AyelaNewLife

My irony-meter just went off the charts.

While I agree with you, I think there's a difference between disliking/hating/judging someone for their choice of clothing, and wanting to maintain a dress code at your own venue for the collective benefit. And an avatar is not really any different to clothing. If a person wants to walk around in a latex bodysuit all day then that's fine, that's their choice; at the same time, I think it's perfectly acceptable for a fine dining restaurant to require customers to wear normal clothing. It's not discrimination because that person chose to wear that latex. Actual discrimination is about stuff you don't choose. Your clothing is a choice; your race is not. And while a fetish is not necessarily a choice, how you express that fetish is. And a RL fursuit, or a SL furry avatar, is still just optional clothing - so I see no reason why a private venue owner shouldn't be allowed to enforce a dress code on the visitors that choose to go there.

Every single example of this that I've seen doesn't actually have a "no furries" rule. It's always a "human only" rule. Some will have exceptions for stuff like ears, but either way they aren't specifically targeting furries, but instead trying to maintain a relatively consistent aesthetic for the sim's community. Turning up as the Iron Giant or as a cow or as a giant sphere of neon blue would also be no good. Drop the unjustified victim complex.

No. You are creating a point out of nothing. This comment chain started when you claimed that the price of land was the natural result of basic free market principles. That's not true, at least not totally; LL have artificially reduced the $ price of land to fit their ideological vision for SL, even at a net cost to them. Supply/demand market forces existing, but overruled. Please stop with the grandstanding about basic economics. You're not telling me anything new. There's no need to treat me like a child when you're the one missing the entire point of my posts.

Second Life is not a free market economy though, not truly, and the $ price of land is arbitrarily set. That's why LL have hiked transaction and marketplace fees, to compensate for the loss of income from dropping the price of land. The free market equilibrium price of land is higher than it is currently, and LL have made a conscious decision to ignore that in favour of an ideological stance - namely that land should be more affordable and therefore more accessible to residents, even when knowing that the increase in customerbase would not compensate for the loss of income. Basic supply/demand free market concepts exist, sure, but they can and have been overruled by ideology. This is true for SL, and it is true for every single real world example of a "free market".

This top from Imbue is amazing, so many gag pic ideas!

While what you're saying makes complete sense, as a photographer I wish it were not so. I've lost count of the number of times I've wanted to derender a small piece of clutter to help make a photo work, and ended up derendering half the house. It's infuriating for me, yet totally justifiable for the sim owner to do that. Not sure what the solution is. Only one I can think of is if LL added a 0 to add LI counts - so rather than 3 '0.3LI' objects (that appear as 1LI) turning into 1 '0.9LI' object (that appears as 1LI), you have 3 3LI objects turning into 1 9LI object. You'd have a LI budget 10x of the current total, of course, so there's no loss to anyone involved, and most people would actually gain a few prims from this. Probably not worth the effort for a few fringe issues though.

I can actually post this one!

B-b-but what if he catches the gay disease from typing words at someone on the internet?!? Won't someone think of the children?!? *pearl clutching intensifies*

I've got this one guy that IM's me every few days with some variation of a spanking emote. If he says hi I'll respond, but every time he does that I close the conversation. Currently up to 11 attempts, he's still not gotten the hint.

100%. And that's everything from some pretentious "/me two lines of describing my existence without actually doing anything" to racist and/or misogynistic abuse in the form of sexual roleplay.

I've developed an irrational hatred of people that open an IM with "/me smiles" and nothing else. Like no dude, you IM'd me, it's your job to start off the conversation, not mine. Even a "hi" is something I can reply to, this is less than worthless.

This is something that annoys me because I've gone through the "scared newbie" phase quite recently, just a few months ago. I was fortunate enough to have a friend who took me on a quick tour of the three relevant body brands - which included telling me how little new clothing is made for other bodies, which is vitally important - and the Catwa, Lelutka and Laq stores. Armed with a stack of demos and an experienced friend to bounce questions off, I got my look together within a day or two. Before that friend's intervention, I was about to buy a full TMP avatar. See, I'd found those links, and found an advert for TMP at a a freebie sim that made their deal look too good to refuse (500L for the body+head? I can't remember). The price seemed too good to pass on. I had no idea that the body and head were both almost entirely redundant and unsupported by creators. That's the kind of crucial information you don't get from a 5 year old review, but it's information that you need to give new residents if they are to make an informed decision rather than a blind guess.

