Have you ever been baptized? I mean adult baptism that you could remember. I’m not worried so much about your beliefs, what religion, or your soul (sorry, your circus, your monkeys).

I’ve been thinking about how baptism is like ‘play acting’ your death. Religiously, it is supposed to symbolize dying (going under the water) and being reborn (coming up out of the water).  

Last Friday, March 10, 2023, AltspaceVR shut down. For those that study the interrelationship between avatars and human beings (i.e. the Proteus Effect), being inside a platform while it shut down was like a form of play acting your death.

I wasn’t planning on being inside the platform when it shut down. AltspaceVR was never one of my favorite VR platforms. But the educator community in Altspace was HUGE, HUGE, HUGE comparatively (Educators in VR claims 6,000 members now). The art & concert crowd was decent too; lots of creative & innovative stuff going on.  

AltspaceVR had its annoyances. 

• It was a downloaded application = bulky, on a scale of 1 to 10. Don’t get me started on Steam.
• Macs weren’t allowed in for the longest time.
• Back in 2020 and early pandemic days, kids be-bopped in everywhere and were ALL OF 13 years of age, if you know what I mean.
• But my biggest peeve? No public chat.  So, never, ever was there the ability to share links, write snarky comments, spell out words, etc. Grr….Hard to believe a major platform would blank on something that Zoom can do.

But I digress.

I caught a friend live-casting from inside AltspaceVR inside the final hour. So I decided to go in to where he was. When I logged in, I could see the last few events holding up the tent poles.

In the final 3 days the events got really sad names:

• Closing Celebration
• Sunset Party
• The Final Countdown
• A Sad Tour
• Africa Says Goodbye
• Goodbye Altspace 
• Party ’til the end
• This is not goodbye
• Goodbye to AltspaceVR
• And some cheeky kids (?), “HELL NO! WE WON’T GO CAMPFIRE”

I joined The Sunset of AltspaceVR held by the classy group, EvolVR. I’d never been to their events.

I was warned 2 days before that the “end” would feel like a glitch.

But the overall impression I got as I walked around their Zen meditation space was two things:

1. Friends meeting up. Folks were in small groups. There were only a handful of solos like me. They were chipping in stories about not being sure they could log in, but they made it.

2. Unfair. The vibe, after being sad, was unfair. No one felt that what was happening was deserved.

Plenty of folks had been making comments in social media that the shutdown was ‘foreseen’ and ‘inevitable’.  But still…it felt NOT FAIR. Like something GOOD was about to be GONE.

If I was asked what the mood was, it was like a funeral before a death.

We heard stories, there was a song dedicated to the shutdown, and due to the magic of Altspace, we could see emojis from users in other instances so at times, the space was non-stop hearts.

I was quite surprised to hear developers, users, artists, designers profoundly THANK AltspaceVR for what it had done for their lives. There were many comments of “I changed because of AltspaceVR.”

We were given about 10 minutes to mill about and talk before the meditation host started the last planned event. Unfortunately, as a group, we were spreading from 3 instances to 5 instances  with over 200 attendees. (Note: Altspace VR’s purported daily attendance total number was 1,000). We were told planned lantern releases were happening but I didn’t figure it out. I was one of the ones that preferred to take a slow walk around the Zen island, letting the tall grass brush past my avatar’s body, hands, and face. (Like that? How can I remember a physical feeling I NEVER HAD?)

We were pulled together for the final meditation and a scene change busted. Such is the way with a VR platform that had been getting less and less attention over the past 3 months. So we stayed put in the Zen space and the host told us he would mute the entire audience. There was one gasp of “What??” but really, we were already into step 3 of “From now on, you will not be able to do what you want to do” mode (aka, death).

He ran a lovely 5 minute meditation, asking us to conjure up our favorite AltspaceVR space and then imagine our loved AltspaceVR friends in that space with us. (Side note: I was QUITE surprised who ended up in my meditation…let’s just say that I’ve been working on my ‘pray for your enemies’ Christian element and whoa did they show up!!  I guess the ‘love your enemies’ thing is really working for me.  I had to smile as I saw them, with no anger, no hate, no disgust. I was just happy to see them. Sniff.😔)

 

Then, the clock ticked over from 1:00 p.m. Eastern US to 1:01, 1:02.  By 1:03 the host said “Hell, we’re in overtime, I’m turning mics back on!” and he encouraged everyone that wanted to to join a hug puddle around him. 

It looked lovely (it’s in the video below).  But it was not for me.

