I’ve just heard some noise about adult content in Second Life®. Again. So I dragged my lazy ass to the official Linden Lab blog to see what’s it all about. And, of course, there is a story about how they will filter search results (don’t we have that already?) and how adult areas will be separated from the rest of the mainland and how private islands will be flagged and that there will be some verification but paying info counts. All that will be done so that everybody can enjoy Second Life® without fear that they might encounter occasional nipples or some other adult content. There is only one thing that is not clear to them: what IS adult content?
And there is one other thing that interests me: Who fuckin’ cares about all that?
I mean, aren’t we all tired of the subject? We don’t need help of an oracle to know what will happen in the next days:
- there will be a lot of noise in the SL blogosphere and large part of the second life population that cares about what’s going on out of their parcel will be pissed
- LL will spend some time discussing what is adult content
- then they will post another article on the blog with new policy defined and put official
- there will be more buzz in the blogosphere
- then we’ll all happily forget about it. Because nothing important will happen.
Linden Lab has better things to do than to check if anybody’s poseballs are around. But they have to show up in public. Good thing is that this time they really made that post good. I really mean it! It addresses benefit of the whole community and calls for public opinion and discussion. And the policy doesn’t sound fascistic as it was the case when they made their first attempt of age and identity verification.
Only thing that might come out as problematic is that flagging thing. Do they really expect that world will be divided to the part where private sex bed is allowed and the one where everybody is in celibacy? I don’t think so, but maybe I am wrong. But I am sure that hard and strict policy like that is not going to work. Hopefully, they know it too. We’ll all just lose time and nerves about it and nothing will be solved. From all we could read (check NWN’s post with a bit more clarifications from Cyn Linden), Lindens are not in the mood to ban everything sex related from the new formed ghetto, just to concentrate genital shops and huge brothels.
We’ll see…. if we care…
I hope you’re right and it won’t matter at all. But the gambling ban certainly mattered to the casinos, and I expect that at least some interesting adult places will be destroyed by the banishment.
And, as I say in my annoyed posting:
http://daleinnis.wordpress.com/2009/03/12/adults-to-be-banned-from-second-life-mainland/
the question of just what counts as adult will remain unsolved and continue to complicate things for a LONG time.
Unless of course this is all window-dressing and LL doesn’t actually plan to banish anyone at all. This didn’t occur to me until I read the bizarre stuff in the NWN posting about various rape-themed places not counting as adult because they don’t actually have “sex” in their names or something. O.o
Of course it’s window-dressing. But if that window-dressing will make "purists" religious freaks and US senators shoot up, I’m all for it.
Sure that definition of "adult" will be an interesting battle in the days to come. And it will raise some more questions (right in the moment when I thought SL blogging was drained for me).
Gambling ban is different case. It was ban, so it obviously affected all the casinos. This case might hurt indirectly. Some land-swap conditions should be negotiated with LL, so that land prices don’t go wild and create opportunity for some people to speculate.
I think you hit the nail on the head. It is a public statement, to demonstrate "we care". It will also lead to a push for age verification. But nothing else will happen.
Yes, a few very prominent operations will be forced to leave mainland. But adult action will still happen.
And actually the TRUE adult action happens in the minds, ond not on the poseballs.
It’s impossible to have any stats on the subject and I can be very surprised, but I am really not sure that lot of really adult activities and content happen on the mainland. So it might turn out that not much moving happen after all.
I agree that true action happen in the mind but that is an exile we shouldn’t agree with. Sure, one can have good time in IM’s on the cleanest sim on the grid, but it’s not about how silently one can do it but that one have right to express by all technically available means.
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