I’ve made no secret of my opinions on Second Life™ weddings.

I hate them. They make me want to stamp on my own eyes (I don’t even know how I would do that)!

But I won’t bitch about Second Life weddings… not today at least. Instead, I will take a positive spin on the whole topic (yay, can you feel the happy vibes? Roses, butterflies and good things in general?) and talk about how you can use the time at a random Second Life wedding productively.

Now, even those who might not admit to hating Second Life weddings, will probably admit to finding them a little bit dull when they are an hour and a half in and the bride is STILL typing all manner of mushball stuff about how their pixels met across a crowded room. But there are some people for whom you just have to be there, right? There are some weddings you can’t miss… however much you would rather be walking over burning hot coals with no shoes on. All is not lost. Your time can be used productively at a wedding.

PLEASE NOTE THAT BEFORE EMBARKING UPON PRODUCTIVE USE OF TIME AT SECOND LIFE WEDDINGS, YOU SHOULD ENSURE THAT YOU HAVE  A NUMBER OF GESTURES TO HAND. ONE SHOULD SAY, “OMG YOU GUYS, SO SWEET.” ANOTHER SHOULD SAY, “AWW… I AM SO HAPPY FOR YOU GUYS.” YOU SHOULD HAVE ANOTHER THAT SAYS “YOU GUYS LOOK SO PERFECT TOGETHER,” AND A FINAL SIMPLE “CONGRATULATIONS!”

Once you have those to hand, you are ready to embark upon the productive use of your time at weddings, safe in the knowledge that you will be able to fake that you’re paying attention with the simple press of a gesture shortcut. Here are ten alternatives to actually paying attention to anything going on – and they are all a billion times more productive than doing so.

1. Sort through your inventory

Yes, we have to start with the obvious one. I do not advise that you sort through anything that requires you to rezz items. Apparently the bride does not appreciate having a plywood house called “Object,” rezzed on her head. Sheesh, some people.

2. Profile Whore

Being a profile whore at a wedding is a great way to pass the time and an amazing way to work out what drama is going on. With a group of 20 plus people who know each other in Second Life, you can guarantee someone has some bitchiness in their profile.

3. Guess who is sleeping with who

Ok, a group of twenty people in Second Life all in the same place tells me there are a lot of pixels rubbing behind closed doors. Perhaps use the information gathered from your profile whoring to work out who is sleeping with who.

4. Flirt with the bridesmaid

Now, I’m Mr. Monogamy these days and am partnered to the beautiful Skylar Smythe. So I no longer engage in this one. But… it is fun and it does pass the time. Set your sights on one of the bridesmaids prior to checking out their profiles. And then, regardless of partnered status or otherwise, your challenge for the rest of the wedding is to get her to agree to going dancing with you later on. A variation of this game is to see how many people in the wedding you can persuade to go out with you. This also works the other way for the ladies… the best man is prime meat!

5. Rate the avatars of random strangers (male and female and all at the wedding) and inform them.

Maybe there’s a guy there whose shirt is really ugly. He’s a 2 out of 10. The chick, however, with the great butt… she’s a 9. Tell everyone at the wedding how they rate.

6. Take snapshots and vandalise them in Photoshop

You can do this quickly enough that, by the end of the wedding, you can actually present your friends with a beautiful album of pictures…. on which each of their faces have been replaced by the buttocks of a gorilla.

7. Cross dress.

A magical gender change in the middle of the ceremony. Productive? Maybe not. Fun? Probably not, no. Better than the wedding? Absolutely.

8. Declare to everyone that you have changed species and are now a dog.

Respond to all weddingy things with an appropriate woof as everyone else applauds. Typing, “/me pisses against the pew,” is not advised. Well… maybe a little bit.

9. Harass everyone who shares your first name.

Once people at the wedding are sufficiently pissed off with you, you will want to leave them be for a while and be well behaved. So go through everyone who shares your first name and teleport them to the wedding. A reunion!! YAY!

10. Play inapproriate sound files.

“Do you Random Avie take Mr. Marriage to be your pixel husband??” That is your cue to play that sound file of Homer Simpson having an orgasm with Cartman from South Park.

Don’t say I never help you guys!

Partner Juggling is a common sport in Second Life™ and, as such, breakups are pretty much the norm! How many people do you know who’ve been through a Second Life ‘divorce’? Actually, I hate the term ‘divorce’ used in the context of Second Life.

Now personally, I don’t consider partnering to be anything like ‘marriage’. In case you haven’t already gathered, I’m not much a fan of the pixel wedding thing. It isn’t that I hate Second Life weddings… it’s that I hate them so much that it makes me want to gauge out my eyeballs, grind them up in a food blender and ingest them via a tube inserted somewhere uncomfortable. But anyway… enough about my dislike of getting married in Second Life. If I get started on that topic we will be here until next year.

Breaking up is a part of Second Life. And of course it can be upsetting to get close to someone and for that to then be over. I’m not completely machine you know… I do understand. But what I don’t understand is some of the crazy lengths people will go to in order to win back their former partners! Yes, I’m talking about the boomerang boyfriends, the desperate divorcees, the changed cheats, reformed rogues and generally bitter and dejected exes.

Rule One: Desperation, Tears and Clinginess is NOT a Good Look.

You know the sort of thing I’m talking about. The guys who fancy dipping their pixel parts in another avie for a while, get caught and promptly dumped and then realise that their new bit of fun doesn’t have the latest Xcite! bits. All of a sudden, craving the interactive genitals and general pixel loving of their former, they set out to win her back. Desperately. Pathetically. Every single picture on their profile is now a picture of him and his former in their ‘happy times’ during that ten minute ‘marriage’ they had. His picks are filled with lyrics from the latest ‘Music to Slit your Wrists to’ album and he does the unthinkable…he writes a ‘poem’ that actually starts in ‘Roses are red’. And not only does he write it, he sends it to her with a freebie set of red roses (that look more like lollipops). Oh and it gets worse… then he puts it up on his profile. You know the sort,

“Roses are red, violets are blue
My avatar dresses like crap without you.
I miss you so much and need you back here,
I just lost my home cos you won’t pay the tier.
My new single status left my ego bruised,
My penis is lonely and soooo underused.
I know I messed up, I know I’m a sleaze.
But I’m broke and I’m lonely, so take me back PLEASE!”

When said poem fails miserably and results only in her muting him, he sets up seventeen alt avatars and spends hours and hours searching the grid for her. He goes to all the places on her picks list and eventually finds her. And then of course he gives his identity away by screaming at the guy she’s dancing with. So she mutes new alt. Never mind. He has 16 more… and on it goes.

And as time goes on he gets increasingly desperate, he’ll put a pick in his profile telling the world how much of a pillock he was to lose her and naming her as the love of his life. His real life tab now contains some slightly stalkerish statement about finding her and at that stage she brings in the police. The real ones.

Anyway, you get my point. Desperate dumped lovers in Second Life and their hideous means of stalking their exes around the grid is sick. Completely sick. GET OVER IT!! There are 85000 other sets of pixels online! Can you not find one set stupid enough to have sex with you? Really?!?!?!

In that case, it’s time to log off….