New World Notes

Flat World Rising: PMR's Cardboard Avatars Top Seller on SL Marketplace, First Flat Town Shopping Event Starts This Weekend

Flat town pic courtesy Novel Events

The cardboard avatars of Salt Pepper have already evolved from an April Fool's prank into a social phenomenon; now, I can report they're also an economic powerhouse in Second Life. The PMR and accessory skin have been among the top ten selling items on the Marketplace since last weekend (see below), their lo-fi displays a refreshing contrast to the super model avatar upgrades which usually dominate the economy. (And culture.)

Even more notable, PMR creator Salt Pepper tells me, the cardboard avatars continue to be popular even though she's no longer offering them for free. Now priced at L$555 (about $2 USD), Salt tells me she's sold well over 2000 copies over the last few days.

Just as notable: PMR is having its first sales event/hunt this weekend, starting April 19th at 3PM SLT, inevitably dubbed: Flat-Out Fun.

Hosted by Novel Events (follow on Facebook for updates), it comes with its own flat paper-based town in Second Life, quickly created by Alice Tartaglia:

Here's How Making Realistic Mesh Humans SL's Main Default Avatar Type Has Hurt Second Life

Image by Susanne Drechsler

Since the flat avatars of Project Mesh Revolution have provoked quite a lot of buzz -- but also, a fair amount of anger from SLers who were expecting a standard mesh body -- here's an apropos excerpt from Making a Metaverse That Matters.

While many people in the virtual world industry buy the myth that ultra-realistic human avatars should be the end goal, my reporting about what they did to Second Life suggests otherwise. Here's the excerpt:

Myth: Photo-realistic human avatars and world graphics are the Metaverse’s end goal

This is a favorite myth among metaverse advocates who consult or work for companies producing 3D graphics cards, 3D development software, and 3D engines.

There is actually no proven relationship whatsoever between the popularity of a metaverse platform and photo-realistic graphics. Despite this, a wealth of metaverse startups and platforms frequently announce new plans to roll out ever more realistic environmental graphics, and ever more eerily human-like avatars.

The very most popular platforms, Minecraft and Roblox, are intentionally low-fi, immersive through their physics and responsiveness. Their whimsical avatars are similarly abstract. 

Why this is likely relates to their core user base: People in their teens and pre-teens, who are often still uncomfortable and unsure about their own real life identity and appearance. This seems even more acute for teen girls and young women, still negotiating the social expectations and judgements around their real life presentation; presenting them with a lifelike avatar to customize is effectively asking them to take even more social expectations and judgements. 

We also have something of an opposite proof point.

At launch, Second Life avatars were human by default but not realistic. The internal prim creation tools encouraged the construction of avatar attachments (robot helmets, furry tails, etc.), which led to a wide variety of avatar types and environments to explore.  

The arrival of mesh in Second Life in 2010 -- high resolution 3D files created in offline software and then uploaded into the virtual world -- greatly changed this dynamic: 

Watch: Seriously Amazing VRChat Avatar Makes Me Miss Them in SL

Speaking of VRChat hiring, I kinda feel like the company should go ahead and hire community creator/merchant "lackofbindings" to make default avatars. Because, I mean, watch above. (Starts slow but shit gets real around 20 seconds in.)

I watch this somewhat whimsically, because amazing avatars like this once seemed pervasive in Second Life as well (as here, in 2007) but are much less prevalent. They're still around, to be sure, but you have to look in earnest, and they're definitely in less abundance on the active marketplace. My working theory, as I wrote in the book, is the launch of avatar-based mesh for ultrarealistic humans too quickly dominated the market after 2010: 

Virtual Worlds Are Relatively Safe Havens for LGBT People -- But Many Concerns Remain (Comment of the Week)

A reader who signs themself "LGBT+ anon" throws some important and necessary cold water on my tribute to virtual worlds as safe havens for LGBT people:

Virtual worlds are surely helpful to LGBT+ people, gender expression and more, and in general I agree, but since we are talking about safety and "safe havens" after this election, I think it's important a word of caution. Apart from some abusive people you could meet also in virtual worlds, I won't feel safe with USA-based Internet companies, as David Bell said, even less now and in the next years.

Second Life is an especially bad case: communication is still sent plain-text and it's logged, with anything you did and where you did go. They keep the info for long, also the employees access to those logs, your other data and your inventory. That's for tech support, but also to investigate abuse reports. For those purposes it is fine, right? Except it's well known... that US government agencies spied on virtual worlds, among which Second Life.

Now, think about all this under a hostile government. Yikes!

More from LGBT+ anon and my reply after the break:

Cajsa's Choices: Some Spectacularly Scary Clown Avatars of Second Life

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

First Snow recently posted “Do You Want Me to Give You a Balloon?” which made me think of the movie It even if this isn’t the same clown. I guess It's the red balloon. I like this picture quite a bit. It is very moody and evocative of scary things that go bump in the night. OR perhaps I have a different scary clown in my head. 

