Monday, December 5, 2011
The Speed of Nostalgia
I ended up viewing a lot of my early Second Life videos, photos and comics over the weekend as I was consolidating back-drives. It felt like watching old family movies and leafing through childhood scrapbooks. Funny thing is, the oldest ones are barely three and a half years old. Nostalgia is hyper-accelerated in the virtual world.
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4 comments:
Beware the League of Virtual Vixens!
I hear you about the speed of nostalgia in Virtual Worlds. I have been in Second Life for a bit over 4 years, and it feels like 10 or more. All of the experiences of my first year seem like they happened a lifetime ago.
The people I met early on, became friends with and did a LOT with, some of who are long gone, seem like aquaintances of long long ago.
The Art world of early 2008 bears virtually no resemblance to today's SL art world. All but a handful of the most 'famous' of those then are inactive or gone, and they have been replaced by a new generation of artists working at a much higher level, many of them inworld for only a year or so.
I remember being nostalgic about 2008, in 2009! hahaha
In the virtual world, many burn brightly for a year or so and then vaporize, never to be seen again. A very odd condition. I think this leads to the nostalgia; that is, the high level and rate of change.
The economics of owning land is a huge contributor to the transitory nature of Virtual Worlds.
Even at less expensive levels ( a sim in InWorldz is $90 a month) there is lots of short lived everything.
I envision a future of 'between world' surfing where one can host a virtual space for the cost of the server and networking fees. More stability in the future, I am thinking....
Most of my friends in SL wax nostalgic about 'the good old days'. I think most of this is due to them being more open to new experiences when they had no previous reference points.
We all tend to get into ruts, and it takes a lot of work to become a noob again and find what is actually out there.
Just Rambling.... ha ha ha
From WOW!! to whatever.... I think that was an old blog post title of yours.
The psyche stands a little outside time I think, certainly the unconscious does.
I have very fond memories of my early builds too.
Scarp: I feel like I've lived a few SL lifetimes too. There was an early time before the blog caught on when my social circle was mostly people I met by chance inworld.
In the next phase, I started to meet people through blog comments and social network posts which eventually led to me moving to Extropia. That was my probably the peak period of my SL activity. I think many of those in my social circle at the time burned themselves out and ended up leaving or cutting back significantly after realizing there wasn't enough time and energy for two full time lives.
In the next phase, I focused mostly on creating comics and videos. I still kept up with those I collaborated with, but rarely went in just to hang out. I think the last straw for me was when my main creative partner disappeared from the Net in the middle of a big video project.
Today, I'm rarely rezzed. It's possible I may continue to move into other creative pursuits, or I may get inspired again and return. Time and Muse will tell. :)
I was on the periphery of the art scene, but never an active part of a community.
I never thought of the economics as a factor in people leaving, probably because I've never owned a lot of land.
Anyway, I enjoyed your ramble.
Indeed! As RL counts time, I'm only a few months old, but I feel I've already lived half a lifetime.
Following your example, I've also expanded my virtual presence from SL to other platforms such as Facebook, flickr, YouTube and Twitter (though I haven't posted much there yet). With all these interactions, time seems to move even more quickly! I think I'm interacting more with flesh people these days than my SL friends, though I still rez at least every other day and rent a lovely beach house in-world.
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