Good Child Skins

It would make it easier to follow if you were a wee bit more careful in your editing. You deleted part of the closing quote tag and it was hard to make out what you were quoting.

Entertainment is the main reason for being in SL. Almost everyone is in SL to be entertained. Unless someone's idea of entertainment is to attack other people for lulz, you have no reason to object to their desire for entertainment... if entertainment isn't justification, then we might as well shut down SL now.

Watch it there. I don't have anything even vaguely like a "kid avatar". I don't even have a *human* avatar. And I think the attacks on kid avatars are reprehensible.

And bigotry against cartoon characters is no different from bigotry against people's choices of clothing... and you see plenty of that, from wife-beaters and string ties to hijab and yarmulkes.

What game? (O.o)

I don't like games. (o.O)

Games are boring. (^_^)

Wanna start a virtual family? (^_^)y

People who see it as nothin' wrong with it that's who. Not everybody's a big ol' grouch.

Why do some of ya keep pickin' on kids anyhow. We didn't do nothin' to YOU folk.



Name caller.

Ya might wanna look up in this thing called a DICTIONARY. Cos you are w-r-o-n-g.

It's PEOPLE you are talkin' bout hating, not cartoons, anyhow. Even I can see that!

Dnftt

That kind of activity has not been allowed in Second Life for almost two years.

If you are concerned about pedophiles in Second Life, perhaps your energy would be better spent trying to prevent children from accessing the main grid.

Can you give me an idea why a pedophile would wear a child avatar in Second Life, which their prey is on Facebook and other social media outlets? Further, if they were on SL, wouldn't they most likely be the fellow in the free candy van trying to capture kid avatars, rather than a kid avatar themselves? Many sex crimes are about power as well as sex, so being in an interior" role would seem foolish, no?

If anything, you'll find that the majority of child avatars, BTW, are the first to report such activity, and warn of places not to go in SL in order to avoid such types.



You know what, the above is about impossible to answer. Not because I don't have a good counter, but because it is as "lazy" a viewpoint as you argue those of us who play kids have. You've not walked a mile in my shoes, nor made but the slightest attempt to understand why one would choose the avatar they choose.

Also, this may come as a shocker to you. I do not have to justify my avatar. Tell me, if someone came up to Madeline Breil, looked around you, and said "Oh, these types! Why they're all perverts. Why do they even allow your kind here?," what would you do?

Why, therefore should *anyone* who plays a child avatar feel the need to explain *anything* to you. The only reason you bring this up here is because you have an issue. YOU, not me.

My suggestion? take a look at yourself first. Decide why you feel the need to denigrate others.

And if the above is "me me me" to you? What-ever. You've come in here with the attitude that this is all wrong, and are unwilling and unable to hear any possible other viewpoint, and sit around making veiled accusations.

You speak of how my entertainment is not worth the risk. Allow me a strawman: how about we shut down Second Life altogether. After all, a pedophile could join this system and ingratiate himself to all sorts of people. Or they could hang around the welcome areas listening for all the underagers on voice chat who should not be on an over-18 system. They might even try to make their way onto Teen Second Life. Clearly, your entertainment is not worth that sort of risk!



You cannot have it both ways here: either this is a game to you or it is not. If the former, then playing an innocent child avatar is simply part of the game and not something you need concern yourself with; if the latter, then yes you are being dogmatic. Bigot may be a bit strong of a word, but I would contend that you are being as blind in your beliefs are you assume others are.

I am sorry, but you are in the wrong here. I do hope that some day you'll understand why.

Furthermore,

When they told me "Your world, your imagination", to me it actually meant my world, my imagination. Simplified: ME ME ME!

We all get to be "ME ME ME" about SL - provided we play by the rules. When I'm a kid, I play by the rules LL has set for kids. Easy as pie.

some people will not be happy untill we all are a 8" barbie or ken.
predictabilety remember... wel boogerheads to that indeed

Actually, my entertainment is more important than you are. Until you can stop every bit of life that can hurt anyone in RL, you have no validity in SL. And you can't stop RL - life is dirty and messy and chaotic.. that is what makes it worth so much to those who live it.

Wow, I'm flabbergasted! You're so narrow minded it defies belief.....maybe SL is not the environment for you.....wait for the release of DISNEYWORLD instead!



