Supporting the Arts in Second Life

There are lots of good deeds done by residents of Second Life, many of which provide donations to an array of First Life charities and causes. Relay for Life, in support of the American Cancer Society, is well known and loved by many SL residents, and there are many other less–well-known fundraisers that do excellent work. But in SL as in RL, the arts are often overlooked when it comes to funding. The Avatar Charitable Trust seeks to improve that situation.

My SL Chores

I never have to dust my house in SL, and hallelujah for that. I don’t have to launder or dry clean my pixel wardrobe or polish my pixel boots, and I’m pretty happy about that too. It’s impossible to leave socks lying around, bills strewn across the kitchen table, or dirty dishes piled in the sink, and those are just a few of the ways that SL is superior to RL. (Also, teleport anyone?) But just because we aren’t burdened with the same chores that we have to complete in RL doesn’t mean that there’s no work to be done.

Cleaning inventory is probably the SL chore that we all do most often, and like everything else in SL, there are different ways of tackling that task. Some people tidy up as they go along, deleting notecards and landmarks and the boxes that their clothes came in as soon as they’ve looked at them. These are the Efficiency Experts, who know exactly what they have in every folder and can produce it in the blink of an eye. They often have shockingly low inventory counts, keeping the contents lean by deleting items as they introduce new ones. At the opposite end of the spectrum are the Hoarders, who let things pile up until it becomes unbearable. I’ve known people who became so overwhelmed by the contents of their inventory that they simply abandoned it all together, jumping ship to a new av with a new empty inventory rather than wading through the thousands of folders, objects, animations and gestures.