Home alone

One of my oldest RL & SL friends Flick logged in last night for the first time in a very long time. It was so nice to 'see' her in SL again.

We had a great conversation which ranged from the really emotional RL stuff to the whereabouts of SL people we both used to know.

We talked about how difficult it is now to engage or meet new people in SL and even though there are a massive amount of people logged into the grid sometimes our IM boxes remain ominously silent. Where are all these people?  apart from the clubs where are they hiding?

Our avatars are roughly the same age, 3ish years and we reminisced fondly about our days as newbies in formal wear at Phatcats (is that still open? I will check).  Oh how busy we were.

I remember going to Phatcats with Miss Flicky both of us juggling multiple IM's and participating in a wicked funny conversation in local at the same time, we were busy busy popular girls *sighs.

Fast forward to last night, I had only my friend in my IM box, I was standing in a SL club she in a SL forest, no wicked funny local, no bombardment of IM's.

What I want to know is how and why this has happened? I have spoken to other people in world who relate similar things to me.

Do we become more anti social? do we become less interesting? I don't believe we do.

If anyone has any thoughts/solutions to this please let us know, I will be the one home alone on a pose stand adjusting prims and Flicky will be the one looking in her inventory for something to wear, while standing in an elven forest.