.

It IS a civil rights issue. The right of a person to use the avatar he or she chooses. The right of a person to BE the person he or she chooses.

You would limit that right, on the presumption that anyone who wants to be a child in SL is doing so for reasons related to pedophilia. Or that other adult SL users who are pedophiles will "prey" on the child avatar, thus gratifying and reinforcing their perversion.

Most of us disagree strongly with both points. Remember that the people behind the avatars are all adults (Or supposed to be. Underaged players on the main grid are another issue entirely). The player behind that "kid" is perfectly capable of taking care of themselves. No need for society to step in to protect the "innocent child". As Marianne points out, the kid avs are the most likely to report people who make sexual advances toward them.

I've met avatars who, if it were up to me, I would erase from the grid in a moment. Ugly avs. I mean, trollishly ugly. Or stereotypes exaggerated into grotesquerie, like the women with breasts they can barely see over, or guys with pinheads and biceps bigger around than my waist. But it's not up to me...or to you. It's THEIR world, and THEIR imagination, every bit as much as it is yours, or mine.

So bugger off.

None of those are the reasons I use a child avatar.

So you miss your mark.

I'm simply pointing out that you IMAGINE you know why I do what I do, but in point of fact you haven't the slightest idea.

If you could try to think of reasons that don't fit in the categories you've stated, it would be a good mental exercise for you.

And about "enabling pedophiles": I've never met a pedophile in SL, but I would AR one if one approached me. All the other child avatars I've met would do the same.

If you regard that as "enabling" you're nuts.

Problem is some people are confused about Second Life in general.

They think that it is a place to have sexual trysts and are taken aback that people are enjoying their time here as children. They think SL Kids are an abomination.

They don't realize that Second Life is for everone old enough to register who can respect the terms of use.

Second life wasn't made for sexual trysts. Second Life accommodates your ability to have them. You have no more privileges than the Trekkies and their RPG and the SLKids and their G-rated pursuits.

Bigot? Bully? Tyrant? Genocidal? Which are you when you say upstanding residents should be wiped off the grid because you don't like or agree with their lifestyle - or just don't like the way they look?

I really do wonder how the same thoughts apply when they see tinies out on the Grid, you know?

Yeah, nothing says "sex" like a miniature purple dragon.

Well said, Mari! *hug*


Also well said... and a beautiful thought, really.

Personally, I enjoy having kid avatars around, as long as they obey the same rules we all do. They add an interesting and fun element to SL, just like tinies and furries and robots and all the rest. I've always found Mari and her friends to be charming and entertaining and well-behaved, and it baffles me when people see something wrong in what they do. It's all about diversity... SL is amazing to me because it allows far more diversity than reality does. We're not bound by physics or DNA or our true ages or appearances.

Also, it's really a shame when innocent requests for information and shopping help get hijacked and turned into anti-child-av threads.

The sad part are all these people taking these irrational stands who think they're standing up to protect children, when at best they're just blowing hot air.

The best way to protect kids is by educating them. The sites most dangerous for kids are the ones where kids hang out, and where they share personal info.

As for what goes on here, for most, it really is nothing more than entertainment. For some, there may be serious stuff going on, but no one in the forums really has enough information to make any legitimate judgment.

No, they are trying to find a way to "protect the children" that requires the least amount of work from them. It's one thing to blow steam on a forum, it's a whole other to volunteer your time working an abuse line, volunteering at youth shelters or actually reporting real pedophilia behavior in RL. *rubs the bridge of her nose, shoving her glasses aside for a moment*

These people also seem to have the idea that SL is all about sex and that every avatar does it. Yeesh, sorry I don't fit your idea of SL, then. I don't have pixelated sex and I'm an ADULT avatar. I, like the child avatar players, have found other things in SL that entertain me, like the challenge of building my own things, meeting new people and exploring.

Sod off to those who can't move beyond sex in SL and see it's beauty in other things.

Kidd, I'm going to agree with about 90% of what you said here.

I certainly agree that real kids need to be protected by educating them. But there is a flip side to that equation, too: the kids are after all the victims here, and they ARE only kids, so that making them web-smart only goes so far.

