Miss Ophelia's Metaverse Manners: The Trouble with Facelights, Unwanted Guests, and the Death of Decency

Exclusive to NWN, Iris Ophelia's take on etiquette and ethics in virtual spaces

We're back this week with three new reader questions, so let's get to it!

Why does everyone yell at me when I wear my facelight!?

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To be honest, I don't understand why many people still insist on wearing facelights. When they originally became popular, it was because lighting in Second Life was more or less always the same, and attaching a light or two in front of your avatar's face provided more flattering lighting than the environment. You saw your avatar more or less how others would see you, so it was easy to tell when a facelight was needed. When Windlight was introduced, people began tweaking and playing with their own lighting settings independantly. Now, you can't know how someone else sees your avatar.

More often than not, facelights that may look fine on your screen are blinding beacons to everyone around you. If you're in a shop, this glare can also wash out vendors and make it difficult for other customers to browse the merchandise or the surroundings. Simply put, facelights have been unnecessary for years, and generally they do more to hide your lovely avatar than highlight it. Ditch the facelight and try optimizing your windlight settings instead (this awesome tutorial by Ryker Beck will show you how to get started.)

Keep reading for more virtual manners tips!

Dear Iris, Is it considered to be rude for a friend to teleport people (that I don't know) over to my skybox while we're hanging out without even asking beforehand?

Oh boy, this is incredibly rude-- and even if you did know the teleportee! If you have land security setting or a security orb, you can limit the access to your land so that your friend will have to ask you, so you can then add the person to the access list. A much simpler and more honest way to manage the issue, however, is just to tell your friend that you'd really like to be asked before they teleport people to your place. If they want a specific reason, it's fair to tell them that your skybox is a personal space, not a public one.

Sometimes it seems to me that respectful politeness (i.e. calling others Sir and Ma'am) is only common on Victorian/Steampunk RP sims like Caledon, and on sims dealing with D/s. I can't understand why this politeness is offending or annoying some people?

Even in RL, hearing Sir and Ma'am is becoming a bit of a rarity. I'm 24 myself, and I'll admit that I see those ways of addressing people as somewhat antiquated, and something that I've only ever used for novelty's sake. In general society seems to be moving towards more casual interaction. Because these kinds of interactions aren't a part of most of our day to day lives anymore, many people may misinterpet them as something to be offended or annoyed by.

The best thing to do if you find yourself offending someone unintentionally with something you've said is to apologize, and explain that it was simply a miscommunication. It is a silly thing to get offended by, but even if you don't understand why it bothers them there's no shame in a swift and sincere apology.

Do you have your own virtual world etiquette quandary? Email me at ophelia.iris [at] gmail [dot] com, or submit anonymously to the Metaverse Manners Formspring.  Be sure to include a pseudonym (i.e. "WTF from the Welcome Area") so you know when I'm addressing your query!

Iris Ophelia (Janine Hawkins IRL) has been featured in the New York Times and has spoken about SL-based design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan and with pop culture/fashion maven Johanna Blakley.

Comments

[Laetizia Coronet]

I can deal with security orbs even if they often rudely inform you to get out, but I do not understand why you of all people would advocate land security with access lists.
You do not want to know how many pleasant flights have ended like that. These settings are activated 24/7 and more often than not I get kicked out of my little airplane and into a sim corner simply for flying past an empty house somewhere, belonging to people who are asleep when I am around in my European timeframe.
Land security settings claim airspace (up to about 100m I believe, above which there isn't a lot to be seen anymore) and are the rudest thing I can imagine in Second Life. Down with them all. Security orbs give you the time to pass over the protected house.

[Valentina Kendal]

Wow, maybe it's because I usually use Midday or Sim Default settings, but I have *never* seen anything like the picture shown, or experienced anything like this
"facelights that may look fine on your screen are blinding beacons to everyone around you. If you're in a shop, this glare can also wash out vendors and make it difficult for other customers to browse the merchandise."

I find 2007-era bling effects much more distracting than facelights

[Arcadia Codesmith]

In the modern American context, "Sir" and "Ma'am" are not commonplace polite greetings, but instead are used in situations requiring exceptional formality or discipline, such as interactions with the military, police or diplomatic corps.

A solid Victorian roleplayer (or reader of Regency romances) might have a working knowledge of the degrees of familiarity that are appropriate to the mileau, to the extent that what appears to be a prim and proper exchange to a casual observer is a steamy, blatant flirtation to the participants.

Alas, most of us are not so well-versed, and the use of overly formal address can be misconstrued as a way of distancing yourself from the person with whom you're attempting to communicate.

Beside the point, but worth noting: if you're dealing with medieval/renaissance roleplayers, Sir and Madam are formal titles and should only be used in relation to Knights, Dames, Barons and Baronesses (depending on how strict the group is and which region/time period they're portraying).

