While the enhanced social media system that Second Life can perhaps offer the best interactive and immersive experiences, my journey lately has shown that the trend has been reversing towards less interactivity and more isolation.
I cannot list all of the places I have visited where residents stand around and simply 'stare' at each other. Are they reading each others' profiles? Maybe. Are they sending direct messages (IMs)? Perhaps. The one thing they are NOT doing is sharing in Public Chat. They are not conversing with dialogue that can be inclusive. They are not actually exploring the 'social aspect' of social media.
This is getting bad in the many so-called 'femdom' places in SL, where everyone just looks at each other for hours. Worse yet, the countless 'lower end' kink places and sex places (using 'femdom' in their keywords for Search, but having no Matriarchal values at all) are nothing but throngs of SL residents leering at each other with no chat whatsoever.
This would not be so horrible if it were open to change, and sometimes, when I say hello or try to start a discussion, there is response...but more often than not, people don't respond at all, or even tell me they don't talk in Chat.
It was not always this way. With all of the other sad developments over the past few years in SL, I relate this trend to the exodus of Women from Second Life. As Matriarchal values seem harder and harder to find in SL, and scams like 'financial domination' and evils like misogyny groups are on the rise, I believe this is due to the dilution of Women's SL organisations.
As more Sisters have left, the standards of communication and networking have suffered. Case in point: Even in one of the more popular 'femdom places', I tried (hopelessly) to start a discussion about Matriarchy and was informed by a man there that such 'womens issues' topics made him uncomfortable. Another man (who actually worked there!) told me to 'drop the topic'.
In the end, what is left? Why go through the learning curve to enter Second Life if there is no interaction to explore?
The good news: there are those of us out there who still like to have discussions about something more meaningful than some man's sex drive. We just need to find each other.
