How did SL gain its "bad" reputation?

[Gopi Passiflora]

I, like many other people, first heard of Second Life in 2003. While I always knew that sex would always be a part of a world that's only limited by the imagination, the media coverage didn't focus on the sex part but more on other stuff like the Linden economy and the bizarre avatars people could make. I think SL received mostly neutral coverage in its early days.

I only became aware of the negative coverage in 2009 when I watched the movie "Gamer" which had a scene parodying SL. It had an overweight man control a real woman in a strange real life version of Second Life. He even gets her to have sex with a male character in the "game" while he watches in pleasure.

I didn't join SL until 2010, but I didn't plan on having sexual stuff be my focus. I just wanted to make avatars of different kinds and having them interact with the inhabitants and explore the world in various ways (not necessarily sexual). Any negative things I heard about it didn't hinder me.

[Snugs McMasters]

Maddy joined SL in 2008, you first became aware of negative coverage in 2009.

Draw your own conclusions.

[Kotelle]

My experience with the negativity around SL is that many people do not understand what a virtual world is and what are the possibilities. I have noticed many comments like "Is it a game" or "ok so if this is not a game, what do you actually do there", "don't you have a real life to take care of", "meeting people online is not real" and so on, meaning if this is not a game and there is no end-game or any other achievement, then it is pointless and a waste of time. Also that it is a place for all these extremenly shy geeky neerdy frustrated-with-RL people who can't manage simple relationships in reality and "normal people" don't need to go there because "normal people" have "normal lives".

The other part of that is a bunch of really frustrated idiots who assume they are free to do anything meaning insulting others, griefing, trolling because it is online and it doesn't count. They are anonymous and can do anything. This is unfortunately partially true and many of them continue unpunished which really affects the reputation of SL community. 

[Max Nova]

I think that is a narrow view of it and it certainty is not viewed as a negative thing in Asia. 

[Paul Hexem]

You've got the gamer crowd that sees SL as a game, except without the optimization, objectives, or fun.

You've got the consumer protection agencies that see LL as a scammer company.

You've got the 3D content creators that see SL as a den of thieves and pirates.

And everyone else sees varieties of pixel sex that you can't discuss in polite company.

Yeah, the "bad" reputation is completely unfounded!

[Janet Voxel]

I wouldn’t say it’s looked at as bad. Most people I’ve ever talked about it with seem either confused or indifferent about it. When you tell people you can actually make money there, that raises some eyebrows. When you tell them what’s involved you lose them again. LL did a really bad job of showing people what was possible in SL so you ended up with a lot of people that don’t even know how to do the most basic things. And the bad is really easy to find. Like the saying goes: an idle mind is the devils playground.

Im assuming OP means some kind of article by bad reputation. There’s tons of bad articles about SL. The thing you have to realize is a lot of the writers only are on SL for a limited time. I’ve been here for 8 years and am still learning things about SL.

The other day I met someone that couldn’t put on Slink hands or use an applier. It took two hours to help her get it right. How long has she been on SL? 9 years. Some people just don’t get it, then there are people that are on SL and STILL don’t get it.

[Ceka Cianci]

Remember back in the days when people thought you were a perve to be socializing on the internet,but now they all do it themselves?

That's more than likely where it started,but their fine with it now..

 

hehehehe

Edited December 13, 2017 by Ceka Cianci

[Claireschen Hesten]

Before i joined in '08 SL had already been given a bad rep by the media as a place where paedophiles would hang out at virtual playgrounds with kid av's. but on the other side through true life magazines and magazine programs it was seen as a place for dating as people told their stories of how they met via SL but got married and had children in RL

[Syo Emerald]

15 hours ago, Gopi Passiflora said:

I only became aware of the negative coverage in 2009 when I watched the movie "Gamer"

The bad press started a lot earlier than 2009.

[Penny Patton]

Early on, LL did an even poorer job of separating adult content from the more general experience. It used to be very difficult, if not impossible to avoid encountering adult content in SL. Sims were either "G" or "Mature", the latter allowing any adult content, and these sims were mixed together across the mainland.

If you owned a parcel in a "G" rated sim bordering a "Mature" rated sim, you'd be exposed to your neighbor's adult content. Because of the proximity of of adult and general content it wasn't unusual for people to wander into a sim with a different rating entirely on accident. Even worse, since content such as, say, a sim based on a horror videogame wasn't allowed in a G rated sim, it would go with the adult content in Mature rated sims. This was the case all the way up until the end of 2009 and it made it impossible to avoid exposure to adult content in Second Life. And since adult and general content was so intermixed for so long, it took years after the introduction of adult rated sims to move adult content out of moderate sims. There are still some adult locations in moderate sims they're just typically no longer shown in search.

