Day: August 17, 2021

UPDATED! Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: Gifts from the Fifty Linden Fridays Birthday Bash

The Fifty Linden Fridays shopping event, one of the longest-running in Second Life, is celebrating its 12th birthday with a special birthday bash on a dedicated sim, where almost every vendor booth has a free birthday gift for you! Simply join the Fifty Linden Fridays group for free to vacuum up all the freebies!

Here are a sampling of some of the gifts which caught my eye. First up is a hairstyle from Exile Called Erin, which comes in a fatpack of no less than 200 different textures! The lovely Blossom tank top from Flora comes in six different colours.

This Dylan hairstyle is one of three different women’s hair fatpacks available from the Elikatira booth at the FLF Birthday Bash! Moesha is also wearing the gift from Cynful, this purple tube top:

Here’s another one of the Elikatira group gifts, the Penny hairstyle, shown with the present from the Blueberry booth, a fatpack of crop tops with an optional bra underneath:

Now Moesha models the gift from Pixicat, this animal-print River minidress, plus the Happy Glasses from Balaclava!, which come in three different colours.

You can pick up a complete fatpack of these Shelbie platform pumps from Phedora:

The gift from Valentina E. is this green plaid dress called Gigi:

The present from the Luas booth is this tie-dyed yellow bikini:

Finally, the gift from Salem is this beautiful Artemis circlet, which comes with a HUD with 28 different gemstones and eight different metal textures:

If you’re interested in the history of this popular shopping event, Wagner James Au interviews the founder of Fifty Linden Fridays on his blog here.

Here’s your taxi to the Fifty Linden Fridays Birthday Bash sim! As you can imagine, the sim is jam-packed, so you might want to wait a week or two before you try to get in (the event runs until September 3rd, 2021, so you’ve got lots of time to pick up all the birthday presents). Happy freebie shopping!

UPDATE August 21st, 2021: Here’s a handy video showing you all the gifts you can pick up at the FLF Birthday Bash!

A Quick Guide to the VRChat Communities on Discord, Twitch, YouTube, and Other Social Media (Plus a Couple of Directories of VRChat Maps/Worlds!)

After writing up my recent blogpost about the Second Life blogging and vlogging community, I decided to investigate what social media exists around another popular social VR platform/virtual world, VRChat, which I have been writing about for four years now on this blog.

Blogs

To my surprise, there’s very little in the way of blogging about VRChat; my Google searches consistently pulled up only two blogs which discuss VRChat regularly, my own blog, and Wagner James Au’s venerable blog New World Notes, which has branched out from its original coverage of Second Life to write about other virtual worlds (here’s a link to all of my VRChat posts, and a link to all of Wagner’s).

Discords

As for Discords, there are any number of popular Discord communities:

There are also the following Discord servers, which have a VRChat section or channel:

Directories of VRChat Worlds

As I have written about before, it can be difficult to find good directories of VRChat maps (i.e. worlds) to explore (other than the Worlds listing in the VRChat client itself).

There is a Japanese-language website called The World of VRChat, a website directory for VRChat worlds (if you turn on Google auto-translate in your Chrome web browser, it works well enough). I don’t know how up-to-date it is kept, however, and I have been unable to find any other website directories like this one.

The World of VRChat Website

Also, VRChat user CatRazor has created a very useful Discord server called VRChat Maps, where users can post their favourite maps to various channels. Check it out!

The VRChat Maps Discord server

If you know of any other VRChat map/world directories which exist outside the VRChat client, please drop a comment, thank you!

Of course, it was the Twitch and YouTube livestreamers who first brought attention to VRChat, so it only makes sense that the overwhelming majority of the social media out there about VRChat is on Twitch and YouTube.

Twitch

There’s a very active VRChat community on Twitch, with dozens of livestreamers. Your best bet is to go exploring, and see whose content appeals to you!

Just a small sample of the VRChat streamers on Twitch

YouTube

There are hundreds of people who regularly post videos about VRChat to YouTube. Feedspot maintains what it claims is an up-to-date list of the most popular VRChat YouTubers, but I have discovered that many of the people on this list haven’t posted VRChat videos to YouTube in many months, if not years (for example, Nagzz21 is listed, but he stopped posting videos about VRChat a year ago, citing the U.S. FTC’s COPPA legislation).

There are so many VRChat videos on YouTube that it is possible to create subcategories! For example, there are many YouTubers who focus on slice of life or “man in the street” interviews:

Here’s a couple of examples of YouTube videos from iListen and iamLucid, to give you an idea of the content you can expect in these interview videos:

Other VRChat videos tend to be edited or unedited recordings of shenanigans happening on the social VR platform. Your mileage may vary; some of funnier or others, but overall it comes down to your personal sense of humour. Here’s the results of a keyword search for “VRChat” on YouTube; dive in! If you’re looking for the most popular VRChat videos, start here (but be warned; some of these are not for the faint of heart!).

Do you know of any resources which should be listed here? If you know of a Discord server, a YouTube channel, or a Twitch channel, or some other social media that should be included in this blogpost? Then please feel free to leave a comment, thanks!

Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: Contraption 10th Anniversary Gifts

Did you know that I run a Second Life group telling you about the best steals, deals, and freebies on the grid, including many finds which I don’t write about on the blog? Here’s how you can join the group.

Steampunk avatar clothing and accessories store Contraption is celebrating its tenth anniversary, and you can pick up some lovely unisex gifts if you join the Contraption group for only L$1 and teleport here (tomorrow is the final day, so don’t wait!).

Webb’s waistcost comes in the following sizes, and you can change the colours of the garters and the back buckle using the included HUD:

Men: Belleza Jake, Signature Gianni, and Slink
Women: Belleza Freya, Slink Hourglass, and Maitreya Lara

The Noble’s tailcoat comes in the following sizes, and you can change the colours of the Scarf and pin using the included HUD:

Men: Belleza Jake, Signature Geralt and Gianni, and Slink
Women: Belleza Freya, Slink Hourglass, and Maitreya Lara

There’s also a Steel Visage mirror mask, which is resizable:

In addition to these three gifts (which you pay L$1 for each; your Linden dollar will be automatically refunded), nearby there is a different fourth gift each day, the Gift of the Day, which is picked at random by Contraption:

If you are into steampunk roleplay, or if you just feel like dressing up in something a little bit different, please be sure to drop by Contraption and pick up these lovely 10th anniversary gifts! Here’s your taxi. Remember, it ends on August 18th!