First Encounters of the Second Kind

My first impressions of Second Life were actually made a few (five?) years ago during the summer. I created an account and made an avatar and flew around a bit, but never really did too much. My most recent experiences with Second Life were marked by a great deal of confusion... it seemed to be much more complicated than I remembered it. This may actually reflect the expansion of the game since the mid '00s, or it may reflect my discomfort with the idea of playing a game for graduate school credit. How was I supposed to say anything profound about the game if I couldn't even manage to figure out how to fix my hair? 

The first two times I went into Second Life, most of the time was spent walking around frantically, trying to figure out how to get the camera view right so that I could appreciate the world and find something interesting to say about the aesthetics of the game. I chose a gladiator brunette as my avatar and entered a doorway that was a portal to the art gallery section. Once there, I promptly got myself into trouble. The first room I entered was a man on a throne... I walked into the room and tried to pick up a sculptural object, but realized that there is no real "pick up" option. The menu for actions seemed very limited compared to the Sims. I walked into the pedestal that it was on a few times in earnest and then moved on to the throne. I didn't notice that there was a note that was produced for me at the top of the screen because I didn't even know about the notes function at this point. The man on the throne was nude and bald but not overtly sexualized. He stood up and began approaching me. I assumed that the room I was in was just some sort of space that was designed by someone, and did not understand that this was actually another player attempting to bring me into the exhibit. I walked away into another room, then received an angry chat from the player telling me that I could have at least stayed to see the performance. Oops! 

My first interaction with a player ended so poorly that I ran out of the room into a 3-D rendering of the (in)famous Dogs Playing Poker painting. The Dogs were like cut outs sitting around a more seriously rendered table, and stuck in the center of a room with red walls and a ceiling lamp. Fortunately no humans expecting me to actively participate at such an early stage in my development. I walked into the table a couple of times (that is basically all I knew how to do at this point) and then decided to ditch the art world until I was a little bit more settled.

I got a few notes out of this:

What does this game expect me as a user to bring in, in terms of game literacy? How do people have fun and feel engaged with a world that seems to just involve walking around and chatting?  Need to find tutorial about Second Life.

Unfortunately, I did not screenshot to document this foray. I'll have to go back to the art zone to see if these pieces are still there.