How Do You Make Friends In SL?

If you’re anything like me that answer is: not very easily. Sure, there are lots of people that I know and that I will talk to if I see them around, but as for close SL friends... well... I can count them on one hand. I just don’t seem to be the kind of person that makes friends easily. Some people only need to appear in a room and all of a sudden people flock to them and wham! Before you know it, they’re BFF! Me, I will join in the conversation and add my tuppence worth when I can, but as for the next phase in making friends, I seem to be at a loss. I have in the past employed various techniques such as IMing them, or asking questions, but I always came out of it looking like a deluded stalker, or one of those annoying noobs whose first words (or rather letters) are the ridiculously out of date “ASL?”.

I despise people who are overly nosey – don’t ask me where I live before you’ve even introduced yourself, or I’m liable to hit that TP button before you can say “male or female?” (not that it really makes any difference in SL anyway). I have offered to share a bit of myself with people in the past, something I have in common with them, but it seems to a few lines of IM chat and then that’s it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not the best person in the world for keeping in touch, but I will IM a “hi, how’re you doing?” every so often and pop over for a coffee once in a while, but it’s that first step on the friendship ladder which seems to totally elude me.

Maybe it’s me, maybe I try too hard. I always wanted to be one of those people that walks into a room to a chorus of “Dakota! Hi! How are you?” and gets the first invite to all the hottest parties. So maybe when I do meet someone I could be friends with, maybe I go over board and suffocate them with friend-making attempts. There’s a fine line between asking enough questions to be friendly and asking so many that you become that annoying person no-one wants to talk to.

Or maybe it’s because I’ve never really had to make my own friends before. When I first started playing SL, it was through an RL friend and most of her friends became my friends. Then, when I met Tenebrous, I adopted some of his friends also. So the friends I have now were never really ones that I made on my own and they never required that initial relationship building stage, they just went from stranger to friend with (quite literally) a click of the mouse.

There’s also the chance that it could just be me. Maybe I don’t have the kind of personality that draws friends, but rather I’m the “plus 1” on the invitations. After all, someone has to fulfil that role. Someone has to be the person greeting the popular people with an enthusiastic “Hi! It’s great to see you!” from across the room.

And of course there’s always some other reason that I haven’t considered. I have no idea. But if you see me wandering around and I try to start a conversation with you, I promise it’s not cause I’m a stalker, honest!