Could fluther ever become like Second Life?

No! Who wants another virtual world? Give me Q&As any day.

I hope the Fluther doesn’t change.

I find the community nice just as it is. Though I can understand how you might envision that.

It would take building a completely new framwork and porting over all the users, to start with. Mostly it would take convincing the userbase to not abandon the site, as its purpose would be completely and drastically different from what it is now. Is it possible? Theoretically, sure, you could wrap the 3D world engine in a Flash player and embed it into the site, but the actual 3D world itself would need a ton of work to create and develop… Your question is kind of like asking what it would take to convert a peanut butter sandwich to the collected works of Shakespeare. Sure it’s possible…

As for your avatar… I was so disappointed with Voyager. Formulaic to the max. And I expected way more interesting relationships and consequences with Seven and the Borg, but was met with nothing. The closest thing I appreciated was the episode where they are hunting down the Omega particle. My favorite Star Trek series remains DS9. It’s hard for me to say that when I really do love TNG, but I’m rewatching TNG right now and am mocking all of the episodes for the stupid writing found in them. DS9 was at least consistent and had progression. Ultimately I just need to re-watch Babylon 5…

I love peanut butter; how do you convert a peanut butter sandwich into the collected works of Shakespeare? With a replicator – or literally writing it out with the peanut butter? That would take some time.

GA’s all around.

The replicator can simply reassemble the molecules of the peanut butter sandwich into a book containing Shakespeare, or more accurately for them a PADD containing it. If the sandwich was large enough you could use the peanut butter as an ink, but the question there becomes where do you get a large enough surface? A third option is lighting both sandwich and Shakespeare book on fire, which transforms them both into carbon, one could argue they are now the same thing… :)

don’t like change… “i be sat in my ways! SO, get your “cottonpicking hands off”!

@BoBo1946 Oh go blow your lawn. You’d love it – swimming around with a virtual avatar – “talking” to people you meet – dining at Zen’s Sea-food bistro.

I’d give you a discount for being Down Under.

As a matter of fact, exactly where i’m going…dis going to blows dat yard away!

That would imply that most of the people here have a first life. OH SNAP!

Uh oh. ^

Fluther could BE a second life, but not a virtual reality game. I was so bored with Second Life that I left my avatar on a public bench for 3 years. I wonder if he is still there. At least I was thoughtful enough not to leave him standing around.

@dynamicduo I enormously enjoyed your phraseology “Your question is kind of like asking what it would take to convert a peanut butter sandwich to the collected works of Shakespeare.”

^ Now that was funny.

@anartist Thankies :)

I love Second Life – been “playing” (yes I know, its not a game but I still can’t think of a better word) for 4 years. My avatar on Fluther is a pic of my SL avatar.

And actually I think there’s potential for something alongside Fluther – a group of Flutherites cound get together (in an under-sea sim, with fish and jellies swimming around) to discuss questions, philosophy etc. There’s a place called Philosophy House which has a very informal format of discussion which I think would work well with Flutherites.

But you can’t replace the main Fluther website because there’s no easy way to store or search the questions that are discussed. Plus the fact that SL requires a pretty decent computer to run it well and that makes it inaccessible to many.

@downtide Actually that’s pretty cool. You could develop a new jelly avatar and start building a new FlutherUnderWorld. And invite us to don jelly garb and visit. I would.

I HOPE TO GOD THAT IT DOES NOT!

I feel better now. :-)

@ChazMaz i agree, for real Fluther. But visiting Second-Life Fluther would be like going to an amusement park with some friends. [I think]

Time to rant…

I have been there, have done that. Had clubs, owned land, made friends, money, and fell in love. Second life on the surface, especially for the newbie and Entrepreneur/artist is a fun and cool place to make some friends, and make some money. It is looked at as a supercharged chat room, a video game. But the nature of its name is where the insidiousness is. As much of a second life (SL) as it might be, in order to operate you still have to use your Real Life (RL) abilities. You do not follow a different thought and emotional pattern when in SL. You can only use what you know in RL. But kidding yourself is one of the appeals of SL. You eventually get lost in it.

@ChazMaz how does one make [real] money in Second Life?

Just like how you would do it here. You can sell land. SL land. Or clothing, or objects for the home. That you can also build and sell.

Or be a dancer in a club earning tips. Or just be a hooker. Puppet sex, mmmm good. ;-)
Same business plan applies in SL as in RL.

The currency is lindens that you can transfer back to the currency of you nation.

Its mostly nickel and dime. And SL is not like it use to be. But, you would be surprised how much “crap” you accumulate while being there. It adds up. and someone was paid for that stuff you have.

I can’t bring myself to close my account. I paid enough ever the years for all the junk I have. You cant re-sell it. You can’t give most of it away. So you either throw it away or keep your account. Another slick Linden move.

Aside from getting the bugs (serious) out of the chat room feature, please do not try to transform fluther into something entirely different!

Right on @Dr_Lawrence!

@anartist While ChazMaz is correct about ways to earn money in SL, there are many others that don’t involve sex. A friend of mine converted his real life paintings into graphic ones and sold them in SL to people who owned or rented housing. And there are many other ways. From what I’ve read, you’d pretty much need to give up your real life in order to make a living in SL, and even then, it isn’t guaranteed.

As much as I was fascinated by SL and enjoy Fluther, their goals are very different. I personally see no benefit for Fluther to adopt most, if any of the SL features. If you are still curious though, there are plenty of SL videos on their site and on YouTube that will give you some insight to what it is all about.

@ChazMaz U cannot tell whether you are talking about Second Life londens or real cash. Lindens don’t pay the mortgage. Who cares about what you accrue on Second Life if you can’t pay the mortgage?

As for hooking, is it like angelfire was, a place for hookers to advertise for realtime?

I can’t see why anyone would give a damn about virtual possessions. If there is some penny-to-the-dollar value to it all, sell your life or possessions to someone else on second life.

@Pied_Pfeffer I see no reasons either for Fluther to adopt such, besides the difficulty mentioned above as equivalent to converting peanut butter to the works of Shakespeare. I was only thinking of one interested Flutherite [mentioned above] creating his own imaginary marine world with fluthers floating about and inviting us to come and play.

Fluther is about real people connecting in illuminating and entertaining ways.

Well, I never said SL would make you rich. But some people can make a few bucks and some have made a living.

That penny to the dollar adds up fast. I probably have $200 (not lindens) worth of SL stuff. I know people that own thousands of dollars of SL Real Estate. And, you can’t give it away. That would get in the way of people wanting to sell stuff, because of that pennies to the dollar thing. Real estate you can, but that would defeat the purpose. Easy enough to sell.

In the day, I was making enough US dollars to afford what I purchased and my monthly fee that increases as you acquire more land. Then when I decided to sell the land. I made a profit. Nothing big but it was cool to stay ahead of the curve.

@ChazMaz damn. You really were into it. Did you do WoW too?

In Second Life – should I ever feel inclined to join (and somebody please stop me) – I think I would have a Jeri Ryan avatar – work as a prostitute and make tons of money. Just a thought.

@zenele You could try it, but I doubt that anyone makes tons of money in SL. People go there for different reasons. I joined because I kept reading about it in training magazines and wanted to check it out to see if it would be feasible to hold classes there for our global company.

Not quite, but I’ll take Fluther over crap like SL or IMVU any day. Goddamn things keep crashing my computer.

@Symbeline re IMVU check this out

@anartist LOL.

Just to clarify my opinion of Second Life.

It’s the land of the weak, home of the broken. :-)

Here is an interesting link.