Second Life’s loyal users embrace its decaying software and no-fun imperfections – Document

Perhaps as the software of Second Life continues to age and degrade, more pockets of resistance will form. Perhaps the platform may, ironically, feel more utopian, more like our own to choose, as First Life slides into an increasingly ghoulish metaverse and we reach peak “NPC syndrome,” overwhelmed with the sensation of being trapped inside a game where we don’t know the rules. The ambient indeterminacy of Second Life is always what made it a place worth preserving. Perhaps that generosity of opacity—and the generative affect of existing in a world that feels forever out of joint—could offer us the perfect place to respawn, reimagine, and reworld our own.