AyelaNewLife

I don't actually have too much of a problem with the pricing changes. It's part of Linden Lab's medium-term vision to move some of the upkeep of Second Life from a small number of landowners and onto the wider population. Sure, that makes things more expensive for me, but I understand the reasons why so I'm fine with it. Three things I have issues with though: Removing the quarterly payment option, and drastically reducing the discount for the grandfathered quarterly accounts. I don't see why they would do this. Quarterly payment options are a pretty common staple of every subscription-based game out there, and they're not removing annual subscriptions... this one is just a head scratcher. Reducing the offline IM/group membership cap because "our backend is bad and we haven't touched it in 15 years" is a garbage justification. They could have duct taped on a lazy IRC/Jabber setup when SL was in its infancy, let alone any of the superior options currently available. If groups are causing too much backend strain due to massively outdated tech, then LL should fix it. I'd also prefer that the stipend rises in line with the premium account fee increase. Right now I pay $5 for the stipend and $4.50 for the other premium features (less on longer term payment plans); that's rising to $7 for the "other features". $2.50 a month for 10 more group slots. Wow, such value. 350L per week comes out at ~$6, or half the premium fee, which keeps the premium account fee at roughly half-lindens and half-features.

Intentionally refusing to even consider any perspective other than your own is being wilfully blind.

This perfectly illustrates the difference (as I see it, at least) between the "don't speak to me unless you're fully mesh" types and someone like me, to whom visuals do matter. You look fantastic in those shots, your avatar clearly is the result of a great deal of care and attention, and you're not just another Ken doll - your avatar reflects who you are. And that's fantastic.

tl:dr

I'd be lying if I tried to claim that appearance didn't matter to me. It absolutely does. I'm a fairly visual creature, I identify quite strongly with my avatar, and a visual connection between the two avatars forms an important part of most close bonds I've formed with others here. But it's not a black-and-white hard requirement, I'm never going to refuse to reply to someone simply because I don't adore their appearance. I've got friends that I've never actually seen inworld, only chatted with in IM windows, and that lack of visual chemistry didn't "get in the way" or anything. Of course, a "good appearance" is entirely subjective. It's not something you can account for with a couple of rules about mesh or brand names. A good number of fairly popular mesh body/head brands are, in my personal opinion, in the "kill it with fire" section of bad taste. Other people will adore that look. Plus as someone who wears a mesh head not produced by The Brand That Shalt Not Be Named, I am fully aware that body parts are nothing more than tools, and it's what you do with those tools that matters. So yeah, anyone that openly has requirements of wearing x brand in order to speak to them not only has their head so far up their own ass that they can see daylight, but it's also unlikely to actually work well as an "attractiveness filter". On the other hand, every single time I've seen someone say (in conversation or profile) that mesh avatars are "all style and no substance", without exception they have quickly demonstrated that their avatar is the most attractive thing about them. There's a massive difference between having personal preferences and being openly judgemental and acting all holier-than-thou, regardless of which side of this "debate" you're on.

A combination of nurture and nature, of course. Exactly how much of the difference can be put down to biology and how much is caused by our culture is both debatable, and varies pretty significantly from society to society and over time. But even if we could eliminate every single aspect of gendering that comes from the culture we live in, those biological factors will still cause a difference between men and women at the population level. That's the thing to remember about gender differences - they're an average, nothing more. Most of the core psychological differences between men and women work on a "60-40" split; so if you were to take a random man and a random woman from the population, and check to see which is more aggressive (as an example), the man will be the more aggressive of the two 60% of the time. That's a vast amount of overlap. And so while the statement "men are more aggressive than women" is true, there's still huge numbers of women that are more aggressive than your average man. Because it's all just averages. What's crucial is that we shape our society to fully accept and appreciate those that don't follow the typical gender behavioural patterns - because there's millions and millions of them. Aggressive women, agreeable men, female engineers and plumbers, male nurses and 'househusbands'; they might not follow the 'typical' expectations of their gender, but that shouldn't matter one bit.

I think a lot of people forget that group notices count towards the offline IM cap. They see a note about sending notecards and assume it's a "haha yes I am so popular and so inundated with praise from my adoring fans that my inbox overflows, woe is me!", when in reality it's more of a "if I don't clear my notices daily then I drown in DJs sending 4 notices per slot". Even with premium I don't even last two days before getting capped, with 0 actual IMs. If I disable notices from a certain photography group, that time doubles does a better job than any words can, that's a big thinker.

Unlimited storage for free (recently reduced to 'only' 1k photos with no real size limit) Handles a wide range of aspect ratios and resolutions Adult content friendly; yet also allows you to filter out such content Like/fave and comment systems that are just as good as the alternatives Groups help with self-publicity And a massive community is self-sustaining by nature On paper it's better than any major alternative, and the fact that every already uses Flickr gives it a massive advantage over any smaller competitor. A better question would be "why would we use anything else?"