I turned on my avatar’s non-existent heels and went back into the tall grass. I was moving towards the moon and the trees. I found some water to watch and I stayed looking down at the ripples. I could hear crickets.

And then, just as it was predicted, I was simply winked OUT of the space. It was 1:08 p.m. Eastern US. The crickets kept going. That was a bit spooky, but just like real death (I’ve heard) in that hearing goes on a little longer than heartbeats or sight (as the brain can operate on sound signals for longer without oxygen).

I just sat and listened. Listened for anything. Anything OTHER than crickets. Nope. Nothing.
I sniffed a bit. 😓

After 1 minute, I had tried all the buttons. Silly me, you KNOW you are dying and yet you still think maybe I can get back into the space. Humans. (In hindsight, how amazingly ridiculous! I’m attending an event LITERALLY DESIGNED FOR DEATH. I know I’ll be glitched out. We’ll all be glitched out. It’s not personal. And yet, when the moment comes, there is a voice that says “Maybe I can get back into that event–already in overtime– that was designed to glitch me out.” Make note: whoever you are in life is EXACTLY who you will be in death.)

At 1:09 p.m. Eastern US, I used the X in the upper right hand window corner, and I closed the program. I took a few breaths.

Death.

Practicing death.

Like baptism. Because here I was breathing afterwards. I was OK. It was a computer program, after all, right?

When I was baptized, I was with a church and religion that did it up– they were the Baptists!!  (Don’t worry, I’m not affiliated with them now. I jokingly say that I disagree with more of what the Baptists believe, than agree.) But I was in a 10,000 seat church where the dunk tank was the size of a HUGE bathtub or small pool suspended ABOVE THE MAIN STAGE where half of it was see-through glass.

I had been prepped on what would happen and prepped on how I would be wearing my 2 bed sheets. I’ll tell ya, THIS the Baptists can do AMAZINGLY. Women get 2 sheets. Men get 1. White.  And they give you instructions on how to fold, tuck, and finagle those puppies so that nothing is seen–even soaking wet.  Major applause! 👏

I’d opted for the “Yes please I do not want water going up my nose” technique where I put my nose in a crab claw pinch and had a washcloth over my nose and mouth.

There were 3 burly men in the tank: one walks you in, one dunks, and the other walks you out. It’s done slowly, one person at a time. Children first with lower water levels.

I was with the adults.

I went in as gracefully as one can when wrapped up tighter than a burrito.  I put myself into my ‘one arm takes care of my nose and the other arm locks into the first arm’ and the burly man was ready to dunk. I honestly don’t remember the exact instruction but I think I had to bend my knees in already chest deep water.

I do remember the last thing I saw.

As as the warm water started to swirl really all around me, I saw BRIGHT LIGHTS, I mean, wicked bright lights (these are STAGE LIGHTS, yos!) beaming right down straight into my eyeballs.  Too bright to look at, so I closed my eyes.

But for one brief moment, I thought, if this is what death feels like, it’s warm and bright and honestly not too bad.

And then I was up. Sputtering, but fine. I was being walked out and there was a little audience clapping (the baptism despite being SO visible was actually a sparsely attended church event).  I was up on the floor walking over those mats that you can drip like a soaked rat over and I was off to the changing room to try to put myself back together. #hairdryerplease

So…what does all of THAT have to do with each other?  It just makes me think about death, the before and the after.

Later that shutdown afternoon, someone wrote that a social VR platform has never shutdown before…so she was studying the timing.  She’s on to something. 

You see, I joined Second Life in 2008, now 15 years ago…and I’ve never left. I actually went back into Second Life 3 hours after this AltspaceVR shutdown event (after also having spent 1.5 hours in Mozilla Hubs). So I haven’t had to lose my avatar in Second Life.

Sure there are platforms I’ve been to once and I just don’t care to go back (I’m looking at you Cryptovoxels) but I haven’t had to see my scenes disappear.  The AltspaceVR world creators took this very badly. They could remove their assets, but removing how things were set was very difficult.  I feel for them.

They are porting off to other platforms (where the dead are, the vultures will gather) like Spatial, Mozilla Hubs, or FrameVR. I’ve seen one stupid but valiant attempt to lure folks by Virbela (stupid b/c you can import zero of your own assets into Virbela).

But I’m touched that the AltspaceVR folks seemed to know we were out here and having a hard time. They posted one final message (I’ve captured it from a friend).

Classy final touch, AltspaceVR.

Thank you and goodbye.

Please watch my video. And thank YOU!~

Note: this post is simultaneously posted to a LinkedIn article.

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