Carol H Tucker Passionate about knowledge management and organizational development, expert in loan servicing, virtual world denizen and community facilitator, and a DISNEY fan
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beladona Memorial Be warned:in this very rich environment where you can immerse yourself so completely, your emotions will become engaged -- and not everyone is cognizant of that. Among the many excellent features of SL, there is no auto-return on hearts, so be wary of where your's wanders...
Last post I established what I considered the components of "friendship"
level of association -- how close is s/he to me?
depth of engagement -- how much do I know about her/him and how much does s/he know about me?
sharing -- giving and receiving support, being present
But what about friending someone online?
Lets walk through the same questions about online friends that I did for RL friends:
How many friends do you have?
Right now I have 450+ friends in FaceBook -- many of them are people that I have met online, primarily from Second Life or from BrainStorms. About a dozen of the people from BrainStorms I have met in person, mostly those who live locally or came into town for a visit. From SL? many names became faces when I got to SLCC [I was able go to the ones in Chicago and Tampa]
In Second Life, beladona has different friends from kala or from Mira. Beladona's friends' list is ridiculously obscene huge, with some people still on it from when I first rezzed back in 2005. Many of the people are there from:
old podcasts -- when I first came in world my daughter was very actively promoting BUCKET. As a result of hanging around in Nowhereville, I came to know many other podcasters that are still on my friends' list
music venues -- one of the activities that I got into rather quickly was going to see Live Music in SL. As a result, there are many folks that I have friended over the years because they are there watching, or managers or performers.
old clubs and hang-outs -- the Silver Dollar was my first real hang-out other than BUCKET. And I still have many of my old neighbors in Lost Grounds on my list, people that I met while I was hosting, etc.
dragons, mers and furries -- self-explanatory really, neh?
friends of old partners -- just like being around someone in RL while you are dating, you end up hanging out with your partners' friends and friending them
lucky-chair hopping -- I think we all go through a phase where you do hunts and go for the lucky chairs! And you end up friending people so that when you have a letter on a chair, you can TP them in to grab it before it changes
time spent mentoring -- one of the first things that a newcomer wants to do is friend the person who has been helping them find their way around. I used to always accept their offer, then quietly remove them a couple weeks later, if I thought of it
working with Perfect World Productions -- guests and models end up friending me so that I can keep in touch with them while the preparations for the show are completed
kala's list isn't quite as long, but is very different from beladona's list. They do have a core of friends in common, of course! kala's friends come from role play [RP] and from exploration of the D/s lifestyle. Mira's friends are other children and Disney fans. The other alts really haven't developed much in the way of a friends' list.
Are all these people really "friends'? They friended me -- but for different reason than "me" if that makes sense?
How long do you stay friends?
Things move more quickly online than they do in RL. Once I was told that it is a factor of 4:1, that three months online equals a year in RL. I am not quite sure about that ratio, but there is no doubt that when you are in virtual reality [VR], the expectations of how quickly you expect a response are much more time-sensitive than in RL..
How do you make friends?
write
Seriously -- altho voice has come to SL, most of the time we are typing.
And of those friends, how many do you actually know?
Okay, pretty much everyone has heard the quip that no one knows you're a dog online. And we have all heard the horror stories about gender-bending and age-defying online identities -- you think you are talking to a teen-aged girl and really it is a pot-bellied old man. On the other hand? I find that when you go online, you are free from the misconceptions about people based on the roles acquired over a life time, that by taking what the person says OUT of the context of their environment, you actually can touch more of the real person.
All you have to go on when you talk to someone online is what they say, how they present themselves in profiles and with avatars.
But when you come right down to it, isn't that exactly what you have in RL to get to know someone? All you really have to go on to get to know them is what they say, how they present themselves?
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