It seems the entirety of the group had a little difficulty to each get an interview. Me and Tollkeeper went around the different worlds multiple times but only got two people to reply. In the Legend of China (SLurl: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Liberia%20Isle/128/128/40), we traveled around the whole map only to have one conversation, if that. We sent out the class introduction: “Hi, I’m a student at a university in the United States.  I am working on a class project about communities in Second Life.  May I chat with you for a few minutes?  I’d like to ask you a few questions about your participation in this Second Life community.  It won’t take long.”; and received no reply. Then they walked towards us and stood there for about  minutes, then either teleported or logged off. This was kind of upsetting because we couldn’t find anyone else for quite awhile.

legend of china from the SL website in destinations.

We briefly traveled to Chinese Island (SLurl: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Monash%20University/61/108/23) where I became excited because there was a lot of green dots (user avatars) on the mini-map. My excitement reached a dreadful conclusion when we went up to the avatars and still gained no reply. Something was off about these avatars, however, for they just stood still but didn’t reply. After about the second or third person not replying, we looked up their profile notecard and figured out they were bots a.k.a programs engineered for the service of the users. Another disappointment.

In a last ditch effort, we visited Feel China (SLurl: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Flyingroc%20Chung/26/230/0). Here we saw quite a few avatars and flew to their destination. Little did we know we entered a private residence. We assumed, prematurely, that we were still within the same location. We said the cosmopolitan introduction and it amounted to get an IM. We started  to talk to the avatar, I think his name was josh, and were about to take a picture, until we asked a simply question, “why did you chose the Chinese location?”, and he simply replied, “this is not the Chinese location…”. Another disappointment. However, he was a programmer and got paid a good amount of money for his programs within SL. Also, sadly, he was in a wheelchair, and his friend introduce him to second life.

Although we couldn’t find an interview, the last place we visited, Josh called it a welcome area, played the perfect role of a cosmopolitan canopy. Many people in this area were talking, dancing, and interacting with each other. Even better, there were different kinds of characters. Everywhere from furies, to queens, to monsters and models. All kinds of people were interacting without restriction and, from my perspective, without judgment. I could even credit when one female avatar asked for money for rent, and a kind avatar in a top hat lend her some.

All-in-all we continue our search to find an interview of our desired culture.