Photorealistic Bodies Turned the Culture of Second Life Into a Gross Mirror of Exactly What Should Be Left in RL (Comment of the Week)

Good conversation on the post about making realistic mesh humans SL's main default avatar type. 

Reflecting on their own experience, Ghost Bird writes:

This drove me away from SL. The focus on photorealistic bodies turned the culture into a gross mirror of exactly what should be left in RL: misogyny, racism, classism, sexualisation and, ironically, materialism. Abstract, whimsical avatars and spaces obviously aren't free from bad behaviour, but I am convinced stylisation helps and photorealism hurts when it comes to socialising and community-building in virtual spaces.

I just visited the official Second Life homepage and was surprised to see it totally cramped with realistic mesh humans -- specifically attractive males/females in their 20s (as above) like a crew roadtripping to Coachella. (I.E., highly privileged people from California and/or who can afford thousands of dollars to travel there and attend Coachella.) Used to be there would be a smattering/token appearance of non-humans on the SL website but I'm not even seeing any of those at the moment. 

 Luther Weymann argues a large part of the SL community has not bothered upgrading anyway:

Before my current mesh avatar, and way back in early 2004 I looked like Ruth most of the time and today my Alt which was that early avatar still has a classic body and with tweaking over the years, except for the hands and nose, you'd never know it was classic. I was okay looking like Ruth and with classic bodies.

My first SL wife was classic body and she was a beauty. From 2008 up until about 2016 I made and sold many thousands of great design, but all prim, residential and commercial buildings and by 2016 that business was mostly dead from mesh buildings having a more real life appearance. Today I'm wearing a mesh body that is 9 years old that you never see in SL anymore and its very low lag. There are a thousands of non-beach luxury humble people in SL just enjoying what they have without any desire to upgrade.

If you hang with the elite of SL and the SL bloggers you might get the impression that SL is a place of cool kids and clicks of families, but its not, it still hundreds of thousands of single individuals with old SL prim buildings with old stuff bought in world and though Magic Boxes and Xstreet and those people are happy with what they have.

I haven't upgraded my own avatar since 2014 (as you may have noticed), partly out of irritation at the UI, but in more recent years, annoyance with the social conformity aspect.

Good follow-up question from WinterRose:

I'm also neurodivergent, so my first instinct is to mask a bit. But I'd be interested in the data as to how much people tend to emulate their actual races or genders or even species when it comes to games/environments like these. Is the trend more to emulate one's self, or to customize and try to be what one would want to be?

I'm going to check in with Nick Yee (who I interviewed in the post) on that very question!

Comments

[sirhc desantis]

Interesting about the homepage - had not seen the top two pics (the others have been there for yonks). The 'community' one does link to erm.. something so there is that. Plus the bloke in the fur coat would not last 10 minutes at Coachella =^^=
As for 'photo realistic' well people have been aiming to be as 'real' as possible for all the time I have been an inmate. Never saw the point personally but it shifts product. Their World Their Imagination is just as valid. Her indoors badgered me in to getting meshed up so I got a freebie just so could continue to eat indoors. Nothing else changed, skin, hair, boots, undies etc. Ser Weymann nailed it.
I would worry that the pic bottom left character don't 'arf look like Lady Miss Kier - now theres a person from a higher plane you do not want to mess with.

[Val]

Wow, I hope LL sees this because you are spot on about the homepage pic. We know who they *want* to attract to the platform, but they are sending an uninviting message to a lot of other people with that image.

[Kylinn]

IMO the Lab should make the homepage at least 50% other kinds of avatars, like Dinkies, dragons, and fairies. Not everyone wants to be a photorealistic human, or even human at all.

[EmptyEyes]

While I get the desire for more weird avatars and atmosphere, if people want to be photorealistic humans, then I don't see the issue with it. After all its their avatar. They don't really suit my taste, which is why my avatars look out of place sometimes, but that's fine. You should look how you want.

As for Linden Labs advertisement, they should probably advertise more non-human avatars just to give a fuller picture of SL to attract people who are into non-human avatars. But they must have some advertising goal that is not that given the current home page.