After floundering a few times, I ended up on Help Island. This is where the SL creators want newbies to start and cut their teeth. The scenery and architecture are not much different from the Orientation Island where you are (okay, okay your avatar is) plonked down after the first sign up. But the purpose and ambiance are very different. Help Island is where the Big Brothers and Big Sisters of the SL-owner company Linden Lab provide guidance. All these invisibles (haven't seen any of them yet) talk to you in honey-smooth voices. There is New Age-ish music, often with lyrics that sound like adult versions of Sesame Street lyrics.
These invisible owner-gods all carry the last name Linden. The Big Brothers Linden (BBLs) and the Big Sisters Lindens(BSLs) are there to gently coach you and cajole you -- into becoming productive SL workers (oops... "creators", "builders"... even Wal-Mart calls their workers "associates"... and this is the super-sophisticated world of SL) and spenders and consumers. There are tutorials, instructions, gentle voice-over urgings to upgrade to premium pay-as-you-play accounts, even some freebie goodies to make you feel happy ("here's your gift balloon and a rattle").... they (the BBLs and the BSLs) all talk in soothing, radio-personality, modulated voices.
On Help Island, you can learn to use the SL tools in the Sandbox (BBLs/BSLs guiding, us toddlers playing/learning). The hope is that we will graduate into workers (oops..."builders") with varying levels of skills, and help build the new SL Pyramids and SL Great Walls and SL Helicopters and SL Spaceships... and pay for the privilege of performing this labor, or for enjoying the fruits of others' labor!
I wonder what avatar persona K. Marx is using on SL...!!
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