Every June, Second Life does the thing it does best: it becomes something bigger than itself. Relay for Life in SL, Second Life Birthday, Pride At Home, to name a few. Pride At Home runs all month long, which means thirty whole days of rainbow everything, live music, dancing, extraordinary avatars, and, if you are me, a deeply personal battle against your own frame rate.
I am a veteran of Mega Events. I know the rules. I know that the moment I teleport into a location with more than forty avatars and a functioning particle system, my Firestorm will quietly weep. I know that walking will feel like pushing through warm cement. I know that my frames per second, which normally lives comfortably above one hundred and fifty like a well adjusted overachiever, will crater into single digits with the dignity of a very small falling object. I know all of this. I attend anyway.
I arrived during a live performance by Veo Voom, which was wonderful, followed by DJs going back to back, which was also wonderful. The energy was there. The music was there. The vibe was absolutely there. I teleported in, walked a bit to reach the festival grounds, found a decent patch of virtual grass to stand on, and thought: yes. This is fine. I can work with this.
The lag arrived shortly after I did, as lag always does, like an uninvited guest who has already made themselves comfortable on your sofa. People were partially rezzed. Now, in polite Second Life society we call this being nekkied, because the attachments that make up heads, bodies & clothing simply have not loaded yet, and what you are left with is the raw avatar underneath, standing there, blissfully unaware of its own state of digital undress. Nobody chooses this. It just happens. We look away. We wait. We do not make it weird. Unless you are me, and take pictures.
I settled in. I started to cam around to take pictures, because that is what I do, that is my whole thing, I attend, document, I capture, write, I make memories of pixels. And this is where the story takes a turn.
My avatar walked to some peoples on its own.
Not a little drift. Not a gentle lean. A purposeful, self directed, highly motivated walk directly toward another person. I suspect that something in my camera controls, some combination of lag and my own clumsy clicking, triggered a “walk to” command aimed at whoever I happened to be pointing at. The result was my avatar waddling through the crowd with the confidence of someone who absolutely meant to do that, and absolutely did not.
If my avatar bumped into you at Pride At Home, I am so genuinely sorry. I value personal space, even in Second Life. I did not mean to invade yours. I did not mean to hump you. Please know that it was lag, it was accidental, and I am still thinking about my avatar’s daring.
In between the involuntary social calls, I spotted some familiar faces in the crowd. Ulta and crew, looking fabulous as always. Nyxx and Tobias were there too, which always makes a big event feel a little more like home. I also found out that Barb lost her dog. Barb, I am so sorry for your loss. That is the kind of news that lands differently in the middle of a celebration, a little shadow in all the light, and I wanted to say something; I did.
At some point, in a desperate act of self preservation, I started de-rendering objects. The fireworks on stage, gone. Every particle producing object I could identify, gone. I stripped the scene down to its bones, which felt a little like turning off the Christmas lights to admire the tree, but my Firestorm was gasping. My frames per second was three point nine. Three. Point. Nine. That is not a frame rate. That is a suggestion. That is the universe telling me to perhaps go outside, and also that my Firestorm is having feelings.
And yet.
Even at three point nine frames per second, even with partially rezzed strangers, even with my avatar conducting its own unsupervised social humping experiments across the event grounds, the whole atmosphere was perfect. I want to be clear about that. The music was exceptional all the way through. The crowd was every walk of life, every aesthetic, every expression of self. Avatars that sparkled. Avatars meticulously crafted down to the last detail. Avatars that chose chaos, and avatars that chose elegance, and somehow some that managed both at once.
That is the thing about Pride in Second Life that I find myself thinking about long after the event ends and the frames per second recover and the laundry list of technical indignities fades from memory. People come here from everywhere. Some of them cannot be who they are where they actually live. Some of them are practicing, trying on a self that the real world will not permit them yet. Some of them have been out for decades and are simply here to celebrate. And some of them, standing in a virtual crowd with a neon stage sign reading Stay Proud behind them, are having the best moment of their week.
That is worth three point nine frames per second. That is worth every particle I had to de-render to keep my Firestorm from staging a full revolt. That is worth the involuntary walks and the accidental bumping and all of it.
Pride At Home runs all of June. Go. Dress up. Take pictures. Accept the lag as your companion, not your enemy. And if my avatar bumps into you, please know that I am mortified, and also that I was probably pointing my camera somewhere I should not have been.
Happy Pride, Second Life. You beautiful, impossible, wonderful thing.
🟥 🟧 🟨 🟩 🟦 🟪
Pride at Home website:
https://prideathome.online/
SLURL:
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Pride%20at%20Home/88/41/25
Primfeed:
https://www.primfeed.com/slprideathome.resident
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/PrideAtHomeSL
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