In #
OpenSimulator, life isn't too easy for individualists. There isn't exactly much respect or tolerance for them. At best, #
individualism is taken for cluelessness, for not knowing how to conform to "standards"; at worst, it's openly attacked.
I'm wondering if it's as bad in #
SecondLife.
One example is if you don't deck out your avatar in the way that "everyone else" does, not in any way you're expected to. Male avatars have to be badass, female avatars have to be sexy, and in #
OpenSim, both have to consist entirely of illegal content. And yes, the black-leather-clad rocker style is still big in OpenSim whereas it has been displaced by business suits in Second Life years ago. I think the currently only accepted male style in Second Life, and the only one for which clothes are being made, is the beach slacker style.
If your avatar doesn't conform to such standards, people are quick to believe that either you don't know the cool stuff (in which case they may push it upon you without asking you), or you don't know where to get it (although it's much harder to get what you're wearing), or you don't know how to wear the cool stuff (in which case they may try to give you lessons without asking you).
Many other examples come from preferring #
immersion over convenience, something else that "literally nobody" does.
If you want to go to the party, and you want to
walk from somewhere where you can't be seen teleporting or somewhere where you'd arrive if this was real life (railway station, bus stop, harbour pier...), it's likely that someone will offer you a teleport right slap-bang into the middle of the crowded dance floor. It's a nice gesture at this point. But if you keep walking, they'll send you another teleport offer instead of checking the map for where you are. If you still don't teleport, they may either send you yet another teleport offer or ask why you don't simply teleport.
If they didn't ask, and you arrive after a few minutes of walking, they may assume that you're simply too dumb to teleport.
When the event is over, you walk away from it instead of teleporting away or logging out right from the dance floor. This may not seem dumb, but it does seem weird.
There are many other things where you may irritate the "it ain't real, it's just pixels" convenience-over-immersion majority that basically treats #
VirtualWorlds like fancy chat rooms. For example, if you deliberately define which clothes you've taken with you to where you are, if any, instead of just having all clothes in your inventory at hand.
Or if you refuse to change into another outfit in front of everyone. Or if you undress and dress step-by-step, maybe even using purpose-made outfits for that because you sometimes have to put something else on while taking something off. You're being weird because "everyone" would just change everything at once.
Or if you insist in changing your swimwear after going for a swim because the beach you're on is not a (sub)tropical one, and what you're wearing won't dry on your body within two minutes.
Or if you actually want to do on a beach what you'd do on real-life beaches. Go swimming, for example, or just take a sunbath. Virtual beaches are either sex spots or party locations or merely decorational, full stop.
Or if you accidentally end up in a body of water, and you do as if your clothes are wet now.
Or even if you dress for the occasion and situation. If you refuse to wear a black leather jacket on a (sub)tropical beach on a sunny day. That is, if you have more than two or three different outfits as a male avatar.
I mean, I've seen people attend under-water, mermaid-themed parties in their everyday streetwear, and I guess at least some of them were wondering what's wrong with those who actually turned their avatars into merpeople or at least had put on diving gear for the event. And I'm not convinced that none of them knew where the party would take place.
Or if you refuse to sit down on the line dance floor like "everyone else" and, in the rare absence of a Clubmaster, make use of a dance HUD. Even worse, if you insist in dances that fit the music. If you don't have anything fitting, you don't dance.
Or generally, if your avatar is a character. With a custom, fictional backstory even. And not just a profile pic in a 3-D chat app.
Virtual worlds being treated as "just pixels" and a fancy chat UI is also why some sim builders wonder why they even take it upon themselves to build beautiful and, most of all, immersive places. It doesn't seem worth it. At most, people teleport in, cam around for a few minutes, grab some stoff and teleport out again. And if they can't pick up everything on your sim as freebies, they'll attack you for it, because what else should a sim that isn't an event location be good for?
After all, if someone wants to do anything else in-world than party, chat with other real-life people through their avatars, hoard freebies or maybe have virtual sex, something must be seriously wrong with them.
In this regard, I must say I can consider myself lucky to know the right people. People who know what I'm doing how and why I'm doing it that way, and who respect it.
