Ajay McDowwll

Back when I was still in my first year in SL, one of my friends just flat-out IM'd me and said "Ajay, you have baby hands; move the slider up" lol I think you can tell them if you're friends... with strangers, eh... whatever. I'm not responsible for the proportions of the entire grid

Let's see.... the state of the world, RL work, and I have the lion's share of tearing down a region yet to accomplish. Other than that... meh. It's all good lol

Of course. The point is that swapping the genders would make it more obvious. We'd be rightly outraged if women were essentially being told they had to meet some arbitrary cultural standard of "softness" and femininity, so it's just as outrageous that it would be applied to men. But I think you knew that. Sorry if I'm wrong... I'm only one cuppa into my normal caffeination for the day.

Oh yes lol -- in fact, when I have a new outfit I usually will run dance animations on it before I take it public to determine if I need to alpha a few more areas, or just bite the bullet and make a custom alpha layer for it. I'm a bit OCD about my alphas

That was exactly my response, Scylla. I was absolutely horrified and mortified... shoot, I'm active with our local Pride group, and I hadn't even put the term with the pejorative context together until it was brought to my attention. I have friends and family members I could have offended, and may have in the past although they didn't bring it to my attention. I'm glad someone finally did say something so I could just stop already. Totally facepalm moment for me, and then some.

Silent, I was really *really* careful to just address the terminology, not you, and I'm sorry that didn't come across clearly, or that I was ineffectual in my attempt. It's a word that I hadn't related to being a slur against the gay community until a couple of years ago, when a friend (who happened to be gay) called me out on it. I was shocked, because I'd used it totally innocently, but then I thought about how it was used in general, and looked it up... ... and also the reality of how they felt about it. They were right. This was strictly about the term, and not at all an indictment of you personally.

From Miriam Webster: It is a very common slur against gay men specifically and men who don't meet some arbitrary standard of masculinity in general.

This. Who a person is matters far more to me than a straight-out aesthetic assessment. And by who they are, I mean the kind of thing you were talking about above -- attraction is based on so much more than physical appearance or the judgments we apply to same.

One thing to remember with alphas -- whether they're cuts or layers -- is that they're helpful with avoiding clipping when you're running different animations (AOs, sits, dances, etc) as no matter how well-rigged an item is, we in SL have always figured out a way to push that item until the mesh "breaks". But yes, ideally, outfits should be rigged so that if we're just standing around with generally reasonable AO movements, there shouldn't be visible clipping.

If the gender descriptions were swapped on that statement it would be tremendously problematic. Men come in all shapes, degrees of cultural definitions of masculinity, etc. Taste is one thing; defining "what makes a man" is quite another. He's attractive to me. Maybe not my type? But the visual is good.

All the person undressing needs to do is go to Avatar > Now Wearing and scroll down to remove the appropriate items. Or, you know, have a "Naked" outfit saved which accomplishes the same thing. It's not that hard to undress your own avatar.

We own a region with protected water access to the Blake Sea and have a public rez zone set up. I'll PM you the SLURL.

I love local; IMs are fine too. I voice with a few friends when we're running amok shopping and so forth, but we usually use Discord's voice because the group calls on IMs are iffy, and voicing in local when there are other folks around can get a little rough.

I filled it out when you sent it out via the group, Nyxx And it's just a general activities survey, y'all, as they said.

This looked way better in my head than in the finished shot.... but eh, here it is lol

Yeah, the t-rex arms are a neverending source of visual pain to me lol

I didn't think I did either, but experience has taught me that my eye for it is bad when I'm working on my own avatar... so for me, the tools help my brain see what's really there, rather than what I *think* I've done lol

From what I can tell, this was an issue where the models should have had their hover height adjusted in rehearsals prior to proceeding down the runway, rather than a build issue. Judging from the walks and the precision of the patterns, it seems to me they were on a "mover" system similar to those used at weddings or for choreographies or something along those lines (like the Spot On systems), and it would have been easy to just adjust the hover slider to give more of an appearance of actually walking on the runway rather than floating above it. It's something that could have been solved quite easily with a bit of attention to detail; I'm surprised it wasn't addressed, to be honest.

I'd say it would reveal a diverse list reasons for that decision. Some people aren't virtually intimate because they're in a monogamous RL relationship with someone who's not an SL resident, and they would consider it cheating. Some people aren't virtually intimate because they'd rather have the real thing. Some people aren't virtually intimate because it's not something they're into regardless of whether it's in the virtual or physical world. Ad infinitum, ad nauseum... It's the same as reasons for why people do engage in adult activities in SL. Some people do because it's there, so why not? Some are virtually intimate with their RL spouse only. Some because their RL may not let them engage in activities about which they're curious, and SL is a good outlet for that. Again, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. A simple "do you or don't you" isn't going to reveal just one reason for either option. Humanity is many things, but rarely a monolith especially with regard to matters of this nature and the reasons they make their decisions about same.

The original question did not specify who it was directed to. It's an open query regarding how you view those who don't "get horizontal" in SL. No restrictions were placed on respondents. It's a public forum, and that's how these things tend to work, whether or not you personally saw it that way. Since you brought statistics into it, I went through and tabulated responses, whether or not people had issues with the matter at hand, whether or not they personally engaged or did not disclose same, or whether they were just all "huh?" about the question being asked in the first place. Of those who responded to the question at hand, 1 person took issue with those who don't engage, and 24 said there was no problem if folks don't want to get jiggy with it in SL. Of the 24 who said there was no problem, 7 don't personally participate, 5 do participate, and 12 others did not disclose their status (as, again, one's intimacy in SL is no one's business but that avatar's alone). 13 people didn't state an opinion, but have no clue why this is even a thing. As for the political slant, that's utterly ridiculous. I have friends in SL of all political persuasions, and I'd say most of them would take some umbrage with how the question was worded, I don't care how they voted. But then again, I tend not to hang out with people who would judge someone for preferring not to bump pixels in SL, because that's just flatly ridiculous. In fact, most of my conservative friends would be totally fine with it as it fits within their moral framework.

I think when the majority of people are getting the same read on the situation, that it does bear consideration. The words used to describe those who don't engage in adult activities in SL were overwhelmingly pejorative. It's not an unreasonable takeaway, from both that and the statement that they'd be better off in Roblox or wheverever, that failure to hop on adult-themed poseballs in SL is somehow a problem. It's not.

And how do you come to this conclusion? I'm genuinely curious, because I see nothing in this thread that suggests that. Unless it's because you mean we don't have an interest in things that are legitimately no one's business, like other residents' intimate lives or lack thereof?

I call them my alts Seriously though, I don't care. It's not my business. I can't even imagine why this would matter -- others' intimate lives aren't our business in the physical world, and it's no different in a virtual world. To address more: As others have said, there is much more to SL than adult activities. I won't claim to be chaste inworld, but I'm married, and my only partner of any sort in SL is my very RL husband. I don't think I should go hieing off to Horizons, whatever that is, simply because I'm not marinating in the adult aspect of SL. My friends are here, my home is here, the majority of my virtual existence is here. Why in the world would I go to a world with far less avatar customization options, let alone all the other things we enjoy in SL simply because I'm not busy doing the horizontal mambo all the time? Good grief. That's just insulting.

It's a bit early for spring cleaning, but there are moments when I can't resist

Sorry for laughing, but your descriptions are hilarious If you're still wearing Lara, I hope you've worked out a shape that's more to your liking.