We DO need to focus on the other side of the equation too: that of both catching the predators, and doing what we can to make incidences of this kind of behaviour less common. It really is not good enough to merely accept that predatory behaviour "happens," and that the only solution is to warn kids about it. This is a little akin (sorry for the inevitable comparison) to suggesting that women should just "accept" that it's dangerous to go out after dark, and that if something DOES happen to them, it's implicitly because they weren't careful enough.

I don't know what the solutions are. I certainly don't want child avs banned, and I fully accept that the vast majority of child avatars in SL are playing within legitimate bounds. I don't know how to "detect" the ones who aren't, or how many of these there are, but I DO know that I have met at least one child avatar who was either fishing for sex play, or had a horribly inappropriate sense of when to be in character, and when out. And that worries me because of the possible implications for behaviours in RL.

One really fishy child avatar in over a year in SL is not bad, I suppose. But it does suggests that there is a problem here that we shouldn't simply ignore. (I might note that there is plenty of evidence of pretty open child sex play in SL dating from before the 2007 ban, anyway).

Equally, however, it is unfair, and ultimately ineffective to stigmatize all those who RP children because of the activities of a (very) few.

Just a small note here too . . .

I get this a lot. "Why aren't you busy working to help women in REAL LIFE, instead of messing with my game?"

Fact of the matter is that the feminist activists I know in SL ARE also hard at work in RL. We don't switch our activism on and off with our computer. What is more, we see SL as an extension of RL: what happens here is as important in terms of its impact upon culture as anything that appears online, in print, or in the media generally. There isn't some kind of firewall that makes us immune from the effects of our own experiences here.

I don't know how "activist" anti-child avatar advocates are in RL. But, and I speak from personal experience, you can't ASSUME that they aren't.

Just saying . . .

I think we have a pretty good idea of how activist one of them is, given how much experience they seem to have with the real life issues.

I do. It's the policy disallowing sexual ageplay that Linden Lab instituted in 2007. It appears to have been remarkably successful. If one encounters sexual ageplay, AR the participants.



One? Out of half a million or so active residents? That suggests the problem has been virtually eliminated. If the policy has been this effective, is there really any need to alter it?

Real pedophilia is a much more serious matter, but it does not appear to be a significant problem in Second Life, either. Children aren't supposed to be here in the first place, which makes it a little more difficult for predators to find them. The solution to that problem (if it actually is a problem) is to tighten up account verification.

I'm an adult avatar, and I just don't do the pixelated sex thing either; don't need it, don't get it, and feel sorry for those in SL who unfortunately focus too much on the "sex" when there is far more going on in SL.
But, back to the subject of child skins in SL - I went along to Burning Life with a few friends a couple of days ago, and we got transmographied (Second Life-Granite has a SLC exhibition of works there) into kid avatars. We spent the rest of the day as kids, and it was really good fun, proper childish fun.
Shame on people who suspect all kid avatars for sexual ageplay.
Shame on those who participate in sexual ageplay as kids or as adults.
It must spoil SL tremendously for the 'real' kid roleplayers in SL.

One question: Do you preach to people who are RPing a Gorean slave or BDSM sub that their RP is wrong and should be banned because their masters "might" be spousal abusers in RL? (I am actually assuming that you don't, so please don't throw things at me!)

*sighs* I just feel that "protesting" something like the existence of child avatars (who don't engage in sexual ageplay) in Second Life redirects what might well be very useful energies and resources away from the actual/RL problems. In other words, this kind of "protest" actually does little forward the cause (because SL is supposed to be an ADULT place, no RL kids allowed), be it educational or actual hands on work. Educating is a really good, supportive form of activism. It encourages people to THINK. It doesn't attack and shut people down.

I agree with you, education about the real problems of internet safety is key! I spent years educating myself on the topic, looking at sites concerning online safety for kids. I enforce those that are enforceable and educate my child and others (whenever I can) on what to watch out for and who to report such behaviors to.

Speaking of... I need to get my information updated and see about getting some boys their badges in scouts. Part of it covers internet safety and the earlier you teach them the protocols, the likelier they'll be habit by the time their teens!

Sorry if I come off harsh. I just got tired of literally hearing, "I want the government to make laws to keep my kids safe for me. I'm too busy to do so for myself."