That's arguably why LL are rolling out these changes to just the Linden Home regions rather than the entire mainland. Make these two minor changes to an area in which LL is the landowner and the user is the tenant (as opposed to the 'landowner' status of private mainland parcels), see how things go, and re-evaluate. We could see these changes rolled out across the entirety of the mainland, or we could see these changes reversed. Depends entirely on the macro-response to the changes, and not a couple of mad people making angery postings.

My RL social media is a goldmine for any stalker, especially Facebook. There's no way to avoid that, aside from opting out entirely. Even if I try and keep my own well-scrubbed, all it takes is a friend not scrubbing the meta-data from a single photo taken on her phone and a stalker has my address. All I can do is limit access to my social media, and try to reduce the risk. Keeping it entirely separate from my Second Life identity is an easy and efficient way of reducing that risk.

Chopped up your posts to highlight these parts. I'd add one thing; normal people do not understand how these people work or their potential for deception, until they've fallen victim to such a deception. Or at least that's the way I've learned to protect myself online. I put my Second Life into a box. That box isn't watertight because I'm only human, but as much as possible I keep the details about my real life outside of that box. My real name, age and birthday, job, location, what I look like, even what my voice sounds like, everything like that stays out of the box. I have fresh email addresses and social media accounts that don't link back to my real self, and anyone that tries to push past those boundaries gets cut out. I don't need to worry about who I can and cannot trust; because even if you compiled together every single conversation I've ever had here, you could never work out who I am. You'd be able to "know me" as a person, I'm not putting on an act or anything, I'd be the same girl if we met face to face. But you'd never "know me" as a list of details, you'd never be able to track me down; at least no way that I'm aware of. Some people call me paranoid, others call it proof that I'm an alt/a RL man/an age player. For me it's just basic common sense, no different to locking the windows and doors whenever they're not in use. It's just some simple steps to keep myself safe, and that's more important than the fee-fees of some idiot that's never been on the receiving end of a doxx or a stalker.

This is precisely what I was objecting to. I truly dislike this "female ownership" of harassment victimhood. Yes, we're more than twice as likely to self-report as having been stalked than men, and twice as likely to worry about it (YouGov polling of Brits; may vary elsewhere). That's still millions and millions of men who have been on the receiving end of this horrible crime, and I don't think phrases like "a lot of platforms are designed badly for women from a safety point of view" are that helpful. Every one of those privacy features and safety concerns applies to men and women, no one is immune from this. At the end of the day though, we're arguing about me being a language pedant, so it's probably best that we both move on?

You keep talking in really vague terms about "insufficient privacy and security". Could you be more specific? What privacy/security concerns don't these tools address? What are the big vulnerabilities? There's one thing I can think of, off the top of my head; the fact that a stalker can park an alt just outside your mainland parcel, on the same region, and can not only tell if you're on the parcel but also which room. Sure, they might not be able to watch you perform the horizontal tango with someone, but they can zoom in on your name + another name at a similar distance away in the nearby window and see that you're both on a bed; and it doesn't take a genius to join those dots. That's a problem, and one that LL could fix pretty easily if they cared enough. In terms of stalking/harassment, the biggest security vulnerability anyone will ever has is a chat box. People openly talk too much, without realising how your tiny little clues you casually drop in conversation can be gathered up and melded together into a pretty specific picture. Actual "hacking" when it comes to harassment is extremely rare, it's mostly just loose lips and someone obsessive enough to join the dots. Oh, and on a point of principle I abhor any implication that only women deserve security and safety. Harassment and privacy are gender neutral. This "women are the victims, men are the perpetrators" narrative is both divisive, harmful and outright nonsensical.

I don't think it's particularly helpful that the big "educational initiative" of those mainland landowner pillars is so... extreme. Open rez rights is not a reasonable expectation to wave in landowner's faces, nor is the removal of ban lines; and the inclusion of the unreasonable makes ignoring the reasonable so much easier for landowners. A reasonable compromise would be "put banlines up instead of using an orb", or "set your orb to move visitors off your land, don't eject to home". It achieves the same thing - maintaining the landowner's privacy - without being a miserable SOB to any unsuspecting wanderers.

And this is what I mean when I said that landowners have the right to be bads. A zero-second security orb that boots people home does not stop people from entering your land. Banlines do that. Taking your banlines down is like leaving your front door open - it's an open invitation for travellers to enter your land. Slapping a zero-second to-home security orb behind that metaphorical open door makes you a poo. Now, as it currently stands, as a landowner you're legally allowed to be a poo in that manner; but I'm also allowed to point out that if it stinks and floats... yeah. Unlike some in this thread, I don't have any problem with the stated goals of those that use these orbs. Want to keep people off your land, because you value your privacy? More power to you. But zero-second to-home orbs that cover your entire parcel is not an appropriate way to do this, at all. Putting up ban lines around your land? Sure, go for it. Orbs that simply punt people to the edge of your land, or give visitors sufficient time to respond to the implied "get off my lawn" of an orb countdown? Makes perfect sense, no complaints from me. A zero-second to-home orb that just covers your skybox flat, or your ground-level house? That's fair enough, no casual passerby is going to 'accidentally' enter such a place. Giving no indication whatsoever that your land is private, allowing open access to said land, and then immediately bumping the unsuspecting visitor straight back home the moment they step over the parcel boundary? I don't think it's that much of a stretch to call such orbs griefing tools. You just can't justify such a thing, not when there's perfectly adequate alternatives that don't treat the visitor or unaware traveller with such spiteful contempt. But I also don't think that it's intentional. I imagine most people will use their orb on the default setting, and simply don't care about how that affects other people... and being a poo through laziness is better than being a poo through malice, I guess. I don't know how LL could legislate for such nuance, though. Only thing I can think of is a total ban on the to-home portion of ejection orbs on the mainland - if they can be pushed off the edge of the parcel in question, they should be. But that's not an option with privately-owned regions, so the to-home ejection orbs should probably stay legal there... it's messy. And so we'll probably remain as we are now, with some overzealous landowners acting needlessly badly, and quarterly threads about how bad these people are. See you all in June, I guess?

