There Goes the Neighborhood

SL has a new CEO and interviews with Mr. Humble are showing up in many, many blogs. This will not be one of those places. 🙂 I’ve read many of the interviews (Dusan Writer had a very good write-up), listened to Phaylen’s interview, read other people’s feedback and comments on the interviews (I really like Lalo Telling’s summary). I’ve read Mr. Humble’s post on the SL site and the multitude of responses. It is not surprising that in most of these places, people fall back to pushing their own agenda. Daniel Voyager posted a list of and links for the various interviews. I don’t know where SL should go. I know that I hoped my company would continue to do business there and that I would have a part in that work. That does not appear to be likely, but I’d still like to believe that corporations could find a profitable, secure home in SL. I want interoperability – I want to take my customized avatar and my inventory and hop from grid to grid. I don’t want to figure out the details – I just want to do it. I want more prims, less lag, simpler controls for new users. I want to be able to build and create if I feel like it, and to go buy content when I’m not interested in creating it myself. I want live music. I want to socialize and meet people from all over the world. I want to live in my home and enjoy my land and live my life here.

One of the most interesting comments that I saw (and it appeared in the comments on Tateru Nino’s article in the Metaverse Journal) was by Winter V:

In two years time, I’d like things to change. I’d like the ability to hide my land from my neighbors.. creating a sort of “you can only see it when you’re on my parcel” system. This would open up a world of privacy, removing petty annoyances like “security orbs”. At the same time, I’d like a companion setting to allow me to hide my neighbors objects from my own view, when I’m on my land. THIS one option would remove the need for all these “privacy walls” that people put up constantly, to block out their neighbors ugly builds.

Wow. Yes. This one strikes home IMMEDIATELY. Because my home has become blocked in on 2 sides by a ton of houses, sky boxes and even a landing strip. On one side – I own the land and I put trees. On the fourth side – it’s Linden road. That has been fine until recently. But the last few weeks there has been a steady stream of vehicles down the road. When I say “steady”, I mean approximately every 60 seconds some unavatar’d scripted vehicle is creeping its vacillating way down the road, in full view from my living room. I gather from reading blogs that other people have experienced these vehicles as well.

I enjoy people coming by and stopping to say hello. I don’t mind newbies who appear, as long as they answer when I try to chat with them. One lovely woman was embarrassed when I logged in and found her on my bed. 🙂 I assured her it was fine, I didn’t mind, but I don’t think she believed me. You see – I LIKE that other people can see my art work, see what I think is attractive and fun. Yes, I’ve found people in my pool. It’s okay as long as they are polite. I’ve made several new friends this way. I like the idea of land where others can see the things in which I take pride and delight. I have scripting and rezzing turned off, so there is a minimum of damage that can occur.

A few weeks ago when I was checking my prim count, it seemed a bit high. When I checked to see who had prims on my land, there was indeed a new, non-group member, in the list. The prims were a wrecked truck. A few days later, she had a wrecked car. I returned them and didn’t think much about it, as I was spending most of my time in my sky box. But lately I’ve been in my house and the steady stream of traffic is distracting. I wouldn’t mind avatars – somehow that would feel like community. I am not sure how I feel about this stream of automated vehicles, but I think for the most part I don’t enjoy it. They’ve stopped wrecking and remaining on my land, but they aren’t especially attractive or interesting. The shapes repeat. They don’t do anything visually stimulating. It reminds me a lot of the advertising circulars that get tossed on my RL walk every week – someone else’s garbage.

I’ve tried to hire a detective to look into the situation. *grin* I’m hoping for a full report: who? why? why here? I don’t hold out much hope because you know how difficult it is to get good help these days. In the meantime, I’m contemplating putting up a BIG wall to block the view of the road. A PHYSICAL wall to ensure that the vehicles don’t meander onto my land again. And if one man’s ceiling is another man’s floor, I’m wondering if one woman’s advertising delight is another woman’s annoying trash.