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The Dangers of AFK

WARNING: When you need to go away or afk for a bit during a show, just announce it in the show chat. Do not use Away or Unavailable during a show. And turn off your Away timeout during shows so that you don’t hang your head down during a show.

The rant

It is important that when you go AFK, you announce it in the show conference. It is completely up to you to let people know what the reason is. But if it will affect your ability to dance in the show, you should consider sitting out until you can fully respond and react.

Some of you think that it is okay to get your outfit on, get on a mover, accept the permissions dialog box, and go AFK.

I’m going to tell you why it isn’t okay:

  • Responding to the audience – This is the biggest issue. The audience took the time to come to the show. And if there’s someone in reserve, at least they’re present. The least you could do is show up, too. Going on autopilot is about as worthless as just throwing bots or AniMesh objects out there. Laura and Sev could replace you with an alt for what it’s worth. And for fun routines, it’s good to respond and engage the audience. Can’t do that when you’re AFK.
  • Hoverheight – You can get a rough guess backstage how high you should be compared to others, but when you go on stage, you may need to adjust your height. But if you’re AFK, you can’t fix that. And we all look bad when one of us is embedded in the stage up to our ankles or knees, or floating a foot above the stage.
  • Alphas – Some alpha issues are hard to notice when you’re backstage. Or, if there’s an outfit change during an routine, you may have an issue with missing arms, legs, or something else. But if you’re AFK, you don’t see the SHOW ALL GODDAMIT message. And you can’t reach the SHOW ALL button on the Maitreya HUD. This looks bad.
  • Clothing – Some clothing issues are hard to spot, too. Wrong color shoes, part of the outfit missing, or a costume change doesn’t work for some reason. But if you’re AFK, you can’t fix that.
  • RLV – When an RLV routine ends, sometimes the clothing comes back on while you’re changing to the next outfit. Or, if you minimize your viewer, RLV doesn’t work. But if you’re AFK, you can’t fix that.
  • Falling off of a mover – This sometimes happens for whatever reason, whether through scripting error or some griefer tool. Whatever the cause, if you fall off, you need to teleport home immediately. But if you’re AFK, you can’t fix that.
  • Clearing the stage – If you don’t come back by the time the routine ends, you’re standing there on stage and someone needs to shove you out of the way.

Most important of all, everyone who didn’t go AFK has to wait for you to come back from AFK to fix the issue.

The right way

This is the best way to do it:

  1. Wait for the routine to be over and the stage manager to say All Stand.
  2. Get off of the stage.
  3. Start the change to the next act’s outfit
  4. Announce AFK.
  5. Do what you need to do.
    • If you don’t make it back in a reasonable time, the stage manager will call for a reserve.
    • If you do make it back in a reasonable time, announce that you’re Back, check yourself and fix any issues that people have mentioned in the show conference. Then get on the mover.

But I need to go AFK right now!

If it can’t wait, okay. Go do whatever.

But if you could have dealt with it sooner, remember that for next time.

But that’s my mover!

Right-click that mover and check the ownership.

Unless that’s your name, no.

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