The comparison page is almost entirely wrong (outdated). You send a new resident there, and they could spend several hours doing their 'research', making an 'informed' decision on which head to buy... only for them to quickly realise that everything they read is wrong, the moment they head in world. I'll use a Laq head as an example, because I use a Laq head so can tear this apart easier than the others: The price is wrong (5700L vs 3100L) HUD is two major reworks out of date, many options are gone, many crucial ones have since been added Makeup shades have been removed or changed, replaced by a far wider range of addon appliers for sale Skin tone included - this is false Head size setting removed Scalp size setting removed It's marked as non-bento, but either was released as bento or has since been updated You take all the incorrect parts out of this review, and you're left with the fact that it blinks (like every other mesh head), inbuilt omega compatibility (nice, but not a game changer), an outdated HUD preview, the fact that it fits mesh bodies (such unique) and that the HUD has save slots. That's kinda it. The rest of the review is no good, or it's mentioning features that are standard across all major brands. It doesn't even touch what is probably Laq's biggest selling point, the unique price scheme that lets you buy the HUD separately from the head while keeping the overall price close to that of its competitors. I just can't see how that set of reviews is useful to anyone making an informed decision. These reviews are still practically useless, most of them are half a decade out of date. All of the major brands have an order of magnitude more head options these days, with a vast array of looks, so you can't even use the thumbnails to narrow down your selection. The tutorials are fantastic, don't get me wrong, they were massively helpful to me when I was new. Those tutorials are a fantastic resource that all new residents considering going mesh should read. But aside from being a list of brand names, the reviews section just aren't any good. Maybe in 2016 they were useful, but no longer. Maybe if those links included a copy/paste paragraph explaining the issues and limitations of the reviews (ie, the tutorials are great, the reviews are useless but there's a good list of head creators to check for yourself) then those links would be okay. As it stands, getting half information from brand cheerleaders is actually more useful than getting incorrect information from a blog that's half a decade out of date. Here endeth the sermon.

Nope, yet people still insist on linking them to new people. It's pretty counter-productive. The tutorials are pretty good, and worth advertising, but sending a newbie towards the review section does more harm than good.

Sim rental costs have almost nothing to do with the free market, LL arbitrarily sets a $ monthly fee and a $ setup fee, and that's how much it costs.

These two contradict each other. If you don't mind political and ideological movements having their own private space, you should not be complaining about this political/ideological group. So which one is it; are you happy for people to have their own private spaces to discuss their own opinions (even those you disagree with), or do you want to take on the mantle of the thought police?

I had a fun one yesterday. [2018/10/22 13:23] Ayela (ayelanewlife): hiya [2018/10/22 13:23] him: nice avi [2018/10/22 13:26] Ayela (ayelanewlife): thank you! [2018/10/22 13:26] him: do you want chocolate ? Oh yes, I would love a bit of chocolate right now, let me just zoom in to see who this kind stranger is... oh, he means the penor. That's disappointing. Time to close the conversation.

What timezone are you, and what do you define as weird times? For example, right now it's mid morning for me in the UK, the middle of the night if you're in one of the American timezones, and evening prime time down under. Giving us an idea of when you're around would help get friends you can actually talk to, rather than people you'll add to your friends list and never speak to again.

Do not ever let someone else dictate what is and isn't okay when it comes to voice or cam stuff, or any other kind of RL interaction. If you'd prefer to stick to text communication, then that is 100% okay. It is up to you, and you alone. There's a small but sadly vocal part of the community that will demand voice verification before they're willing to be anything more than acquaintances with a female avatar. Feel free to tell them to "go forth and multiply". Broadly speaking, they're either hopeless romantics using Second Life as an alternative to OkCupid, or barely-disguised homophobes that are scared of catching "the gay disease" by typing words at a man across the internet. ? On a similar note, if you'd prefer to present yourself as a 'woman' rather than 'trans woman', that's also 100% fine, as is doing the reverse. Do what makes you feel comfortable, don't feel like you have to 'out' yourself if you'd prefer not to. This is SL, you could be a dog behind the keyboard and no one would be the wiser. To be honest, I'm half convinced some of the regular posters here are dogs behind the keyboard. It certainly would explain a lot. ?