 Add to this the merging the adult and teen grids together pushed a lot of mature content to move to adult sims just to keep kids out. Then on top of that, LL neglected to improve SL's social or interactive features and that left sex as one of it's biggest draws. It may look terrible, get awful framerates, and offer no real engaging interactivity that doesn't exclusively involve other residents, but you can bump pixels with anything anyone can imagine.

[Bree Giffen]

I'm not really sure it has gained a bad rep. I recall one article about the child avatar predators but that was a while ago and there haven't been many other negative articles. 

[Rhonda Huntress]

15 hours ago, Gopi Passiflora said:

How did SL gain its "bad" reputation?

 

Through years of focused effort and hard work.

 

On a more serious note, this may be of interest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Second_Life

Like any wiki article , take it as a starting point and not a definitive answer.

[Love Zhaoying]

Smoking in the boy's room, making girls cry, making BOYS cry, not washing hands after peeing, being an easy lay.

SL is badass!

[mikka Luik]

As a certain someone (Hi HH!) responded over the way where you asked, "We earned it".

[Love Zhaoying]

22 minutes ago, mikka Luik said:

"We earned it".

Some of us earned our elbow and knee pads!

[NevaehHeartstrings]

Often the Rep comes from people who never even tried it..They just read articles online by some obscure magazine often seeing the outdated pictures..then they just repeat that...if you say it enough times on the inter-webs then it must be true?

Many of those same online publications have had hidden motives/ agendas behind some of the more over the top negative press to just trash the whole platform...often this is done when some kind of competing social platform kicks off who just happens to be the sponsor of the author who wrote the damaging article.

[animats]

Second Life succeeded at making online sex somewhat fun. That's turned into a problem for Linden Labs. It kept SL from becoming an advertising-based service, which is where all the money is. SL dates from when AOL was big and customers paid the bills.

Hence Sansar, which may turn out to be about promoting major media franchises.

[NevaehHeartstrings]

2 hours ago, Rhonda Huntress said:

 

Through years of focused effort and hard work.

 

On a more serious note, this may be of interest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Second_Life

Like any wiki article , take it as a starting point and not a definitive answer.

I was surprised the whole ending discounts for educational and non-profit organizations was not listed in the Wiki...Huge Damage when they did that.

[NevaehHeartstrings]

1 hour ago, animats said:

Hence Sansar, which may turn out to be about promoting major media franchises.

Whatever keeps the lights on in SL for us

 

Edited December 13, 2017 by NevaehHeartstrings

[Parhelion Palou]

39 minutes ago, NevaehHeartstrings said:

I was surprised the whole ending discounts for educational and non-profit organizations was not listed in the Wiki...Huge Damage when they did that.

The discounts were brought back perhaps 2 years ago. Getting rid of them did cause a lot of nonprofits & educational institutions to leave & not come back. It wasn't so much the money as the incredibly bad timing of the change.

[NevaehHeartstrings]

21 hours ago, Parhelion Palou said:

The discounts were brought back perhaps 2 years ago. Getting rid of them did cause a lot of nonprofits & educational institutions to leave & not come back. It wasn't so much the money as the incredibly bad timing of the change.

Your right bad timing taking a half decade to try to repair the damage

Edited December 14, 2017 by NevaehHeartstrings

[MaggiJin]

I also think certain greifer youtubers have something to do with it. they find something "cringy"/weird/ anything to do with furries and go "look! everything in sl is like this!"

[Tari Landar]

Bad reputations come from two things, primarily...

Misinformation and questionable actions(or inaction as it applies, since it falls under the same umbrella). It's not hard to figure out where the *perceived* bad reputation some folks say sl had, has, or will have. Add the two together...and you have your answer. 

[Ceka Cianci]

\o/

 

[Aislin Ceawlin]

On 12/13/2017 at 10:53 AM, janetosilio said:

Im assuming OP means some kind of article by bad reputation.

OP stands for "Original Post" or "Original Poster" as in the person who starts a thread.

ETA: Wait, or did you mean the original poster meant ........ ? 

Edited December 14, 2017 by Aislin Ceawlin