[Adeon Writer]

@Valentina: The face-light macro is a humorous exaggeration of the worst senerio, but not that far from them. I'll have to go to some welcome areas and gather some real examples. It would take some standing around but you'd find one eventually. :D

[Toxic Menges]

Now we can get per parcel lighting on some tpv's I think facelights will come back some (I still use mine - but it is very discrete)

[Loraan Fierrens]

One reason people get upset about facelights is that the client is quite limited on the number of lights it can handle in the scene at one time. I forget the exact number, but it's something like 6 or 8. This means that a person with a facelight (or two) can mess up the lighting effects the sim's builder has arranged.

On the other hand, it is relatively easy to turn off facelights in the viewer (they're called attached lights in the viewer preferences). This is what I usually do, since I don't really care for the effect.

[brinda allen]

Courtesy is contagious... And sadly it seems many have found an immunization. At 68 I don't expect someone to respect me even though I feel I've earned a bit of respect. I still say please, thank you (and I spell it, not ty), may I, and you're welcome, no matter the age of the person.
Much of the behaviour covered in this column comes under something purported to be from Voltaire 200 years ago. "Common sense is an uncommon virtue."

[Rin Tae]

Ohh.. facelights .. those can be sooo bad to the surrounding area and in most cases the wearer is not even aware of it. There have been some horrified reactions when people got shown snapshots of how they look on the monitors of other people.

Especialyl on RP sims I would say facelights should not be worn because it is true that some of those light up entire streets in places that have been designed with a totally different feel to them. And while it is true that one can disable 'attached lights' rather easy through the advanced menu not everyone is familiar with this or feels safe enough to go into those settings.

So as far as I am concerned, facelights are great tools for taking pictures and creating the right light condicions for them. But in other places it might be best to remove them completly.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

Courtesy is the respect we owe each other by virtue of being human; manners are the rules by which we are expected to display it.

One may be perfectly mannered and yet inexcusably rude; conversely, an ignorance of manners is often excused in a person making an honest effort at courtesy.

I am not terribly concerned at my poor grasp of etiquette, but I am shamed when I'm deliberately discourteous without ample provocation.

[Iris Ophelia]

@Laetizia That's a good point, but I was thinking more of a sim-wide access list on a private estate, I should have been a little clearer there. If you have land and a manager role on a private sim with fairly stringent security, that can be a good way to restrict unwanted guests without affecting the current ones with things like those unsightly ban lines.

[Arcadian Vanalten]

Our estate has a covenant against ban lines, that I like, but I DID have to set up my first ever home security orb this week.

FOund an escort in my house looking for script-enabled private locations to take her johns who weren't age-verified.

I actually dusted off the blog to vent on that one, LOL

[Syd Loon]

Just overuse of scripts & prims overall can make a buggy virtual day go from bad to horribly laggy. Sometimes the playful side decides to tweak the environmental effects; in some cases turning a "bright friend" into a wicked looking creature. Can be fun. =]

[Fogwoman Gray]

When I first arrived in Caledon, being from the US, the use of titles as well as "sir" and "ma'am" seemed very awkward.
After three years, not only does it feel quite natural and respectful, but I find myself being more respectful to those I deal with in everyday life.
I see it as the equivalent of the "namaste".
Even in Caledon we tend to greet our friends using first names. The formality is less a RP requirement and more a desire for a more genteel and polite overall public interaction.

[HALEY Salamon]

You wil pry my facelights out of my cold dead hands.

[Uriel Wheeler]

I rent skyboxes, so the security thing makes sense to me. I love that HippoSecure "orbs" are very configurable - both to parcel and to distance.

So to give my tenants privacy, they're set with a goodly radius - but only within the limits of the parcel and not from 0m to 4Km either.

They also default to "display only". :)

[GoSpeed Racer]

Speaking as someone who uses a dark skinned avatar a face light helps me be seen clearly by others and not just myself. When it's on I set it to its dimmest settings, smallest radius and the color set to either gray or brown.A dim brown light actually does work pretty well and does not tend to light up the surroundings like a white light can. I have tried tweaking the viewer settings but it often washes out the faces of light skinned avatars. Finding that balance is hard to do and since lighting conditions vary so much in SL it's often a losing battle.

[Adeon Writer]

On some custom viewers, local lights cast shadows, which would make face-lights absolutely hilarious.

[Arcadian Vanalten]

I've seen facelights used well for dramatic effect in supernatural RP sims, but otherwise, yeah, they can be pretty eyeburning. And "for dramatic effect" really only works if they're used sparingly. I think some folks just don't realize how washed-out they look w/ 'em, especially if they can't adjust 'em down a bit. I remember one wedding I DJ'ed where one of the bridesmaids refused to dial down the FL (which apparently was set to 'Supernova') until no fewer than 6 other people dropped photos of her on how blinding she looked. That finally sold her on losing the personal solar flare effect.

[Mariko Nightfire]

In the blog post below, I explore the question, "Are we better off walking with windlight or without windlight?" I find the answer is no. So the question that I want you to answer is "Why are you walking with windlight?"

http://mariko-nightfire.blogspot.com/2011/01/walking-with-windlight-again-windlight.html