One of the most persistent snafus I see in terms of social relations on SL...is simply ignorance, or indifference to where freedom of the individual ends, and where indiscretion begins.
Consider....when you go to a department store in RL...when you find clothes you like, do you just strip down to put them on in front of all the other shoppers? No. When you are in crowded public with your RL significant other, do you announce for all to hear...how you cannot wait to do this-or-that with him and start lewdly pawing him in public? No (and if you do...you really shouldn't...unless you plan to be a porn
star...and in that case...why the free show?).
Making people uncomfortable is not how we express our freedoms. It's how we rub other people's noses in our freedoms...and that means someone is missing out on some damn freedom.
There is stuff that should STILL be relatively private...even in SL. Heck...you want to have an intimate encounter in public? There are whole sims dedicated to public sex. Go there. It's not like these places aren't around.
And here is where we get to the lifestyles that make up SL. Lots of people are into different things, just like Real Life. What is NOT like real life is the notion that other people are eager to hear about your particular lifestyle. I have never in real life, had a total stranger walk up to me at the grocery store to evangelize about how great pony-play is. But I see comparable conversations in SL all the time.
People...the same social rules that make real life function without everyone killing each other, are the same rules that really should be applied in SL too. Get to KNOW a person...THEN decide if they are someone who might be interested in your lifestyle. Don't try to "recruit" just for the sake of recruiting! Come on...you KNOW people in real life hate this! Unless you clap your hands with glee when you notice the Mormons working your neighborhood...you already understand people don't like to be randomly solicited. So why do that in SL? It's lazy. You are more interested in promoting your lifestyle, than you are interested in the people you are talking to. And people know it, and quickly despise you for it.
And remember...when you represent a lifestyle, people associate your actions with the lifestyle group as a whole. If you give them cause to despise you, they will despise your group as a whole, and isn't that the very opposite of what you want? Human nature is geared to have greater recall for negative experiences than positive ones...so while one person may be around 7 SL vampires all the time who are cool and courteous...the one vamp they are going to think about most often (and not in a good way), is the one who sent a bite request without so much as a "Hello".
As for the undressing in public thing...this really is avoidable. I know some folks carry around their own private dressing room, and while that is an option...when I'm making adjustments to something it could be troublesome if my camera doesn't have room to pan around me and gets stuck in a wall.
There ARE dressing rooms in SL. A particular favorite of mine is the Bare Rose Fitting Room & Spa. I have to admit, there may be better fitting room spaces out there for ladies, but I was so satisfied with this one, I did not look further.
I know it's troublesome, But I teleport back to the Fitting Room before leaving SL (unless I crash of course). Making this sort of an unofficial "Home" That way, if I log on and want to change clothes first thing...I obviously don't have to go anywhere to do it.
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Whiteraven, if you fly four or five hundred meters into the air, it will be relatively safe to change clothes. I do it all the time. It's conceivable someone will see you and fly up, but I've not yet had that happen.
ReplyDeleteAh yes! Good point. So there is another option aside from the dressing rooms. I forgot to add, clubs CAN be good places too, IF they have roofs and you are ON the roof right over the dance floor full of dancers.
ReplyDeleteOne of the mistakes I kept making when I was new, was trying to get "off and alone", but when folks popped onto the sim, they just got curious about who was "over there" and inevitably dropped in on me.