SL a California based virtual world

[Rolig Loon]

No, embarrassingly enough, it's worse than that. My mind doesn't extend Europe to the Urals. 

[Callum Meriman]

6 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

My mind doesn't extend Europe to the Urals. 

Based on Eurovision - which I am sure Americans havn't really had the joy of being heavily exposed to yet - Australia is part of Europe too!

 

[Pamela Galli]

10 hours ago, Innula Zenovka said:

political positions that seem quite extreme and grotesque in much of Europe are apparently pretty mainstream in much of the USA

They may be mainstream, but they are still extreme and grotesque to the majority of Americans. We are living in a nightmare from which there is no waking up. 

[Klytyna]

On 21 April 2018 at 12:46 PM, Callum Meriman said:

The mortal fear USA people have of female nipples is always surprising. It's a national phobia.

Warning! Rated PG-European... May contain traces of Satan's Fun Buttons! Unsuitable for residents of the Confederacy. May cause apoplexy, heart failure, retinal melting and ETERNAL DAMNATION...

To me SL feels very "Californicatian", that whole aura of...

"Welcome to our strictly PG-Murican world *cough* Large adult section in the back... HOT Ladyboy on Goat action! see everything *cough Yeah we don't allow none of that filthy euro-smut stuff here, no siree!"

For example, a couple of Lindens telling the owners of an Adult rated private estate region dedicated to kink, that if they wanted to be included in the Adult section of the destination guide, then they had to pass a sim bylaw forbidding any non pg activity including partial female nudity (topless) within 20m of the landing point...

SL is VERY "Murican Double Standards"

 

[Drake1 Nightfire]

On 4/21/2018 at 7:46 AM, Callum Meriman said:

The mortal fear USA people have of female nipples is always surprising. It's a national phobia.

That is a very broad brush you are painting with... There are several states that allow women to be topless in public. And yes, it was voted for. I would bet most of us dont really care. Its teh loud ones that get heard. 

[Ceka Cianci]

12 hours ago, Pamela Galli said:

They may be mainstream, but they are still extreme and grotesque to the majority of Americans. We are living in a nightmare from which there is no waking up. 

That's true..

You can't watch anything nowadays without politics showing up..If you ask me,both sides need to give us a break when we're just trying to go about our days doing what we need to  do or even when we don't and are just looking to relax..We'll see them soon enough in the midterms and 2 years after..

Until then they need to stay out of our entertainment,at least..

hehehehehe

[Drake1 Nightfire]

48 minutes ago, Ceka Cianci said:

That's true..

You can't watch anything nowadays without politics showing up..If you ask me,both sides need to give us a break when we're just trying to go about our days doing what we need to  do or even when we don't and are just looking to relax..We'll see them soon enough in the midterms and 2 years after..

Until then they need to stay out of our entertainment,at least..

hehehehehe

Sadly, an entertainer was voted in as President.. 

[Ceka Cianci]

34 minutes ago, Drake1 Nightfire said:

Sadly, an entertainer was voted in as President.. 

I never watched his first show and certainly not his current..

Although,you can't turn anything on without seeing everyone advertising it..

hehehehe

 

[Solar Legion]

42 minutes ago, Drake1 Nightfire said:

Sadly, an entertainer was voted in as President.. 

Reagan was an actor (an actual entertainer). The current mistake was a "television personality" - a "reality TV star" if you want to get technical, something that is as far removed from being an actual entertainer as one can get.

Please do not demean entertainers.

[Drake1 Nightfire]

45 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

Reagan was an actor (an actual entertainer). The current mistake was a "television personality" - a "reality TV star" if you want to get technical, something that is as far removed from being an actual entertainer as one can get.

Please do not demean entertainers.

I'm sure some people somewhere were entertained by his TV show. I never watched more than 15 minutes before i realized how stupid it was. 

[Solar Legion]

I am really wishing we had a proper Groan button here ....

The point was that the present Mistake in Chief is about as much of an entertainer as a Butcher is a Surgeon.

[Ceka Cianci]

I did catch something from the tonight show that they said he said..

Is it true that he called some guy named Abe,Abby,thinking the E was pronounced?

Jimmy Fallon said something in the next line about him calling Abe Lincoln, Abby Lincoln..

Edited April 22, 2018 by Ceka Cianci

[Paul Hexem]

58 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

I am really wishing we had a proper Groan button here ....

The point was that the present Mistake in Chief is about as much of an entertainer as a Butcher is a Surgeon.

I'd say that you just insulted butchers.

