Once again, it is perfectly ok to play a child avatar

[Luna Bliss]

Full song...guaranteed to take you on a little trip all by itself:

 

[Luna Bliss]

19 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

20 hours ago, Luna Bliss said:

Well it could, but it could also bring out some of those long-forgotten characteristics children have that are very positive and desirable.  Like wonder & curiosity, playfulness, the ability to live in the moment....and more. 

Sorry, I was meaning some adults about those wearing childlike avatars.

no worries...I don't think I was very clear myself...was just trying to express all the positive attributes of childhood ways of perceiving the world to balance out the negative characteristic you expressed.

[Eddy Vortex]

As a part-time child avatar, there ain't nothing wrong with us. The Terms of Service has already stated that we're allowed to wander around in adult rated sims as long as we're not in close proximity to x-rated activities. I (actually Greg) don't intentionally go to A-rated sims in child form, but sometimes ended up on one because I wanted to shop in a store (during a weekend sale) that happened to rent a parcel in that sim.

These trolls seem to like saying 'pedophile' a bit too much. Accusation, as is recognized in psycho-therapeutic circles, is just another form of confession. Chances of their own guilt & shame turning out to true are as good as the homophobic politician getting caught with a gay lover in a public bathroom.  They could put a movie theater out of business with all these psychological projections.

Reason and logic will not reach their dark minds. Tossing them into your block list takes less time than typing out "I know you are, but what am I?  I am rubber, you are glue, whatever you say bounce off me and sticks to you!"

[Silent Mistwalker]

On 9/22/2021 at 3:43 AM, Lewis Luminos said:

I'm 54 and still waiting for my first childhood to end... 

Well... I never said my first childhood ever ended so... 🤪🤭

[HarrisonMcKenzie]

On 9/19/2021 at 10:28 PM, Quistess Alpha said:

Well, I'm probably not your target audience, but since you opened the floor. . .

1. Do you use your child avatar all the time on SL, or just some of the time? What do you like about being a child avatar? Are there some things you dislike about it?
2. When you're a child avatar, are you always 'in character'? or do you sometimes(how often?) just be your normal (adult) self but with a child avatar representation?
3. What are the main activities you do in SL as a child avatar?
4. Not quite sure how to ask this, but is there ever any friction or dissonance caused by the fact that you (as an adult) have more mental faculties and maturity than one would expect of a person of the age your avatar represents?
5. In the real world, it is rare for anyone below a certain age to ever be unattended by a parental figure or other adult supervisor (or maybe that's just a cultural thing?). Does that ever cause problems for role-playing and exploring, and if so, how do you navigate around that?

I think that's most of the things I'm curious about. I haven't really had many run ins with child avatars.

I'm super happy to try and answer your questions.

For question 1, I do use a child avatar all the time, unless I'm going shopping in an Adult rated sim (think hair shopping or something, where I just don't want to deal with being hassled) or have a reason to be an adult. I'm a roleplayer, and the reason I play a child avatar is because I like the immersion of it. When I started SL, I didn't know how to do anything. It made sense to be a kid because kids learn new things. Now that I'm not new, being a kid gives me an excuse to go to amusement parks and otherwise just have fun. Whenever I've trying playing an adult, everyone just talks about RL and sex, and that just doesn't do anything for me.

As for things I dislike, there are a few. It can be really, really hard to buy things as a kid. I went to a store that was having a sale the other day and immediately went to the shoes section because I knew nothing else would fit. Even among the shoes, only 3 pairs fit since everything else was rigged for adult shapes. The same is true for furniture and buildings. Things can be so big that it's comical (why can't a 5th grader reach the doorknob?), yet sometimes they cannot be scaled down. As a kid, another thing that annoys me about shopping is how little there is older boy or teen fashion. A huge number of avatars in SL seem to be women, so most things are geared towards women. The same is true for kids, only with the added challenge of so many things being targeted towards babies and toddlers. It can actually be outright difficult to shop for clothes because avatar sizes among kids clothes aren't always clearly marked, or because it's just really hard to find boy clothes among all the girl and baby stuff. There's also the issue of kids being barred from so many roleplay sims, even when kids being there would make sense. We end up getting largely forced into family roleplay only, and that drives a lot of kids nuts for varying reasons.

Question 2... I'm kind of always in character. I should note though that this doesn't mean baby talk or trolling. With regards to roleplaying, I make a third distinction about being in character. When I am in SL, I'm "in character" in that I don't go around talking about sex or drugs, because that creates a cognitive dissonance. But I'm not roleplaying in part of a story at all time. This means that a lot of the time, I'm just me, except shorter and with more tailored speech (again, no sex talk). I met some people early on that played kids to avoid people hitting on them, but they still talked like adults. That weirded me out. I'm not an emulationist (where everything needs to be 100% realistic), but I do think you should play to your avatar to a certain extent.

