Alice in Wonderland

'might' is not the same as 'likely'.


In SL, unless you're really quite careful about it, you're GOING to see pornographic images. They're everywhere. Naked avs, things for sale, images, etc, etc.

SL is saturated with it. For someone new to SL who is just traveling around it however they can manage, it's even more likely.

Just having a computer doesn't make it likely you'll see porn. In fact just HAVING one has nothing to do with seeing porn. And you have to be rather UN careful to see porn without intending to, really.

you obviouly have not paid much attention to all the bill board along the highway and byways across the usa that or you don't live here.heck some of the moble bill board on city busses are almost to that level not quite but really close. so my case and point would stand

I like sexy ads - much better than boring ones. Especially on London Underground.

I like diversity...



'nuff said? (^_^)y

I think SL has the potential to attract MORE "intelligentsia" than not due to its freedoms and creativity. It's also easy enough to avoid the sex and clubs aspects if one doesn't wish to indulge. SL is constantly growing and with it the quantity of educational, creative, and magnificent installations and builds.

How is SL any different than the Internet which is nearly half smut, half cat macros (and related cat things) and the rest not (yes, I'm making the stats up, but some days it feels that way)?

A short time in SL and people either learn that there's a real person behind the avatar whether it's a bowl of jello or the most photorealistic woman in a business powersuit, and it's the mind of that real person that is connected with -- an avvie can change in seconds.

Wonderland seems to happen in Rl around me as much as it does in sl sometimes. Bizarre and Whimsy seem to pop up all over often at the same time.

I was on vacation last week in the Smokey Mountains and walked into wonderland in the form of a small country store which took me back in time to the 40's, it was delightful. I bet I could have found a blue dress with white apron if I had looked...

Pftt.

I was on OI the other night and hollered for a Portuguese speaking Mentor to come and help a confused newbie from Brazil. The fellow showed up as a two-foot tall robotic vehicle on tank treads. The newbie didn't even blink, she was just grateful for the help.

Same deal when I show up on OI in my dragon avatar. Occasionally I will get someone who likes to riff along with me, and we have some fun chat exchanges. But mostly it's just "How do I get L$ please?"

I think the variety of appearances in SL appeals MORE to the "intelligentsia" (whatever that means) than a boring NormalLand sort of place would.

Is SL really much different than RL?

Walk off most campus's and with in a few feet you usualy find Strip Bars, Pick up Bars and XXX Video stores by the Bucketload.

And after watching years of news reports on the goings on during "Spring Break" I think most university kids would fit right in here in SL....

/me puts Animal House in the DVD...yep... looks like SL to me!

/me points to that "Your World, Your Imagination" slogan again.

This harkens back to the whole immersion forsus augmentation thing, really. The thing is, I think SL can be both.

Some simply want an SL that is an extension of their FL. They want to have a photorealistic avatar, they want to use voice, and heck, they may even have a FL photo on the front pane of their profile. They are who they are, and aren't going to let the digital realm we all enjoy change that. They're the Mitch Kapors of this world, if you will, and they live in Mitch Kapor's Second Life. You'll find them in the corporate places, the social places, and elsewhere.

There's the one who want their SL to be something different. They want to explore an alternate self, and do the things they might not want to IRL. They're not going to be too far from their reality, but their going to be an "aspect" of their real self. They'll be all sorts of places, the clubs and dance places and elsewhere. They're the Philip Lindens.

There's also those who want to go all out. Free thinkers who want to make their avatars as unrealistic and different as they can, and want to be on the bleeding edge all around. They're also all about. They're also not totally apart from their real selves -- just on some tangent of sorts. They're, well, the Torley Lindens.

Finally, there's the role players, embodying a part. They're completely taking on a role -- and while it is their real selves who control that being, they're FL is kept in chack by the part they're playing. Let's call it, say, the Magellan Lindens.

The thing is, You don't have to just be one. You can take a bit from all these columns, if you wish. While I am not often in the Mitch world, there are people here who know mw from my FL, and we sometimes inhabit more of a FL sort of mindset. I even have a FL avatar somewhere, but she doesn't come out to play very often.

But I do fit, from time to time, in the other three. At Camp HardKnock and elsewhere, I am immersed in my character, while at a lot of other times I'm more of a "Philip." Let me loose in Grendel's Children for a bit, and who knows what form I might take -- at thos times I fall more into the Torley camp, perhaps.

I'm sure there are likely other nuances I'm missing, too.

Second Life *can* accomodate all of these. Look, for example, at the relay for life, where one could see a gaggle of kids being led by their camp director, goreans trekking along the path, elves and unicorns, "Robbie the Robot" and a few "tinies" -- and that just in a brief span. Amongst all of these were "normal folks," some dress to the nines or otherwise different from their real forms, while others appeared not that far removed from their own first lives. Yet all these different types were able to work together without some sort of dismay over who was what or how it differed from reality.

In my Second Life, I enjoy time as a kid, doing kid stuff. I'm having a blast at camp. I also do some things that, to say the least, "stretch the role." I'm a store owner, I do fireworks shows, I bounce around the grid without proper adult supervision, even. Lately -- and with no small amount of pride -- I've started to do work for one of the better inworld content creation companies. I work along side all types, from realistic avatars to tiny warthogs. Our clients just want the best places.

So back to the OPs question. Maybe Second Life will redefine identity, and just what is viewed as "acceptable" in a professional, in a "when in Rome" fashion. Not overnight and not in all places -- but to an extent. And even if it doesn't so much, there will still be plenty of room, I hope, for children, bunny rabbits and 9 foot wonders.