I've only been on the, er, receiving end of such a HUD, so I've learned something new today!

So just to add to what flowers said: Rightly or wrongly, Aeros is considered the gold standard of appendage, to the point where it's almost become synonymous with male parts. So if you're going to go with another brand (which is a perfectly legitimate choice), be aware that Aeros is the measuring stick against which you'll be compared. I have no idea if the other three brands mentioned measure up (heh) to Aeros or not, they might be even better! Aeros also has this cool feature where your partner can click it and get a HUD that looks like yours. You give them permissions through your menu, and they can angle your dangly bits just like you but cannot change any of the shape/size settings. Which is useful for... academic reasons? Okay so not that useful for most people. Whatever you do, don't get anything that talks in nearby chat, ever. Please.

This is a conditional one; I greatly dislike anyone that asks something like "Are you busy?" as a loaded question. If it's asked out of genuine curiosity, I have zero problems with that line, it's fine. But it usually isn't. It's usually a setup for some variation of "I see, so if you're not busy, then you have no excuse not to come to my adult-rated rental skybox for 'cuddles and chats', right?". And those people can go copulate with a cactus. No one wants to be pressured or guilt tripped or "logicked" into a corner. Just to preempt the followup questions; if your actual question is "would you like to do x?", then just ask that. "Are you busy? If not, are you free to pose for a photo?" is a pretty common line I throw at people, or "If you're not busy at the moment, there's a few of us at The Beach, want to join us?" No guile or deception, just lay your cards out and be open with what you want, and let your conversation partner make an informed response. Or the cactus awaits.

Is that a yes then?

As someone who bought the Slink Physique body, because I slightly preferred the look over the alternatives, only to swap to Maitreya four months later; don't ignore the availability of clothing and accessories. It might not matter to some people, but it certainly matters to others, and you don't want to regret buying your body. I'd take a look at a couple of the big men's clothing events (search for "The Mens Dept" and "The Men Jail" for two examples, I'm sure there's others), wander around them and check which bodies are supported by each piece of clothing or accessories. That will give you a feel for what the market is actually like. If you're okay with picking a body that impacts your clothing choices, that's totally fine. Just be aware of that consequence before making the decision. Also, don't forget to make the shape that you want before committing to buying a body. You can make Gianni look like everything from an Aesthetic-tier 'meathead' to a sleeker runner - but you're gonna struggle to make the body look softer or pudgy. Oh, and don't forget to make your arms longer, don't be another T-Rex

Side question: who made that eyepiece? It's awesome

I've gotta disagree with you here, and I think you've completely missed the point of what we are saying. I'd say the overwhelming majority of people who are in SL are open to chatting and making friends. Almost all of us. But many of us do other things than just chat. It's not one or the other. Take my photography; sometimes I'll be chatting to several people while tweaking the poses or lighting, so I'm still able to chat, it's just that my replies might be slow. Or I might be taking the actual photo, with all my settings turned out, and so I'll be ignoring chat completely. And then I'm done with the photo, and then I can focus more of my attention on our conversation. But you will never have my full and undivided attention. Chances are I'll have more than one conversation open at once. Or my phone could ring, or my flatmate could be putting the kettle on. Or I might need to change my music, or I could be reading an email, or a thousand other things that could mean I take a minute or three to reply to your message. Sometimes I'll want a sandwich, or there will be some other RL reason why I need to step away from the keyboard for 10-15 minutes. Despite all that, I'm still open to chatting and making friends. If your expectation is that people respond to your messages instantly, you will forever be disappointed. Whether here, or elsewhere online, or out in the real world. People don't work like that, they don't spend their days sat at their keyboards waiting for you to message them. People have lives, they have distractions, and those distractions mean that replies can sometimes be slow. If that's a problem, talk to robots or pay someone to chat with you; or just learn a little patience.

Mine's also a bit eclectic. I've got old friends I've not spoken to in months, people I barely know but who are there for the quarterly "hey can you sit on this pose stand for an hour?", as well as "actual friends". I'm not too picky about who I'll accept a request from, so long as we've actually talked and you're not giving off weird vibes. The only times I clean the list is to purge irritating people, or those that added me after a single conversation only for us to not talk for months. I don't really over-think it.