For question 3, it's about roleplay. I go to school, attend and help run a scout troop, do family stuff, hang out with friends, play card games, and that sort of thing. I don't like clubbing, even though that's a big thing in the kid community, and I'd love to do more genre roleplay (like playing a fantasy character, or playing on a historic sim). This is ultimately what I like about playing a kid; I can enjoy myself. I just never really enjoyed myself when playing an adult. I don't have to play an adult and do adult things (whether than means talking about investing or sex content). Being a kid makes it that much easier to find things to do and have fun with.

Question 4 is an interesting one. A lot of kids have this problem (myself included). I tend to play a little mentally older than my age, and I know people who play younger. I know babies who act like noisy adults, but I know adults who act like kids too. On the roleplay side of things, it seems to be more about intention than accuracy. As long as your playing "a kid," no one seems to really get hung up on ages.

However, I do want to bring up dissociative identity disorder. I've met a lot of DID kids and this is where things can get muddy. For a lot of them, logging into SL as a kid allows them to have a body that matches their identity. So while I'm roleplaying being a kid, they actually are one (even though their body is an adult and are legally adults). Interestingly though, I sometimes see this same age sliding even with DID kids, where someone might act older or younger than their identified age. But I've never seen any friction because of it.

For question 5, that's why I picked my age. At around 5th grade, kids start getting more freedom, so it made sense that I can run around and do my own thing when not at home. It makes sense for me to go skateboarding or whatever on my own, more so than if I was 8 or 5.  But most kids don't really care about this. Babies run feral in the streets, kids are always home alone, and a lot of kids don't have or even want a family. I've seen this come up in roleplay sim rules, where they ask kids of a certain age to roleplay with an adult for the purposes of immersion, but in normal practice, everyone seems to recognize that we're all IRL adults and don't need adult supervision.

Does that answer those questions?

[purrrkitten]

If you want to play as a child avi, fine. But you can't act like it's not a little weird. With that said, it's not right that you are being harassed for it because at the end of the day anyone can have any avi they please. 

[Luna Bliss]

5 minutes ago, purrrkitten said:

If you want to play as a child avi, fine. But you can't act like it's not a little weird.

Why does it seem a little weird to you?

[purrrkitten]

18 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

Why does it seem a little weird to you?

No reason in particular. They just creep me out. 

[Luna Bliss]

9 minutes ago, purrrkitten said:

28 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

Why does it seem a little weird to you?

No reason in particular. They just creep me out. 

I'm just curious as to why it creeps you out or why it seems a little weird.  Not laying any judgement on you 

Also, how do you feel about animal avatars and such...do they also creep you out?

Personally, child avatars are fine with me and I realize they are of benefit to some people.  However, if they automatically demand that I roleplay with them (because we're supposed to care for kids, for example), I'm not okay with that.  I had that happen when I was responsible for a big event and they mercilessly distracted me from my attempts to get the thing off the ground.

Edited September 30, 2021 by Luna Bliss

[purrrkitten]

27 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

Also, how do you feel about animal avatars and such...do they also creep you out?

It depends. If it's just a normal animal, it's cute. If it's an animal that has a human dick hanging out, it's 100000000% creepy.

[Amina Sopwith]

1 hour ago, Luna Bliss said:

Why does it seem a little weird to you?

I know you didn't ask me, but you could have done, so... I find adults infantilising themselves to be a bit off-putting. I never liked it, and I've liked it even less since becoming a parent. I understand why people might like to do it and obviously I realise their right to do it in SL. And I accept that doing it in SL with a child avatar is "owning" it, and causing less aggro than adults who, in RL, expect everyone else to do life for them. But I find those people irritating and off-putting too. I had a boyfriend once, years ago, who used to do this horrible childish lower lip pout and expect me to be his mum. Lasted about five minutes, that did. Ugh.

Bottom line is, I just find adults acting like they're dependent, vulnerable children to be unappealing company, so I just leave them alone in whatever world I encounter them. They can do it but I don't have to participate. As Sid said earlier, I never met one who could do it convincingly anyway. 

[Luna Bliss]

4 hours ago, Amina Sopwith said:

I know you didn't ask me, but you could have done, so... I find adults infantilising themselves to be a bit off-putting. I never liked it, and I've liked it even less since becoming a parent. I understand why people might like to do it and obviously I realise their right to do it in SL. And I accept that doing it in SL with a child avatar is "owning" it, and causing less aggro than adults who, in RL, expect everyone else to do life for them. But I find those people irritating and off-putting too. I had a boyfriend once, years ago, who used to do this horrible childish lower lip pout and expect me to be his mum. Lasted about five minutes, that did. Ugh.

Bottom line is, I just find adults acting like they're dependent, vulnerable children to be unappealing company, so I just leave them alone in whatever world I encounter them. They can do it but I don't have to participate. As Sid said earlier, I never met one who could do it convincingly anyway. 

I can understand that.

I have this immediate response when I encounter a child, one that says I am there for them in the way they need... since they are a child.  I don't always want to feel that way as I may have other goals at that particular point in time.   Funny, even in SL I get that feeling even while knowing intellectually I don't have more power than they do...along with the resultant feelings of needing to protect them...as is the case in RL.

Edited September 30, 2021 by Luna Bliss

[Luna Bliss]

4 hours ago, Amina Sopwith said:

Bottom line is, I just find adults acting like they're dependent, vulnerable children to be unappealing company, so I just leave them alone in whatever world I encounter them.

So did all the children you've encountered in SL act in a dependent manner?   It's been mixed for me..

Some didn't want me to take care of them -- they just want to play.

Edited September 30, 2021 by Luna Bliss

[Amina Sopwith]

7 hours ago, Luna Bliss said:

So did all the children you've encountered in SL act in a dependent manner? 

I'm going back a long way, but generally yes. Not necessarily very overtly, but certainly playing on the "I am very small and young so you need to humour me in whatever way I'm angling for". 

I also never met one who could capture that quality children have whereby they are obviously innocent and unknowing, but quite often catch you out with a very profound or wise observation, or unexpectedly adult turn of phrase. Or the sense of discovery about the world without actually realising overtly that discovery is what they're doing. Or the frustration, when that occurs.

Why would they? Innocence doesn't know it's innocent, and that's why it's so hard to capture when it's a contrivance.

[So Whimsy]

Personally I like child avatars, they're adorable and fun.

What I have an issue with is the baby talk, as a non native english speaker it gives me a headache trying to descipher what they are saying

[Amina Sopwith]

48 minutes ago, So Whimsy said:

Personally I like child avatars, they're adorable and fun.

What I have an issue with is the baby talk, as a non native english speaker it gives me a headache trying to descipher what they are saying

This contrived way of writing is another reason I find it impossible to immerse myself in one of these illusions, although to be fair I can't get under this particular spell anyway. If somebody is role-playing with a particular accent, I've never seen them try to incorporate that in the typing. They might have it in a title over their head or something, and they might be using language in character (eg, particular turns of phrase), but I've never seen anyone else writing their actual pronunciation into their text. Like "parse me that glarse" if they're supposed to sound southern English.

[Luna Bliss]

3 hours ago, Amina Sopwith said:

This contrived way of writing is another reason I find it impossible to immerse myself in one of these illusions, although to be fair I can't get under this particular spell anyway.

Yeah the baby-talk can be annoying. I mean it's totally contrived, although I can see it's useful for the roleplayer to display their age. If my little grandson ever talked in such a manner though I'd be taking him to the emergency room quickly, worrying he had a brain aneurism or something.

[Zidaya Zenovka]

I just want to point out that if calling people wearing child avatars creepy isn't OK it's also not OK to call adults wearing furry avatars who just happen to have genitalia attached 'creepy'. First off the overwhelming majority of furries who wear sexualized furry avatars wear them in adult-rated sims where it belongs, and second the only difference between a furry avatar and a human one is fur. Most of us rp sapient humanoids. 

As far as child avatars I've considered making a few to represent child OC's I've created over the years. It's exactly because some people make negative assumptions about adults wearing them that I've been reluctant to. Which is a shame as I don't feel it any different from an adult writing a young adult novel where the main character is a child. If adults weren't allowed to imagine life from the perspective of a youth we wouldn't have books like The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe or Hello, God It's Me, Margaret. 

[Zidaya Zenovka]

1 hour ago, Luna Bliss said:

Yeah the baby-talk can be annoying. I mean it's totally contrived, although I can see it's useful for the roleplayer to display their age. If my little grandson ever talked in such a manner though I'd be taking him to the emergency room quickly, worrying he had a brain aneurism or something.

I've never, ever encountered someone with a child avatar who wrote like that. This seems to be a common stereotype spread by people who are either unfamiliar with the community or misinformed. Most 'children' I've met in SL sounded like most kids I've known IRL. They're either shy or silly or-like a lot of kids these days-a lot more intelligent and experienced than people give them credit for. 

I know when I was eight years old I was reading Isaac Asimov's Foundation series and Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy. I would discuss their themes with my reading teacher and get pretty in-depth. Later-when I was around twelve-I was corresponding secretary for my schools malacological society (shell club). I wrote letters to the governors of every state asking them what their state shell was. Eventually I helped our little club get the Quahog voted state shell (I lived in Rhode Island). 

My point is kids don't always have to talk like stereotypical little kids to sound like actual young kids. 

[Amina Sopwith]

5 minutes ago, Zidaya Zenovka said:

 I don't feel it any different from an adult writing a young adult novel where the main character is a child.

I see an enormous difference between writing a child character in a story, and presenting oneself as a child with the intention, even expectation, that people around you will indulge the fantasy and interact with you as one.

[Luna Bliss]

8 minutes ago, Zidaya Zenovka said:

As far as child avatars I've considered making a few to represent child OC's I've created over the years. It's exactly because some people make negative assumptions about adults wearing them that I've been reluctant to. Which is a shame as I don't feel it any different from an adult writing a young adult novel where the main character is a child. If adults weren't allowed to imagine life from the perspective of a youth we wouldn't have books like The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe or Hello, God It's Me, Margaret. 

I hope I didn't say anything to discourage you.

Portraying a child in SL can be magical -- it can help us reconnect with very positive aspects to our personality often lost as adulthood progresses.  Playfulness, spontaneity, being in the present moment.

Not to mention those who never got to experience these gifts as children due to abusive or busy parents who disallowed them, yet in SL we can get a taste of what we lost and it can become a permanent part of our self in RL too.

You really can reconnect and retrieve the lost beauty of childhood via roleplaying.

[Zidaya Zenovka]

Just now, Amina Sopwith said:

I see an enormous difference between writing a child character in a story, and presenting oneself as a child with the intention, even expectation, that people around you will indulge the fantasy and interact with you as one.

Care to explain? Because when one writes and publishes a children's book one is-to a large degree-expecting both children and the adults raising them to indulge in fantasy with you. Maybe you're not expecting them to roleplay with you like you're a kid but you are asking people to engage in their sense of whimsy. That aspect of it is no different from what child roleplayers in Second Life are asking others to do. It's harmless whimsy meant to elicit a sense of child-like wonder or at the very least help the roleplayer perhaps escape from some of the stresses and anxieties that are so often attached to the times when one has to do the whole adult thing. 

[Silent Mistwalker]

6 minutes ago, Zidaya Zenovka said:

I've never, ever encountered someone with a child avatar who wrote like that.

I have a few times over the years. There was one that never would speak to me like an adult, even in IMs, so the association didn't last long.

[Zidaya Zenovka]

10 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

I hope I didn't say anything to discourage you.

Portraying a child in SL can be magical -- it can help us reconnect with very positive aspects to our personality often lost as adulthood progresses.  Playfulness, spontaneity, being in the present moment.

Not to mention those who never got to experience these gifts as children due to abusive or busy parents who disallowed them, yet in SL we can get a taste of what we lost and it can become a permanent part of our self in RL too.

You really can reconnect and retrieve the lost beauty of childhood via roleplaying.

Nah, you're cool. For me that last bit has been what the furry thing has been about. While I rp a character my own age (47), I still engage in quite a bit of fanciful whimsy. When I was a kid I was raised by someone who expected me to behave like a miniature adult. I wasn't allowed to play with others much, I was kept from my birth mother and sister save for on rare occasions, and for the most part I never really had the kind of childhood you see in so many films and TV movies or read about in books. 

While I've always been reluctant to call it abuse it kind of was. So I can see why someone would want to get to experience at least some of how it feels to be a kid, even if it's in a limited fashion. I don't know if it's something I could do just due to how much stigma there is around adults interacting with kids in anything other than an 'adult being a responsible adult behaving responsibly around them, and not doing anything childish or child-like lest they be considered some kind of groomer' way. 

That's the whole issue, really, and what this thread's OP seems to be dealing with. Everyone just assumes if you're an adult rp'ing a kid or even just interacting with a kid on their level you must be some kind of creep. It's really unfair-not just to the adults (whether they're rp'ing or not) but to kids as well. I think it's why a lot of adults end up misjudging kids or not respecting them the way they ought to because people are too afraid to. So we end up expecting them to grow up to fast to better fit in with adults instead of letting them develop at their own pace, and maybe in a way where the adults they become aren't as close-minded as the ones that came before. 

Edited October 1, 2021 by Zidaya Zenovka

[Theresa Tennyson]

10 minutes ago, Amina Sopwith said:

I see an enormous difference between writing a child character in a story, and presenting oneself as a child with the intention, even expectation, that people around you will indulge the fantasy and interact with you as one.

Yeah, I can't imagine how people wandering around imaginary electronic landscapes and encountering avatars that could be any type of beast could imagine themselves as characters in a story.