What we can and cannot control, and how it affects us.

[kali Wylder]

I'm feeling philosophical this morning and it occurred to me after trying and failing to quote someone in a closed thread, that I had something to say that could be generalized and applied to so many aspects about life in and out of SL.  

It seems like there is an increasing need to control everything and everyone. We get peeved by non conformity.  Become aware of something, don't like it and it's got to go.  "The existence of Bots must be forbidden by LL.",  "We've got to roll back the clock to 1950",  "there ought to be a law against...",  "we need more dress codes and more stringent rules governing behavior."

Whatever happened to Live and let live? Xenophobia is running rampant everywhere these days.  Is it because with rapid communications the world has gotten so much smaller?  Is it a side effect of coming out the other side of the pandemic?  

 

[EliseAnne85]

9 minutes ago, kali Wylder said:

"We've got to roll back the clock to 1950",  "there ought to be a law against...",  "we need more dress codes and more stringent rules governing behavior."

I've never heard anyone say we need to roll back the clock to 1950!   But, in some ways, since the overturn of Roe Vs. Wade, some of what you are saying might be true.  It does seem, at times, we are going backwards.  

At the heart of it all would be a dissatisfaction with "God-mode" in SL, government in RL, or one could say rules in general.  My philosophy here in SL is that I am not a LL police.  I have never reported anything.  It's up to LL to police their own business.  I don't want to be involved.

As far as rl, there is a lot of name-calling on Twitter which was getting a bit toxic.  Twitter is full of trolls, Elon even said so.  That name-calling stuff I don't feel is right but it is out of my control, so I use Twitter sparingly.  What we can control is ourselves.  

[Nick0678]

Nah we had a civil war over here back then, i don't want to experience 1950.

[Cinnamon Mistwood]

As far as SL is concerned, being intolerant makes your world very small.  There are as many different personalities and opinions as there are avatars.  Perhaps I'm just being passive in allowing other people to think and act in any way they want without challenging much of it, but even I have some rules about behavior.

I will give this thread some thought today and revisit later.

[Rolig Loon]

There's some truth in the strange "law" that says "The lower the stakes, the more people will argue." We somehow expect that the big things in life will be out of our control, so we moan and grumble but we don't waste as much time yelling about them as we do about the small stuff. When some people don't get the right change at the coffee shop or someone else gets to a parking space first, they get all bent out of shape. We ought to be able to control the little things; when we can't, we lose our tempers.

I see that happen here in SL a lot. People get "cheated" because they paid L$100 for a shoddy product (L$100 is all of about 40 cents!). They whine because they don't like someone else being able to see them. They lose all sense of proportion about small things instead of just getting on with life. I'm not surprised, I guess, but a lot of it does make me just shake my head and wonder what the big deal is.

[Love Zhaoying]

I cannot control what dumb things people post on the Forums!

I can, theoretically, control my response.

This tension (between my reaction and "should I respond") affects me depending on my mood, and how deeply entrenched I am on the Forum that day.

This example applies to a lot of stuff in life.

[Ceka Cianci]

If I can control the on and off switch, that's most times good enough and best for me..

 

 

[kali Wylder]

In SL I can choose who and what I want to see.  That's enough for me. I'm a big fan of derendering things that offend me.  No need to complain, just right click and make it disappear.  If I don't like the music, I turn the sound off and play my own music.  If I'm shopping in a crowded venue I select see friends only.  Someone's gesturbating? Mute 'em. Somebody ranting about something in the forum?  I don't have to read it.  

 

[Love Zhaoying]

28 minutes ago, Ceka Cianci said:

If I can control the on and off switch, that's most times good enough and best for me..

It can be fun to sit there and either passive-aggressively, and/or obsessive-compulsively switch something on/off on/off on/off no/ffo of/fon ff/ono..

[Ceka Cianci]

21 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

It can be fun to sit there and either passive-aggressively, and/or obsessive-compulsively switch something on/off on/off on/off no/ffo of/fon ff/ono..

Ya, but I could shut it off and go and do something even more fun.. hehehehe

[EliseAnne85]

1 hour ago, kali Wylder said:

In SL I can choose who and what I want to see.  That's enough for me. I'm a big fan of derendering things that offend me.  No need to complain, just right click and make it disappear.  If I don't like the music, I turn the sound off and play my own music.  If I'm shopping in a crowded venue I select see friends only.  Someone's gesturbating? Mute 'em. Somebody ranting about something in the forum?  I don't have to read it.  

 

Yeah, pretty much this.  I *chose* to leave Twitter.  If something is toxic, it's easy on the internet to move on.   It's not always that simple with things that are toxic in our real life, unfortunately.   But, it's LL's job to choose to do something or not to do something about something.  However, they gave us some controls to help such as de-render being one.

I rarely have de-rendered stuff but now, if I do, I don't even need to choose temporary or permanently, all I have to do is choose don't re-render what I have de-rendered in the preferences section.  So, de-rendered stuff isn't going to re-render in my life.  But, for me, that's very rare.  And, it's a bit sad too because it's permanent and that it had to come to that, even.  Permanent elimination.   But, still, I say, that's the way it is.   

[animats]

There are people loudly insisting that the Metaverse needs to be tightly controlled. Here's an academic paper out of U.C. Berkeley - "A Secure and Equitable Metaverse". They demand heavy censorship. Fortunately, they haven't discovered Second Life yet.

What most academic critics don't get is that big virtual worlds are not broadcast media. We don't have "followers" or 'retweeting". Space is what keeps everything from being in the same place.  In Second Life, the annoyance radius of a jerk is about 100 meters. It's hard to be annoying beyond the shout and draw distance. Anyone who affects a larger area is clearly griefing. Since SL is about the size of Los Angeles, jerks are a local problem. On their own parcels, owners have enough authority to deal with jerks. This is why, as I've said before, Second Life doesn't need an army of low-paid outsourced censors armed with ban hammers. Both Facebook and Roblox have exactly that - Facebook, because they're a broadcast medium, and Roblox, because their average user is in middle school.

Someone with a background in sociology should write this up for publication, to counter the loud voices demanding censorship. I have the wrong credentials; my degree is in computer science.

[Paul Hexem]

The real issue is corporate fear of bad PR.

Based on most of the original rules in SL, I suspect LL wouldn't ban much of anything that's not crashing computers or regions- things that affect concurrency numbers. Everything they've "banned" has been in pursuit of that or fear of bad PR on Twitter, it seems like.

[Bree Giffen]

Everyone in this thread is writing their own view of this topic which is  not necessarily what the OP is talking about. I propose the OP impose some kind of control on this thread to keep everyone on the same subject... like in the 50s. 

[Cinnamon Mistwood]

I think the issue for me is knowing we each have a way we live our Second Life.  I may decide that I don't like something, and I don't want to see it, hear it, read it, or have it around me.  There is nothing wrong with having personal standards and boundaries and there are tools for me to customize and control my experience.  

I think the problem is that some want to control what others see, hear, read, or have around.  I don't want someone else deciding what I am allowed to experience.  There is an old meme that I occasionally see that says something like "Something is against my beliefs, so I can't do it."  Fine. That is very different than "Something is against my beliefs, so you can't do it."

I cancel things from my life all the time but would never make that decision for someone else.

[Love Zhaoying]

42 minutes ago, Nalates Urriah said:

There is so much happening these days the information blizzard is nearly impossible to see through. Its the can't see the forest for trees sort of thing. And we see the results in SL and everywhere. Fortunately within SL we can pretty much ignore those becoming "True Believers", unless they are Lindens. So far users remain relatively free of the oppression being experienced in other parts of life.

Have you noticed that among SL residents many have the same need to control and general social beliefs no matter which country they live in? While there certainly are differences by nationality and ethnicity, does it seem odd that within months nearly the entire world adopted many similar beliefs and decided to restrict freedom of movement and speech? Only a couple of countries disagreed with the other 193 and avoided lock-downs. And even the Lindens decided here on their forums we should only discuss things directly related to SL?

What could cause changes so deep they even begin to appear in our games? Do you believe these are just unrelated coincidental events? On this kind of scale? Seems unlikely.

This pandemic is not the first. But it is the first time freedom loving people were stepped on by totalitarian governments that were supposedly democratic republics to this extent.

Why is non-conformity becoming such a bad thing? Wasn't the liberal, progressive ideology big on diversity? What happened? Suddenly the former pro-diversity people are all into cancel culture... In SL we have diversity because we are a multi-national, multi-ethnicity group. Yet you see this broad spectrum of people doing the same things and reacting, often violently, to anyone that dares challenge their thinking and diverting from conformist thinking. Try visiting the philosophical groups in SL and challenging their thinking. I thought they would be into honest debate and tolerant of diverse ideas, capable of defending their thinking in civil debate in the pursuit of truth. Nope. I consider these people the epitome of SL's cultural lock-step thinkers.

For decades the move has been to "pass a law" to control people... the "there ought to be a law..." people which is basically a fascist mentality. It is also a departure from the ideas of freedom, duty, and responsibility. In SL we see it manifest as people encourage the Lindens to make things illegal (against TOS) or impossible via system restrictions which the Lindens will enforce. Few fight for or stand for creative and social freedom in SL.

Xenophobia... racism, gender bias, and more... are these really increasing? Or are these ideas of increase being promoted? When I came in in 2008 and wore a dark skin I got a few racial digs. But literally none in the last 3 years or more. Have you or your friends become more xenophobic in recent years? What is actually going on? What do you see in SL? How do you know what is or isn't representative of the whole of SL or the RL world?

Live and let live is a freedom idea. Freedom of speech is part of that. Yet our speech in the SL forum is limited to a very narrow area. The Twitter Email releases show the American government is/was heavily involved in censoring information. Why would the FBI, DHS, & CIA of a democratic republic have so many people that want to control speech? Is this the same need for control you see appearing in SL?

Are you starting to see some of the forest?

Whatever makes the news...

SL manages to stay out of the news, somehow, except in comparison to the wannabe's.  Jealous, the lot of them.

 

[LittleMe Jewell]

3 hours ago, animats said:

There are people loudly insisting that the Metaverse needs to be tightly controlled. Here's an academic paper out of U.C. Berkeley - "A Secure and Equitable Metaverse". They demand heavy censorship.

Eeeeek

 

 

 

7 hours ago, kali Wylder said:

"We've got to roll back the clock to 1950"

The 50s were awesome...... well some of the clothes & hair styles anyway, and some of the music (when that dangerous rock & roll stuff started to take over)

 

 

[Dyna Mole]

A quick reminder while this interesting conversation is still young:   I know it's not easy to separate SL from RL, but please try to keep the focus on SL here.

[kali Wylder]

5 hours ago, Cinnamon Mistwood said:

I think the issue for me is knowing we each have a way we live our Second Life.  I may decide that I don't like something, and I don't want to see it, hear it, read it, or have it around me.  There is nothing wrong with having personal standards and boundaries and there are tools for me to customize and control my experience.  

I think the problem is that some want to control what others see, hear, read, or have around.  I don't want someone else deciding what I am allowed to experience.  There is an old meme that I occasionally see that says something like "Something is against my beliefs, so I can't do it."  Fine. That is very different than "Something is against my beliefs, so you can't do it."

I cancel things from my life all the time but would never make that decision for someone else.

"the problem is that some want to control what others see, hear, read, or have around" (Highlighting mine) I think that you nailed it Cinn.  Everyone needs to have some control or choice of what they want to experience, nobody needs to have the right to inflict that control over someone else's experience.

[Coffee Pancake]

Censorship is not bad on it's own, especially when it is used to remove content that undermines the viability of  the platform as a whole. SL doesn't allow people to simulate CSAM or have NAZI dance parties for more than just the obvious and simplistic reasons of "CSAM and NAZIS bad". Such content applies negative pressure to the health of the social whole.

Outside of some broad acceptable content & behavior guidelines, the best solution is one that allows everyone the space to choose there own comfort levels.

However, this presents a huge potential for culture clash that inevitably invites push back and division. We have had this in SL between different cultures (Furrys vs Gor being the funniest everyone is likely familiar with), but this tribal wall is repeated over and over right down personal social circle level. Friction will always be present and it's not something we're well equipped to deal with. We are not taught how growing up, and in our daily lives we instinctively work to minimize the friction, either by trying to fit in or by leaving (often at great difficulty or personal cost).

Part of what makes SL unique, precious and delicate is that social community isn't homogeneous.

This is not a place for everyone, and were it made for everyone, no-one would find anything of interest.

 

The biggest problem, as with RL, is there will always be a laser focused vocal minority doing everything in their power to exploit the paradox of the tolerance. We are fortunate that SL, unlike Twitter, is not seen as a space worth having such a turf war.

 

In short, creating a space that allows community to thrive and grow it is no less complex in a virtual space than it is in our real lives. It is to the determent of these forums and platform as a whole that such discussions are now undesirable here. But make no mistake, deciding the social rules that allow a space to flourish is absolutely politics.

[Nick0678]

4 minutes ago, kali Wylder said:

"the problem is that some want to control what others see, hear, read, or have around"

Are you talking about government agencies , the media , WEF and stuff like that

or just the usual online folks who can't even name 3 countries in south east asia without google?

[kali Wylder]

19 minutes ago, Nick0678 said:

Are you talking about government agencies , the media , WEF and stuff like that

or just the usual online folks who can't even name 3 countries in south east asia without google?

None of the above.  I'm talking about people in SL, the ones that barge in and start threads about something that riled them up and they want LL to do something about it. Like banning bots or stopping landowners from making their own rules about who can do whatever on their land, or wanting to make rules about who can fly over their land or how tall your avatar should be.  

The same desire to control other people in SL that is also manifested in RL but as Dyna Mole gently reminded us, we need to focus on SL here.

[Nick0678]

Oh OK those are boring.

[Theresa Tennyson]

1 hour ago, kali Wylder said:

None of the above.  I'm talking about people in SL, the ones that barge in and start threads about something that riled them up and they want LL to do something about it. Like banning bots or stopping landowners from making their own rules about who can do whatever on their land, or wanting to make rules about who can fly over their land or how tall your avatar should be.  

The same desire to control other people in SL that is also manifested in RL but as Dyna Mole gently reminded us, we need to focus on SL here.

 

1 hour ago, Nick0678 said:

Oh OK those are boring.

They're also usually completely ineffective. That's especially the case for the threads that are meant to say, "XYZ Resident/XYZcorp is a horrible avatar/business! Moomph!," which almost invariably end up by just making the original poster look bad.

[EliseAnne85]

8 hours ago, Paul Hexem said:

The real issue is corporate fear of bad PR.

Based on most of the original rules in SL, I suspect LL wouldn't ban much of anything that's not crashing computers or regions- things that affect concurrency numbers. Everything they've "banned" has been in pursuit of that or fear of bad PR on Twitter, it seems like.

If I can add some things about "bad pr", not addressing your post specifically.  But, the problem on Twitter, I read, is the bots and trolls are impersonating celebrities and companies and giving out false information to make the celebrity or company look bad.  What I read, that Elon Musk wants to do, is to make all celebrity and business accounts have a monthly fee in order to know it's the real company or celebrity.  Impersonating a celebrity or a company on Social Media, I believe, is already a crime in the real world.  

LL seems to allow us a lot of freedom of expression and, imo, a very small part of SL walks on a thin tightrope of just going too far.  For me, it's the toddler looking avatar faces on the fully grown woman's body that is going to extremes.  However, I am not getting involved on a personal level.  It just bothers me from time to time as some of it is bloody, violent and frankly portraying child abuse.   There is no happy medium between me and that other than to just walk away and avoid as best I can because as, I said above, I am not LL police.  I have a busy SL and RL.  However, I feel I should have the right to express my view on that matter under freedom of speech.   And, am I going to go all gung-ho and take a stance to have those types of avatars banned.  No.  And, the reason is that I have my own life and it's not my responsibility or problem to deal with it.  I am here for my pleasure, not to be police person.

Edited December 16, 2022 by EliseAnne85