One can never have enough fun from Lindens. As you probably know, fifth birthday of our wonderful world is coming up. As the tradition is, there will be a celebration, organized by volunteers showing what this world is about. And this year the theme is 'Celebrating the cultural diversity of Second Life‘. I couldn't think of better thing to celebrate. Creativity and diversity are the most valuable things this world has to offer. But hey, nobody said this world is perfect.
In that celebrating of diversity some are not welcome. Namely, child avatars, Gorreans and BDSM community. I don't know, maybe they are not diverse enough. At first, kids were not to be allowed to attend the event at all. Then Daniel Regenbogen sent an email to M Linden and
[that] mail was forwarded to and answered by Robin Linden, who wrote me that kid avatars would be welcome as guests but not allowed to contribute to the showcase – because that wouldn’t be in the best interest of the event and Linden Lab.
Now that is even more crazy. They are tolerated to be there but not allowed to show what they create? I would really like to know what is that interest of Linden Lab that is preserved by discrimination based on avatar's shape. Creativity or diversity?
Or we are facing that "business people won't like it" paranoia again? Well, I was hanging around lately with people that are interested in biz use of Second Life®. And guess what? Nobody mentions Gor (they hardly ever heard of that), nor BDSM (that is something on the sim far, far away). Children are out of the scope as well. But they are very interested in grid's stability and interruptions in the service. It's simple. One can do a biz meeting while some people are having their wild kinks on the other end of the world. But hardly if grid is down, images are not loading or teleports are failing.
Since email to M and Robin did nothing for the problem, Vint filled a JIRA. Go there, vote and read the comments. Creativity is on the scene again. Hardly that one JIRA will help some people to realize what Dusan Writer put so well:
you’d better realize that this IS the Wild West, and it’s that way for a reason – because THIS is the frontier, this is where the great ideas are arising, this is where the creative classes, the prosumers and the hackers, the griefers and the savants are mashing up the future, and if you want some sort of hint of how the future’s going to unfold you’d better at least suck it up and have a look around.
Until then, we'll celebrate the birthday of the world of our imagination, creativity and diversity on our own. After all, it was the residents that shaped this world in all its diversity, sure we don't need Linden Lab to celebrate its birthday. Though, Lindens are welcome to any unofficial party. W're not discriminative.
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