Broadly offending content ~ what is it for *you*?

In a push-button world, where everyone had an electronic voting panel beside the TV control - or built into it - oatmeal could find itself outlawed in an instant. All it would take would be something like the winner in a reality TV program to attribute some traumatic experience to oatmeal.

This is where constitutions and courts come in to dampen the effects of what 'the community' is chattering about on a particular day.


"Murder Death Kill" (look it up) is probably instinctively "broadly offensive" to many.


My experiences with "Murder Death Kill " in SL :

Dolcette
I had barely started building in my First Land when a neighbour offered to show me some of the darker sides of SL.
How could I resist???
We visited a few dungeon type places, and then came to one that had a special section with tables and cooking/barbecue type stuff. She kept banging on about how she thought the animations in the main cooking thing were the best she had seen. The devices had animations that made it look like your limbs and head could be cut off.
WTF?? -- That's WTF with ZOMGs tacked on!
"It's called Dolcette" she said.
I was so busy thinking "Weird!!!!" that I didn't have any time to consider "offensive".
It would only have become offensive if she had begun to pressure me to get involved in it.


Kill
A guy wanted to RP with me.
We discussed the limits of the RP - as one does.
He wanted to kill me.
I politely declined his request - with a bit of humour.
He accepted that with good nature.
He didn't try to force the issue. He didn't get abusive.
He wasn't offensive. He was just weird.
I gathered that he did this a lot. This would make him *very* weird. RPing a killing once might be interesting as a story-telling. Doing it a lot is just a bit ..... intense.
But he certainly was not offensive.



What about that movie "Silence of the Lambs", for example?
Is that "broadly offensive"?
There's some seriously weird stuff going on there - but should the movie be banned?

This is the thing, that movie is way more real than some cartoons, even so it shouldn't be banned.

It's the banning that is offensive.

Because of the way the terms "broad" and "broadly" is used in phrases such as "broadly speaking", "in broad terms" etc., I'm afraid that to me the phrase "broadly offensive" means "mildly offensive", i.e. the sort of think which might niggle but nor really upset me, so there's quite a long list... LL's lack of any understanding of their current customer base being pretty close to the top...

Matthew

I am more offended by people thinking that they should decide what adults do in a fantasy world. It is too easy to just not go to places that do things that i don't want to see.

/me goes to add more toys to the dungeon.

OK, I think some people are mixing up two things here.

"What is broadly offensive"

"What should be banned" (banned, segregated, filtered, whatnot)

If something in SL offends me, I leave. I don't demand everything I find offensive be banned, I just skedaddle. Just because I don't think it should be banned, though, doesn't mean I'm not offended. Being offended, that's not such a big thing. I go "eww" in my head and avoid it.

Silence of the lambs, I wouldn't watch it. Even with fava beans and a nice chanti. It's "eww".

Who knew there was so much blood inside Tweety?

then by all means carry on- i wont be there!

don't worry, I have a safe place for you.

Most of the sex stuff, including Dolcett and all that is too silly to be offensive. Most of the usual /b/ stuff griefers use (I'm thinking tubgirl, lemon party, goatse etc) is too lame to be offensive.

I am offended by people who blatantly beg for money and people who threaten me with dire consequences if I don't obey their demands.

Although now I say it out loud it kinda makes me wonder why I keep letting LL get away with it.

Well, yes - you're right - in a wider sense.
However, the context of the question is SL and the separation of certain types of content. This is effectively a form of banning, although not outright banning.

A balanced person might come across something and go "eww", then leave - or not go there in there first place.
Someone who demands a "predictable experience" might take a less understanding position.

aka Control Freak?

Is Mindfuck a word we can use on our PG forums?

It is now. Desmond said it.

Only by someone who pumps a lot of money through Second Life.

Can we say Pump and Mindfuck in the same sentence tho??

Truthfully, my threshold for never-you-mind is probably a good deal lower than most. I honestly don't care to be around open depictions of sexuality (not just nakkies, but acting upon the opportunity). But, that's simply me. Obviously, there is a good amount of SL I don't hang about in. On the other hand, there's a good amount of SL I *do* hang about in. My only feeling is that I ought have a bit of forewarning about what sort of area I'm headed off towards.

Some things really do turn my stomach, however. Child sex and gross violence (fantasy sword swinging is fine, but I don't care to see spurting blood or flying body parts) are probably the biggest offenders in my mind. Your private sim, your imagination as far as I'm concerned. But keep it private, or at least put a few clear warning labels on it, not vaguaries such as "adult".

I also don't want to see laudatory depictions of REAL atrocities and the people who commit them. Gor, fine, whatever makes people happy. That's fantasy, and never really happened. But I wouldn't care to see a positive depiction of the "comfort women" the Japanese Army used, or a death camp. Yes, I know, that's subjective, but I think we all can tell the difference between a Holocaust Memorial and Neo-Nazi paraphernalia.

You're never going to find out what is "broadly" offensive then, since your sample is of a tiny minority of the population, those who use the forums, can conjure up enough English to make themselves half-understood, and care a little about this. It would be difficult to justify any such feedback as representative of even the active participants in sl.

Pep (And what would you find? Probably that billions of flies like the taste of cowpats. Doesn't make it yummy for the gourmets among us. )

yay- and toys too!

And yet, as imperfect, unscientific, and poorly representative as this thread is, it is still a better job at discovering what is "broadly offensive" than Linden Lab has undertaken.

I find a lot of things irritating, but not sure I have really found anything in SL to actually be offensive. It is a virtual world where, as far as I am concerned, each person can act out whatever they want to act out - as long as I am not "forced" to sit by and watch it or listen to it.

Despite the best and repeated efforts of a seriously mentally unhinged sl girlfriend I don't find anything offensive inworld. There is a lot of bad taste and stupidity demonstrated, mind you.

Pep (Now, the forums, that is a different matter! )

I don't think you can say that.

Pep (Well, you can, and you did, but it doesn't mean that any conclusions arrived at here are any more valid than the non-definition that LL appear to work to.)

For the record... Pep and I have never been involved and are yet to have ever met inworld. =^-^=

this would be I think lol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrSCjSRMY64

Based upon Linden Lab's track record, what they have shared about the process, what has been notably absent from what they have shared, and continuing vagueness in the policy, I can say it with a high degree of confidence.

If there is some degree of work Linden Lab has done to determine what is "broadly offensive," that they just have not shared with us for whatever reason, I would be very surprised. It's possible; I have no knowledge about the internal workings of Linden Lab; I just guess based on what I see. But I would be very surprised.