While I was fishing, I watched a video called “Second Life: The Internet’s Forgotten Metaverse.” That title made me laugh a little. Second Life isn’t forgotten. It just didn’t live up to the hype.

The biggest issue? It failed to scale.

You can’t build a true metaverse if only a handful of avatars can stand in one region before everything starts lagging. You can’t create immersive events if performance drops when more than ten people show up. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: lag kills fun.

Over the years, Second Life focused heavily on graphics. Avatars today look incredibly realistic, way better than back in 2009. But what’s the point of amazing graphics if your computer struggles to run it smoothly? Performance should always come first. Fun should always come first.

Speaking of 2009, that was my golden era with 7Seas Fishing. I created and sold custom fishing rods and ended up making over $2000 USD that year. That money helped put food on the table for my kids. I will never forget that. Second Life was more than just a game, it made a real-life difference for my family.

Of course, not everything was smooth sailing. I once got reported for “cheating” in 7Seas because I was fishing with a sword instead of a rod. All I did was transfer the scripts from the fishing rod into the sword. Nothing was modified. Even the creator confirmed it wasn’t cheating. It was just creativity. It was before Custom Creations were introduced.

These days, nobody really buys my custom rods anymore. They feel like relics of the past. But the memories are still there.

Watching another recent Second Life video reminded me of the same old issue. The world looked beautiful, stunning even. But the lag was obvious. You could literally see the choppiness in the footage.

Second Life isn’t forgotten.

It just never solved its biggest problem.

And until it does... lag will keep killing the fun.

Enter the Virtual Fishing event at The Notorious Kingdom Tiny Empires Fishing POF Club Gaming. They were running a 2× multiplier that day, which meant every catch could double my earnings. I grabbed a virtual rod, cast my line, and started reeling in those pixelated fish. By the end of the hour, I’d netted 22 Linden Dollars. Not a fortune, but enough to remind me why many avatars rely on these mini‑games to keep their virtual wallets happy.

While I was busy fishing, my mind drifted to a topic that’s been buzzing in the SL community: child avatars. Yes, you heard that right. Second Life allows users to create avatars that look like children. Personally, I find them a bit unsettling. They don’t fit the adult‑focused vibe many of us enjoy, and they can give newcomers the wrong impression about what the platform is really about. It’s a nuanced issue—some argue it adds diversity, while others feel it detracts from the overall experience. I’m firmly on the side that prefers a more mature aesthetic, but I respect that the community is diverse and opinions vary.

Back to the fishing—what makes it so addictive? The simple mechanics, the chance of landing a rare catch, and that sweet x2 multiplier that feels like a cheat code. For newcomers, it’s a low‑barrier way to dip a toe into the SL economy without committing to massive projects or pricey assets. For veterans, it’s a quick hustle between larger endeavors.

So, what’s the takeaway? Virtual Fishing is a legit, fun way to earn a modest amount of Lindens, especially during special events. And while I’m not a fan of child avatars, the conversation around them highlights how Second Life continues to evolve and grapple with community standards.

If you’re curious about trying it yourself, hop into the The Notorious Kingdom Tiny Empires Fishing POF Club Gaming during their next multiplier event. Bring a sense of humor, a willingness to chat, and maybe a fresh perspective on avatar choices. Who knows—you might end up with a bigger haul than I did, or at least a good story to share on your next livestream.

Happy fishing, and see you in the virtual waters!

It’s not just another simple fishing script, it’s a real system that actually feels like a game inside SL. You catch different kinds of fish with different rarities, values, and sometimes special traits. Some are common, some are rare, and every now and then you get that little thrill when something unusual bites your line.

What I really like about 7Seas is how flexible it is.

If you own a 7Seas Fishing Area, you aren’t stuck with a boring default setup. You can create your own custom fish, collectibles, or even completely unrelated items to be caught. I’ve seen places where you can fish up treasure chests, event prizes, roleplay items, and funny novelty objects that have nothing to do with fish at all. That creativity is one of the best things about 7Seas.

Because of that, I’ve always considered 7Seas one of the better activity systems in Second Life. It gives landowners a reason to build themed areas, decorate their sims, and actually care about the environment instead of just dropping down a bunch of camping chairs.

For a long time, I didn’t really have anything bad to say about it.

