New World Notes

Linden Lab Needs a Heavily Regulated PG-13 Continent in Second Life -- And More SL Presence of Linden Staff & Mentors (Comment of the Week)

Expanding on the idea that Second Life needs a PG13-only content, reader Gingir Ghoststar proposes a way to make that happen:

I've said for years that if SL would provide a maintained PG to PG13 area that it would thrive. I get it, it would be work, possibly [cause] increased cost of living and [provoke] the argument "nobody wants to be told how to live" but I beg to differ. Linden Lab thrives on all the private sims that they're paid to host that are then locked down with strict land rules, building rules etc and people pay through the NOSE to live on these super landscaped country club like estates. There is a market for it. If LL could create a continent and build it up like an actual city and enforce land/build codes I can almost guarantee that it would fill up in a heartbeat.

More than that, she adds, what's really is missing is a lack of Linden Lab activity in Second Life:

Meet Mrs. Mayo: Foul-Mouthed Old Avatar Hilariously Rants & Advises About Second Life Drama on YouTube

While most Second Life YouTubers are focused almost entirely on virtual fashion and avatar poses (near exclusively emceed by avatars in their early 20s), Mrs. Magnolia Mayo stands out in the crowd: Old, cranky, frequently dropping F bombs, always entertaining, she's an advice columnist for the metaverse, responding to questions sent anonymously to her blog right here. 

Watch another recent video below, but you'll probably just want to subscribe and watch them all (some of which are more serious than others).

Linden Lab Should Have Created a PG-Rated Showcase Continent for Second Life, Instead of an Adult-Only One (Comment of the Week)

ZEXPO 2011 photo by Ginette Pinazzo

Responding to a recent report that 1 in 4 Second Life sims are now Adult-rated, longtime SLer and blogger Emilly Orr blames this on Linden Lab's move to create an Adult-focused continent called Zindra in 2009, writing in Comments:

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.

And if you think Ms. Orr is saying this because she's personally opposed to graphic content, the opposite is the case:

Cajsa’s Flickr Pick: West Shaka Photographs Second Life's Surfer Community

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

West Shaka's photostream is an exploration of a large SL community-- the surfers of Second Life. He takes excellent action shots, framing them beautifully. He puts you right in the water -- don't you think you are just about to get splashed? You feel the sense of movement because he's not centered. Traditional advice is to frame the subject so they can move across the shot; but often, if you put the subject where they are soon to move out of the frame, you get a greater sense of speed. Blink! You might miss it.

Has Second Life Been Fully Gentrified? Thoughts from My BBC Interview

Pictured: A steampunk city in SL from 2008; a Kim Kardashian ad campaign using SL from 2018

Here's the full episode of BBC's The Digital Human which expands on the short excerpt I featured last week. The show's larger topic is gentrification of the Internet culture and online communities, which often lose their unique character as they become more mainstream and commodified. I talk about how this happened to some extent during the 2006-2008 hype wave, when MTV and other companies became (briefly) interested in Second Life as a marketing platform, and how SL culture has greatly changed since then. For the original early adopters, I say:

They had this unique beautiful thing that existed basically only there on the Internet; they built these really beautiful intricate steampunk experiences and they had the fashion to go along with it... [but] there really was a feeling that they'd lose that uniqueness. That's at least partly right: The Second Life culture that existed in the beginning is still there but it's really been crowded out. Kim Kardashian recently did an advertising campaign using Second Life avatars and it was not actually surprising because the avatar fashion and styles [popular in Second Life now] had started to look more and more like a Kim Kardashian aesthetic, a cheesy virtual version... For a lot of the original users, I think they could feel that they'd sort of lost that unique spark that they had.

This isn't to say there's something intrinsically wrong with a Kim Kardashian style if that's your thing, just that it's so inescapably pervasive across all media -- even now in virtual worlds which once offered a respite from all that. And that might just be inevitable now that virtual world culture has become mainstream (hello, Marshmello), but hopefully we'll start to see the cultural influence flowing in the other direction more often.

