People think I am an alt?

I am pretty new, been here about a week. I have a few friends who have been on SL for a while, and one of them tweaked my AV for me so that it looked nice.

Maybe too nice ... I was exploring today, and got kicked and banned because people did not believe that I have only been here for a week because my AV looks too good. Ummm ... why would this be a problem?

Besides uglying up my guy, any suggestions on how to avoid things like this?

EDIT: Apparently the owners of this club thought I was up to something, though I could not figure out what it was they thought I was doing.

Personally, I find the paranoia surrounding alts to be very strange. I'm not sure I really understand why anyone who didn't already have a reason to be cautious (i.e., knew that he or she was being stalked, etc.) would even care.

Anyway, one of the more common perceptions is that alts have empty, or very bare, profiles. I'm pretty sure that if you fill up your First and Second Life profiles, and add a few picks (it doesn't matter too much what, at first), that you will be less likely to be accused of this.

That's what all the alts say, you know..

/me looks suspicious.

Sigh.

Allright, allow me to approach it from another direction. For the sake of argument, let us say that I were an alt (which, of course, I am not). Come someone explain to me why that is bad, or suspicious, or whatever?

It's probably not a big deal. Most people won't notice or care. I think you hit the exception that proves the rule with that club owner.

Thanks. I hope that is the case. I do not want to constantly have to defend myself or sweat getting banned from places for no conceivable reason.

LOL.. I was just giving you a hard time.

/me doesn't care about alts, unless they're used to grief. Sometimes people come to my club and tell me that they used to log in a lot under some other name. I always try to stop them from telling me their old name. Not my business. Not what SL is about.

If you really are new (and I have my doubts about that!!! ) just avoid the drama. Try not to care if somebody else is paranoid. Enjoy yourself. Have fun.

Funny, though. I DO know a lot of people who will IM me to fill me in on their suspicions that "so and so must be an alt." They generally won't say anything aloud, or do anything about it. But there IS this sort of paranoia about it. It's particularly strange as half the people who ARE suspicious have alts themselves . . .

Hey bud. Welcome to SL. Do what Scylla said and fill in your profile and never apologize for skipping the stupid newbie phase.

I don't dislike alts. However, I dislike people who use alts to talk with their split personalities. That's just weird, if not actually a sign of mental illness. I have a couple alts for building and testing stuff but they don't have social lives and I wouldn't dream of trying to convince people that they were "Smif's friends and supporters." I have had people in-world talk to me with alts and try to convince me they were separate people more times than I care to remember and I see it here on the forums all the time. It only takes one instance of this happening to earn you a place on my private "crazy list." There's a fine line between funny and psychotic.

if they kick you for something so silly just look at it as them doing you a favor..you don't need a place that is probably full of drama on a hair trigger..
there are too may places to enjoy to worry about that one

Hi Dread!

Welcome There are many of us who have had some bad experiences with alts. Some ppl here use alts to spy, to abuse/grief others, to hide, to cheat.. etc. Yes, I fully admit being paranoid in this regard and am quick to ban from my parcels if the behaviour is suspicious.

Alt accounts are used for legitimate purposes too.. as Smith has explained. Many ppl use alts for privacy when building and creating and testing etc. I have an alt - I've kept the same first name however.. and I use her to belong to certain groups so I receive their notes, and training materials.

However, yes, when we see new avis who are a bit too well put together for their SL age - we/I do wonder if he/she is an alt and to what purpose.

I'm sorry that you had that experience at a club. Filling in your profile is a good suggestion. Maybe in your picks make a note that you had help putting your avi together.

warmly wishing you the best!
Z

Plenty of other places to go - just ignore people who are suspicious. I have (at least one ) alt and it's just to explore being a slightly different personality (or to expose a different facet of my single gemstone personality, Smith).

I hardly ever use my alt any more. I log him in to air him out once in a while. There is nothing nefarious about it.

All I can say is, weird...

Be thankful you learned that person was a pain-in-the-... early on.

Move on, SL is big, you'll never see them again if you don't want to. Find some nice people, there are a lot of us.

Um...

No.

I can't explain it, because its not bad.

I've got my own share of alts. No big deal. I also like meeting new people - I'm not that far from one myself. Welcome aboard.

I have tried to enter various locations and got a pop p message saying im not age verified, yet i have pain info on file and have give my information to linden labs, so how can i still be denied these sims?

Suppose you have an account that does a lot of business, and is what you consider to be you "main, public" account, that you want to have a reputation as being honest and behaving in a socially acceptable.

However, that's only one facet of your personality, and you also want to do stuff in SL that is outright dishonest or widely unpopular.

So you make an alt account to be your evil parallel universe self.

I suspect that sort of thinking lies behind some people's suspicious attitude toward alts.

Given the concern about unauthorized copying, some might think an alt that looks too good might have gotten that way by either copying things without permission or buying improperly copied items.

One thing to keep in mind in trying to figure out what motivates some people's behavior in SL is that they might be sitting at their computer with a half drunk bottle of vodka next to their mouse pad. The seemingly senseless behavior stems from the user actually being senseless at the moment. To the possible current drunken state one can add chronic lack of sleep, bad eating habits, excess time spent in online interaction without interruption. Add and substract other substances such as pot, cocaine, etc. Plus the user might be a bit of a whack job to start with without these other factors influencing their behavior.

So sometimes when you can't make much sense out of what people do in SL it's because they aren't functioning properly.

This is odd. SL must have been a different place when I first began. My daughter was already here and well-established. I think it was on my second time to log in, within four or five days of signing up, and I had just TP'd off OI and promptly got lost. She found me in blue skin, tie-dye clothes, and some huge gawdy wings, lost somewhere in furrydom. :^) I laugh when I think back on it now. She started TP'ing me around and within a couple of hours I was sporting about L$10,000 worth of skin, hair and AO. I never got accused of being an alt, though I did get propositioned often...

It WAS different, Kenbro. It may not have had quite so many whistles and bells, and it had its fair share of griefers who could shut down the grid, but it was a happier world. It had a joyous innocence about it. I even miss update Wednesdays!

Or maybe it's just that as a couple of doddering three-year-olds, we're looking at the good old days through misty eyes and Rosedale-tinted spectacles.

/me cries

Have them come talk to me. I can vouch that you are most definitely not an alt.
I have a list.

Someone on xstreet forums (may they R.I.P.) once went on for days in every thread claiming everyone was my alt. I guess it is sort of the inverse of what the OP experienced.

As for people being paranoid about alts... the ripper is probably standing next to them whispering in their ear you might be a copybot. While the ripper is stealing the ban hammer happy person's skin of course.

There are over 30,000 regions in Second Life. Surely next time you can have better luck than landing at pinhead island.

OMG I used to get that all the time. Not because I was suspected of copybotting, but generally paranoid guys thinking I was an ex trying to mess them about. I'd gotten myself together fairly quickly, yet am so anti-style I guess they thought I had to be trying extra hard to be the opposite of some normal looking girl they knew

Now people are just worried I might be one of Pep's alts

Just tell them "Yes you're Phillip Lindens alt"

Your first name doesn't really help matters.IMHO. Some people are wary of names of similar ilk. ie: Thug,Crook,Ripper,Doom,Ripoff,Scamman and of course Blot.

It's true that griefers, alternate accounts are created sometimes to cause ill intent to owners/residents, this makes up about 60-70%?. And true that there are alternate accounts created generally for the user to escape from the world he is in, be it hectic schedule or just wanted to be alone from the people he knew. And there are those who create alternate accounts for jest, wanting to see how their friends would react if some stranger comes up and talks to them. And then there are those who are enemies, surprisingly alternate accounts are created to try and reconcile and get to know the other more better which they couldn't do with their main account.

*smiles amused* Well, I have two alts and it SAYS in their profile that they are my alts. People don't seem to care one way or another about it, probably because I am so blunt about it.

Guess I don't care if someone's an alt or not. I judge avatars by how the act. I mean, a griefer is a griefer, doesn't matter about the alt part or not. I don't stop to think whether they are an alt or not before I pull a eject/ban on them.