Or, The Great Summer Disappearance
Summer. That wonderful time of year when people disappear from Second Life faster than the new furniture you forgot to rez under your landgroup.
One moment your friends list is buzzing, you get teleport offers and people asking if anyone fancies a bit of shopping. The next, it’s eerily quiet. Your best friend is “currently somewhere in Italy”, another is camping in Denmark with apparently little Wi-Fi, someone else has gone on a cruise, and that one person who is online has been marked as “unavailable” since last Thursday.
Welcome to another edition of my Second Life Survival Guide, where today we tackle one of the greatest seasonal disasters known to virtual humanity: surviving summer while everyone else insists on having a Real Life.
I’m genuinely happy for them, of course. I really am. Fresh air is healthy. Sunshine is important. Beaches are lovely. Ice cream is delicious. But must everyone leave at the same time? Surely there should be some sort of schedule. Half the grid could holiday in July and the other half in August. I feel Linden Lab should perhaps look into this. For the sake of the remaining residents, naturally.
Denial Is the First Stage
The first instinct is usually denial. You log in and immediately stare at your Friends list, convinced somebody will suddenly appear. Then you check again ten minutes later, just in case Ibiza has unexpectedly become boring and your friends have rushed home to decorate their virtual kitchens. After another half hour you realise they’re still gone, the camping trips continue, the cruise ship hasn’t sunk, and you’re standing alone in Bellisseria talking to your mailbox again.
Time to Become an Explorer
Once you’ve accepted your fate, it’s time to embrace the opportunities that come with temporary digital solitude. Remember all those landmarks you’ve been collecting over the years? The ones you enthusiastically saved with every intention of visiting “later”? Well, congratulations, later has finally arrived. Buried somewhere between a landmark from 2023 simply labelled “Cool Place” and another mysteriously called “OMG”, there are probably dozens of regions you’ve never actually explored.
Summer is the perfect excuse to become an explorer again. Visit art installations you’ve never heard of, wander through forests that look magical, climb mountains that exist purely because someone thought they looked nice, and take far too many photographs of places you’ll never find again because you forgot to save the landmark.
Fortunately, I have spent a fair amount of time doing exactly that already, so if inspiration is lacking, feel free to browse through some of my region reviews. Think of it as letting me do the research while you enjoy the scenery.
Dance Like Nobody You Know Is Watching
Of course, exploring doesn’t have to stop there. Why not visit a club you’ve never been to before? Most of us eventually find one or two favourite venues and stick with them, like loyal regulars at the local pub, but summer is an excellent time to venture outside your comfort zone.
You might discover a fantastic DJ, meet interesting people, or accidentally end up at a medieval country music club where everyone is dressed as pirates. This is Second Life. All three outcomes are equally likely. I even dragged poor Huck along for extensive club-hopping research recently, purely in the interest of journalism, so you could always borrow a few ideas from those adventures.
Club Hopping, Notes from the Dancefloor #1
Club Hopping, Notes from the Dancefloor #2
Ah Yes… The Inventory
There are, admittedly, also those productive activities people keep recommending. You could finally learn Blender. You could start building. You could improve your photography, experiment with machinima, practise scripting, or finally organise your inventory.
Yes… the inventory.
Every survival guide eventually reaches this point, because no matter how hard we try to avoid it, the inventory always wins.
Somewhere inside yours are at least forty folders called “New Folder”, seventeen unpackers you forgot to delete, demos you’ll definitely never wear again, and a mysterious box called “FINAL FINAL COPY 2” that you have been too afraid to open for the last six years.
Summer, apparently, is an excellent opportunity to sort through all of this.
Personally, I prefer just pretending to doing it and clean only one folder before rewarding myself with coffee and a shopping trip that immediately adds another hundred items.
Reinvent Yourself (Responsibly… or Not)
And if socialising isn’t quite happening because everyone appears to be enjoying cocktails somewhere in southern Europe, perhaps it’s time to reinvent yourself. Summer has always been the season for questionable fashion choices, both in real life and in Second Life. Try a completely different avatar. Become a fairy for a week. Be a steampunk queen or king. Turn into an elf, a tiny woodland creature or, if you’ve completely run out of sensible ideas, a duck.
Experiment with colours that should probably require planning permission and combine outfits that make absolutely no sense whatsoever. Your regular friends aren’t around to witness the fashion crimes anyway, and by the time they return you’ll either have perfected your new look or quietly deleted all photographic evidence.
Questionable Decisions Build Character
Speaking of questionable decisions, boredom has a habit of encouraging them. Summer is therefore the perfect time to indulge in a few harmless experiments. Teleport to that one friend left who’s supposedly been online for nine hours, they’re probably asleep at their keyboard anyway.
Accept that random invitation to a roleplay despite having absolutely no idea how it works. Stand perfectly still at a busy shopping event just to see how long it takes before somebody mistakes you for part of the décor.
Say Hello, You Never Know
And perhaps the most outrageous suggestion of all: simply talk to people. I know, revolutionary.
Say hello to the person taking photographs beside you. Compliment somebody’s outfit. Ask where they found that ridiculous dragon shoulder pet.
Some of the nicest conversations in Second Life have started completely by accident, simply because two people happened to be standing in the same place at the same time. Yes, sometimes you’ll be ignored. They may genuinely be AFK, trapped under a sleeping cat, or simply away making a cup of tea.
But every now and then you’ll end up chatting for an hour with someone you’ve never met before, and suddenly your lonely summer evening isn’t lonely at all.
Before You Know It…
The good news is that summer doesn’t last forever. Eventually your friends will return, armed with photographs of beaches, stories about delayed flights, tales of campsites and declarations that they “hardly looked at their phone.” Meanwhile, you’ll have discovered new regions, visited clubs you never knew existed, cleaned exactly three inventory folders, bought an entirely unnecessary duck avatar, and somehow ended up in a pirate karaoke contest at two o’clock in the morning.
I know whose summer sounds more interesting!
Survival Rating: ☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️ (5 out of 5 Sunburned Avatars)
Until your friends come home, embrace the peace, explore somewhere unexpected, make a few questionable decisions, and remember: in Second Life, boredom is usually only one teleport away from becoming an excellent story.
