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.

Comments

[In Kenzo]

It's true, there's green discrimination across the grid; I've encouraged everyone to try going green for awhile to see how others live.

It's not easy, bein' green.....

[Harper Ganesvoort]

To quote from The Wiz, "Go for Gold!"

[Maggie Darwin]

Somehow I have trouble ginning up sympathy for the oppression of artificial minorities. "Going green to see how others live" would make more sense if anyone was involuntarily green.

Kind of "Black Like Me"...but green.

[Timmy Lee]

Well as a SecondLifer, i am Purple, well i prefer to be called blueberry
and i have people say stuf like if you wanna hang out here you need normal looking skin or something along those lines... i was banned on sight at one place just cause i wasnt "normal" looking. its a VR world that we create for ourselves. so who is this mystery person or persons that decided what is normal, i have a petition to file

[Ann Otoole]

It doesn't matter what the current staff and executives at LL do. Everything they do will be met with suspicion and derision. Like the Zindra land swap. I'm certain there will be drama never ending over that process too.

[Nalates Urriah]

It is amazing how gullible people can be. With Google and Snopes just clicks away people still forward email that is hateful and hurtful to others without a thought.

[Ace Albion]

People can ban or not for any reason or no reason on their own land, that they pay the tier on. If the rest of us don't like it, we're welcome to pay for our own land and be more tolerant.

Of course, I understand that the difference between SL/Linden policy and private individuals/groups operating strict "no shirt, no shoes" policies on their personal land would be too subtle to be grasped by the diggerati. None of us have any special rights to impose ourselves on what is a resource paid for by someone else, and I don't think that sense of entitlement helps.

[DagnyT Dagger]

Therein lies the problem with any "no tolerance" policy, anytime, anywhere.

Just remember, little green man, that you were ejected to protect the (virtual) CHILDREN.

[Doreen Garrigus]

People get really weird about size because of the age-play thing. The other day, I was asked if I went to kindergarten---cleavage, curves, eyeliner and all---because I came up to some woman's belly button. She had maxed her height and leg sliders, making her something like eight feet tall, and I measure (prim height) 5'2".

Now I am deeply tired of clueless giants baby-talking at me, but all that aside, I do wonder about a couple of things.

First, which method of measurement are the sim owners using? If they are measuring the bounding box of the avatar, as typical height detectors do, the measurements they are coming up with are about six inches too short. The bounding box stops at, roughly, the avatar's eyes. In that case, I would have been banned, at my full, real-world adult height, and I would have been extremely irritated. (If you are curious about height detectors, Vaelissa Cortes has a good, accurate height detector, and Sativa Ember has a useful set of height reference prims. Both are available on xstreetsl.com for free.)

Second, are they applying this to tinies and other non-human avatars who use animations to fold their bodies up smaller than the slider height minimum of 4'2"? Or was the alien singled out because he is humanoid? Would a quadruped have been banned? (Can you age-play with a pony or a fluffy white cat, or is that another perversion entirely? Wouldn't the desire to have sex with a pot-bellied green alien be some deviation other than pedophilia?) A height detector will return the height of the unfolded avatar, rather than the apparent, folded height. So my Fizzlepop Dragon shows up on a height detector as 4'2" tall, even though he is only 27" when measured against a prim. (He is, after all, a baby dragon. I don't even want to delve into what kind of perversion that might be.)

So here's a message to the sim owner who banned the alien: Because of your short-sighted and blunt application of a policy that isn't very useful in the first place, half a million people think you are a "raving moron", as one commenter put it and, by extension, they think we all are. Thanks for that.

[Ewan Mureaux]

Clearly the anti-green movement is a thinly veiled hostility to the people of Iran and their recent plight. The height thing is just an excuse obviously.......

It's not easy bein' green for sure

[emerson999]

Found out about this from digg. We figured out why pretty quickly, just a few comments into the story. Most of us still think it's a pretty weird restriction, to put it in the most polite way possible.

[Archie Lukas]

Please bear in mind that there are stupid people everywhere.

Therefore why SL should be an exception?

(Referring to the Hermit character
with the tape measure here)

[Everest Piek]

As I am having it in my profile text: Stupidity should be made a bannable offense.
and some beach patrols are FAR below an IQ Level that is scientifically described as idiocy. Nope, no swear word. Just Scientific terminology.
Ev