Looking Backward: Skin Trade For Iggy, 2007

April 15, 2007 5:00 PM

Location: Lila’s Skin Shop

I came here seeking baldness, because I heard that this store sold “Old Dude” looks for avatars. I’m stunned by what I found.

Lila is a designer of mostly female “skins”—wrappers one can place on a blank avatar, like my handy gorilla-suit, to completely change one’s appearance.

And what skins Lila had on offer!  They were a frat boy’s dream-date, straight out of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition.

I walked past pictures of the nude female “skins” on big posters, showing skin-tone and other attributes. 

A male avatar was nearby, and he only seemed to be ogling the merchandise.  Soon another guy showed up in just a pair of jeans and a male “demo skin” costing only one-quarter of a cent in real money.  Demos work just like full-priced skin (about 7 US dollars), except it is branded all over with…you guessed it…DEMO.

There was not a woman in sight.  A cheerful little sign told players to “get nekkid” and try on demo skins in the store.  Um, not me.  I needed a changing room.

I bought two (male) demos and went back to UR Island to try them on.

Ironically, the “Old Dudes” skin does not permit baldness.  But one called “Ben” does, and with lots of tweaking, I found myself oddly creeped out. Except for the lack of gray in the beard, Iggy now looks a lot like I will, after my pre-summer buzz-cut.

Iggy's 2011 notes: I've added Dreadlocks to Iggy, but he's basically the same avatar I had in 2007, wearing the "Ben" skin. Lila's skin has aged well and still looks decent when compared to those of newer male avatars.  Or is that that males still have a disadvantage, and most innovations go to female avatars?

Sadly, Lechium Candour, who ran Lila's Skins and has been an SL resident since 2005,  no longer appears to have an in-world store. The last location is now a police-equipment provider with cop-cars, guns, and a firing range. Whee.

No results came up in Marketplace when I searched under her name. I dropped her an IM and a notecard, and if I hear back, I'll report on it here.

In real life, I have moved on, too. I shave my head not seasonally, but at least once per week. My beard is now as gray as "Ben Senior's," alas. No dreads have sprouted, yet.

My "Looking Backward" posts are aggregated here, if you want to see the fool I made of myself in 2007.   

Looking Backward: Spending Money The First Time

April 05, 2007 4:00 PM

Location: Mauve Sim, Wynx Whiplash’s store

Baldness can wait. I’m about to make my first purchase in Second Life.

Following a lead from the ever-vigilant Ida Keen, who writes Baedaker, a tourist’s guide for SL, I’ve come to see what Wynx has for sale.

I understood, since getting to Orientation Island, that most players have multiple avatars, each available in the player’s inventory. All it takes to change from buff toyboy or sleek partygirl to, say, a tiny bunny-rabbit is a few clicks.

And all it takes to buy one of these alternative identities is a few hundred Lindens (at about 270 Lindens to the US Dollar).

So, why not? Now, thanks to Wynx, I have solved my hair problems, forever.

Q to self: What to be today? Iggy? Ol’ Putty Head? Or Monkey-boy?

A to self: Monkey-boy.

Now I can go, in style, to investigate that giant statue of King Kong in one of the SL Sims. It’s in some sort of deserted theme park.

I will also be more than ready for next year’s “National Gorilla Suit Day.” I need something to take my mind off reality for a while.

This week’s reality check is too painful. With the daily grind of nut-cases posturing and sabers rattling, I’d bet that Second Life will soon be full of new avatars, each in need of a little down-time in a gorilla suit.

If you are not in a gorilla suit yet, you are not paying attention. GOOD bumper sticker.

Iggy's Note: My "Looking Backward" posts are aggregated here, if you want to see the fool I made of myself in 2007.  

Looking Backward: Sandbox

This is one of my all-time favorite "new to SL" moments. Nowadays I could be a terror in a sandbox, having learned these various tricks.  One tip: do not try to learn to drive in SL in a Sandbox.

March 25, 2007 8:43 PM

Location: Sandbox Island

A house just fell on me.  Then cars started to rain out of the sky.  I am buried by the word “HELLO!” in letters the size of garage-doors.

Public Sandboxes permit items to be made and modified.  I did not know, however, that in a Sandbox I’d be attacked by players with the power, and immaturity, of newly minted gods.  I only wanted to make a little content of my own. . .creating items makes SL a unique gaming experience.  Early on, Linden Labs decided that the players would be the world-creators.

I was also hoping to drive a white moon-buggy that I’d found in a “Free Stuff” store on Orientation Island.  I drove to a group of avatars waving their arms and making things—big things—out of thin air.  A house tumbled by. . .tossed between two avatars like a baseball.

“Tsunami!” a female avatar typed.  The big wave washed over me, without sweeping me away.

“Cruise Ship!” she next yelled, dropping a gigantic boat on me.  I had to crawl out from underneath; my buggy was stuck.

Was she flirting? I stood up and typed in her direction.

“Duck?”  I have always wanted someone to yell it, so I could ask “Where?”

She replied “No duck. Buffalo!” and in a cloud of dust, a stampede was upon me.

When the dust cleared, I hopped on a free motorcycle and roared off, pursued by Linden knows what.  A woman like that is dangerous. . .

Iggy's Note: My "Looking Backward" posts are aggregated here, if you want to see the fool I made of myself in 2007. 

Looking Backward: Awkward Island

Flashback madness continues! Lesson learned way back then: be fearless. I'd fare much better today, but even on Orientation Island, I feared "not doing something right." At least I had a sense that a coherent culture did exist in Second Life's irreal spaces. I chose the image above both for its insight into the native culture as well as hint that Linden Lab used to have a sense of humor.

