25% of Second Life Land Mass Now Adult-Rated for Extreme Sex & Violence

A recent report by Tyche Shepherd, a top statistician for a major multinational whose quirky hobby is tracking Second Life land ownership on Grid Survey, has a notable milestone: "Adult rated regions were up by 20 to 6000 (25.3% of the grid) while General Rated were up 7 to 2951 (12.4%)." As far as I know, this is the first time that a full quarter of Second Life's total landmass is Adult-rated. That includes private islands like the unsubtly named "Nude", which when you arrive (above), offers you the wonderful promise of something called LifeHump.

Back in 2013, Adult-rated sims represented about 17% of the world, but that percentage has been slowly creeping upward since then. "Adult", of course, does not necessarily mean the place is swamped by virtual porn or  is solely devoted to porn, just that extremely graphic sexual and violent content is allowed within it -- a feature often integrated into "dark roleplay" areas popular in Second Life that are sort of NC-17 versions of Grand Theft Auto, Game of Thrones, and Fallout (i.e. urban/crime, fantasy, and sci-fi roleplay). 

What this data point mean depends on your perspective:

A small loss of 3 regions this week . Total #secondlife grid size is 23759 regions 16100 are Private Estates. Adult Rated regions now number 6000 (25.3% of the grid) https://t.co/ORynsbyWy8

— Tyche Shepherd (@tycheshepherd) February 10, 2019

For SL veterans, I suspect this will garner a shrug, since 25% is not that much a jump from previous rates. Then again, it definitely complicates the dismissive opinion that Second Life is mostly virtual sex and fringe disturbing content. No, just 25% of it is!

I've reached out to Tyche for more perspective on this data, by the way, and will update as needed!

Update, 3:15 SLT: Just heard word from Tyche, who tells me: "Adult region numbers have been slowly growing as a percentage over the years since the Adult ratings were brought in (April 2009) . The same with General-rated as well -- polarization at the expense of the middle Mature-rated regions. Adult-rated have grown to just over 25% from 20%  3 1/2 years ago and ~15% 6 years ago." By contrast, she adds, General-rated sims have remains stable for the last 4 or 5 years at about 12.5%.

Comments

[Nalates Urriah]

Seems to reflect RL as Democrat leaders release more criminals and destroy cities like Chicago, Detroit, LA, and NYC. So, it could just be the progressives congregating in SL...

[Alex]

Sad some people have to try and drag partisan hate politics in here.

[Alex]

Nalates, what is your problem? Aren’t there enough Russian trolls online? You have to pollute SL with your right wing, racist ignorance and hatred? I didn’t think Republicans were even smart enough to use computers, let alone form cogent sentences.

[Hamlet Au]

Chicago, Detroit, LA, and NYC are not even listed among the FBI's 40 most violent cities in the US in recent years. No, not even Chicago. 4 of the 5 very most violent cities in the US are in states that lean heavily Republican - Alabama, Arkansas, Missouri, and Tennessee:

https://www.businessinsider.com/most-violent-city-every-us-state-fbi-2018-4#2-memphis-tennessee-had-974-violent-crimes-per-10000-residents-39

But this post is about Adult-rated sims in Second Life, so let's keep the conversation on that.

[Emilly Orr]

This entirely fails to surprise me, for what it's worth. This was EXACTLY why so many of us were begging the Lindens to make Ursula-now-Zindra a showpiece of how good PG content could be, instead of the new 'adult' continent. We knew trying to funnel everyone who wanted adult content in SL to one place wouldn't work.

But they didn't listen.

[JohnC]

You may hate it with all your heart and mind, but take out the adult side of SL and there will be no SL. One day those who live in pink fluffy Paridisio will realize that Virtual, just as RL, worlds will always contain light, and dark bad and good, you may dream of a day when humanity rises about such things. But you will be long dead before they never happen.

[Emilly Orr]

JohnC, if you think I was protesting the icky adult stuff on SL, you are woefully misinformed. I work on an adult sim in an adult business. I have zero problem with virtual sex in nearly every regard. But the point remains: Linden Lab would have been better served to make a single PG continent, and dumped all the refugees from the Teen Grid THERE, than make it an adult content. What do we have now? Half of Zindra used, half of it wasteland, and sex all over. How is this different in any way from not having a dedicated "adult" continent?

The experiment was a failure, because they don't understand their own grid.

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

There's considerable variation in the response to partisan content on this blog.

[Mondy]

Here's another side to it. Friends of mine own and run a hangout spot in SL used for playing music, chatting, building, an option to put up a jewelry store.
On the weekend some DJ and get together to chat. No one is doing the naughty but it's an adult sim. Purely because that gives the option, as adults to do whatever we want without being told "Hey, you're not allowed to do that, it's against the rules!" If some weeks we have a theme with adult content and dress, we can. If the owner wants to put a bench or rug down somewhere without enclosing it in a skybox, then they can do that to. But for the most part, you'd be hard pressed to find any difference anywhere between this sim and any other PG, general rated sim on the grid.

[Mondy]

The actual point I meant to make is that just because a sim is rated as adult or extreme content, doesn't necessarily mean that's what it's being used for. It's just easier to set that option to cover it for any and all uses.