Artificial Boy

Response to Open Forum: What Was *Your* First Hour In SL Like?. Hamlet Au asks, “I wonder, however, if all this is looking at the problem backwards. Forget figuring out why 90% of those who came, left. Instead, isn’t it more important to run a resilience study, and locate the commonalities between the 10% who stayed, and build on that? So I put the question to readers: if you’re an active Resident, what happened in your first hour in Second Life that kept you here?”
Answer:

Join Date 4/4/2006

My first hour
Trying to make my avatar look like a child.

My second hour
A Linden-made sign in Waterhead had a notecard full of landmarks. One of them was captioned “who wants free ice cream?” Indeed!

…Trying to fly across the ocean towards the red beacon, and realizing that the dark blue regions were impassable.

…Arriving at the ice cream shop and eating an ice cream cone by myself.

My third hour
…Feeling lonely and brainstorming where to find like-minded people. The best i could think of was adoption agencies. I searched for one and found one, but it was empty. The second one I found was populated, and I stayed there for more than a week.

Epilogue
The ice cream place is gone now. I took my first set of foster parents there, when arranging to meet them for the first time. It was empty for that visit, too.
The adoption agency is long gone now, too.
*sniffle*