Second Life, On Hiatus

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So, a couple days ago I decided to stop paying for all these things that I do in Second Life in order to maintain a presence for my store in-world, and to have a “place” for my avatar to “live.” And it wasn’t really a split second decision or anything. It’s kind of more of a feeling that’s been brewing for months. Everyday I log on, take care of a few things, check to make sure things that need to function for my store to work properly, are working, and then I log off. No drive to stay on, or even put anything new in the store.

And it has to do with a lot of things.

Back in 2014 when I started the store, I was out of work. I was having a lot of issues in life where my options were very few. But I was on Youtube, and I saw this video of a woman who was like, “I quit my job and started making shoes for avatars in Second Life, and now I have a new income!” And I was inspired! I thought, “Well, okay, I’ll learn Blender.” And learn Blender, I did.

Over the time that I developed the [REVOSA], I met a lot of people inside of the virtual world, made a lot of friends. I also found a lot of cool places, and kind of sorta made an actual second life within … Second Life. It was what I needed at the time in order to fix myself and my life.

But did the store ever actually become an income?

Not really. Not in any sense of the word. But I wouldn’t necessarily call it a failure either. It’s been generating entertainment subscription money for ten and a half years, every single month.

Now, though, we’re in 2025. Exactly zero of those friends I made talk to me anymore. They don’t message me, some of them vanished forever, and even a lot of the places I used to visit are gone. I tried to replace all of that by having my own city that I spent months building. But it wasn’t really enough.

For whatever reason, scifi themed places take a backseat to fantasy and users who only log on to shop for clothing for their avatars. You’d think that second part would be a plus for my store, but I never really could get a solid hang of weight painting and skeleton rigging. It’s a pain in the ass.

On top of that, a good portion of the people I have met in the past couple years, at least across random sims, or even on the Thundr “meeting” app, all seem to have these avoidant attitudes, or even some have extremely negative attitudes. People who talk to you as if they’re automatically assuming you’re a jerk, or don’t know what you’re talking about, or doing. Real stand-offish behavior that drives me away from others.

And that’s not counting the extreme amount of bigotry that a lot of people just have proudly on-display in their own profiles.

The women in the virtual world who are definitely violently transphobic, who all have the same copy-paste shit in their “offline” profile that reads, “Female verified.”

And then the men who have a secret obsession with trans women, where they’ve made their whole avatar a perversion of what they believe a trans woman to be, and in their profile it reads, “My avatar is a sh*male :D”

It gets tiring.

And now, with Philip Rosedale’s return to the company, Linden Labs, we’re suddenly seeing a push for “AI” “features” to be integrated into Second Life. The absolute last thing a virtual world needs, where the main draw is being social.

None of this is the Second Life I knew back in 2014.

Well, except for my very first interaction, which was with a random woman who ran a skin store, where she adamantly informed me that my avatar must match my gender in the real world.

A real strange interaction for my very first time logging on.

But to sum it all up, Second Life, for me, has become an unhealthy monster that I begrudgingly log into, and have been logging into for over a year, where I sigh, check the things I need to, and then close it as quickly as possible. And it’s gone that way, until I finally asked myself, “Why am I still doing this?”

So, I’ve taken down (for now) the links on my website that reference my store and my persona within Second Life, and for the time being, I’m taking a break. I’m not sure when I’ll return, but I know for sure I can’t be a part of this virtual world right now. I don’t know if it’s because I grew beyond the need of what I originally logged in for, or if Second Life itself has changed so much that it’s no longer Second Life.

I would say, “I apologize for having to do this,” but there really isn’t anyone left to apologize for, or to.