So I interacted with a couple people in second life on my own, but several of my conversations were done during our meetings for the SL project. While I was interviewing I met a girl who provided me with a great deal of information not only about Amsterdam but also about other European counties. I learned about how popular SL is in Slovenia, and how cool it is that I live where I do. When I first met her she even asked me about finding a job in Amsterdam, I got excited because I could answer her question, I knew exactly how she felt because I was lost and confused in SL just a couple weeks ago! Now I am some what SL savvy... barely. But I was able to tell her where she could go because of our little group sessions, and exploring individually a little bit. We explored a lot as a group, and had a couple interviews as a group. So I told her that she could just stand under some of the lamp posts, or at the end she could sit down in the box in Sin Alley. Then I realized that she could only stand under the post if she was in the VIP group, which I found very interesting. Amsterdam is a place full of individuals yet there is still unity on the island. This is really interesting to me because the people that I talked to didn't really no many other people on the island, yet everyone who makes money under the lamp post is automatically put into a group of people.
The girl above was really helpful in our understanding of SL Amsterdam too because she told us about how she felt that SL Amsterdam was a poor representation of the real Amsterdam. She told us about how she liked the coffee shops, and how disappointed she was for their lack of them. However, like I said in an earlier post, the red light district is very popular and we talked to a couple of people who involved with those activities. There was a man that we talked to during one of our group meetings that was all about having intimate relations with a woman there (but he was talking to us while he was making money), and then one of my individual conversations was with a female dancer who was a little too friendly. She gave me a hug, and I accepted. She also asked if she could dance for me, and I politely said no thanks. So the aspects of the Red Light District are still very prevalent.
The biggest reason why people go to SL Amsterdam is to make money to spend in SL. In SL Amsterdam, there are several ways to make money for basically doing nothing, and there are also several free things to get. For example you can stand under a lamppost and make money at a pretty respectable rate for just standing there, and you can also just sit down on a cardboard box and make money. There is a catch, to make money standing under the lampposts you have to be a member in the VIP group.
No one in our entire group was able to find a person that was actually from Amsterdam. This was really odd to me, then I thought about it, if you were going to have the opportunity to go explore places all over the world and talk to people from all over the world why would you stay in your home country? Plus going to other unknown places is way more exciting and adventurous!
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