A certain something left the grid this week - Good or bad?

Anticipate being offended for the next few paragraphs... Friday thread on a Friday? Who knows? This will not end well. (=_=)

With all the Sky/Fox News stuff and the availability of open grids, it was bound to happen... "The camp" is gone. Wah... It's hard not to name names. I'm sure there are a few people here that know what/ who I'm talking about. (=_=)

I stopped by last night to see the carnage... It was a bit silly... There are still people TPing to the somewhat empty parcel in "barely legal" avatars. (^_^)

[unpopular opinion]

The part that bugs me now is that I wonder how many people actually see is that what is happening now is a move for the worse. Maybe not specifically for SL, but much more generally.

Sexual Age Play is moving away from an adults only grid that's relatively policed and monitored to a certain degree. It is now transitioning to an open grid with nearly no enforcement of age requirements nor an organized abuse report/handling system. Thereby increasing the potential of RL kids getting involved. Which, to me, is the key problem.

At least on the adult SL grid, SAP has been a matter of grownups with grownups living out their deviant fantasy, no matter how controversial. Since the ban people have been working out alternatives in effort to keep practicing their fantasy yet still avoid the banhammer around every corner. At the same time, people outside the circle have been wrought with accusations due to relatively diminutive avatar sizes that have no relation to the subject.

Well... The witch hunt has been a "success" and most of the SAP circle is now moving on. But, as I said before, they are moving on to a situation that could lead to much greater amounts of harm to the human condition as a whole.

[/unpopular opinion]

Now... This is resident answers... And I do have a question...

Aside from celebrating the "cleansing" of the main grid and dancing on the grave of a specifically controversial and socially dangerous group...

How do you feel about the migration of SAP to an unregulated grid that's piloted by the mindset driven by a fantasy that so many wanted to destroy?

_______________
BTW... I almost know where this will go... So.... IBTL!

/me holds breath and clicks [Submit]............

Personally I think that it moving to an unregulated grid is nothing to do with us, we should not allow it here just so we know where it is. I personally don't want to be part of anywhere that allows that sort of thing, assuming I am guessing right on what you are referring to.

I'm not sure how I feel about that place going away. On one hand, I'm glad to know that I won't be seeing yet another Sky News expose of it (though I'm sure they'll call it "Second Life" anyway) or have to worry about a few of the more innocent SL kids I know ending up in really uncomfortable (for them) situations. I may be a kid, but I worry about some kids like a mother, ya know?

On the other, it puts this stuff in a position where, ya, it can (an likely will) make for a lot of trouble for a lot of people -- but it will take some work for people to get there, too so I dunno.

I suspect there were some within LL who, while they had no love for the place in question (if so, though, you'd expect they would have been a lot harder on it), they liked having it all "in one spot" they could easily monitor.

Mari

In terms of it being banned in Second Life, and enforced to some degree, and it moving to some other non Linden platform, I honestly don't think the two are related. It isn't going to be Linden Lab's responsibility to police the metaverse, but rather the community and law enforcement's (where necessary and appropriate).

This is the beginning of what I have talked about seemingly eons ago, when the sexual ageplay issue sparked the first shitstorm.. This kind of activity is arguably beyond what most fair-minded, even liberal people are comfortable with, including myself, and as the Metaverse expands, expect these activities to settle into other spaces that are more accomodating. Linden Lab should not be expected to provide simulator and search facilities for it.

I have no interest in destroying the mindset that drives such activities, as at the end of the day that's a futile endeavor. I would, however, prefer that they go somewhere else. I'm glad they did.

We cannot rid the world of all its ills. But if it's gone from SL, then good riddance, we have one less legal thing to worry about.

It will be up to the police to find this stuff. If predators want to connect to the greater world, they will be subject to sting operations the same as in SL.

Well, I have zero idea what it is that has gone. Does that me make me ... ME!!! ... an innocent?

Oh, and...

The camp in question is not the same camp I'm attending inworld. I jes wanted to clarify, cuz I know I've been talkin a lot about camp lately, an did't wanna confuse.

I have to WONDER, Cherry, what LAND you have been on that you don't know?

True that... Like I said... It was tough not to name names. (>_<

I have no idea what you are all banging on about

/me nods.

I guess you coulda pointed at the sky news articles, but why give them the traffic?

Taking an SL-centric view on this, from our point of view, if the undesirables go elsewhere, it's better for us.