[Solar Legion]

1 minute ago, Gadget Portal said:

I'd say that you just insulted butchers.

Any analogy applied to that creature would be insulting to a degree.

[ChinRey]

19 hours ago, Callum Meriman said:

Are you sure Rolig?

In terms of land mass, the United States and Europe are pretty similar in size — the United States is 9,833,000 square kilometers, while Europe is 10,180,000 square kilometers.

But even Europe and North America combined is just a small, sparsely populated outpost of the world. Here's Kai Krause's classic illustration of Africa's size:

 

(Source: http://kai.sub.blue/en/africa.html)

As for humanity, there is more genetic/ethnic diversity among Africans than among the entire non-African population combined but when it comes to sheer numbers, Asia is of course the continent where people actually live.

Edited April 22, 2018 by ChinRey

[ChinRey]

On 21.4.2018 at 8:27 PM, Rolig Loon said:

I'm not apologizing for my fellow Americans, but to add a little perspective .....  Even after seven decades of travel across the US, I am still amazed at how radically different people in one region can be from those in another.

That reminds me of something I've been thinking of for a while:

I live close to the twin infohubs of Borrowdale and Waterhead with Eric Linden's wooden bridges and native American decorations. It's a really lovely piece of early SL work but I've been wondering, would he have presented the Wild West exactly that way if he had been from Texas and not California?

[JuliaFina]

On 4/21/2018 at 4:55 PM, Innula Zenovka said:

political positions that seem quite extreme and grotesque in much of Europe are apparently pretty mainstream in much of the USA. I don't have to live there, thank heavens, so it's not my problem.   All I'm saying is that views that appear extreme on one side of the Atlantic appear quite mainstream on the other,

 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

On 4/21/2018 at 12:55 PM, Innula Zenovka said:

All I'm saying is that views that appear extreme on one side of the Atlantic appear quite mainstream on the other, so probably Brits aren't the right people to comment on whether San Francisco values and attitudes seem odd or out of place (they don't, by and large).

What Innula says above -- tempered by Rolig's caveats -- is, I think, pretty generally true: certainly, from the perspective of a Canadian (and, as neighbouring mice trying to live peaceably while uncomfortably nestled next to the restless American elephant, we are mostly reasonably well-informed about the culture south of us), Americans seem overall much more right-wing. That said, many European nations -- and to a lesser degree, perhaps, Canada too -- have their own neo-Nazi right wing cranks.

What has always struck me most about Second Life's "political culture," insofar as one can generalize about it, is the heavy prevalence of a "libertarian" perspective. Libertarians can be, of course, either right or left (although, in the US, the right, again, seems to predominate, particularly these days), but the particular flavour of libertarianism that is baked or hard-wired into SL is of the Silicon Valley Techno-Utopian variety which, I think, tends to be socially "left," and economically "right." Think of the semi-mythic origins of SL, in Burning Man, and the tech-start-up world of the early part of this century. (One interesting, and to my mind distasteful, manifestation of this was the early prevalence of "hacktivism" and 4Chan-like groups in SL, of which the old Woodbury University crowd was the prime exemplar.)

The economic system in SL is definitely free-market (with a few minor exceptions): caveat emptor is the rule, and there is next to no regulation of business practices, nor even much of the Linden. On the other hand, SL has been, certainly since the time I've been here, a welcoming environment for all sorts of identities, esp. LGBTQ ones. It was so long before social acceptance had become mainstream in RL America.

This is why I am going to respectfully (and affectionately) disagree with Ceka's suggestion here:

On 4/21/2018 at 4:18 PM, Ceka Cianci said:

I haven't noticed LL too political in either direction.

The libertarian biases of Second Life are hard-wired into the platform itself, as well as evident in places like Community Standards. As a Canadian social democrat and inveterate lefty myself, I've found SL to be simultaneously welcoming and congenial, and very, very alien at times.

[Luna Bliss]

On ‎4‎/‎22‎/‎2018 at 2:54 PM, ChinRey said:

I live close to the twin infohubs of Borrowdale and Waterhead with Eric Linden's wooden bridges and native American decorations. It's a really lovely piece of early SL work but I've been wondering, would he have presented the Wild West exactly that way if he had been from Texas and not California?

That depends on which part of Texas or California he came from. Not all of CA is liberal...I frequently spend time in CA and there's a conservative element in many places. Likewise, there are liberal meccas in Texas (like Austin).

[Magnek Fang]

On 4/22/2018 at 9:44 AM, Solar Legion said:

Reagan was an actor (an actual entertainer). The current mistake was a "television personality" - a "reality TV star" if you want to get technical, something that is as far removed from being an actual entertainer as one can get.

