Amina Sopwith

So what's monstrous about you?

I'm getting the impression that you think you're the only one on here who has ever been hurt by someone or experienced nasty behaviour, and that you are somehow privy to a great truth that eludes the rest of us. Why would you think that?

It might be, if it had actually happened. It patently didn't, but as wind-em-up-and-watch-em-go jobs go, it wasn't the worst, wasn't overtly offensive and was good for a few feed lines. I haven't got any issues with it.

Can I have his number?

They were both the same person.

Remember Sh*tterton and the winding canals of Great Bottom Flash. And of course Ugley, whose branch of the Women's Institute is getting very tired of the jokes.

I was thinking of that too!

I know, but a surprising number of people really don't seem to be prepared for it and get very angry about it. From a friend who was sitting in a Gor sim many moons ago and despairing at the human condition: "You know every single last one of these slaves is actually a hairy, 30-stone trucker called Derek, right? Even the ones who really are women. In fact, especially them."

It's not an exact science, obviously. Sometimes it's certain turns of phrase, or the position they're espousing, but it's more likely to be in the way the prose is constructed. Just the manner of self-expression. I'm a bit reluctant to give concrete examples because there will always be exceptions, but I just find that overall, at a class level, men and women speak and write differently. <<I wrote a paragraph here about a couple of times men masquerading as women were outed on another forum I use, for no good reason since men are welcome there, but I changed my mind. IM me if you're interested.>> I once fed two pieces of my writing into the Gender Genie. It decided one was male and one was female. If I use a gender neutral name online, I'm often assumed to be male until the conversation goes somewhere like sexual harassment, and then I'm apparently pretty convincing.

I get called "babe" by other women. I don't find it's the term itself, more what's being said with it, that's more a male or female thing. Never had a man call me "hun" or a woman call me "princess". I tend to assume it's a man when a woman with an especially flowery name says things that a woman wouldn't usually say. Gender bending is probably one of the most obvious things people might want to explore in SL. It makes sense, I'm sure most of us have been curious about what it would be like to have some experiences as the opposite sex. It's a very limited way of experiencing it though.

Yep, and as Rolig says, the men can be women too. I know, I was also kind of surprised a few months ago to discover just how unprepared some people are for this inevitability.

Loony tunes.

"Just over 21. Stone, that is. Sorry, what did you mean?"

I remember when I was looking for a job in SL back in the day. Became a store model in the end but I looked at the application form to be a dancer and it carefully specified "prim hair and realistic genitals". This obviously made sense, and I was hugely immersed in SL at the time, but I still found myself RL laughing so hard that I couldn't bring myself to apply. I just had this mental image of Hugh Hefner in his dressing gown lying back on a sun lounger praising all the bunnies for their prim hair and realistic genitals, or a punter being reassured that "we are a high-class institution, sir, all our girls have prim hair and realistic genitals". Especially funny when so many of them are RL men anyway.

If I came into SL as a noob now, I'd never stay. The culture is such that there is extreme pressure and judgement to look a certain way if you want to interact with people, and the learning curve to look that way is insane. It was roleplaying that finally got me to fall in love with the place first time round, and luckily people at the time were very forgiving of hideous avs who were still learning. If I'd been found wanting for my looks in the beginning, or not allowed in at all, I'd not have had the chance to discover how much I loved it and be inclined to make the effort. It's really no good setting all the trials and tribulations at the very start. You need to lure people and entice them so that they have the motivation to want to go to all the trouble it's going to take to find the place's full potential.

Cold turkey.

Time served.

Umbrella term.

I know SL has always had a learning curve and required a time commitment, but I'm really quite uncomfortable with the idea that it should be some kind of dungeon challenge where only the bravest and boldest should prevail. If you want that kind of approach to it, fine, but by its very nature it's going to lose a lot of people (that's the idea, no?) and however exercised some people get about it, there really is no moral value to staying in SL and getting mesh to work well for you. It really doesn't make one a better person. Mesh bodies were pretty easy to figure out. It's when you start adding a head that it all goes NASA technician. It's absolutely insane. I would mind this less, because I'm not technical enough to know a better solution, but for the cultural shift that seems to have sprung up around it. We always liked to look pretty and individual, nothing wrong with that, but as I believe I've said before, the focus on looks now seems to come to the detriment of whimsy, open-mindedness and sheer friendliness. People of course have every right to associate with whomever they like, and make any rules they wish for their land, nobody disputes that. But a culture in which system avs are banned from many places, and in which numerous people wish to create environments where they need never even clap eyes on one, even if there's no need to interact at all, is going to affect the way the place hums. Personally I think it was better before, even if it wasn't as pretty. I've been called a Luddite for this, accused of being lazy, of being stupid, of not moving with the times, of rose-tinting the past, and all the rest of it (and I do actually have a mesh body and a couple of mesh heads, though I'm still figuring out the latter two so I don't use them yet). In short, of not being brave and bold enough for the new SL, for lacking the moral fibre that it apparently now requires. It just looks like defensiveness to me and I do wonder why it upsets people quite so much to hear this criticism, especially given how completely true it is. The time investment needed now to learn how to make a fully mesh av that will pass muster more or less anywhere is crazy, especially for true newbies who weren't here the first time round. I'm sure that once you've got it, it's straightforward, but it takes time to reach that point, and honestly I'm losing patience. I'd rather be exploring; I never wanted to spend all that long on customising my av anyway. The kicker to all of this, of course, is people then derendering and jellydolling all the other beautiful avs because they can't get the place to move otherwise. I know lag was always an issue, but for some reason, I just find this really really funny.

No. I literally cannot see what point you're making. You're saying that if you drag a load of Black Lives Matter activists off a road, they're inciting racial hatred? I have to be careful not to start hating this overused and exploited quotation. I know what it's saying, but it's not censorship or repression to create a world where black, Jewish and gay people can freely go about without incitement to hatred and violence. It's such a studenty position to hold. It's so theoretical and idealistic, and such utter rubbish in actual real life practice. No, you should not be allowed to go into a public place and incite people to racial hatred and violence because of an overly simplistic and absolutist concept. Flaming Nora. There's a massive cultural difference between the US and the UK on this, though, and I know there's absolutely nothing to be done about it. Bloody glad I couldn't be identified when I did jury duty, too.

Animal magnetism.

Pleasure dome.

What?

Did it on my phone with a cat on my head, too. Thank you.