Scylla Rhiadra

Yeah, I actually thought of "cleave" as I was writing that. Now, THAT bugs me.

Yes, except they are invariably understood by those to whom they are speaking. If someone says "I'm not going nowhere," we understand that what they mean is that they are not going anywhere. If someone says "I could care less about what the OED says," we, again, understand their proper meaning. This stuff bugs me too, but the point is that language isn't, and never has been, about "rules." It's about communication. And there will come a time doubtless when someone who literally means "literally" when they say "literally" is the one who is misusing the language, because they are miscommunicating their meaning.

The Oxford English Dictionary, which is the go-to for English usage in any era, has the following under "literally": So yeah, it's not merely a thing -- it's crowded out the other meanings. And all the griping in the world from nerds isn't going to change that. It's interesting to note that the earliest examples given are 18th-century, and there are six instances cited from the 19th and 20th centuries, so it's far from entirely new, even if it is more current than it ever was before. The 21st-century exemplary quote is, predictably, someone griping about the shift in meaning: 2008 Herald-Times (Bloomington, Indiana) 22 Oct. a8/1 ‘OMG, I literally died when I found out!’ No, you figuratively died. Otherwise, you would not be around to relay your pointless anecdote. The language marches on, and it will literally crush those who stand in its way beneath its phoneme-shod boots.

That depends upon how badly you want it. I agree that these are stupid, but they do take a lot of the risk element out of the equation. Essentially they mean a variable price for objects, but it's a price you can usually calculate with at least some degree of certainty. Dumb but not gambling.

Just a quick response, in passing. I think you are oversimplifying what I mean by cultural and social attitudes. Yes, there are likely always going to be those who are toxic -- but the degree to which they are socially enabled, controlled, punished, etc., makes a huge difference. A simple example from real world crime and statistics. The murder rate per 100,000 population in the USA in 2017 was (according to UN stats) 5.30. In Canada, for the same year, the number is a teeny bit more than a third of that: 1.80. In Japan, same year, it was a fraction of both of those numbers: 0.20. So, unless you're willing to suggest that there is something genetic about Canadians and especially the Japanese that makes them less inclined to murder people, there are social and cultural differences that account for at least a large degree of those differences. Now, I'm simplifying to some degree as well: there are a lot of factors that go into determining homicide rates: poverty, access to deadly weapons (firearms), social attitudes, crime and drugs, and so forth. But those are all social and cultural factors. The same kinds of reasoning apply to toxic behaviours in virtual environments. What are the affordances that enable such behaviours? How are they restricted, reported, punished? What sorts of attitudes enable or disable them? What kinds of variation can we see in-world -- the fact that sandboxes are notorious hangouts for griefers is no coincidence. The point is that it is the "culture" of Second Life (and Twitter, and Facebook, etc.) that determine the degree to which these behaviours are tolerated, enabled, or constrained, including code. But it's the culture, not the code, that is the key determinant here: code reflects more than it shapes culture (although there is an interdependence of course as well.)

There are a lot of people whose posts I enjoy a great deal (including yours btw), but so far as I've ever been able to see, "following" doesn't actually do anything, so I stopped bothering some time ago. Like you, maybe I am doing something wrong?

Should make dancing fun. Harassment and griefing are the product of cultural attitudes and social issues. And you can't change or fix those using code.

One reason why, perhaps, some people here might be at least a little hesitant to throw themselves bodily into helping someone "new" is that, on occasion, it turns out that the "new" person isn't actually so "new" after all . . . and has in fact been trolling the forum in the hope of . . . well, I'm not sure what? Making those who try to help look "foolish"? I am still very much of the opinion that it is better to take that risk and help someone who may indeed need assistance, than it is to ignore them on the off-chance that they are trolling you. And in the final analysis, who really comes out looking bad in such a context? But it can be a bit of a struggle, maybe, to be "nice" when there are those who seek to take advantage of that.

I think Zuckerberg is absolutely awful in nearly every way, but can we please avoid Incel-talk here? It's just gross, and it moreover trivializes the issues by focusing on an utterly irrelevant (and, so far as I know, completely fallacious) element of his personal life. I wish I could believe that was the case but, honestly, I highly doubt this is the issue. What's happening, I think, is that Facebook is old and stale, and does not provide the kind of experience that younger users want. It's possible that there has been some really minimal loss due to the whistleblower leaks that demonstrated how truly toxic the company and platform is, but, sadly, I think the vast majority of people are quite happy to sell their data (and by extension themselves) to whoever gives them the kind of online experience that resonates with their own social world. TikTok employs its user data to produce targeted ads too, and there are no signs that anyone is fleeing that platform.

With respect, no. This is a recipe for cliquishness and exclusion. This is a public space: no one should be made to feel that they are being shut out of the public discourse here, or excluded from conversation. You have tools, as you should, that enable you to control your own experience here. You're not in charge of someone else's experience.

AND it's ribbed!

It's not true, certainly, that all clubs restrict residents who are under a certain age. But many of the most popular ones, and a great many other sims as well, do -- presumably because of a paranoia about griefers. It's one of the not-very-helpful corollaries of the "My Land, My Rules" approach to land ownership that LL chose to take. Although it would be easy enough, I suspect, to disable the bit of code that allows property owners to do this. I wonder how much of an uproar there would be if they did?

That's not all they're called. Frankly, I'm half surprised the prudish forum censorship filters doesn't replace the emoji with an asterisk. 🍆 🍆 🍆

This is a great idea!

OMG. They grow up so fast these days! /me dabs her eyes

Well, it would be nice if you could stand in them for more than a half hour before they started HURTING

High heels are sooooo overrated in RL. I mean, sure. They look great, make your legs look sexier, and add height. But other than that, what use are they?

I could have told you that a long time ago, Rowan.

Here, Sandor. This is an oldie but a goodie! It's from an old web series, "The Guild," which was a parody of World of Warcraft. Pretty good evidence that sex and relationships have long been happening on other MMOs.

Really interesting, Matti. I think I've mentioned before here that I had a friend (a long time ago) who created a shape specifically intended to represent a post-op trans woman. (I don't know whether it was also supposed to represent someone undergoing HRT or not.) So, breasts, feminized face, but less pronounced hips and such. Fascinating and very cool.

Many style, much kitchen

I share your frustration, but there are actually some very good stores that do what you might call "everyday wear" very well. You may already know some or all of these, but if not I'd start with Neve and Just Because. Pixicat, Tetra, and Zoom also do some nice things that would not be out of place in most RL contexts.

Do you also derender all the men in the room? 😏

You are of course quite right, which is why I said it was "one of the reasons" given for the ban. Although, I wouldn't entirely dismiss the nudity thing -- this particular set of historical revisionists is really not very happy about the fact that (other) people have genitals and use them for fun.

In fairness, and speaking entirely from a marketing perspective, LL is leveraging Rosedale's new (re-)association with Second Life for all it's worth. He's everywhere right now, evangelizing for a version of the metaverse built upon the central premises of SL, and employing SL as a shining example of what works well. The next step is for the platform itself to step up, and show it's still a force to contend with, and not merely treading water, as it has been.