Amanda Crisp

Happy Tuesday Hippie!

while singing opera on her

and who are probably misconstrued

Unfortunately, some of the factors driving long-term (since 2005) Residents away from SL lie outside Linden Lab’s ability to influence. LL seems incapable of dealing with stalkers, griefers and semi-professional “Social Bomb Throwers” - and people eventually lose patience and go elsewhere. LL has also taken no effective action to incentivize the SL Roleplay community (formerly a Big Deal for SL) - and RPers are known for being willing to dump $ on the in-world economy on avatars, props, land rentals and other gadgets to build their perfect Character. Personally, I stay here because my Partner is heavily invested here. She enjoys DJing and helping to keep a night-spot going; and I enjoy and admire her :-) I’m here for her; not because LL has really -earned- what I invest in Tier each month and on my annual Premium fee.

It seems that Norman Lear can be given credit for using an unpleasant role to shine light on a more noble purpose, but I cannot :-) We are laughing -at- the mindset being depicted; not gleefully celebrating stupidity.

You keep missing the function of Roleplay :-) Storytelling is not intended to convert anyone to any belief; it is intended to tell a story.... .....where the bad people lose in the end :-)

To clarify, the thrust of my thoughts about Roleplay Is that by portraying a character whose role it is to behave badly, I drive plot for the other folks whose characters oppose me :-) When I take on a character (that’s called “acting” by the way) my job is to portray that character, even when I and the other players are laughing in IMs to one another over what a complete piece of garbage I am portraying In Character. I provide an accessible villain and they get to exercise their heroic muscles and literary talents opposing me. When that story-arc completes; then one of them gets to be the Mean Person next time :-) That makes me a racist ? Carrol O’Connor was a racist for portraying Archie Bunker? Tangentenally, it’s very cathartic for me when I’m not playing the heavy - to be able to Roleplay the act of dealing with bad behavior much more directly than our sensitive society deems “correct”. If the other character is being an evil bastage; you can tell them that and then play through an attempt to discourage their evilness. In RL (real life) in the business world, dealing with bad behavior takes time, paperwork and lawyers - roleplaying spray-painting the rich bad-guy’s Mercedes is rather fun compared to that :-) Roleplay is escapism :-) So I contend that you are way off base to call me a racist :-) You are of course entitled to your own opinion :-)

One key component on governmental influence on private expression depends on whether there is an instrument in place that specifically makes free expression more difficult to attack than with a mere 51% majority vote. Constitutional monarchies or Republics might have such things written into their “ground rules” to protect the privilege of dissent or even Provocative Art. One expression that I have heard over the years that exemplifies this concept is; “You are committed to freedom of expression when someone says something that makes you furious; and yet you are willing to defend their privilege of saying it.” Something similar was attributed to Voltaire / Francois-Marie Arouet :-) Its one of the harder concepts to live, and unfortunately many in my homeland no longer bother to try.

The advantage of Roleplay mirroring the actual dynamic tensions in society can be measured in this way; It allows people to develop coping mechanisms for those selfsame social tensions that do not involve “run and hide from the thing that bothers me”. For persons like myself who daily deal with a certain level of what people like to call “PTSD”, Roleplay can even be therapeutic as it provides a safe outlet to “game out” responses to stressors in a virtual environment. After all, within my own head I can’t hide from what bothers me - so I had to learn to cope. Lastly, the environment must be taken into consideration. Roleplay sims are privately owned and players spend upwards of $20 on average just to build an avatar for play. Everyone is there voluntarily to participate in writing a story based on the theme of the sim. Should someone with no interest in helping to develop a recreational story be able to dictate what story can and cannot be told?

I tend to classify sex-centric play more as fetishistic sexplay than Roleplay (even though it involves playing a role). Unfortunately, over 12 years in SL I have seen more than one “Roleplay is evil” campaign where story-based Roleplay was lumped in with the sexplayers and everyone received a morally - indignant verbal shaming. Story Based Roleplay May well include erotic content, but it is not the purpose of it.

As a general response (not to this post specifically) to those who have voiced concern over SL role play sims where occasionally people RP behaving Badly and doing Very Bad Things, I would pose the following question; ”How much fun would an action movie be if the Bad Guy never did anything that gave the Hero a chance to be Heroic?” Roleplay Sims have had to resort to extreme measures just to keep someone playing “the Heavy” so that plot lines have an easily identifiable Bad Guy. I was actually working as a sim manager one place where we took turns playing Bad Guy on our alts - just so the majority of people who wanted Action had Something To Do. If it’s roleplay, then someone has to play the negative stereotyped role.....and, as most people involved were not Bad Guys at heart - their presentation of gang bangers, thugs and prostitutes probably seemed a little formulaic or hokey. Lack of people willing to do this has been slowing killing RP in SL, as has the judgemental stance of many outside the RP community towards Players who undertake to play the In Character Heavy so others have a Bad Guy To Provide the Action of the story. Are there people in Non-Roleplay situation acting out badly about race or gender? Sure. My experience in RP sims however, has been that most of what people see there is part of Story - but to really see that, you have to understand the nature if freeform SL Roleplay....

On A Hollywood mogul’s libido

And spewing grease globs hysterically

Generally, no one forces anyone to participate in a role play sim, to spend money building an avatar that fits “character” or so spend time developing a character in RP. Participation is voluntary and Story is what the players are there to create (except the ones looking for sex). Most people get their perception of other parts of the world from Hollywood and most RP sims are evolved from those same sources. You can blame the sim, or you can blame Diverse and Tolerant Hollywood for perpetuating negative stereotypes...... Why else is it big news when a movie or TV show presents a “strong woman”, an upwardly mobile minority character or an LGBT character who isn’t emotionally damaged or a sexual predator ? RL has plenty of positive examples of those people, it’s only -news- in Hollywood - when they present one; which is the shaper of how many perceive the world.

Wearing an orange sports bra

because the hairless rabbit griefers

It occurs to me that this really isn’t limited to Race. I have been missing out on a whole, entire thing to be Offended about......-sarscasm- By birth, I come from the Southwestern USA and have lived much of my life in the South. If I were to believe the way Sotherners and Southern Women are portrayed by people in many role play sims and on the grid in general; that would be as follows; “Racist, homophobic, baby-on-my-hip, get-in-the-kitchen, uneducated “white trash”, very likely to marry my cousin, consider possum a culinary delight and be the victim of spousal abuse” Since I come from the south-WEST I also qualify for cowgirl memes.... Reality is that I hear crap about southerners in SL that -might- have been appropriate a century ago; and I largely just let it go by. If someone wants to put them self at a disadvantage by under-estimating me......too bad for them :-) If someone is so narrow as to buy into that stuff, I’m better off without them in my social circle :-) So I’ve been missing out on tons of butt-hurt; and I have no plans to start catching up. SL is the realm of imagination, there are plenty of Imaginings I can pick from - so I choose not to fixate on the negative ones.

Oh, there is plenty of up-tightness about THAT too :-) Just look at all the “voice verified” blurbs in people’s profile info..... You’d think this was Second FaceBook or something....

I once encountered someone who was trying to shame people whose avatars did not match their RL racial demographic; they called it Racial Play-Acting and cultural appropriation and were quite indignant about it. I tried to politely educate them that they were shaming people who were filling Non-Player-Character roles in our RP sim, because we had no one PLAYING a Chinese scientist or a Colombian Politician.....but they were pretty invested in the notion that SL should always match RL. People like that confuse me....

and Colonel Sanders wept bitterly

Erupt with flaming, furry chickens

Weekend celebrations at the Keen household.....

When you try to walk through a door, and something prevents you.......you have been blocked :-)

It was pretty freaky, especially as I was working at the kind of place where we were expected to be "normal and upstanding" people :-) I can FAKE that in RL pretty well, but its not me......... He finally realized that I didn't need or WANT saving from my strange lifestyle, but it was a hard sell because I look so damn NORMAL :-)

I try to keep my RL firewalled from SL. I do have other social media related to my SL avatar, but that doesn’t overlap to RL. Once, when a (clueless) friend from both RL and SL accidentally leaked my identity to someone in SL - they promptly went “RL Stalker” on me and flowers started showing up at my RL workplace from someone I barely knew in SL. Ever since then, I have been leery. I’m always at work in RL unless I’m home and either asleep or in SL - so you might say I prefer my partner of 12+ years and friends here to RL anyway :-) I can’t log out of RL when people get tedious :-D