I believe Thunda Masala has to do a lot of explaining to his friends. He left SL in a haste with a brief group IM on a day when most of his friends were on holiday. Those few who were present could not understand the meaning of his sudden and vague announcement. To them, it appeared to be one of Thunda’s lighter moments of jabbing at friends. I will try to explain his actions in as few words as possible.
Thunda came to SL out of a natural curiosity that has brought most of you and keeps bringing a steady stream of players to the virtual world. Like most people, he was dazzled by the carnival and hung around a little longer. Nevertheless, his approach to SL was dismissive and bordering on a contempt towards what he thought was a kids’ game. He didn’t understand why one would like to spend real money to look good in a pixel world, why it was so important for so many people to be at their best behavior in this unreal world? Why would people feel offended if a naked avatar walked into a public place? After all it was just an animated interactive cartoon movie.
Yet, something kept him coming back to SL. Ironically, it was the human interaction in pixel world that kept him anchored here. A few very patient and helping strangers became friends who guided him and showed him the ropes. In fact, a friend volunteered to spend more than one hour to transform destitute Thunda’s raggedy original avatar into a decent one. Another showed him the tricks to fetch linden dollars through ‘camping’ and money trees . Many more joined this volunteer force over time that resulted in Thunda of the present day.
A turning point came when Thunda met someone who was extremely energetic, witty, intelligent, but suffering from a terminal ailment. Something deeply moved him and he began to pay more attention to his surroundings. Gradually he made a number of friends who had been afflicted by health issues but were absolutely fantastic persons. This has been the most important thing of SL that has held him here so long. People, and only people, can have so much of power over someone because SL itself is an unstable and everchanging landscape.
Music has been another important factor in SL. I seriously think that other virtual worlds have not been as successful as SL because they lack the variety of music that SL venues offer. It serves another important purpose of meeting people from all over the world. Thunda was fortunate to meet great DJs and their hosts at music clubs. It was not without a reason that several posts of this blog have been on SL music scene.
The creative talents and excitement of people in SL prompted Thunda to write about them. He was totally excited about these people who could do amazing things in this world. They could build wonderful objects ranging from almost microscopic to grand scales, those who could write scripts to nuke an entire sim, and also who could make people dance with their tunes and make them laugh with their witty remarks.
Friends were too kind to Thunda. They joked with him, they engaged in friendly verbal sparring for hours, they showered a lot of attention, they showed their awe on his ‘smarts’. They made him feel like a celebrity. All this slowly led him to swell a bit. He began to feel important. A little arrogance crept into his head. He took some liberties, perhaps not with malicious intent. Intentional or not, the results were disastrous. A few felt hurt but they laughed it out.
In the end it dawned upon him that he was going down a slippery slope. He came to SL with certain basic principles. In all situations here, he managed to keep his head high and felt proud. There was no agenda but had there been one, hurting friends was not on it.
In your company he laughed and cried, sang and danced, shared jokes and stories, and most of all he had fun. He thanks you all for all that you gave. He would like to take a step back and ponder over the situation. Do not write him off yet. Give him time to reclaim himself. He will be back.
