New World Notes

Tonight: Adult Content Community Celebrates "Zindrapendence Day"

Tonight at 9pm SLT, to celebrate their independence from the rest of SL, the Zindra Alliance, a community affiliated with Second Life's new Adult-rated content "Amsterdam continent" are having a "Zindrapendence Day" party. In fact, Alliance co-founder Jago Constantine tells me, "The theme is Banned On The Mainland, so come in something you couldn't wear to SL6B (remember that naked is not a costume!)" Give them your tired (of getting Community Standards penalties), your huddled masses yearning to breathe free (in public orgy rooms), they lift their [censored] besides the golden door, or something. Direct SLurl teleport at this link.

Alien Behavior: How Moral Panic Over Second Life Policies Confuse the Unitiated

Here's a fascinating example of user behavior, virtual world management policy, and moral panic all colliding together in an amusing if somewhat irksome way. Back in 2007, after some widely publicized cases of simulated pedophilia (or what's sometimes called "age play") were discovered in Second Life, the Lindens issued a policy forbidding the behavior (even among consenting adults), with a threat to ban violators from SL. While applauded by most of the community, this policy has also caused numerous landowners to employ draconian measures to prevent any perception that age play is tolerated on their property. This often means ejecting from their land not just sexual ageplayers from their property, but avatars who even seem underage, for totally non-erotic reasons -- women in "Gothic Lolita" fashion, for example, or adult Residents seeking to recapture an innocent childhood through roleplay. Or as we saw last weekend, even avatars under 4'9", spotted and then chased off a nude beach -- even if they happen to be squat green aliens without genitals. (See screenshot.)

Normally, long-time SLers would read about this instance of misapplied Community Standards policing with tickled annoyance, or affectionate frustration, or maybe both. But the thing is, last weekend the above screenshot wound up on the front page of Digg.com with 2500+ votes. (Which in my experience, roughly translates into several hundred thousand page views, if not more.) Unsurprisingly, the overwhelming reaction there, from readers who know nothing of this backstory, is confusion and contempt. And in this way, moral panic over a totally reasonable policy has led nearly half a million people to conclude Second Life is rampant with green alien discrimination. (And all the strangeness that seems to suggest.) Image source.

What Would Google Do If It Was Linden Lab?

Writing about the ongoing controversy over the Lindens' imminent "Adult" regulations, which will (among other things) remove Adult-rated content from default search queries in-world, Cieran Laval of Your2ndPlace makes this keen analogy:

Linden Lab wouldn't be happy if Google decided tomorrow that you could only find Second Life if you had Google safe search turned off, yet this is the logic Linden Lab are applying to their search and it is not good for business.

A point worth thinking about. I actually didn't even know Google had a "Safe search" mode, until now-- here it is. (Which suggests that I'm behind the curve -- or that it's function rarely used outside of kid-oriented contexts.) In any case, following Google's success, wouldn't it make more sense to offer a non-Adult search filter as an opt-in feature, rather than a default?

Virtual Love Economics: What Sells Better In Second Life, Romantic Poses or Sexual Positions?

Leila Carroll is one of Second Life's most talented content creators; her brand !Meya! (official site here, xStreetSL shopping channel here) specializes in customized poses for amorously-inclined avatars.  All of them are sensual and beautiful, and suggest a wide range of explicitness, from the dreamily romantic to the sexually carnal (as here, and here.) She's also quite successful in this economic niche; her top six pose configurations, she tells me, have sold seven figures in Linden Dollars (L$1M converts on the open market to nearly US$4000.) Her Second Life business, Leila adds, "has been my sole source of income since May 2008 (I opened in February 2008)."

That's impressive in itself, and it also offers us an excellent data point on the Second Life market for virtual lovemaking. Put another way: What sells better, sexual positions, or romantic couplings? When I asked her that, Leila generously offered to let me report and display her top-selling poses this year -- see for yourself and read her conclusions after the break.  Some images below quite possibly NSFW, of course, but tasteful and gorgeous to behold:

The Perils and Pleasures of Kissing Avatars

I've been thinking a fair amount about what it's like to kiss an avatar, because last weekend, I kissed maybe a dozen. That was for a Relay for Life fundraiser kissing booth, and while it may seem strange, it's often a difficult or complex thing. Avatars had the option of choosing several kinds of kisses; some preferred the intense, swooping kiss (as did Haver Cole, above), others a much more modest, Norman Rockwell variety (as did the blue butterfly-winged Patchouli Woolhara.) And while this was all just a matter of pixels on a screen, there was definitely some tension in the process. One person I kissed insisted on choosing the most modest one; another said they would like to donate to the booth's kiosk, but they'd rather not kiss me. Others came plunging forward demanding the most hottest variety, and I was happy to comply. That's when things got keen:

Single SL: Less Than 6% of Second Life Residents Have In-World Partner, Veteran Users More Commitment-Oriented

Longtime SL Resident Jade Lily with listed partner (also married IRL)

Marriage and commitment ceremonies in Second Life are usually the focal point for wildly elaborate and well-attended celebrations. One unconscious reason for all that excitement?  As it turns out, probably because they're so rare.