March 10, 2007 6:02 PM

Location: Wooded valley, Orientation Island

I tried to have my first conversation with another person and I failed, miserably.

Once Ignatius had his appearance more or less correct, I walked away from the central plaza on Orientation Island, flew into the air like Superman (a favored way to travel “in-world”) and landed in a well designed forest.  A much later snapshot (I didn’t know how to take them when this happened) gives some idea of what the landscape looks like.

After crossing a small stream on stepping-stones, Iggy sat in the shade of the trees and thought about the utter strangeness of the virtual world.  Soon enough, a female avatar walked by. I waved, shouting “hey,” using a pre-programmed animation from a set that all avatars possess.  She walked over.

Once you get close enough to another avatar, you can type short messages.  I began to type, and Iggy’s fingers obediently made little typing motions in mid-air.

Being no stranger to MOOs and MUDs, the text-only virtual worlds long popular in academia, I figured that I would have no trouble at all.  My style is right: articulate with just enough shortcuts to keep the typing swift (lol for “laughing out loud,” btw for “by the way,” and so on).

Here is what I typed; I will never forget: “I am utterly new to this. What about you? Can you tell me anything?”

Reply: “???” followed by the other avatar swiftly walking away.

Jean Baudrillard, where are you?  He’s the French philosopher who predicted that we prefer simulations to reality.  Wait. Baudrillard just died.

I wonder if I can get a virtual T-shirt that reads “Dork. Utterly”. . .

Iggy's Note: My "Looking Backward" posts are aggregated here, if you want to see the fool I made of myself in 2007.

Looking Backward: My First Second Life Login

My first in a series of flashbacks to 2007, when I first logged on to Second Life. Unlike Edward Bellamy, from whose Utopian novel I borrowed this title, I am not so sanguine about how things have gone over the past four years. And now, to turn on the time machine. . .

March 07, 2007 8:49 AM

Location: Keyboard, my office

I am ready to log in, for the first time, to Linden Lab’s Second Life. When I describe it many listeners shrug and get odd looks on their faces when I say “Second Life isn’t a game. It’s an alternative world.” Writers William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, and Neal Stephenson imagined these worlds in the 1980s, and now coders and I.T. millionaires like Mitch Kapor went ahead and made what Gibson called a “consensual hallucination.” Once broadband became common enough, it had to happen.

Unlike other online games, Second Life does not have clear-cut goals or even that many rules. It is less a competition and more a new way to communicate. It’s a paradigm-buster like e-mail, chat, or the Web. This may be hyperbole or it may be a moment that we’ll long remember: the first virtual reality for the masses.

Evidence? A meteoric growth in Second Life’s online population and the million dollars laid down every day by over 20,000 players, some of them running virtual businesses “in-world.” What are they “buying”? Imagine virtual real-estate, clothing, vehicles, chips at the casino, and tickets to virtual events. Yet SL is free to use.

Or is this just more hype? Is Second Life just World of Warcraft for bored Yuppies?

When I dive in, what will I find? Stay tuned.

March 09, 2007 8:53 AM

Location: Orientation Island

I needed an identity for this world; you may not use your own name. In fact, players must choose a last name from Linden’s list. I picked “Onomatopoeia”; this was the one word I was beaten (repeatedly) by Father Raymond for never learning in 11th grade English.

I’ve chosen “Ignatius” as my first, after John Kennedy Toole’s Ignatius Reilly from A Confederacy of Dunces (to reflect my fears) and Iggy Pop (to reflect my attitude of “why not?).

After downloading and installing Linden Lab’s free player (for fast Mac, Windows, or Linux systems) my next step was to design Iggy’s avatar, the 3-D manikin that walks, flies, or drives its way around Second Life’s virtual world to meet, greet, flirt, or shop with other avatars. I chose a stock image from several, and like most players, the next step was to customize Ignatius to make his face, hair, body, and clothes fit some ideal.

I chose to make Iggy look as much as my first-life self as I could. But here there is a snag; I cannot be nearly bald and gray. In fact, when newly arrived avatars appear in the segregated starting place that Second Life calls “Orientation Island,” it’s hard to find an avatar who is not smooth and polished in a bland-but-a-tad-edgy, Barbie-meets-Ken, or maybe Paris-Hilton-meets-GWAR kind of way.

There are shiny, happy, bone-stock avatars all around me, bumping into others as they learn to walk and begin their second lives. So, it has begun. . .more pictures soon!

New Features at In a Strange Land

Location: Like Janus, looking two ways at once

I advise readers that I'm going to run a couple of new features here.

One of them will be "Looking Backward," my account of some of the notable posts from my first year in Second Life, 2007; I rushed in like a fool should do, made mistakes, made friends, had fun, dragged my students along. Lalo Telling's recent reflections on the past twelve months in SL and OpenSim grids inspired me to take my own look backward as Iggy comes up on his 4th Rezz Day.

FYI Lalo, I started to call my series "Four Years On," until I saw your post's title and quickly changed things. I'm not into one-upmanship unless we are playing a board game, which we are not.

These posts were originally published at the Richmond Time Dispatch's Web site, before they deemed SL coverage to be a passing fad and buried the blog on their site. That earlier version of In A Strange Land ran until April 2009. I'm rather glad that these posts never moved to the newspaper's attempt to reach a younger demographic online. The results have been shallow and unfortunate.

The second new item at this blog will be a series that, for now, has the working title "Under a Virtual Moon." Elaine, the latest co-author at this site, is a member of my Unitarian-Universalist Church in Richmond, as she's a neo-pagan who has been active in the spiritual side of SL. I'm looking forward to her guest columns!

Welcome Elaine...and now I'll glance over my shoulder for a next post.