Oh, in case you haven't seen the 2008 steampunk city tribute I mentioned above, it's still on YouTube here:

8 Posts on Confronting Real Racism in Virtual Worlds to Read on MLK Day

Black Second Life User Shares Real & Virtual Experiences With The Confederate Battle Flag:

"I wish people knew how much it hurt to see the flag on TV and in places which are supposed to represent everyone in a fair manner, like court houses. I have been to places in Second Life which had the flag up... We always knew what it meant. That we and others with our color are not wanted around that area. It is like putting up a 'Caucasian only' sign. I have a lot of bad memories with that flag. Like walking past homes of people who have them proudly displayed in front of their homes... while at the same time, the mean stares we got just for walking by their home."

Cajsa's Choices: Celebrating Fantastic Black Avatar Portraits For Juneteenth

 I convinced a couple other friends of mine who are Black to join SL back in 2007, but they were disappointed in the quality and variety of  black skins back then and left the game. It’s true, most skins were shades of bronze, and a deep ebony like this one would be hard to find. I love the way the highlights define this picture so powerfully, the highlights on her hair, her face, and her top. A skin designer told me back then that the reason skinners didn’t make dark black skins is that people didn’t buy them and people didn’t buy them because they didn’t know how to photograph them. 

What People Should Ask Themselves Before Roleplaying As Black Avatars:

If you aren't black, the luxury of throwing on a black skin and playing black should make you think about why you want to do that. Do you know black peoples IRL? Do you think they would be ok with what you do in SL? Do you actively call out the racist thoughts and behavior people have towards a black person, or do you just [say] "LOL I'm white"? Do you think it's cool to be black, but IRL you engage in black shaming, like saying things are "ghetto" or "hood"?

Avatar Skin Tone Experiment Reveals Strong User Preference For Whiteness:

In virtual worlds and MMOs where most aspects of avatar appearance can be instantly changed by a few button clicks -- including gender and skin tone -- do we leave our real world attributes and preferences behind? After noting that avatars with lighter skin seem to get more likes than darker ones on Flickr, I enlisted the help of Mandy Smith, a popular SL fashion photographer on Flickr, to take two photos of the same avatar in the same pose in the same location, with the only difference being her skin tone...

Lack of Avatar Racial Diversity in an MMO Makes Black Users More Likely to Create White Avatars & Hide Their Real Race, Academic Study Suggests:

Lee gathered 56 study participants — half identifying as white and half identifying as black. She then had them read a fabricated magazine story titled “Meet the Coolest ‘Second Life’ Residents.” The eight “Second Life” avatars profiled in the story were either all white, in the low-diversity scenario, or an equal mix of white, black, Hispanic and Asian, in the high-diversity scenario. She then had them perform two tasks: Create and customize their own virtual avatars, and rate their willingness to reveal their real racial identity through the appearance of their virtual avatar. She found that black participants reported less willingness in the low-diversity scenario, and that they also created whiter avatars, as judged by objective raters.

Three classics after the break:

How Many Second Life Communities Will Follow Pfaffenthal 1867 to Sansar?

Linden Lab has created Sansar partnerships with a Hollywood movie, e-sports groups, and YouTube/Twitch personalities (including the just-announced comedian Steve Hofstetter), but little has been reported about any outreach with the many communities and brands in Linden Lab's Second Life. One possible exception is Pfaffenthal 1867, a sub-community built around roleplay in a detailed recreation of a Luxembourg City district from the 19th century. But last week, Pfaffenthal 1867's leader, Hauptmann Weydert, announced the roleplay sims would be closed, so the project could move to Sansar:

The moment has finally arrived, for the 1867 project to move on to SANSAR, were land is free, where we can have better graphics,VR headsets and real physical interactivity. Note that Sansar works very well on a normal PC [Editor: Some would argue otherwise] for desktop mode you do NOT need a gamer PC. IMPORTANT! All the 1867 sims in second life will be shut down next Monday, on the 26th of November. Please pack all your stuff by then.

The sudden move is surprising, so I asked Hauptmann Weydert donations were running short to cover tier.

