During all this drama about the new adult continent we’ve heard so many times that second life is the adult playground. That was supposed to be an argument against the new policy. But, it’s a bad argument. Luckily, second life is not just adult playground.
Yes, the main grid is reserved for people older than 18, but that doesn’t make the whole world adult. And yes, that is good. Frankly, when I heard that for the first time I couldn’t believe it. I still can’t. There are so many things in second life that are perfectly acceptable no matter how old are you and whichever your stance towards sex and violence is. Otherwise you would never hear a story about SL avatar being dressed up by her young daughter. Nor you would enjoy amazing builds, exhibitions, learning events… You wouldn’t even be able to go to a cafe for a cup of nice harmless gossiping. And if you can’t imagine the world like that, go to Red Light Center and see if that’s the world you want to live in. What makes second life so great is the opportunity to play Mario Bros AND to have sex on the pool table AND to choose which of those (or both) you will do tonight (many thanks and kisses to Isle Lunasea and Raven Haalan for the pic). But not only that PG content is good on its own, it’s a significant part of our cybersex lives.
I already wrote why sex content in second life is not just porn. Not only that there are many other things to do in-world beside cybersex stuff, but cybersex gets a completely new dimension thanks to all the "side" activities. If you have ever encountered an avatar that is here just for cybersex and nothing else, you know what I mean. And whether we engage in "adult" activities or not, second life is also a place where we make friends, create, learn and experience many other things, things that are not reserved for the adults nor for those who are fond of exchanging sexual fantasies in the virtual world. Negating that is the same type of violence as it would be to negate the existence of the adult content.
Other thing that’s been talked about is the percent of content that counts as adult. It probably started by Linden Lab’s estimation of 5% which caused lots of laughs in certain circles. And it caused counter-estimations going as high as 85%. But both numbers are pointless. How can we say how much adult content there is when nobody don’t know what "adult" is? Both numbers are just silly figures. My guess is that Lindens fired that up to fight against the mainstream media stories of Second Life as 3D porn world. Why, for the grid’s sake, some people have the urge to counter that? Like that saying that 85% of second life is related to sex would make it better. It won’t. It only might attract more noob-looking freaks with prim genitals and bad spelling and cut the amount of the other content in the future. We should know better than that. Or maybe the urge for drama is stronger than common sense and common interest?
And that urge is impressively strong in this case. We hear calls for protests, ranting all over the blogosphere, swears and insults… like Lindens personaly want to get rid of everything adult and take a candy from us. Which is far from truth. Think for a second and you’ll see that Linden Lab has no interest in shoting down one of the strongest industries of the world. And if you’ve ever talked with any of them you know they are far from puritan freaks. So stop whining and behave like an adult. Second life will keep it’s naughty content, and it will keep its PG side as well. And that’s for the best of the both, if it makes any sense to talk about two sides. After all, it’s just one world with huge diversity as it’s best feature. Please keep it that way.
I think you’ve missed the point of most people’s objections to what LL is doing. Few have seriously suggested doing nothing about adult content. They just object to how LL is going to deal with it. Massive relocation of existing builds. Effectively rezoning land you purchased that you thought already was suitable for adult content and turning it into PG. Relying on a very broken system of verification. Adding to an already easily abused and overloaded abuse reporting system. There are just so many things wrong in the current approach LL is taking. Residents have offered many outstanding ideas on how to really fix it but these seem to have fallen on deaf ears.
No, I’m addressing one specific argument here, not the loudest one (luckily) but one that makes so little sense. While I generally support the idea of zoning I have my own objections as well.
Relocation will be painful and will be a huge test for LL. But after all, zoning is good for all of us, especially for adult content creators and consumers. Fact is, not many were thinking about which land is suitable for their shops. Those who were are on private themed islands, and they will have no problem about relocating.
Aristotle as a system of verification is broken and suspicious but that is solved by adding payment info as acceptable verification.
AR system is problematic already, I agree on that, but do we have an other option?
I would add word filtering to the list, and hopefully will give it a whole post one of these days.
Awesome post Dande. Thanks for a bit of a voice of reason in the middle of all the fru-forah.
I can’t imagine hanging in SL without the adult dimension, nor could I hang without everything else. The people, the creativity and the amazing dimensions of wit and pure fun are where the action is.
That having been said, I don’t like the mechanisms LL is using for age verification, think there’s a lot of silliness in the whole "classification" thing, and suspect it’s all a paper tiger for public visiblity purposes.
(Oh, and thanks for giving Isle and I an opportunity to participate in your post. Had a great time hangin last night.)
There is pg and mature already, I don’t know why we need adult, too.
Thanks Raven, glad you like it.
Tilie, that’s a good question. But on the other side, I am pro different classifications, e.g. differentiating between sex and violence. At the moment, both of them falls under adult, but they are so different in nature. Some people don’t object their kids seeing nudity and sex, but have an issue with exposing them to the strong violence. Unfortunately, our civilization usually behave opposite.
[...] 22, 2009 by London Spengler Dandellion Kimban wrote an interesting post, mainly because it links to one of mine and because it has an enticing picture of a sex scene. Oh, [...]