That news from Second Life business/demographics analyst Metaverse Business, which employs data- gathering bots to generate highly detailed user data from Residents' public profiles.  Founder Louis Platini shares his findings with New World Notes from time to time (as here, and here), and I recently asked him if he could determine the number of Residents who listed an official partner in their profile. His bots went off tither, and after many weeks (months even) of counting, came back with these results:

Number of profiles retrieved : 698,997 - Profiles with a partner: 40,967 - Percentage: 5.86%

This would seem like a surprisingly low number, especially for a virtual world with near gender parity. (Women comprise roughly 42% of the active population.) Strikingly, the Residents who do have a partner listed are disproportionately veteran users who've been in Second Life for over four years. (2005 was a banner year for metaverse commitment, with 1 in 3 Residents born that year partnering up.)

How to explain the results?  An explosion of casual users in recent years, for one thing, but I suspect another major factor at play: divorce.  In 2006, a famed virtual wedding planner once complained to me how in the early times, Second Life partnerships were made to last.  More recently, she sighed, "They just do it for a few weeks for fun, then put in a divorce request on the website."

Full chart and Mr. Platini's trenchant analysis of the numbers after the break:

Tateru Takes An Adult Regulation Poll

On her blog, Massively writer Tateru Nino is running a survey on the Lindens' coming "Adult content" regulations. Of course, web surveys like these generate unreliable samples, but in my experience, still yield a worthwhile snapshot of general opinion. Go here to register your take.

Unconsenting Adults: Protest Against Linden Content Zoning Hits Company Bug Tracking Software

There is a substantial protest against the coming Linden zoning regulations that will remove explicit sex and violence from Second Life's default search engine and its main continents, set to be imposed this Summer. Much of the organized rancor is hitting JIRA, the Lindens' bug tracking/feature request software, which now contains this entry, dubbed MISC-2727:

"Terminate All Installation of any 'Adult Content' filtering, Relocation, Banning, Viewer Modifications, Server Modifications"

As of right now, that feature request has garnered 3119 votes, which may not seem like much in a population of nearly 750,000 regular users. However, the JIRA program is difficult to navigate, and requires users to log in with their avatar name and password, which means it's generally used by only the most dedicated Residents. Despite this difficulty, the entry is now the second most popular in the entire database, only behind a JIRA entry launched in relation to last year's epochal OpenSpace pricing rebellion. In that case, the Lindens responded by substantially changing their pricing policies, and even apologizing to the community. However, it remains to be seen what this new uprising will accomplish. Go here to follow it in JIRA. (Much thanks to Thorn Witrial, for the pointer. Protest image taken from the JIRA imagery.)

Cambridge Grad Studies Second Life Relationships

Machinima documentarian Draxtor Despres produced this smart profile of Dareth Denimore, a Cambridge sociology student who's been compiling a study of SL relationships from in-world interviews of a couple hundreds Residents, and describe what he's learned.  Perhaps surprisingly, he says most of his subjects say they want to take the relationship into the real world. It's a mixed reality video, since it also includes some footage of Philip Rosedal at University of Washington's Virtual Journalism summit (which Draxtor attended and I co-moderated), and a snippet of Helen Thomas and Bob Schieffer, who were also there to take questions from the audience in both worlds.

Sexed Down: Second Life's Latest Release Candidate Hides "Adult" Content From Unverified Users; A Linden Lawyer Discusses SL's Coming Content Regulation (Updated)

Talking sex and violence with Linden deputy general counsel Kend Linden

Starting next week, you can, if you choose, remove virtual sex from your metaverse reality. Come this Summer (probably June), that choice will be made for you. (Unless, that is, you willingly opt for the wild side.) That's the crux of the news announced today by the Lindens: in brief, an optional release candidate (1.23) viewer software will be put out next week, and will contain filtering tools that allow Residents to block Second Life content according to its designated rating-- PG, Mature, and Adult. A few months from now, making good on announced plans to create a "red light continent" of sexual and extremely violent content (i.e., "Adult" rated), the official viewer will include those tools, too. To see and access Adult content from then on, you'll need to first validate adult status with real world identification, by providing payment information such as a credit card, or via the company's designated age verification company, Aristotle.

In theory, this will yield a Second Life where free expression is encouraged across a diverse spectrum of societies and community standards. The question, of course, is if standards of what's considered PG, Mature, and Adult can be clearly defined in specific cases, and enforced. Is that possible? Yesterday I had an in-world chat with Kend Linden (IRL, Linden deputy general counsel Ken Dreifach), who made his company's case.

Despite that conversation, however, questions remain. For instance, the Lindens declined to provide me with a list of the keywords that will automatically flag events, locations, and other content as Adult in the SL viewer's search interface. "I can tell you that [the company] is taking great care to avoid overzealous filtering," a Linden publicist sought to assure me. Given the enormous number of words that have both an innocent and sexual connotation, however, I'm not as yet convinced. If you're a college professor who plans to give a public Second Life lecture on James Bond novels next Fall, for example, I wouldn't advise putting the words "Pussy Galore" in the event description.

In any event, here's how the Lindens define "Adult" rated content, and examples where these definitions would be applied: