wrote about his experience with reading what journalists have to say about Second Life. I don't know if he had just read how badly misquoted Philip Linden had been early this week and, l…

Then, when you finally leave Help Island, you are often dropped into one of the "Newbie" zones which fall into a couple of different categories: a noisy place full of morons playing obscene gestures, an unpopulated sim full of vendors, or, just maybe, somewhere with some helpful people.

Overall, this does not make for an average user's first experience with Second Life to be a positive one.

It is so easy to sit on the sidelines and whinge about things that you have never experienced. The fact is that you could take ANY activity and make it look silly and pathetic if you wanted to - because human beings are all partially silly and pathetic. It's part of our very nature, isn't it??

Imagine something as innocuous as watching a man having an animated conversation in a phone booth - you can't hear what he is saying, but he is gesticulating wildly and looks decidedly absurd. without knowing the context of his conversation, it would be all too easy to conclude that he IS decidedly absurd.

It's the same with Second Life - peeking in from the outside, it would be too easy to conclude that it is silly and pathetic - but only because you have no context. We all know better - the richness of SL is something that can't be explained - it can only be experienced to be understood. The experiences, feelings, friendships, and learnings that we have in SL are very much real and valuable.

I think you are right - in future times, we will look back on virtual interactions like those in SL as the first steps toward defining a whole new way of interacting and communicating - or maybe more precisely - a significant step in the development of a new world of possibilities in interacting and communicating that is already underway! Like all innovations, it will suffer the slings and arrows of the entrenched, the ignorant, and the frightened.

It's a paradigm shift, in the way that term was meant to be used - a new set of assumptions and technologies that are changing our understanding of each other and the way we explain the world around us. Physical presence becomes less and less important with the passage of time. Younger generations think nothing of communicating important decisions and information in a text message - that 20 years ago would only have been considered in a face-to-face meeting.

Thing is - those generations GET it - it's part of their ethos and their world already - and I suspect that as SL and other virtual mediums develop, they will slide into them like into a comfortable pair of shoes. Second Life is simply making a more robust medium for what they are already doing in chat, text, voicechat, Facebook, etc. etc.

As for the entrenched, the ignorant, and the frightened - they will eventually be dragged along behind us - by the time Second Life is mainstream and established widely - they will be telling us that they knew it all along…

dd