Ant Love, baby!
I love this post. Really.
SLove? I’m not sure I’ll routinely use the term, but my friend gets at something essential about sl.
Everything happens in sl, as Cindy’s commenter Benson so aptly puts it, in ant years. That is so true. The accelerated nature of the experience is part of what makes the word, and feelings associated with it, pop into our sl relationships so fast. Ain’t be too much time to reflect.
That sort of thing happens in rl too, but not as frequently or as fast. But I still think it’s love. I mean, what I mean by love. It’s no less so because it’s fleeting, or because, like everything else in sl, it’s going at warp speed, and therefore has a really short evolutionary cycle.
If we’re friends in sl, I’ll still say I love you after we’ve known each other for the relative eternity of 4 months. It might mean something different than it did when I first had the thought of it. It might have evolved from a not-very-successfully disguised infatuation to a good friendship. Heck, it might be slove (which, disturbingly, makes me think of Sammy Hagar), but whatever it is, I’ll claim it. It’s on the love continuum.
I want the best for the ones I love, whatever that best may be, and I’ll do whatever I can to see that happen. At least, I’ll wish for it.
Well finally!
Love this post, argyle. Short evolutionary cycle. Ain’t that the truth! But I agree, it’s still love or slove or whatever it is. For whatever length of time, those ppl have setup a tent in my heart.
Great post, great to hear from you. JJ
I believe that we love so fast and hard on SL because we are getting to know the people behind the avatars. We are getting to know the thoughts, feelings and what essentially makes a person tick. How can you not fall in love with that?
That being said, I myself have had a hard time with the whole ant’s life philosophy when it comes to SL. There was on relationship I was in where I wondered how this person could possibly love me after knowing me for a few weeks. Turns out what he loved was the high from Slove, not me.
But I digress. Great blog! Glad I stumbled upon it.
Thanks, and I think you’re right, fwiw. The ant’s life timeframe? Not a way of thinking I advocate. I just think that for most people, it’s reality. In a virtual kinda way.
And your stuff is way more profound than anything I’ve posted here. I hope you don’t mind if I link to it more often.
Nice post! It is true that relationship seems to go warp speed. I think that is because all of the mundane tasks of life have been stripped away – leaving a relatively “clean” (for lack of better words ATM) experience with someone. I mean – there is no commute time, no bill paying, no cleaning. And when we type we think our words through so much more than we do when we speak. All I know for sure is that I have fallen in slove twice in SL…and it feels just as wonderful and can be just as painful real as RL love.