Day: March 20, 2020

VRChat’s Popular Endgame Talk Show Will Focus on Mental Health During the Coronavirus Pandemic

On this blog, I have often written about Endgame, the popular, long-running talk show based in VRChat (here, here, here, and here).

Well. this coming Saturday, March 21st, 2020, at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time, Endgame is hosting a special episode, titled Coping with COVID-19: Dealing with the Stress of a Pandemic:

In a tweet sent out yesterday to promote the event, the organizers said:

Join us for a special Endgame episode in VRChat on Saturday: we’ll facilitate a support group to discuss how we can cope with COVID-19. It’s stressful to be isolated, but we can come together in social VR to navigate this pandemic. Saturday 3/21 at 11:00 a.m. PST @PsychNoah

PsychNoah is, of course, Noah Robinson (a.k.a. Psych; Twitter; LinkedIn), a clinical psychology doctoral student at Vanderbilt University and the founder and CEO of Very Real Help, and one of the three regular hosts of the Endgame talk show in VRChat, along with Nomono and Poplopo.

Given how I have been struggling with both anxiety and depression during the coronavirus pandemic, I do intend to be in the studio audience for what promises to be a fascinating, wide-ranging, and educational discussion. Although users are urged to ask questions, you can also just sit back, watch, and listen, and enjoy something that is becoming ever rarer in the real world—being part of a crowd!

Endgame now has its own website, with and you are welcome to join their “Deep Thoughts” Discord server. You can also find all their previous weekly episodes on YouTube. See you on Saturday!

UPDATED! Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: Free Face Masks and Toilet Paper!

I got an insider tip on a very timely accessory for your Second Life avatar: a face mask! (I still need to hunt down surgical gloves, eye protection, and hazmat suits, but it’s a good start.)

Teleport to MALified (here’s the exact SLURL); you do not need to join any group to pick up this freebie, just click the panel:

The mask comes in seven different colours: black, blue, cyan, pink, red, violet, and white. They are completely adjustable to fit any avatar. Here’s a close-up look at the white one:

You can also pick up these masks on the SL Marketplace for free. Some people are actually charging L$180 or even L$200 for face masks, so this is a real bargain! And best of all, unlike the real world, there are zero limits to supplies.

UPDATE March 21st, 2020: Salt and Pepper have a new free gift available, something that is much in demand in the real world: free toiler paper! Just click the panel in the store (here’s the exact SLURL). You do not need to join any group to pick up all the virtual toilet paper that you will ever need!

UPDATE March 27th, 2020: Sau Motorcycles is offering a complete package of pandemic supplies, including masks (decoration and werable versions), boxes and rolls of toilet paper, even a toilet paper thrower! Just pay the vendor display one Linden dollar and it will be automatically refunded. Here’s the SLURL to the store.

The sign says:

Free COVID-19 Supply Kit: toilet paper, N95 masks included. Decoration, throwable, attachment…everything you need to get a little fun in this hard time. Hope you enjoy this and please share with your friends. We are never out of supply!

Stay healthy!

Editorial: How the Coronavirus Pandemic Is Sending Me Running Back to Facebook

As you know, I am not a fan of the Facebook social network. In fact, my New Year’s resolution at the end of 2018 was to ask Facebook to delete all the data it had collected on me over 13 years, and quit Facebook.

Then, when it was announced that you will require an account on the Facebook social network to use the upcoming Facebook Horizon social VR platform, I reluctantly decided to rejoin. But I found that I had successfully broken my formerly powerful Facebook addiction. I befriended only six people, mostly close relatives. I would go for weeks, even months, between sign ins. I was no longer addicted to Facebook!

But unexpectedly, the coronavirus pandemic now has me running back into Facebook’s embrace.

Kicking the Facebook habit is hard…

What drew me back in were a couple of Facebook groups:

I also belong to a couple of Sinespace groups on Facebook, where I would cross-post sponsored blogposts.

I had installed the highly-recommended F.B. Purity browser extension to control a lot of Facebook’s annoying features, but I found it interfered with the We Got This group, so I landed up uninstalling it completely. And, of course, now that I have uninstalled Purity, Facebook now sends me reams and reams of friend suggestions…

And this morning, I finally threw up my hands, gave in, and started accepting friend suggestions (Facebook is scarily accurate in remembering who my friends and acquaintances were). I’m baaack…

The fact remains that Facebook is tailor-made to keep track of all the loose connections in my life: family (including distant relatives), coworkers (many of whom are now working at home), and friends and acquaintances whom I rarely see in real life. This is now even more true with the imposition of social distancing policies and even lockdowns in places like Italy and California.

And, during a coronavirus pandemic, I am now willing to let Facebook strip-mine my data in order to make me feel more connected while I am maintaining social isolation in my apartment.

So, congratulations, Facebook: you win. For now.