Then auto-casting became a built-in feature.

And that’s the one thing I really don’t like.

Before official auto-casting existed, people still tried to automate their fishing. Many used gestures but those gestures weren’t perfect. Eventually they would stop or something would break and require manual intervention. The fisher still had to come back and restart everything.

It was lazy fishing but it still required some human presence.

Once auto-casting became official, everything changed.

At that point, 7Seas Fishing started to feel less like fishing and more like pure camping. People could sit in one spot indefinitely, casting over and over without ever touching their keyboard again. Their avatar could stay there for hours, sometimes even days, with no real participation from the person behind it.

I understand why landowners like this. Systems like 7Seas were partly designed to generate land traffic. More avatars on your parcel means higher traffic numbers, which can make your place look popular and attract real visitors. That has always been part of Second Life’s economy.

But before auto-casting, there was at least some level of engagement.

Even with gesture casting, people were still somewhat present. They had to check in, restart things, or press F2 every 24 seconds. You could still chat with them occasionally. You could still say hello. There was still a sense that actual people were there.

Now, most fishers are simply AFK.

You’ll see rows of avatars standing silently on docks, all auto-casting in perfect rhythm like machines. The sim might look full, but it often feels empty because the people behind those avatars aren’t really there.

At that point, it starts to feel less like a game and more like a bot farm.

That’s what bothers me.

I don’t hate AFK activities in Second Life. Camping has existed for years, and people have been sitting around for Linden Dollars since the early days of SL. That’s nothing new.

What bothers me is that 7Seas used to feel different.

It used to feel like an actual interactive activity, not just another passive income grind. You had to pay attention at least a little. You had to be there in some way. You were participating, even if the gameplay itself was repetitive.

Auto-casting removed that entirely.

I wish auto-casting had never been added, but that’s just me. If the wider 7Seas Fishing community wanted it, then who am I to argue with them?

I guess I just miss the old days, when I actually focused on timing each cast and pressing F2 at the right moment. It was tedious, repetitive, and honestly pretty boring at times but there was still something to it. Nailing the timing of your next cast felt like a small skill you developed over time.

It wasn’t exciting in a flashy way, but it was still participation.

You were still there.

I still love 7Seas Fishing though.

The system itself is fantastic. The creativity it allows, the custom fish, the unique fishing areas, and the mini-economies people build around it are amazing. Even with auto-casting, it remains one of the best activity systems in Second Life.

I just wish fishing still felt a little more like fishing and a little less like parking your avatar and walking away.

“Your life is going to be horrible, so that’s free money as far as I’m concerned,” streamer Northernlion said before setting a short position on a small alien baby made of molten igneous rock. He was playing Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator, an absurdist stock market simulator that lets you speculate wildly on the lives of alien babies. Short, brutal and laugh out loud funny, it is a game that is only marginally more evil than the financial markets that rule our lives.

Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator starts on a positive note: in the year 3478, devices called FutureSee terminals have given the intergalactic masses limited insight into the long term consequences of the future of companies, conflicts and star systems. This was a massive boon for civilizations everywhere, as technology improved and most wars were now avoidable. But it also devastated all speculative financial markets, as now nothing could be speculated on. With no other options, the financial industry turned to the only speculative asset it had left: the lives of individual babies, which were too volatile and immediate for the terminals to see. That’s right, it’s time to get out there and speculate on the lives of babies.

The latest game from publisher Strange Scaffold, Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator feels retro in a thoroughly specific way. It feels like a throwback to a game like Drug Wars, a game I spent endless hours playing on a TI-83 instead of getting work done in math class. Tonally and aesthetically it feels indebted to games like Dinopark Tycoon, Afterlife (a game I was obsessed with) and the masterpiece that is Star Control 2. It is absurd on its face, totally unsubtle with what it’s saying, and none the worse for it.

Like Drug Wars before it and the stock market generally, the goal is to buy low and sell high. You follow the lives of individual babies on a market-style ticker, buying stock in their lives at their worst and selling at their best. The baby’s overall health is indicated by a beating heart on the right side of the screen. The goal is to optimize your profit and make more than you started with plus the cost of the entry fee. The stock ticker will flash various events in the baby’s life from “covered in gleple poop” to “learned what reading is” (their value goes down after this event). 

