Listening to the criquets, I was lost in thought in the tea house, this morning. It was a quiet Sunday morning without anybody passing by or looking in. After a while I got an IM from a friend of a recent friend, who turned out to be from Holland, like me, and we chatted away for a bit in Dutch. Given that I hardly ever use my mother’s tongue, it is one of the nice aspects of SL that I get to practice not only foreign languages, but also my very own one.
I’m still amazed at the speed of developing rather extensive networks in SL. The time scale seems to be five to ten times shorter than in RL, for forming all kind of connections of a type comparable to what you would want to form in RL. And as far as I can judge from close to half a year of active SL involvement, the bonds made in SL do not seem to be weaker than in RL. If anything, they may be stronger. After all, each bond has two components: one being the particular activity or interest you share with someone in SL, and the other being the shared interest in SL in the first place.
I had to think back to that curious experience of meeting other SL folks in the RL coffeeshop, the previous day — that was very much like meeting other people from Holland abroad and suddenly finding out you have this shared language and culture. There must be many lessons here, yet to be learned, on so many levels, from psychology and sociology to anthropology and various other fields.
