For the twentieth consecutive year, women are apparently swirling their tongues around the tip of something, while men continue to receive urgent telephone calls from real life.
The results of the annual Second Life Language Survey have been published, revealing that the most frequently uttered phrases on the grid in 2026 are exactly the same as they have been for the previous nineteen years. For female avatars, the undisputed winner was once again "/me swirls her tongue around the tip", a sentence which researchers estimate has now been typed approximately 14 billion times, frequently by somebody who is simultaneously eating a sandwich in real life. For male avatars, the winning phrase was "That was great but RL calls", continuing an extraordinary two-decade tradition of real life developing urgent and apparently unavoidable demands immediately after sexual activity.
Researchers at the Second Life Institute of Linguistic Studies described the results as "depressingly consistent", noting that despite enormous advances in technology, artificial intelligence and avatar anatomy, the vocabulary of the average Second Life resident appears to have remained largely unchanged since 2006. "We've analysed millions of conversations," explained Professor Richard Shitpeas, head of the institute's Department of Unnecessary Communication. "Women continue to demonstrate an extraordinary commitment to swirling their tongues around things, while men appear to inhabit a real world in which emergencies occur with remarkable precision, usually within thirty seconds of finishing."
The study found that the male phrase was frequently accompanied by several variations, including "Sorry babe, got work early", "My internet is playing up" and the increasingly popular "Wife's awake". Researchers were particularly interested in the sudden appearance of real-life obligations among men who, only moments earlier, had apparently been available for an uninterrupted six-hour session involving three poseballs, a scripted shower and something called the Ultimate Passion Engine V7.
One participant, who wished to remain anonymous, explained that he had been forced to leave seventeen separate encounters during the previous month because of urgent real-life commitments. "It's just unfortunate timing," he said. "My phone rings, the dog needs walking, somebody's at the door. You can't plan these things." His dog is understood to have died in 2019.
Meanwhile, female residents expressed surprise that their most frequently used phrase had remained unchanged, although several admitted they had simply copied it from a notecard purchased in 2008 and had never seen any particular reason to update it. "I've got about forty of them," explained one resident. "There's the tongue one, the breathing heavily one, the arching my back one and the one where I apparently bite my lower lip so often that realistically I shouldn't have one left."
The report also identified several phrases that narrowly missed the top positions, including "Mmmmmm", "Oh god yes", "Are you still there?" and the perennial favourite, "Sorry, crashed." Linguists noted that the latter remains particularly difficult to distinguish from genuine technical problems, although crashes occurring immediately after the words "Can we talk about us?" were statistically unlikely to be accidental.
The institute has recommended that residents consider expanding their vocabulary in 2027, perhaps by incorporating original thoughts, complete sentences or occasionally asking another person how their day has been. However, Professor Thrustington admitted that meaningful change was unlikely. "We've been conducting this research for twenty years. Every year we hope to discover something new about the way people communicate in virtual environments. Every year it's the same tongue and the same urgent real-life commitments."
At the time of publication, researchers had attempted to contact several male participants for further comment. Unfortunately, RL had called.