On top of simply buying stock, you can short a baby if you are confident their life will get measurably worse in the near future. However, this can backfire tremendously and potentially bankrupt you should you be wrong and they get a promotion or find love. If a baby dies in the span of the short, the short is voided. And though you can choose one of four potential babies every day, side bets can be placed on each of them for potential events, life span and overall value.

The campaign features nine distinct characters and scenarios representing different traders. The plot of each character adds a significant mechanical tweak to each trading period, with four distinct outcomes to each scenario: failure, bronze, silver or gold. For example, trader Holmit Miskie is a disgraced junior financial planner at Holmit & Spawns whose elderly clientele wishes to get in on the new baby trade, a market his bosses are not confident in and thus are setting him up for failure. He is a sad sack who looks like the alien equivalent of Jack Lemmon in Glengarry Glen Ross, and mechanically he is not allowed to take side bets. Nuria Voll is a retail trader who puts their rent and everything they have to get into the lucrative baby trading market. Mechanically, she is scammed every day by the lease on her “HiValue Guaranteed trade license” and enters the market just as the entire thing goes to shit in what’s known as “The Great Flip.” Mechanically, the market gets twice as expensive and half as profitable halfway through her run. Rep. Hoddle is a legislator who regulates the market, and thus is not allowed to interact with it, save through an intermediary named Willy “No Hands” Shig. Mechanically, this legal loophole of an unscrupulous proxy adds a significant delay to every purchase and sale, making it harder to trade on volatility.

In addition to this, there are seven different planets you can trade on, each of which have wildly different market tendencies for the babies on them. For example, Google Gibby is a “war world,” where half of the planet is permanently in conflict to benefit the arms industry. This constant state of war means that baby investments tend to trend steady upwards before the baby’s life turns reliably horrible, often for war-based reasons. Cantor Vantis, meanwhile, is a tropical reality tv show planet where galactic children are sent to compete on the show “Get Big or Die Trying,” and which can lead to sudden fortunes before sudden, comically

Real Housewives-themed deaths. Though the potential for wealth is high, you could lose everything if they die in a celebrity mishap while you’re holding the bag.

Assisting in your buying and selling are advisors, who can lend insight into the lives of each baby for a fee with varying degrees of accuracy. Details range from the average price of the baby, the value of the baby at age 30, the floor price of the baby, random events in the baby’s life, the longest duration of its positive upswing, and so on. Advisors are key to making money. For example, if you know the average price of a baby is about $3,000, and the baby has been trading below that for several decades, you know that it will have to swing upward above $3,000 for a specific period of time for the overall amount to average out. Occasionally, the knowledge of the advisors will sometimes intersect with the side bets, allowing you to make smarter calls on which baby will pay out aside from the general odds given by the bookies.

Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator is exhilarating, absurd and compelling in the same ruinous way that day trading or speculative investment is. Like Q-UP, it is a game that takes the mechanical form of the thing it is lampooning, successfully having its cake and eating it too. It is the ideal game for someone like Northernlion to stream, and him screaming like a r/WallStreetBets guy is an incredible bit of comedy. It is not a game that overstays its welcome, and it leaves you wanting more to play (an endless mode would be nice, but maybe that defeats the purpose). 

Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator is also a game that could not be more germane to the moment. The last six years have been maddening if you believe in anything resembling financial regulation. Gambling is functionally legal from your phone in most of the country, the market has never been less rational, insider trading is happening nakedly on a historic scale and the entire economy is held together by bubble gum, petty scams and investments that mathematically could never pay out. Every day you wake up, and every day you think “this will be the day that the bottom falls out,” and that sensation of freefalling you felt in 2008, if you were old enough to remember it, forms like a lead ball in your stomach.

This is not to say that there was some golden era in which the markets were ever ethical–the average 401k or pension quietly finances pure evil–but there was a degree of plausible deniability diffused in the market. Private equity, crypto, and the AI bubble have made those realities increasingly harder to ignore, and now everything is gambling to some degree. And now prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket let you bet on the outcomes of everything including war with little to no oversight. There’s literally a grotesque Kalshi ad with roughly the premise as this game made with enthusiastic generative AI slop aliens and zero self awareness. Given how supremely warped the world we live in is, how much worse is it, really, to short a baby?