Today's random teleport takes me to the Capital City sim. The crowd here is in the club portion of the Bootyliciouz Club & Shopping Mall, which is just what its name says it is. The stream is an internet radio stream playing hip hop at the moment. There are 24 people here, including myself. There are two German girls in voice chat and some typical club chat in text.
I say hello. Nobody notices.
Other than an occasional "fuck you" I have no idea what the German girls are talking about. One of them occasionally types, but nothing shows up in text. Neither of them are participating in text chat.
The conversation is disconnected one-to-four word sentences, mostly silly. English, but not all words are spelled out. And there's gesture spam, some of it big ascii pictures. You know...club chat.
After a while I say hello again. Nobody notices.
One of the girls pulls out a big gun and someone else notices and comments about it. Apparently there are at least three humans here, other than myself.
Someone asks who spoke his name. Nobody did. He now has some chat gestures to share. The German girls have now left.
Someone new has come. She's Payment Info Used (PIU). She walks to the dance floor and starts to dance. I greet her. She doesn't notice. Another PIU enters and goes into appearance editing mode. When she's done I greet her. She doesn't notice.
I now search the place for any camping systems and don't find any, but there is a sign that says this place pays you for profile picks.
Now even the club chat has stopped. Time for a Turing test.
I offer L$50 to the first person who can name one of the Beatles. Two people respond, one who is responsible for much of the club chat and one who has said little. The former wins the challenge. I congratulate her and pay her.
Now the club chat resumes. Maybe I brought their attention back to SL from somewhere else. My challenge is called a contest by the winner. The quieter of the two who responded comments on the lyrics of the song that's playing, so she's apparently listening.
It's been a while since I heard from the guy who noticed the gun, but he's still here. Eventually he and three others, including the above-mentioned two, strike up a conversation. I get the idea from what's being said that at least two of them know each other IRL.
I've been here almost an hour now. One person contributing to the club chat starts repeating things he said earlier. A bot? I ask him if he's a bot. A minute later he has a new chat gesture to share, but no response to my question. Others are repeating gestures, but not conversation.
Lots of heavy gesturing follows. Some is common between avatars. Three that share gestures are all PIU. There are now about 30 people here.
A few minutes later I decide it's time for another Turing test. I ask anyone who is at their keyboard to say hi. Nobody does. A few minutes after that I ask if anyone is here. No answer. A few minutes later a general greeting. No response.
Chat has died again, so I make my L$50 offer again, but this time I leave out the dollar-sign, in case someone has scripted an alarm to look for it, though I doubt it. One of the four who were chatting responds. I congratulate and pay her. She and I chat a bit between now and when I leave.
Someone very heavy on the club chat, speaking mostly nonsense, is now making it really boring to follow chat. I consider leaving but notice some goodbyes are being said. The avatars who were sharing gestures all leave, and a few others leave as well. There are still almost twenty people here. The place had been getting crowded.
Someone is using copybot to clone people. He's not cloning anything interesting--in fact he cloned a Ruth--so he's apparently just here to annoy. He's the subject of some conversation, but mostly, the noisy person prevails. And I've been here way longer than I wanted to be, so I leave.
What do I make of this place? There were definitely humans present. In fact, I don't think there were any bots. I think this is where a bunch of kids parked there avatars while they did other things. I suspect that several of the avatars were all controlled by one person.
I'm going to put this one in the Club Chat category. Live, but mostly AFK, and uninteresting.
This visit happened between about 5 and 7 pm SLT, Friday, July 18, 2008.
Comments