I keep the box as a backup too. For me this isn't a Maitreya-specific thing, but something I do for almost everything I own. There's nothing to stop a creator from going "cya suckers, I'm out" one day and tearing everything down. While unlikely, many of us own stuff from hundreds of creators, so the chance of one creator shutting down their redelivery system is relatively likely. Keeping a box for everything gives me that one backup. Besides, owning the box means I can delete anything and everything I don't need, so keeping the box actually saves me inventory space. There's just no real reason to delete the box of, well, anything that's sold as copy. The Maitreya HUD (and Slink one when I used to wear Physique) is the one HUD I leave on pretty often. Mostly because of laziness; fixing alpha problems (the number of clothes that auto-alpha when you put them on but do nothing when you remove them is too damn high) or a quick ankle lock toggle etc takes less time than the HUD takes to load from unattached, so I just leave it on normally. If I'm at a shopping event or any other high-pop or high-lag sim I'll take it off of course, but otherwise right click -> remove is more effort than leaving it on

I'm not sure what it is about SL's culture that makes so many people allergic to feedback. It's this "reverse entitlement"/"entitlement paranoia" that's so toxic and yet so rife here, that I've never seen out in the real world with such vitriol. It's bizarre. Look I get it, with only a handful of exceptions, you can do whatever you want here. You can create whatever you want, sell whatever you want for whatever price you want, and say whatever you want. No one has suggested changing that. But those freedoms go both ways. You can make your own decisions; and I can call those decisions stupid. You don't have to listen, of course, but I can still say it. Every time a thread here touches the issues of a sim owner's choices, or a creator's decisions, there are those that immediately start churning out the same tired lines. "If you don't like it don't buy it", "why should you care what they do", "don't dictate what creators should make" - and the lines are usually borderline irrelevant. No one here has suggested a Linden Lab enforced ban on Halloween decor or clothing; because that would be a ludicrous suggestion that would rightfully be shot down. What this thread contains is feedback and suggestions, and while disagreeing with said feedback is perfectly legitimate, screeching about "muh freedoms" as a response is ridiculous and unnecessary. Just ignore the feedback, or provide your own if you disagree with it. As an on-topic example, a sim I (used to) visit often for photographs did a total makeover for Halloween in mid September. It has a couple of large stone buildings, with a good sized forested outdoors section, really quite beautiful. Now all of that is covered in cobwebs and pumpkins, skeletons and blood decals... all of which makes the sim useless for me, as I have no intention of doing any Halloween-themed photos. That decision affects me. Of course, the sim owner is well within her rights to do so; and I am well within my rights to let her know that, while the redesign was very skillfully done (genuine compliment), it means that I can't make use of the sim until the planned reversion takes place. That's called feedback. And the sim owner/creator can look at that feedback, add it to the other feedback (positive and negative) received, look at the metrics involved (visitor count for this sim owner, sales figures for a creator) and then use that to help inform their future decisions. That's how a free market functions. Far too many people seem to think that a free market means that creators are exempt from feedback and criticism. They are not. They can individually choose to ignore it, of course, but that's not for unconnected posters to police on their behalf. It's just obnoxious. Here endeth the sermon.

He's talking nonsense, the player count has been holding steady for the better part of a decade now. There will always be churn, with some people leaving and others (like myself) joining; if you stop meeting new people, your friends list will grow inactive. Sims are no different, old ones close and new ones open every day, with the total number remaining fairly consistent. As for the black community; part of the problem is the fetishistic 'black man' roleplay (probably played by white guys) dominating the search results, making it much harder for new people to find and engage with the community. There's plenty of people-who-happen-to-be-black though, throughout SL as a whole.

Halloween is fine. I loved Halloween week/weekend as a kid and through my teens. It's the sim owners/creators/flickrites that turn Halloween into a two-month long tediumfest that need to just stop. I've never actually been bored of Halloween until I started Second Life, although I'm not sure if that's a uniquely SL thing or just American over-commercialisation infecting everything it touches.

Makes sense, thanks! I've not really touched RLV for anything, never had the need, so wasn't aware of the difference.