For more scary clowns in the run-up to spooky season, click here:

Second Life's Flickr Community Celebrates Pride Month in Dazzling Imagery

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Laerka’s “Whatever Sprinkles Your Donut” made me laugh because its liberating message with donuts reminded me that ten years and one month before the Stonewall Riots commemorated in #Pride month, the purported first gay uprising took place at a donut shop in Los Angeles. Donuts were thrown! And like Stonewall, it was led by people who are trans and by drag queens. So, let's never forget the letter T in the liberation alphabet.

Speaking of which, the trans community is a crucial and thriving part of the Second Life community, as explored here, with customizable avatars offering people a chance to freely explore their gender identity and sexuality.  No surprise that the Second Life Flickr community is posting a riot of images celebrating Pride month. 

I love Elaine Lectar coming with all the Pride Pastries! Some say the Cooper’s Donuts Riot in LA never happened, but there are plenty of other uprisings before Stonewall and they usually involved food, such as the Compton Cafeteria and the Black Cat Tavern Riot that launched PRIDE, the acronym (Personal Rights in Defense and Education) and The Advocate magazine, the Black Nite melee in Milwaukee, the genteel sip-ins in Philadelphia and New York, and many more. Gay rights and food seem to go together.  

For more virtual world PRIDE pics, click here:

Cajsa's Choices: Utterly Vivid Avatar Portraits by Cicciuzzo Gausman

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Cicciuzzo Gausman is Second Life’s Lon Chaney, a man of a thousand faces. This is #1151. Casually browsing through Flickr, you might think he’s a portrait photographer who shoots a very specific, closely-cropped sort of head shot. And yes, they are all really good headshots, but you would be missing the real art, because every one of those headshots is a selfie. He’s creating an entirely new persona in each picture. This is the art of making shapes, and yes, he has a store.

Take this guy, He doesn’t look like an avatar worn just out of the box. He’s somebody you can hang a story on. He works in IT for a company in Omaha. He thought his life was ordinary until yesterday when he caught an attack on the company’s servers. This was no ordinary hack and he knows they won’t stop trying… 

For Face #1000, click here:

Today's SL Flickr Pick: Completely Charming Avatar Photos by Jane Bang

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Jane Bang has the cutest avatar. I was browsing and I could not stop smiling when I looked at this picture. A second and third look and it still worked - insta-smile. I want those glasses in real life, by the way. That smile, though, is what really draws me in. It’s just that little bit off center, a quirky smile that is just so sweet. 

I wrote about Jane in the past, loving how she manages to look so casual and spontaneous. She still does. The majority of her pictures are vendor pictures for Space Cadet, her pose store. The vendor pics also have the casual cool you find in her pictures, probably thanks to the poses. 

For more of her fabulous pics, click here:

Second Life Community Social Feeds Swamped by AI-Enhanced Images, Creating Craving for "Real" Avatar Photos

Above: Untouched raw screenshot of Yo Roo's avatar

In a virtual world dependent on highly-detailed, heavily customized avatar models, and images depicting them, what qualifies as "real"? In recent months I've noticed the social media feeds of Second Life users increasingly swamped by avatar images heavily enhanced by generative AI programs like Krea AI, Midjourney, and Leonardo AI. They're showing up in ads for avatar content, and in avatar portraits themselves.

The trend is becoming so acute, it's led longtime SL content creator Yo Roo to post a Facebook request for avatar authenticity:

Tired of seeing AI glow-ups along my entire SL Facebook feed. Yeah yeah, you look good... but honestly, everyone all kinda look the same (notice the eyes and nose always widening) 

So, ❗️TREND ALERT❗️... I'd like to see what you *really* look like in SL. No edits, definitely no AI, snap me a raw so I can appreciate your SL pixels and uniqueness in all their original glory... bonus points if I can see them ugly SL hands. (I miss them.)

Community members have already posted dozens of "candid" avatar pics in the thread.

Ironically, this backlash to AI enhancement actually echoes a prior backlash over avatar images overly enhanced by Photoshop and other editing tools. But for Roo, there's a difference between the two:

Damaged Avatars: Style Choice, or Expressions of RL Sadism/Self-Harm/Misogyny?

Above: From my 2010 post, "Sexy Scarface: The Story Behind 'Broken Hearts Bleed', the Latest in Stylishly Brutalized Female Avatar Skins"

Really interesting /SecondLife Reddit thread about the prevalence of avatars who are physically damaged in some way:

My daughter, who does not play Second Life, asked me about the prevalence of avatars showing body damage. Band-aids, bloody noses, cuts, scrapes, bruises, etc. It's so common on SL but I honestly never put much thought into the "why".

She hypothesized it is "representative of internal real life feelings". I said it seems to be the current fad and may not have any deep meaning. It's just a "thing" these days.

It's actually been fairly popular pretty much when it was possible. This from my 2010 post on the topic: