New Zindra Blog Post

LOL. Second Life is about personal choices. Or: was.

Since new, the company is telling you, which choices you have to make.

The time to make choices by yourself is over, if you like SL.

I, for example, have to stay or to leave. V. has to move, or to leave.

And an upcoming third phenomen will be, that people have to pay moon-prices if they want to move to Z. later, to have the freedom of self-design and self-expression like before.

Three prisons, if you want so.

Beside all emotions or metaphorics, it is the worst case for customers.

Spontaneous I have no idea, which other company on this planet could have the chutzpah to treat customers brutal and icecold like this - and this constantly and permanently.

And if I don't think on companies but on governments, then I would know only some rogue states which are treating "residents" like this.

And hold in mind: the terms "governor" and "resident" are official LL terms.

They are not our developements.

Even the terms "buy" and "own"

Actual LL makes worthless what we bought and own.

In this case it is true, to call the situation: prison and ghetto. And not only one prison.

Three. One is Zindra. One is mature mainland. One is the fact that any later move will cost a world.

Tip: read Kafka. Then you know...

Since globalwide social relations are involved, creativity and IP, much money and *friends* it is not a simple decision to let LL's servers alone.

We have a massive product change with a massive frontal attack on customers and on all they own and created and additional all creative spontaneity has been stopped by sudden impertinence of the company.

For all that is LL using strange metaphores like "predictable" "better customer exoperience" and to top this: "green future" - and so we can do too in finding fitting metaphores!

I have a feeling, that our metaphores are not too bad, to describe the situation.

We pay now full prices for the half or quarter or 1/8 product and exact ZERO choices ingame and only one choice as customers: prison or leaving.

If we stay = prison. *Measured* on the *freedom* we had before March, 12, 2009

This freedom was the main reason to enter SL, or not?

We all people who have to move, people who have to stay on the non-adult side and people who have to pay astronomical prices later if they chose...to move, after the free of charge swap phase is done - we all have now the shoes open and the umbrellas closed - to say it metaphorical again...

Well now. I really dont know what to make of this. I was absolutely sure that all that talk about 'merging the teen grid' was just hysteria. Now in the blog I read that the teens have a sim at SL6B. Just how much interaction does that facilitate? Honestly no a clue in the world here.

It WILL happen.

This is right on. No one I know "wants" this kind of segregation of content, or communities, including those who are offended by adult content of nearly any stripe. Segregation, even self-segregation, simply closes down discussion: BOTH communities are the worse off for it. And I also know of no one who thinks that LL has handled this properly.

The problem is that for a variety of reasons, mostly probably due to the anonymity of SL and the sense of "no consequences" for actions, the normal strictures of civil discourse, and of respect for others, that generally hold pretty well in RL are largely ineffective in SL. When I go to a nightclub or restaurant or coffee shop in RL, I don't need to check the sign on the door to be sure that it is "Mature" rather than "Adult": I know that social convention and civility will keep social interactions within reasonable bounds. But it is almost impossible to go anywhere in SL, with the possible exception of PG sims, and not find oneself subjected to highly explicit sexuality of one form or another.

Should there be places for sexual interplay? Of course. And ideally, we wouldn't have to hide them behind an "Adult only" firewall. But "freedom" in SL has too often been interpreted as "licence." Frankly, if more people (on BOTH sides of this debate) had behaved in the first place with more respect for each other, this whole Zindra mess would never have been necessary. Brenda is right: ultimately, we have only ourselves to blame.

You exaggerate, or you're defining "highly explicit sexuality" pretty loosely. There are a number of sims I visit that explicitly encourage public sex, and even there I hardly ever see people deliberately engaging in sexual behavior or public displays of sexual content. There are others that are very explicit, but they're hardly "everywhere".

The big problem is that even if you're trying to avoid public display, it's virtually impossible to guarantee that someone won't see it by accident.

If Linden Labs had implemented SVC-205 or equivalent we'd never have been faced by this. Given the ability to take part of your parcel out of public view, people WOULD do that.

If it were only the existing teen grid.

They want the whole youth of the world in - means their pocket money and the credit cards of their parents.

So far, the half of a worldwide potential customer base - or the half of a market - is locked out.

There are not much companies on earth which would operating by ignoring the youth.

Also any youth grows up...one day a teen is 18+...

If early addicted = mucho $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ later for LL.

I mean: 350 000 000 along the last biz year is nothing...

LL wants billions of dollar!

Hahahaha.

I strongly disagree. I spend a lot of my SL time wandering and exploring. I can spend hours sim hopping in Mature regions and find no "explicit" content. Either, as Argent said,explict is defined widely by some, or those making this claim are pretty much looking for it to be there. There are places where it is inapproppriately displayed, especially in some PG regions, but the "in your face" and "at every turn" claims are nonsense.

Yeh I cruise a around a bit exploring at random, I just don't run into it unless I specifically search it.

I definitely disagree on this. i've explored the mainland extensively, and while there are indeed plenty of it out there, it is not impossible to avoid it without even trying.

kk, fair enough Argent, and Brenda. Let me qualify then:

1) "Explicit sexuality" for me comprehends explicitly sexual language, even when it is not cybering or RPing. For example, last night at very popular hang out I know that certainly does NOT feature virtual bonking or public cybering, I was nonetheless subjected to an extraordinarily explicit description in public chat of a very graphically sexual online video clip. Frankly, I'd RATHER have been overhearing someone cybering . . .

2) I also don't mean that one is exposed all the time, every time, to explicit sexuality at many places; just that there are few places one can go where there is not some risk that one IS going to be exposed to it. And I am talking about chat from "regulars" here, not griefers; I will grant that those who seek to offend will always be a problem.

One of my old hang outs, a very popular coffee house, was destroyed in large measure because neither peer pressure nor the entreaties of the sim owner, could prevent some people from indulging in public chat -- and again, I'm not talking about cybering -- that was over-the-top explicit. (That sim has now been restricted to "invitation only". I am in the process of watching the same thing about to happen to another hang out.

So, yeah, sorry if I seemed to overstate my case. My basic point still holds, however: there are few sims I know that have a reasonable amount of traffic (I hardly ever get bothered at the empty ones) where I have not been, to greater or lesser degrees, exposed to what some would undoubtedly term "offensive" chat.

Argent, you are right, also, about the problem of "accidental" viewing. I am not sure what to do about that, to be honest, other than some form of "zoning." I just wish it weren't quite so restrictive, or badly handled, as the new AO rules.

/me nods.

I've never just 'run into it.'

Anyway, smut only comprises 2 to 4 percent of the total experience, right?

/me snickers

There's this handy section on 'about land' something to do with 'ban list.'

The solution to the problem of "accidental viewing" is effective privacy mechanisms enforced by the sim.

The solution to the problem of offensive language is tougher. I personally find people using terms like "nigger" more offensive than descriptions of sex acts, and I never let my kids or their friends use "gay" as an epithet in my house. I don't think that's something you are going to solve with any kind of zoning, and I don't think trying to stop it by any kind of corporate fiat is going to be useful.

Well, I'm not going to pretend to speak for the sim owner here, nor am I going to defend her decision to close the sim, which I think was the wrong one. She did use bans, but apparently decided at the end that it was too much work dealing with this sort of thing on a case-by-case basis. And, let's face it, unless you or employees are maintaining a more or less full-time presence in the sim . . . which is probably objectionable in its own right . . . you are only going to be able mitigate, rather than solve, this problem through bans.

Yes, that's true. I suppose it has to do with one's personal tolerance level for all those things, Scylla. In the end one must weigh all the hassles of owning land against the benefits, and both against the actual cost.

I agree absolutely with everything you say here. That's why I find the whole Zindra thing so lamentable: it really represents our collective failure to establish bounds built on respect and consideration for others.

Then it would have to be called Utopia instead of Second Life, Scylla.

There will always be those that cannot see the wood for the trees

And on another topic, outside of areas where explicit sexuality was encouraged, I don't recall ever running into that either. Perhaps something in the set or environment of that coffee house encouraged it, because that's still not normal.

Of course it will, within twelve months I'd hazard a guess. They need to do what they're doing with Zindra now to facilitate the merger.

/me shrugs

I guess our experience of SL differs, for whatever reason. I don't consider myself prudish; I am quite happy to employ profanity or engage in explicitly sexual discussion where it seems appropriate. But I do know that, in the milieu in which I mostly move (which is not, btw, particularly "feminist" in flavour), this issue has been, and continues to be a problem. Nor am I the only one who thinks so.

Got my parcel at 3/7/2009 6:28 AM PDT from Harry LInden- we needed to re-draw his original plot layout a bit, but he was amenable to doing so, and we wound up with the same amount of land that we are giving up, and in a relatively nice area. (close to the train tracks- I'm guessing that there will be the occasional amount of lag form that, but nothing's perfect).

There were a few delays due to me not being online when the first Minerva asked for more info and then Harry first laid out the plot, so being online when they ask for you speeds things up I would imagine.

All in all, a horrific experience, and I still think that all of this is a bad idea- but at least this part of things has worked out.

I wish everyone an even speedier resolution though- the part where I had to submit a total of 18 choices was a little draining.

Funny, you'd think that a vampire would be used to "draining experiences"

^V^

Well..., since the first kind of room-building for people was to sit in a circle around a warming camp fire (if not in a cave) we had some developements like opaque houses and apartments.

If I would be LL, I would have an interest to establish exactly this: the ability to build literally opaque or to switch a viewer control element (checkbox) to make homezones totaly invisible.

Hehehe, I think it was you who was grown up, or lives near a nude beach zone or something in rl. Congrats, it is a nice way to grow up without moral blinders.

Same here. I was living in near of a nudist lake in Germany in former years and even now in Vienna is a large non-prude zone established. Open for people from 0-99+ without entry fees and without fences. Kind of "living naked in the city" - this zone is not very separated, just a bit at city-borders.

So, it was ever normal for me to see pure human nature and to use this opportunity to act that free too and I have no problems with anything, but as a newbie some years ago I was kind of slightly irritated that I can technically look through walls in SL.

Coming from rl it is a new experience..., hahaha.

Now, often in SL, I would like to see through walls in RL too, hahaha.

But only me should have the ability, not the other people. LOL.

Ok, but serious: without the lack of privacy ingame, we wouldn't have mountains of problems and moral discussions and LL has done nothing along 6 years to develope the fitting switch to set parcels/homes literally private.

If SVC-205 is able to make it possible, I vote for it. otherwise is all what LL says about "private activities" on mature land relative absurd.

But what is not absurd along the last 4 months...

Congrats

I remember seeing a map in an article somewhere- might have been the Slapt.me wiki- that showed Zindra with the north and east shores mostly complete- I think that the two new blocks are going to slide in to complete the north shore, and some of the eastern shore- so we can get a look at how big they expect Zindra to be, at least along the north edge.

I still think that it is going to wind up being a *lot* larger than they thought- once the swaps are done and they add the land for auction, we're gonna be looking at something major.

I hope that your swap goes well

^V^