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Enemies and Friends
The party's over. The Eden-like mood that I have
been basking in in Active
Worlds has been shattered. No more can I hope
to recieve kindness from all.
There are people out there that are not happy
unless they make others unhappy,
just like in the Real World. I guess it was inevitable.
Oh sure, I've met
people who were irritating but irritation depends
a lot on the irritatee's
state of mind or the amount of multi-tasking
they are performing at the time
of the irritating. You can be irritated by your
best friend, given enough
time. No, I'm talking about people who go out
of their way to make your life
miserable either by design or because you are
a convenient target to be blamed
for their problems or shortcomings. I've been
here long enough now,
experiencing this down side of human nature in
VR, to grow a few layers on my
skin. Mind you, I didn't like it when the first
layer was stripped off. It was
painful and wholly unnecessary in my opinion
but I learned quickly that my
opinion about my affairs is sometimes not taken
into account by those
previously mentioned. No matter. I'm much stronger
for all of it and though I
hated the experiences at the time, I'm grateful
for the insight into others'
thoughts and motivations. It has given me a way
to head off some future
confrontations before they get nasty. On a much
happier note, I'm enormously
grateful for all of the friends I've made in
Active Worlds since I joined! The
genuine warmth and friendship I've recieved from
all the beautiful people I've
met in Active Worlds make the occasional bad
seed seem infinitesimal by
comparison. I'm particularly impressed by the
amount of building help I've
been able to obtain and to distribute. Because
of my intense interest in
building, particularly Special Effects programming,
I have met some very
knowledgable people who have not been shy about
sharing their building info.
When I first joined, the impression I got was
that really good builders tend
to keep to themselves and not share their "hard
won" knowledge. But since I've
ventured out in search of help, I've discovered
that if those individuals
exist, they do a great job of hiding because
I have recieved nothing but
enthusiastic help and encouragement from whoever
I ask. I guess I fit in that
small group of people that was described in last
week's edition who love both
socializing and building equally. I tell my friends
that I'm essentially a big
show off. When I have a new place or an addition
to an existing one, I've got
plenty of friends to drag over to see them. hhmmm....
I wonder if that's the
reason why some of them seem to vanish for days
when I tell them I'm building
something new? And I thought they were just leaving
me alone because I was
busy! (Just kidding guys) Where else could a
person have friends that they
talk to on a daily basis from New Zealand, Croatia,
England, Belgium,
Australia, Denmark, Norway, etc and not have
a long distance bill in the
thousands of dollars? Two of my very oldest (in
terms of the length of the
friendships, not the friends' age) and dearest
friends are deaf. I would never
have been able to communicate with them anywhere
near as well as I do in AW.
What a wonderful way for the deaf & hearing
worlds to be able to communicate!
If there is any down side to this, it's that
I have too many
friends........Naaaaaaaaaaaa.........The more
the merrier! : )
Ewasx
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