Please do not demean entertainers.

Also Regan was a state governor, which has got to be the closest thing to political entry-level job. What we got now doesn't even have that, and boy does it show.

[Ceka Cianci]

22 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

The libertarian biases of Second Life are hard-wired into the platform itself, as well as evident in places like Community Standards. As a Canadian social democrat and inveterate lefty myself, I've found SL to be simultaneously welcoming and congenial, and very, very alien at times.

I haven't really noticed their politics..For me that's a good thing..

Usually when someone is doing something right and well,it does go unnoticed..It's more a compliment to them than anything..

Edited April 26, 2018 by Ceka Cianci

[Scylla Rhiadra]

3 hours ago, Ceka Cianci said:

Usually when someone is doing something right and well,it does go unnoticed..It's more a compliment to them than anything..

Ah, but invisible to whom? Not to me: there were things about the culture, economy, and "politics" of SL that very much surprised me when I first experienced them. I suspect that this is true of many others as well.

And that's actually a pretty good thing, I think. There are "filter bubbles" in RL, just as there are social media platforms: we seldom question the assumptions and occasional absurdities of our own culture because we either accept their premises without question, or are just too used to them to even notice. 

Finding oneself a "fish out of water" in a strange political culture is useful because it forces one to at least question one's own assumptions. Ideally, too, an "alien" to a society can contribute really needed critique to it by highlighting the questionable assumptions that lie at its foundation.

Actually, a lot of really good satire works that way. Think Crocodile Dundee, but with a more probing and critical social and ideological focus.

[Ceka Cianci]

9 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Ah, but invisible to whom? Not to me: there were things about the culture, economy, and "politics" of SL that very much surprised me when I first experienced them. I suspect that this is true of many others as well.

And that's actually a pretty good thing, I think. There are "filter bubbles" in RL, just as there are social media platforms: we seldom question the assumptions and occasional absurdities of our own culture because we either accept their premises without question, or are just too used to them to even notice. 

Finding oneself a "fish out of water" in a strange political culture is useful because it forces one to at least question one's own assumptions. Ideally, too, an "alien" to a society can contribute really needed critique to it by highlighting the questionable assumptions that lie at its foundation.

Actually, a lot of really good satire works that way. Think Crocodile Dundee, but with a more probing and critical social and ideological focus.

If you go back and read my original post,you will see that I was referring  to myself and how I feel about LL and SL for me..How it feels compared to all the other social networks and medias and  so on..

I wasn't speaking for anyone  but myself..

It's a nice place to escape for some peace and quiet..

[Scylla Rhiadra]

18 minutes ago, Ceka Cianci said:

If you go back and read my original post,you will see that I was referring  to myself and how I feel about LL and SL for me..How it feels compared to all the other social networks and medias and  so on..

I wasn't speaking for anyone  but myself..

It's a nice place to escape for some peace and quiet..

Sorry, Ceka! I wasn't trying to correct you; I was merely noting how subjective the experience is, based on one's own background and context.

I don't know that I ever felt that SL was about "peace and quiet." Really, I think, I always found it pretty challenging, from all sorts of perspectives. 

I sort of like that challenge? You compare it to social media; on FB (which, to be honest, I don't use much anymore anyway), I am surrounded pretty much exclusively by like-minded people: family, friends, friends of friends, people with similar tastes and background and education. So, I guess, social media is where I find "peace and quiet," because nearly everyone I know there already agrees with me. I can nod my head approvingly at the politics and the news and the perspectives that come across my feed: they all just confirm what I already believe and feel.

Whereas SL . . . well, it's full of weird people with different ideas. Weird Americans especially. (You do know that pretty much everyone else in the world thinks your nation is a little nuts, right? In a loving, caring, friendly sort of way, of course. ). And, again, that's a good thing. It's too easy to be complacent: I want to be challenged sometimes. And occasionally a good fight is invigorating too!

[Innula Zenovka]

On 4/25/2018 at 3:46 PM, Scylla Rhiadra said:

What has always struck me most about Second Life's "political culture," insofar as one can generalize about it, is the heavy prevalence of a "libertarian" perspective

How much of this do you think is "political culture" and how much is LL taking the pragmatic (and, to my mind, prudent) decision to avoid as much as possible trying to regulate and adjudicate disputes between residents short of blatant fraud?   In most cases,  I don't think they're at all equipped to play a quasi-judicial role, and it's unfair to ask them so to do.