"No," he told me via SL IM, "it was arranged that the museum paid until that date and after this we were to move to Sansar."

The passive voice of his answer was a bit ambiguous, so I asked him if (as many have speculated) that Linden Lab was helping the community make this move. No answer at press time, but I'll update this post if I get a reply. Until then, and until Pfaffenthal emerges in Sansar, here's a lovely tribute by Pepe Cometa to what the community created in Second Life:

Cassie's Clips: Important Etiquette Tips for SL Shoppers & Merchants

Among the reasons given for the apparent SL recession that we're currently in, is the high levels of drama and social strife among merchants and consumers. So NWN's Cassie Middles and some of her friends are here to lay down some basic principles of etiquette and best practices -- watch above. Guidelines include:

• Treat others how you wish to be treated
• Customers and designers are people too.
• Check merchants profiles and see who to contact [with questions]. "The designer might not answer because they have a person who would.
• Say Please and Thank You. "I cannot emphasize this enough."
• Please try to contact a designer first before writing a bad review. They might be very happy to help fix the issue [you're complaining about].
• Don't jump straight to anger. "Be polite, kind, and considerate. You'll get much better results than anger ever would."

Most of these principles, discerning readers might have noticed, are equally applicable to real life. Except when it comes to contacting an SL merchant, that's pretty unique and ridiculously counter-intuitive:

Inside Elysion: How Second Life Group Admission Fees & 18,000+ Members Help Subsidize Experiences Like Its Tribute to Stranger Things' Upside Down

When I wrote about the impressive Stranger Things tribute in Second Life last week, I should have been more precise about its "admission fee" of L$1000. It's not actually a fee to access The Upside Down, but a membership fee to join the private SL group Elysion (Flickr page here). I've since corrected the original posts, and in the process, found out there's an even more interesting story here. Elysion is a gargantuan group: As of last week, group founder and manager Syn Beresford tells me, it counts over 18,000 members, amassed since its founding in 2013.

That size, and the Elysion membership fee, does much to cover the costs of its Second Life sims, and the complex, temporary experiences they create, such as the Stranger tribute:

"My fee has increased over the years as more and more things have been added to Elysion," Syn tells me. "However, it is not a public sim; never has been, never will be. I do this because it affords the people who join a level of privacy (setting my land to group access). Land like everything else in SL in my view is not a entitlement. Most of that member base has grown simply because people come, they enjoy the sim, and they bring their friends, which to me speaks volumes." (She doesn't advertise her sims beyond her Flickr account and within the group message boards, she tells me.)

Perhaps thanks to that exclusivity, the Elysion community has thrived, and now owns six regions, with weekly DJs and live singers, performance art, a residential sim, and a diverse community, albeit with a decided gothic edge: 

Sign of the Virtual World Times: SL Universe, Second Life's Longest Running User Forum, Becomes Multi-World Discussion Site

VirtualVerse is a new online discussion forum that's also another sign of the Second Life community evolving: It's the new home of SL Universe, Second Life's longest running third-party discussion forum. (Founded in 2004/2005 era, I believe.) Its owner, longtime SL veteran Cristiano Midnight, has just announced SL Universe's closing and rebirth:

The SLU forums will be closing within the next few weeks, depending on how long the transition takes. These forums will be archived - they may be unavailable for little while but will come back as a read only forum... VirtualVerse, which expands the scope of SLU to all things related to virtual worlds, whether it is Second Life, Sansar, other VR worlds that are gaining in popularity, or game related worlds like MMOs and open world games. I've wanted to become less SL centric, but it has been hard to do that with SL as part of the name.

It's a smart move and probably a necessary one. Based on the latest Linden Lab data, Second Life's monthly active userbase has dropped over the last couple years from 600,000 to now, about 450,000-500,000. SLU has always been a tight knit, highly positive sub-community with much great conversation on many topics, but in recent years, seems to have been declining in usage. For example, compare its page views with SL Secrets, which as I said yesterday, now seems to be the largest blog devoted to Second Life: