Accused Of Being A Child Avatar

Today I was exploring SL and a group of people came up to me and accused me of being a child avatar and said they were going to AR me because I was on a nude beach. I do not have an avatar age listed and I never tried to look like a child. The only thing different between me and them was height, my avatar is 5'2" which is my RL height. I didn't think my height would be an issue. I thought is was if you state in your SL profile that your avatar is under 18. I guess my question is what are we using to determine child avatars and can I really be AR'd for this?

Ppl need to get their heads out of their collective butts and stop these accusations. Put in your profile that your avi is over 18 and they should leave you alone.

Mandy C

No, you cannot be AR'd for that.

Part of the problem with avatars in Second Life is... Generally, everyone is gigantically taller than normal. My avatar itself is something like 6'9 normally, when translated into real height. So 5'2 is just really really short, in game-terms.

Don't sweat it, they can't do anything.

My RL height is 5ft 2ins also and I absolutely refuse to be bulldozed into roleplaying a giant just bacause other people want to roleplay being giants.

And what of people who are, or want to roleplay, a growth restriction syndrome? To attack people like that on the grounds of paedophilia is very offensive and discriminatory. I think anyone who is accused wrongly of roleplaying a child should report the people doing the accusing. They're the ones making it an unpleasant place.

So the witch hunt begins...

You shouldn't have to explain yourself or your realistic size to others, but just to be safe: do state in your profile your avie is over 18 and merely realistically sized instead of freakishly tall, not a child avie. Any jerk can and may AR you for any excuse, but that doesn't mean they will get their way. Stating your avie age in your profile will make it that much easier on Lindens to judge the non-existent merits of these accusations.

Thank You all for your replies. I will go and state my avatars age in my profile. Thank you again.

Is someone accused me (I am quite short), I would point out that I have breasts and an adult skin which hardly looks like a child.

Unfortunatly that argument didn't work for me they said I was a "highly sexualized child avie".
But at least i know i'm not gonna get in trouble and I just updated my profile clearly states 24 years old in the RL and SL part.

Some people need to get a life. Height does not determine age.

People are just being obnoxious, looking for a reason to ostracise someone else. It's petty and pointless, and if they are that miserable with themselves that they have to go hunting for things to attack, then so be it.

I was in Japan (Real Life) two years ago. And most girls were a lot smaller than me, were older than me (30+), but looked like 18 - to me.

It is absurd that people even try to guess your (SL) age from the look of your avatar.

Meni.

That would irritate the /daylights/ out of me, and I would probably end up saying: "Cool, you AR me for playing my RL actual height, I'll AR you for harassment and TOS violation, we'll see who wins the distance of urination contest."

ALL my avvies that are human are 5'4" or less if they're intended to represent me in any way. The 7' freaks are *supposed* to be 7' freaks.

*eyeroll* What's next, people going to come down on Tinies and Chibis?

I'm going to go out there and find a way to build that Pixie avvie I've been wanting, and to heck with people complaining that it's small.

~R

I am 5ft 6ins and permanently 26 years old! When I step into those height measurers they tell me I'm anything between 5ft 10in and 6ft 2in but I'm shorter than many females in SL, let alone the males. I suppose my avatar could pass for anything between about 15 and a youthful 40 but I always intended to be in my mid 20s and my profile says so - not that I get up to anything very naughty in SL anyway !

I don't see anything wrong with child avatars as long as they don't get involved in 'adult' activities. For instance, suppose someone had wanted to create a representation of their real selves as they were when they were a child in order to inhabit a magic island they'd dreamed of as a child but were now able to create in 3D in SL. That would be harmless. Maybe someone might have had a very unhappy adult life but remembered a happy childhood and wanted to recreate that in SL. That would be sad, perhaps, but not wrong. Having said that I've never actually met a child-like avatar in-world. Dwarves, midgets, little aliens, yes, but no human kids!

Or maybe someone who uses SL snapshots to make cartoon strips might need to use a child avatar as an actor in a perfectly innocent production as in the Simpsons. Is that wrong?

Doesn't matter what people here say, if it gets reported to LL you risk banning. There is no way to determine an avatars age objectively, and they state "We simply will not tolerate the depiction of sexual or lewd acts involving minors in Second Life."

Good luck getting any Lindens to tell you how they determine if an avatar is under 18 though.

I think the ones that say 5'10" are measuring the height to your av's eyes, while the ones that say 6'2" are measuring the height to the top of your av's head (or more likely just measuring the height to the eyes and then adding a bit).

The problem is that short avatars don't look well-proportioned, and everyone needs to bump their height up a bit to even be able to get realistic adult proportions - and so avatars that have a realistic height for a short adult would have more child-like proportions.

Even so, child-like proportions or not, if you're not overtly playing a child, it shouldn't be an issue.

Yeah. I'm a furry, and I always liked being shorter and all, I'm a NWS chibi so they're not meant to be big Avatars, and it's the only avatar I use. Well, since I was so short in game (which chibifoxes are suppose to be), someone reported me and I was suspended until I showed my drivers license and updated my credit card information.. I waited like a whole week to be verified! And the worst part is, no one even bothered to say sorry about the misunderstanding or anything! I think it's ridiculous, people don't even read your profiles or anything and they're just guessing away.

That could happen over lots of things. I was worried about being banned after I got mistaken for a griefer. I reported a griefer to a land baron because he was making large prims all over his land. The land baron turned up and ejected/banned/muted ME because he thought I was the griefer.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with child avatars as long as, as has been said repeatedly, they don't depict sex.
I've met a couple in-world and they are hugely entertaining. One had a really cute mobile phone anim instead of the typing anim, hilarious. Another the other day I found with a friend dancing by the side of a race track.
I wish people would get off their high horse about his height thing. If they weren't looking down from the wholly unrealistic gods of 7 feet up they'd have a far more realistic view I'm sure.
Grrrr! /rant

Proportions - not height, determine whether someone looks child-like or not.

Think of Alice after she drank the potion and grew to be gigantic

I have my avie set to my RL height - 5'6'' and she's not a child at all. Her facial features and general figure are patterned after me.

I refuse to be corralled into playing a seven foot tall giant.

the trouble with women is they are "neotenic" in appearance to start with - that is, they imitate the appearance of a child. Smooth skin, wider set eyes, etc. However, they don't share ALL traits of children, at least not children that haven't hit the age of puberty yet.

Evolution is a little borked, what can I say... *shrugs*

The best you can do is classify women avs as looking generally "prepubescent", "at the age of puberty" and "postpubescent" - and only the first is really banned (in sexual situations). The fact is - a 14 year old girl and a 18 year old woman can look very similar. There's only 4 years of age difference after all.

Prepubescent girl =! petite woman of age. Petite women, aside from a finer bone structure and smaller breasts (usually) - still follow proportions of a woman at the age of or past puberty.

Prepubescents - girls and boys look virtually identical aside from the very small anatomical differences. No waist, large head, wideset eyes, very small lower face compared to the upper part of the head. Completely different ball of wax.

What about naughty ugly-little-boy avatars who are griefers? What if they have "in-world ADHD" - should they be banned or sent for treatment? Is Ritalin available in SL?

As I said earlier, I haven't met any realistic child avatars in SL but I have met a 'tiny-man' one that is about the size of my foot. What's the position there? !!!!

The way I see it .. and I may be wrong .. last time I said this I think I was responsible for an entire sub-thread so apologies in advance mebbe!

To appease German law and I think others too, it's against the CS and or TOS to portray sex between a child avi and an adult. Anything else as regards playing a child avi is ok ....

.... sooo even an avi mistakenly assumed to be an ageplayer simply walking along a nude beach is NOT defying TOS/CS.

And from what I've seen of conduct and attitudes on nude beaches I would take anything anyone there says with a huge handful of salt. From the forum we know of one female who was ejected for wearing prim breasts and I personally witnessed a fellow forum poster being ostracized for being about the only nude in a group one evening ..... it's a nude beach for deightys sake!!!!

To the OP; your 'companions' should have kept their pants on .. it might have stopped them talking through their orifices!

not true - you can change your arm and leg length independently with sliders, under the torso and legs sections under appearance.

I've done this to correct "gorilla arms" and leg length to great success.

My Avvie is 6`2" and looks NOTHING like a child to me, my profile states that I am over 18 and yet I still continually get indecent proposals and accusations about her. I too refuse to conform to the ridiculously tall norm in SL and have even had to prove her height to several people that refuse to believe she is over 6ft.

Lots of buildings and furniture also contribute to the problem...They make me look even smaller because they are made for the all the supersized avvies, so yeah I do look like a kid when I sit on a sofa and my feet don`t even touch the floor lol

On a more positive note, lots of really tall people don`t actually realise how tall they are and I have had people measure themselves after they have seen that I am 6`2 and they are shocked to find they are nearly 8ft tall when they thought they were normal....Usually to cries of "OMG I am a freak!!" and then going to adjust their own height hehehe

So stick to your guns with your human sized avvies, one by one we may get the rest of SL to conform with us one day instead of expecting us to be the ones to change!!

I knew this was going to happen. The vigilantes have been set loose. Now we will have self appointed morality police to worry about along with sleazy journalists and TV crews. This will also be a griefer's delight as well. I know of a situation where an alleged offense was committed, and the accuser told the offender to sell him his land at a ridiculous price to prevent being turned in. I have a bad feeling about this whole thing, paranoia and suspiscion are gonna be running rampant unless something is done.

Yes Brenda, would have been very useful if in the thread 'Lindens Define Ageplay' thread, they hadn't corrupted and misinterpreted it for all and sundry