New World Notes

No, Virtual World Ageplay By Consenting Adults Is Not Legal (In Many Places)

There's been lots of heated reader discussion about last week's update on the lawsuit against Linden Lab, which alleges the company has not adequately prevented money laundering, sex abuse, and virtual world ageplay in Second Life. Some of these comments, unfortunately, contain a profound misunderstanding of of age play in particular that should be addressed -- for instance, this:

Is it pedophilia when two 45-year-old people using the SL system have pixel sex, and one has a mesh female adult body and the other a mesh child-like body? Is this pedophilia?

Is it pedophilia when two 45-year-old females using the SL system have pixel sex, and one has a mesh male adult body and the other a mesh female child-like body?

Legally speaking, the answer to both questions is yes -- in many countries around the world that are essential to Second Life's survival as a virtual world. To quote this analysis by lawyer Benjamin Duranske from 2007, when the age play controversy as reported by a German TV news story, utterly tarnished Second Life's brand forever:

Senior Citizen Struggles to Compartmentalize Her Second Life from Her Retirement Community Real Life

Last week's post "Only The Young Think The Elderly Want To Live Their Last Years In Virtual Worlds" provoked an intriguing conversation, highlighted by some charming thoughts from Stephanie Meyer, who writes this really helpful new SL user guide blog, and has direct and very personal experience on the topic:

In RL, I am happy to live in a retirement community with many social activities.

In SL, I am happy to be able to explore and create without anyone thinking I'm weird.

In RL, I seldom talk about what I did that day in S, because I have found that it results in a lot of eyeball rolling.

In SL, I am not going to tell anyone about the RL Ice Cream Social with music by the International Philharmonic Ukulele Orchestra.

In a way, I feel compartmented. Just as sometimes I feel a disconnect in SL when changing alts and avatars, in RL I have to remind myself "Everyone act normal".

I'm hoping that by the time I am 100 there will be more integration of the realities.

With online game worlds growing larger and VR headsets getting cheaper every year, I suspect she'll get what she's hoping for soon. In the meantime, you know what they say: Second Life is for people who don't have ukulele-themed ice cream socials in real life.

Picture credit: "My Ukulele" by Susanne Drechsler, who rocks the virtual uke well.

Only the Young Think the Elderly Want to Live Their Last Years in Virtual Worlds (Comment of the Week)

Thought-provoking comment from regular reader John C, responding to a call to create virtual world/avatar applications that help the elderly:

It has always struck me that places such as Second Life are great places for older people to live their lives when real life has become limited. But getting old myself, I now think this is what young people think old people should be doing.

As you get older, the computer becomes much more of a nightmare. Your eyesight fails, you get tired quicker, you feel ill all the time, sitting in some chair staring at a screen seems less inviting. And the killer is, you know that what you really want is the real life you used to have, when you were younger.  F**ck virtual life, what you want is reality in the last few years you have left.

I remember my father in the few years he had before he died would go sit in the sun as much as he could. If I had showed him a virtual world, even one that looked better than the real, he would have looked at me and smiled, like the elderly often do to the young. One day you will understand.

To be sure, there are many elderly people who do find value in virtual worlds and VR, especially if they find therapeutic utility in them. But I suspect that JohnC's right, and most senior citizens would rather take what they still can from the material world in their final years, rather than spend time in a digital one.

Then again, that may soon change:

Metaverse Artist AM Radio On the Ephemeral, Communal Nature of Digital Art

Great conversation around last week's interview with art critic Cristina García-Lasuén, on the nature of VR-based art, and the criterion required to call a VR installation "art" at all. (Which shows you just how smart and engaged NWN readers are!). One key comment came from someone imminently qualified to discuss this top: Jeff "AM Radio" Berg, whose Second Life-based installations are generally considered among the very best works of art created on the platform.

Responding to García-Lasuén's criteria that VR-based art "must respond to very elaborate intellectual criteria and not merely aesthetic ones", Berg (who graduated from an East Coast art college before going into technology) had this contrary thought:

"Having been formally trained, I understand the academic foundation of philosophical evolution desired in celebrated artists and their work. I'd qualify on paper maybe.

"Digital [art] however presents a new challenge...

William Gibson & Others Note, Celebrate, Mourn SL's Hangars Liquides

Here's the correct teleport link to visit and explore Hangars Liquides, Second Life's legendary cyberpunk city that's still set to close at the end of this month. Thanks to a retweet of my story by William Gibson, this viral Reddit thread, and massive social media shares by Second Life users past and present, the city has been inundated by visitors. However, my post originally included a teleport to a store in Hangars, and not the official landing spot. (Shopkeeper Beev Fallen helpfully added the proper teleport to his showroom.) 

The original post also includes some lovely tributes to Hangars and its lead creator,  Djehan Kidd:

Is it Too Late to Curb SLers' Use of Badly Optimized Mesh Bodies?

