brodiac90

Not that I know of!

Not all child avatars are interested in parents. Some might enjoy having an aunt, uncle, godparent, grand parent etc who only checks in now and then. I'd imagine this would mainly apply to teens and more independent kids. Similarly, some families look for nannies and believe it or not, family pets who are played by real people.

1. How do you wish other people would talk with you? or even interact for that matter ... Just normally please. Say hello, talk about common interests, you don't have to do anything special or talk at all if there is nothing to talk about. 2. Do you ever wish some sims were updated to General rating, instead of just Moderate to make them feel more accepting to all? It really depends on what's on the sim. A lot of kid places are on moderate sims. Most likely because people tend to have their stores and homes on the same land and if you have a family it can effectively mean having 2 pieces of land otherwise because obviously parents may want adult furniture in their bedroom which you can't have on General land. Given the recent TOS changes though, I think we're likely to see something of a reallignment where you will see more and more kid moderate places becoming General. Similarly, some businesses on adult land may switch to moderate if they think they're losing money, but this I think will be to a lesser extent. A good solution for such businesses would be to put their PG stuff on MP, although it does make testing furniture animations on PG stuff harder. Some would say just switch to an adult avatar but the sizes don't really work.... 3. speaking of Cars I generally tend to prefer cars that are more to RL scale, but that's because I support builders who are trying to get houses and vehicles down to smaller scales and not the giant things we've had in the past. We kids have lots of toy cars so there isn't really a gap in the market, but there aren't any real cars that have things like child car seats that function like real ones which you can sit in as the car is moving. Something like that would be very cool. I'm not sure what it's like in the US but here in the UK kids tend to use child car seats until they're a certain height or around 11 depending on which comes first.

Yeah I totally get that. I mentioned that in my initial post. I just don't get some people.

That's interesting, I didn't know they aged her up but then I shouldn't be surprised since Hollywood does this all the time. They did it with Ender's Game which is one of my favourite books of all time (I discovered the author's views after the fact), as well as many others. I get they must find it hard to find decent kid actors but it really changes how the characters are perceived.

Good, because right now my 5 year old avatar wants to be a dinosaur when he grows up. Rawr!

I think there is definitely some of this going on. I think everyone does it on a subconscious level without even realising. For example, how often do people make avatars that look identical to their RL selves? Not often I'd wager. Are you really that young? That tall? That beauitifal? Isn't everyone sort of adopting a persona when they log into SL? I've heard people say that they act differently depending on what alt their using.... I think even knowing there is an adult behind the screen that people find it hard to look at a very realistic looking child avatar and not on some subconscious level treat them that way. Whether intentionally or not.

The vampire topic is an interesting one, because you can draw a lot of parallels between the kid commuity and the vampire community in SL in so far that there is quite a bit of hate for both. I know for a long time a lot of places banned vampires too, although that sort of hysteria seems to have died down compared to a few years ago. It does beg the question though, are marginalsied communities in SL generally more accepting of child avatars than mainstream ones? That's an interesting thought. @Love Zhaoying brought this up before, but the topic of kid vampire is quite fascinating to me. Would a child vampire retain their innocence and 'happy go lucky,' outlook on life or would they eventually become jaded, bitter and resentful? Would you stay like Peter Pan or end up like Homer in Near Dark? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Back to the questions I posed. 1. Who is your favourite person or persons in SL and why? My mum and dad are amazing people who make me feel incredibly loved and very special. 2. What are your top 3 best experiences in SL? Top would be any occasion or time spent with my family. Christmas is a particularly magical time. I have also loved time spent at kid summer camps like RSC 3020 and Camp Panther at HKE Elementary School. An entire week living on sim spending time with other kids and friendly adults having a blast doing crazy activites is just so much fun. Camp Panther was such a long time ago now but I still have very fond memories of and the time I spent with the camp counselors who were a ball of fun! 3. What do you think child avatars could do to improve relations between other groups and communities? I agree with @NicholasTheHufflepuffWizard that toning down the baby talk, gesture spam and diaper green text etc is probably a good thing in general, but I also think we could be more active in a number of ways. Mainly by discussing things, havng our voice heard and by showing people just how good a community we can be, although I do get that it can be quite hard to do that through all the hate. It would be nice if LL acknolwdged our existence in media etc and perhaps we could even do something like a community exhibition? 4. What do you think adult avatars and other groups could do to improve relations with child avatars? I think just keeping an open mind would be the best thing really. I get there are adults out there who have had nothing but bad experiences with child avatars, and I can totally see how you would only have a negative opinion if all you've experienced is the griefer kids / trolls who came to your adult land trying to get you into trouble. That would upset me too. I'd just say not all kids are like that but I accept a lot of people probably aren't going to change their minds. 5. The Belli Hamsters or Linden Bears? You can only pick 1 🤣 Sorry Hammies, but bear, bear bears!

So it would be a boy playing a girl who is also playing a boy....

Are also there Zombie kids? I've never met any zombie kids. Do human kids count "furry" kids as part of their community? Generally, I would say no, but that might be because in my experience furry kids don't tend to interact with people outside of the furry community. I do know of one boy who has rabbit ears and a tail but otherwise looks like a human kid. I'd say he is part of the kid community but that's more because he interacts with other kids in the kid community. I've heard lots of good things so yes it would be good!

If People ask specific questions on what it's like to be a vampire child then that would be on topic.

I agree with a lot of what you said. On a less serious note, you can't collect the Belli Hammies, they're real people! 😅

There are lots of child avatars that hate this sort of behaviour too. I really dislike it as well but I tend to keep that opinion to myself as much as possible as I really don't like to judge. I can just just about tolerate baby talk if it's in short enough doses. It really doesn't help people who use translators too or people who may speak English but not fluently enough to understand the child is speaking phonetically. Also, real children don't actually speak like that. English speaking children tend to have problems with irregular verbs and will say things like "We swimmed at the beach," rather than. "We swam at the beach," because typically in English you add the suffix ed to the root word to make it past tense, which obviously isn't the case with irregular verbs. Similarly, sentence structure tends to be less complex and the vocabularly used is usually rather simple, but it's not. "Cans yews helps mes wid dis pwease?" Shudders.

Not all child avatars have parents, fewer have parents that engage with them, and even those who do have attentive parents can't expect their parents to be around all the time like you would in RL. So if you meet a child avatar in world just going about their business and ask them where their parents are, they might take offence to that or see it as you trying to control them / where they can be. It's totally different if you're on a roleplay sim though. For example, I went and visited St Lewes RP sim yesterday by myself because my SL mom was afk. While I was there one of the teacher's asked me where my parents were. A perfectly acceptable question to ask given the situation. My reply was along the lines of. "They're there," points to park (NPCs). Which was totally fine. I imagine if I was alone as a 5 year old the teacher might have started trying to find my grownups or called the police etc. However, that was a very clearly defined RP scene. In general, I'd say just treat them like any other out of character person (minus the obviously adult stuff) unless they want to RP the situation a certain way, and even then, as I said to @Scylla Rhiadra, if you're not comfortable RPing then you don't need to. Basically we want to be treated as normally as possible and not hated upon. And if how you treat them differs publically to private, then yes, private messages that are out of character would be acceptable, although I would suggest you avoid all adult topics even in private.

Well how do you identify? I would certainly ask questions. I appreciate your contributions!

You could see if there are any child avatars who would model for you. I don't think any would mind so long as you credit their participation.

@Love Zhaoying If you feel comfortable I think it would be cool if you started a thread too. Obviously only if you feel it is right for you. Some questions from me to the other child avatars in this thread: @Madi Melodious @Lilbap @NicholasTheHufflepuffWizard @Sadvhi 1. Who is your favourite person or persons in SL and why? 2. What are your top 3 best experiences in SL? 3. What do you think child avatars could do to improve relations between other groups and communities? 4. What do you think adult avatars and other groups could do to improve relations with child avatars? 5. The Belli Hamsters or Linden Bears? You can only pick 1 🤣 I will answer these questions too but I think I will let others respond first. To the adults who have responded. Have you learned anything? If so, what? Do you have any other questions? Please don't worry about offending me. @Love Zhaoying @Scylla Rhiadra @Persephone Emerald @InnerCity Elf@Ayashe Ninetails@Ingrid Ingersoll @Alwin Alcott @Cinnamon Mistwood @Aethelwine @Bree Giffen Sorry if I missed anyone!

This is what was posted on May 2nd. Since then there has been no communication and members have had the ability to initiate chat in the group removed.

I'm in the same boat regarding Tweenster. They posted 1 notice in the group May 2nd and since then it's been radio silence which is why I've switched to Tweeneedoo since they've updated and are compliant. It's looking more and more likely that I'm going to lose years of content costing thousands.

That's a big compliment - is embarrased. You're very cool too. I need to come to one of your Crooner nights at some point. Not sure if it's my scene or not but I'm all for trying out new things. Yes, I think while not LL's intention, some people have certainly taken this as a green light to enact open season on child avatars. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- I realised I never stated in the original post that this was a ask me anything (aka AMA) style thread, probably because I didn't think every child avatar would be comfortable answering all sorts of questions. I personally don't mind people asking though. If there's any questions which are too personal or sensitive i'll simply just reply with the word 'pass,' so please don't be afraid to ask. Similarly, I just want to thank everyone who has asked questions and all the kid avatars who have contributed.

Points! That's my mum (is proud) 🧡

I think this would be fine. Most child avatars would just be happy you were talking to them. They'll get the message pretty quickly if you don't engage in any roleplay. However, in my experience, most kid avatars don't just randomly start RPing with people they don't know anyway.

That's fair enough, I have responded.

I don't mind responding, I just don't want this thread to become 'let's post pictures and judge,' since there is an entire thread already dedicated to that. Also, I'm not entirely comfortable passing judgement on someone's avatar when they haven't invited it themselves. If you insist, however, as to the picture @Ingrid Ingersoll posted, I'm honestly not sure. Could easily be 15 or 16 - the lollypop and the candy ring on the finger stood out to me. I'd say it's borderline and therefore dangerous really. I wouldn't be comfortable going to adult land with an avatar like that, regarrdless of what their profile says. "I'm 18," disclaimers don't work if your avatar doesn't look 18. The fact they feel the need to put that in their profile is probably telling.

There is a thread deciated to judging how old avatars look. You might get more reponses there.