I imagine the bigger opensim grids like Open Life and Central Grid have regulations similar to SL about ageplay etc. I visit OL sometimes and I haven't yet seen anything dubious.

I visited another small new grid** which looked like it was being set up for gambling. But presumably if the grid operator is based in a country where online gambling is legal, there's no problem.

But what happens if an independent grid is based in a country which has no laws against online virtual ageplay and is used mainly by citizens of that country? Presumably the internet service provider might feel obliged to act.

So an SL with fewer undesirables is a good thing. But if lots of seedy little grids start up where people can get up to dubiuos or illegal activities, that will give virtual worlds in general a bad name, and the big hand of regulation might slam down on all of us.

**well, not me personally, but another, somewhat ruthoid avatar generated by my RL agent!!!

Good riddance. SAP is a nice way of saying "child molestation fantasies". Migrate away, and don't come back.

NIMBY

/me points cross-threadingly at my reply to the question about BT users in the UK having problems ... I've been stuck at home gloomily unable to go anywhere or do anything in SL really. So the correct answer to that would be "Maceday". LOL.

Seriously, I get the gist of what this is about but have no idea where this camp was, what it was called and tbh I am rather glad that I didn't. Good riddance! Maybe now we can perv in peace!

Let's not forget that gambling has not been banned for moralistic reasons. I will assume that the private grid doesn't care about taking credit cards.

There is no "if" involved. It has already happened, and that's where I see the danger. That new open grid based location is relatively unregulated and there is a greater risk of RL children getting involved. Honestly, without that factor, I would have let the place and the group RIP instead of starting this thread. But, I saw what I saw and it worries me.

Personally, I avoided like the plague any areas that seemed to publicly promote ageplay between random individuals, even before the official ban on such games. I have a business and a reputation to uphold, and though I do have some young avatars, I don't ever want them being the cause of that sort of public drama. I'd heard of the place that is obliquely referenced in the opening post, but I made a point of not bothering to ever seek it out.

But then again, I also avoid the "meat market" scene of bars and clubs (in SL _or_ in RL) where the main goal of a lot of the adults there is to find a stranger and "get it on" with them. I just never was into the pick-up scene. If I get intimate with someone, it's because I like them and have gotten to know them, or because someone else who I realy like well has vouched for them, as being worth the time and effort. A stranger coming up to me and trying to get me to make-out has lost the game before he finished his first sentance.

I do sort of agree that driving such adult fantasies off an adult grid and onto, presumably, a less-regulated venue is not that great. But it also isn't really 'our problem' after that. I certainly wouldn't go to an unregulated sim that hosted such play. I'd expect it would be far more likely to be a place where a real kid might get involved, or where sexual predators or police sting operations might make it seriously hazardous to be there.

As for SL, there will still be those who do SAP here. But they will be more descrete, and will keep it to sims that only "members" can get to, or at least to skyboxes and parcels where those allowed to go there have somehow already been 'approved' as safe. It will be like the joe-bars in the Prohibition. Those seeking it will make a connection, pass a 'test' showing that they are in the know and cool with what goes on there, and it will be 'kept behind locked doors'. Prohibition doesn't work, especially not when the prohibited act is seen as a "victimless crime" by those who seek it.

One time at Band camp.....

SAP

D'uh.

So we're not talking about any logistics applications then.

I never went into these places, but I did do my share of long distance camming. FWIW, I felt it would be wrong of me to speak about what was or wasn't there, without at least some first hand information. By and large, particularly pre-ban, what I could see let me know that it was not a place for the likes of me. Nothing to do with reputation, everyting to do with my own feelings.

At any rate, on this thread? Ya, what Immy said.

Mari

Never heard of them, but *very* glad such a thing is gone from the grid.

Presuming of course that we have the right info here, we haven't heard both sides.

* * * * *

How many of those opensource grids are really going to enforce 18+ age?

Probably none.

- "Can my RL kid build here?"

- "Can I attach my family's grid to yours?"

- "Hey it's my grid, none of your business what goes on across the region border."

- "Wow it's cool to have all these green dots around."


Forget about 18+ enforcement, meh, forget about even 13+.

Wait until real kids wander off their parent's opensourced, linked regions and run smack into the ageplayers. That is gonna be ugly.

It's just like TV. Parents can control what their kids access. It would probably behoove OpenSim to develop a parental controls feature in the absence of a separate grid, to allow a parent to add lists of blocked grids/sims.

It will be a "not if, but when" I suspect.

You just made my day nearly as much as the realisation that I can now go home. Yay!