brodiac90

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.

How do I respond to child avatars? If you're not comfortable engaging then you don't have to do anything. Most child avatars are used to being hated upon so just being ignored would actually be an improvement to be honest. I'm not joking, the amount of times I've just been minidng my own business and someone said aloud something to the effect of, "Ewww a child avatar...." if I had a linden for every time that had happened I would be rich. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ you kind of develop a thick skin.

I simply the question to - how do child avatars speak? This really depends on the child avatar in question. People like @Madi Melodious I hope she won't mind me saying tend to speak like an adult. You do find quite a fair few younger kids engage in 'baby talk,' which you can either tolerate or hate. It's not really based on how real children speak but more how people think they do.... Me personally, I tend to speak more like an adult although there are times when I'm feeling particularly safe and happy that I will engage in a sort of rhyming cadence. For example, my favourite food, salmon, becomes Sammy Salmon etc, or I might say foody food to add emphasis.

How often does a Child Avatar need to change their diapers? I'm not sure whether you mean the mesh object itself or the RP of the diaper being changed. If it's the latter then same as RL. I don't have much experience of this though as my avatar is too old for diapers.

Have you ever encountered a real child playing in SL and what have you done or would do if you did? I've never met a real child in SL - not knowingly anyway. The closest I have come I suppose is hearing kids in the background on voice but they're obviously not involved with SL itself. What would I do if I encountered a child on SL? Depends how old they are and where they are. If they're over 16 and on G land then as far as I'm aware that's allowed. If they were anywhere else and I knew they were under 16 then I'd report them. That would most likely be Moderate since I wouldn't even be on adult.

Are there any products you struggle to find but wish existed I'd say there's a lack of kid furniture in general. We have PG options but sometimes these are just not appopriate as they're often just adult furniture with the most adult animations ripped out. There's a company called AR Status who make very good kid furnture and a few others but not loads. There could certainly be more. As for vehicles, I've never seen one sold with the option to have child car seats built into them. You can certainly buy child car seats, and Starries even has an option for one on the HUD, but those are more for out of the car. I'm talking about one that it actually built into the car so that when you sit in it, you can be sat in the seat as the car moves etc. I'm sure you could do it with a mod car and mod child seat but it's way beyond my building / scripting abilities. Toy vehicles though, there are loads! As for diaper covers and diapers, I think there probably more diapers aimed at adult avatars in SL than there are for kids, which is ironic really since it's usually the other way around in real life.

Are some child avatars always in character? It really depends on the child avatar. Me personally I probably manage about a 50/50 split. It's not really a conscious decision we kind of just go with the flow of things. When I first log on we usually spend a bit of time catching up with each other's real lives and then we get into roleplay and hanging out. Maybe before I log off we talk about upcoming plans and then have 'tuck in time,' before bed etc. It really depends on what we're doing. I very rarely ever voice though as it's a big immersion breaker. I usually only tend to do that if it's a really serious or complicated topic where typing just doesn't work.