The debate over badly optimized mesh bodies in Second Life continues in NWN comments, but Subversive Vavoom (love the name) argues that the debate is basically moot:

SL is mostly a shopping and sexual simulator if you pay attention to where the money is being spent. If wearing mesh bodies that are poorly optimized were only a couple years old, I could understand the outrage. We're way past that now. Every single major sales event is geared towards them, and has been for more than six years. When everything is being created for the top four mesh bodies including rigged accessories, you can't possibly think thousands of creators are just going to stop. It's as if the people saying this haven't really played SL very much in the last few years. Go to Uber, Fameshed, Collabor88, and look around. That's where the most money is being exchanged in-world on apparel. There's no stopping that kind of popularity, and frankly it just shows how out of touch you are with the platform if you think it could.

The popularity of poorly optimized mesh bodies has been well-known for quite some time, but in my opinion, assuming there's no way to address the bad externalities they cause (i.e. lag for everyone) is a mistake. Another reader, Summer Haas, suggests some changes that would allow people to keep their resource-heavy mesh in the privacy of their home/skybox, but nudge them to optimize better in social spaces:

Poorly Optimized Avatars Are the Pollution-Spewing SUVs of The Virtual World - Comment of the Week

The debate over poorly optimized mesh bodies which threaten Second Life's existence as a shared, virtual world, continues -- this time, with an apt metaphor from Soda Sullivan:

The official avatar needs a complete overhaul. It has been the subject of many debates fro years and years and let's face it, the verdict it in and this avatar was built wrong. It is too tall, it is ill-proportioned, and the improved mesh avis are complicated as hell to try to get a new user comfortable with customizing... This overhaul should have been done over a decade ago and now it is crucial.

Linden Lab wanting to keep "hands off" makes perfect sense in most cases, but not here.

Think of cars. Currently our roads are full of gas-powered mammoth vehicles that are literally killing us with their exhaust. So , the government wants people in electric cars. They [encourage] manufacturers in that direction with both carrot and stick. Governor Linden should act the same way with the avatar. Make a new basic avatar, and then set down some rules of the road for anyone who wants to make their own heads, bodies, etc.

Or to put it another way: Wearing a poorly optimized mesh body in public spaces is like driving a massive SUV with a busted catalytic converter around town. Enough people do that, and everyone just stays indoors.

Unless and until Linden Lab does do anything about this, there are alternatives. Reader Lelani Carver reminds readers there is a kind of Prius Hybrid of mesh bodies on the market:

SL Should Adopt VRChat's Avatar Rankings -- And SLers Should Be Less Like Barbie, More Like Elizabeth Warren (Comment of the Week #2)

Great conversation in this post praising VRChat's new avatar optimization rankings (from Excellent down to Very Poor, for avatars over 70,000 triangles) -- including this great comment from reader "Finni Graves", who agrees with reader "Cake" that Second Life should adopt these rankings:

I've invested a lot of my SL esteem in the whole crazy avatar adornment scene. Then one day, after trying to navigate a horrible shopping event, I've got to stop being so selfish and hogging so much resource. What's the point of looking good, if I don't feel good? These ridiculous mesh bodies, heads, hair. clothes, and accessories are literally sucking the life out of our SL. We must simplify ourselves because this whole hamster wheel isn't working.

Cake is right. All of us need to be graded harshly and it is our duty to ask ourselves, " do I really need this?". It's also the duty of content creators to make consumers aware of the optimization of their products and to guarantee it. They should have to be graded too, at least on Marketplace. 

Finni says SL's many fashion bloggers should advocate optimized avatars and stop promoting resource heavy avatars which degrade the performance for everyone around them. And then, notably, likens these reforms to the plans put forth by the US Presidential candidate who's leading the charge to reform the American economy by penalizing people whose greed hurts society and the environment:

Linden Lab Needs a Prominently Placed FAQ for Second Life Users (Comment of the Week #1)

My interview with a famed YouTuber turned Linden Lab staffer Strawberry Singh provoked some reader complaints that the company is not very responsive to SL user feedback. As reader "Mac" points out, there's an easy way to partly address that problem:

People need context to understand. Just as important, however, this context needs to be accessible and available.

My suggestion: Have Linden Lab make a bullet point FAQ list. '20 Top Misunderstandings Explained' -- something like that. Put this list up on the Forums and PIN IT, so it stays up there and people are forced to see it. Pinning it will also help with (formerly answered) questions that keep coming up, such as "Why won't LL tell us the exact time when they're going to do big maintenance?" [Linden Lab community forum staffer] Grumpity (I think), has answered that several times, but without a pinned answer, her attempts have vanished into the ether. Add to, and update, this list when necessary.

One great thing about having a prominent FAQ is it encourages oldtimers to point to it, when noobies ask a basic question. It's why RTFFAQ is a commonly used acronym. And as Mac continues, it helps convey more transparency:

Why VRChat Players Love Looking at Themselves in VRChat-Based Mirrors

In case you were wondering what inspired Nylon Pinkney's latest comic about VRChat, reader "Cake" has some more context for you in Comments:

The mirror is a big social area in your typical VRChat room. People stand in front of it and talk like they would if they were primping with friends in a bathroom. Shaders also look slightly different in different maps depending on what you're using--so even if you have one set for your avatar, you still go to the mirror to check out what you look like on that particular map.

That's actually a fascinating analogy, and does a lot to help explain VRChat's popularity: