short AV=child allegation..has the witchhunt truly begun?

shakeshead...........

So yer saying my Godzilla avatar should be banned??

Ekkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk fast right!!!!!!!!!! and fast

Sure they do.

I have a whole catalog of avatars that disagree with this statement.

Stop and think for a second .. in real life, little girls clothing is extremely different than say teen and adult. A skirt for a little girl barely covers her panties. They sometimes even wear ruffled panties to show. Same for shirts, short / crop / tank / etc ... And for the most part, our society accepts that as normal, until a certain age. There is nothing "sexy" about a 6 year old in a skirt that doesn't cover her butt. Put a 12 year old in a skirt that doesn't cover her butt, and it's taboo ... she's a slut .. that' sexy ... whatever you want to think. The clothes little girls can get away with and be socially acceptable is different. Unfortunately, that doesn't translate well to SL.

As for me ... I am 5' 4" RL and SL. I did my best to model my SL avatar after my RL self. Right height, build, bra size, hair color, etc. When I'm in SL ... it's like *I* am in SL, doing things *I* may not be comfortable doing in RL.

I've only been questioned once ... I walked into Sumos Playpen and someone sent me an IM saying "ageplay isn't allowed here ... if security catches you, they will ban you." Of course, I simply changed to my VIP tag, got on a dance pole, and asked the person if they cared to tip me for their mistake. *grin*

My profile doesn't tell my avatar's age. It used to give an age, but I don't consider my avatar actually having an age. If anything, she's 35 just like me. I used to have her age listed as 22 in the profile, but then realized she would sometimes talk about things she wouldn't have been alive for.

However, since I own a photo biz, I list in my profile that "I have 15+ years of RL experience in photography and photoshop" so I guess that would tell anyone reading that I'm obviously an adult. Although, many people probably get confused with the whole "Lolita" name thing and think I'm a 12-year-old like the book.

*sigh* ... just call me Lita. I would change it if I could. But LL won't let you change your name, and I can't transfer my inventory to a new account. So I'm stuck with it. "Lolita = Little Ol' Lita" .... my name is Lita, and I'm short. I'm not a 12-year-old girl looking for sex. Nobody has come right out and asked me to my face, but several people have hinted that direction. Usually simply rezzing and drawing a pair of MK3's will put a stop to it immediately. *grin*

As for the child avis ... I am part of a kid-friendly group. We have several locations, parks, homes, etc ... that are focused on providing a safe place for children, nekos, and furries. So I'm around kids a lot of my time within SL. We are all non-sexual, and honestly, if you get a chance to really know some of them, you begin to understand why they live out their SL existance as children. Here are two examples:

One of my child avi friends is a retired first grade school teacher. She is living her SL existance through the eyes of her students. She plays a 6-year-old girl. She goes to school in SL. She has other 6-year-old friends. She is living her SL existance as her students.

Another of my child avi friends ... oh how my heart aches for her ... she was from a very abusive family in RL. Her childhood was not a good one. She is in SL now as a child, growing up in a loving family with close friends and living a childhood she *should* have been able to live in RL.

There are others ... but I think you get the idea. Don't bash the child avatars ....

My sympathies are with you. One of my SL women friends is 5 foot in RL and when initially making her AV on Orientation/Help island it seemed nothing short (no pun intended) of sensible to her to make her AV a RL representation of herself. She has lost count of the times she has been "accused" of being a child AV, been accused of ageplay or even been approached to indulge in ageplay, when she goes out of her way to portray a mature adult in both actions and appearance.

At times she has considered resizing her main AV (she didn't make the same choice for her alts) but refuses on general principle that she shouldn't bow to other people's ill informed predjudices.

If there was a sinister side to AVs over 6 foot tall would people be running around telling the rest of us to downsize or carry the cloud of suspicion with us? Good luck to you and don't give in to other people's paranoia.

When I first arrived, I adjusted my avatar's height to what looked good to me and it wasn't until later that I found out I'd made myself six feet tall.

I think people tend to make taller avatars because they're easier to see on the screen without having to zoom in all the time.

Making your avatar match inworld measurements for normal human height is going to make you look small. I don't quite see the point in being precisely accurate when the numbers are, in a sense, imaginary anyway.

Nevertheless, I do think people are going WAY over-the-top in terms of freaking out when a child avie shows up. Here's a clue--not everybody is here to get laid. No, really. It's true. If you catch them in the act, feel free to AR away, but if they're just wandering about minding their own business, try minding yours. Simple.

Although it's no guarantee, that profile information *does* cause me to limit my own behaviour sometimes.

If somebody hasn't got payment info on file after a few months in game, I don't swear or cuss in front of them, I don't talk about adult subjects, and I wouldn't take them on a sight seeing tour to a RP sim. If my behaviour would be unsuitable in the presence of a ten year old, then it's unsuitable in front of a NPOF av.

If I ran a business, I wouldn't bat an eyelid at one hundred Marianne McCanns with payment info on file descending on my premises and buying my stuff, but if a two month old, eight foot tall muscular model with dashing good looks and NPOF turned up, I'd be thinking: potential griefer, possibly underage user, etc.

Let's face it, if I was ten years old in a virtual reality world, I'd want to look like my adult role models too. Thank goodness there was no such thing in 1982 because I'd have gone for the Lee Majors look. =D

Gosh! Imagine if someone had an avvie that looked like this!



How terrible, huh? It would be just horrible to think dat an adult might play such a horrible, horrible thing as an innocent child. I'm shocked an apalled!

Oh wait... dat's me.

Mari

God that picture makes me hungry!

your avatar is clearly standing next to a plate of hot dogs on the buffet and thats blatently suggestive so im going to have to report you now

Time for me to make some alts!



Blame Kirchen Korner. They make the bestest stuff. Oh, an they dun kick kids out of their store!

(They will, however, ban people who harass their kid customers)



Sometimes a cigar...

Mari

My point is how LLABS now allowing images as the one i am posting in a typical sterio type setting. As in said company being allowed to post such images ( and images i posted are from said company on sl ). Other then that I am not making any other referances.....What ever you do with your sl is your busines. But when LLABS is now showing child avies in advertizing images as i posted above. That is a problem......I hope that cleared up the confusion.


Usagi

/me rezzes .... swipes hot dogs .... looks innocently up ... hotdogs ErrUh ..... where?

where is the mustard? and pickle?

Quoting merely saves me time typing it out myself.

How horrifying, that LL might show that you can make a child avatar! Oh noes! Next they'll be offering you the chance to use a furry avatar when you create your account! What is the world coming to these days?!!

I fail to see how that would matter. I see an avatar in a typical school childs' outfit with a backpack. Do you see that avatar doing something inappropriate? If so, is it possible you are a bit colored in your judgement?



An you know why alla them is around! I'm shocked, SHOCKED I say!

Mari

You said the picture was posted by a Language Learning Centre didn't you? How could Linden Lab "disallow" a third-party company from using such a picture?

Next thing you´re going to tell us you have fun as well


Oh and went to your art show Mari, absolutely loved it!

/me hands Usaqi a hotdog .. looks into pocketses ... mmm, corn relish?

The horror!

(An a few minutes ago, I did send a group IM to my online friends tellin them to have a fun day. What have I done?)



Cool! Glad ya did!

Mari

yes I did.........what i was trying to say is LLAbs is promoting SL within Japan. And the SAID learning center is a company that SL Japanese PR department has brought in. What is confusing here is that photo I post is that of said company was posted on the company website pr about sl. I though LLABs has enough common sence to tell adertizers tht posting photos of grade school child, after the german child porn is not of good taste. But there you have it.

Please -- I feel like I'm missing something, What's the bad taste part of this image?

Mari

RL sex between adults and children is against the law. In some places, it's illegal for two 16 year olds to have sex with each other, but it's perfectly legal in other places.

Explicit, visual depictions of children engaged in sex, when indistinguishable from RL photos of people (even if the people don't exist), are illegal in the US and probably elsewhere.

There have been assertions that explicit visual depictions of child-like cartoon characters having sex are illegal in some countries, with Germany coming to mind. I haven't found any authoritative source to confirm that, but I'm willing to accept that as true. On the other hand, I've also read that the Dutch government has dropped their investigation of sexual ageplay in SL on the grounds that the SL avatars aren't realistic enough to be a concern.

Visual depictions of child-like cartoon characters having sex are not illegal child pornography in the US. They may or may not be illegal obscenity, as can the textual conversations.

For example, consider a scene of two actors playing teens, having sex in an R rated movie. It's obviously not illegal. Translate that into an SL scene, and it still wouldn't be illegal. LL could arguably decide either way on such a scene, due to their deliberate vagueness in the policy. If someone were to AR such a scene, I wouldn't accuse them of overreacting or being unreasonable or fanatic. Nevertheless, I'd hope that LL would not prohibit such a scene.