Mari

I've always wanted to become an intellectual and get involved in academia - maybe be a college professor or something, primarily because I know I would give everyone absolute fits. Some perverse part of me would enjoy watching my colleagues try to deal with me.

I agree with you, Marianne. But I think the fear in this process - and the reason why people like Mitch like to focus on the more realistic end - is that it doesn't end up redefining identity, but rather short-circuiting it.

The problem is that there's a very thin line between "accepting" that your corporate image consultant is a fox wearing a crash helmet or an 8-year-old with ribbons in her hair, and "ignoring" it. And pushing in the "ignoring" direction is dangerous because it removes the value of a fairly large segment of the SL economy (why spend a lot of money on making an avatar, or even a personal build, if all that's going to matter is the interactions and skills of the real-life person, even if those interactions happen to occur through text chat?)

Taken in this logic, the OPs point could be seen a different way.. if we persist in appearing as "children, bunny rabbits and 9 foot wonders" then do we run the risk of destroying any meaning from being one of these things? Does it remove that form of expression, because expression requires communication and there is no communication if the message is just thrown away?

It seems to me that the Lindens promote that sort of thing, as if that were what SL is all about.


http://www.secondscripter.com

This thread has the same idea behind is as the CEO one /327/67/270008/1.html

I happen to be a RL college student that spends alot of their spare time in SL; I enjoy SL for its diversity and open-mindedness, I have even mentioned SL in a few of my class essays. Not only that my college (Hocking College) has it's own virtual campus (I don't care for, since who ever built it did a terrible job), they are even getting people on as virtual assistants to the college.

Now as for me, I prefer to roam the grid as my tiny robot AV rather than either of my human based ones (the "Matrix" themed and Iron Man mod) doing what I feel like!! If people want to have ultrastrcit rules in their regions, they will lose most of the SL population that way.

I wrote a lot of the above also in relation to some of what we've talked about inworld, Yumi.

It's interesting, because I end up in such a dual (or more) space so often. I think you might have seen some of that the other night. And my boss (and, by extension, her boss) see my as a five (six tomorrow!) year old kid *and* as a professional creator. It's a strange space that's prob'ly only viable in a virtual world.

Oddly enough, and to add to it, my avatar being a child was one of the things my boss commented on as a *positive* part of her group, and somethign she was glad to have on her team.

Mari

I wish there would be more people like you in the field, it probably woyld keep me from leaving it. The rigid stuffiness is beginning to work it's way into the lower levels from Colleges, especially Adminstrators. You would be a breath of fresh air.

PS..Mari's post#34 is dead on . Nicely said. Call me a 2 with some 4 thrown in.

My experiences in life are that the 'intelligentsia' are usually snobbish, ignorant, and anything but intelligent. I hope they do stay out.

By the way, I'd like to add that I worked in higher ed for something like 15 years, and I can't imagine any of the people I worked with in al that time having much of a hard time accepting the diversity of avatars that we have in Second Life. I can quite easily imagine many of them choosing unusual avatars.

On the other paw, I've also worked in the Corporate world, and some Corporate types I know could never break out of their First Life Business suits enough to do more in SL tham make their avatar a mirror of their real self.

They coexist in the real world. The artists/actors and the Business suit types. Why shouldn't they in SL?

I think the problem isn't so much that the academics or the "intelligentsia" are such awful people, I think it's that the people who want to class themselves in that category are the most visible and are the ones who overshadow the others. As soon as people convince themselves they are more intelligent than others, which is, of course, very easy to do when you have a bunch of degrees, then they almost instantly become intolerable to the rest of us. Nobody likes to be around someone who thinks they are a cut above the rest.

I get the same thing in my profession. I try hard not to give a damn about what I do. I'm a normal guy. I go to a job all day long, then come home and try to ignore the stress of my job until I go back the next day. The end. But there's a tendency in my profession, as well as the medical profession and a few others, for people to take themselves WAAAYYYY too seriously and to act like they are somehow better than everyone else because they have fancy degrees. It's pure BS, but it makes them totally insufferable, and unfortunately, it causes people to paint us all with the same brush.

I think Marianne sums up the main topic pretty well.


A few brilliant people will come off that horribly but what you described is more often what you'll encounter from people who are closer to average but want to appear smart. Unless you are in an academic setting or know the person, you will never recognize most of the truly "smart" people around you. Smart people know they're smart so what need is there to show off for the world just for the sake of showing off? Engage them in a good conversation or ask for help with some problem and it'll often shine through in the process. But the rest of the time they're just as likely to go to a baseball game and watch The Simpsons as they are to spend the day at a museum then watch Discovery Channel when they get home.

Remember Mitch Kapor's SLB5 speech, about the pioneers of Second Life coming first, and the mainstream integrating behind them?

Well, let's assume for the moment that he and Phillip and everyone else did plan it that way (rather than re-writing history).

There would be no Second Life for the suit-and-tie mainstream if the bunny-suited pioneers were not attracted first to pave the way. And foreseeing that, there is a plan to integrate the mainstream when it finally gets here.

My guess is that the plan all along was to separate the free-spirited areas from the corporate/academic mainstream areas. As long as there are separate sections of Second Life devoted to different uses, people can pick the areas in which they are comfortable.

I don't think Second Life is different from any other aspect of the internet in that regard. There's a lot of eccentricity on the internet. Regardless, the corporate world has found a way to use the internet for its own purposes. The World-Wide Web is far beyond the point of being a playground; connection is a requirement for any serious corporate entity.

I don't think corporations or academia are terribly concerned about living next door to eccentrics, as long as they have what they need to get their work done.