Scylla Rhiadra

Yeah, mine fixed the third time around. Weird.

Anyone else's FS login screen just a big, blank white???? 😮

A new rendition of the Mosque at Ross. https://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Ross/128/240/45

I've got a new design for the male Senra.

I'm not, as you know, what you would likely call a "spiritual person" (although I feel I am, in my own way), but I do think that SL and other platforms can legitimately function as sites of spirituality. Our experiences here in SL are different from RL, but they are in their own way no less "real." Key though is that the spirituality is emanating from you and not from the code or the platform. A church or temple or holy place is a pile of stones or a collection of trees, until we lend it spiritual significance. Same with SL, I'd argue.

And the very real danger is that buying into the "tech is magic!" or "tech brings us nearer to God!" argument simply turns our tech overlords into priests whom we permit to wield unlimited power over us through the ways in which they use code to reshape and ultimately control our lives. Father Zuckerberg and Father Musk know best . . . Which, again, is what, on a more micro level, this article is about: how SL residents have resisted and subverted the dictates of the Holy Church of Linden.

The kind of critical approach that this article takes is, in theory anyway, "demystifying": it's trying to show how the quantifiable mechanics of a system -- code, rules, etc. -- work unseen to create what may appear as "natural" or even "mystical" ways of doing and understanding things, but are actually artificial constructs imposed by design. So, when one does something that in some sense "subverts" design by exploiting a glitch or a cheat or whatever, one is actually pulling aside the curtain and showing the wheels and pulleys and the little man trying hard to control everything behind the scenes. Every subversion that highlights the realities of code and design is also in that sense a reminder that none of this is really mystical or magical or natural: it's all just been coded to seem that way.

I've seen some amazing things in Minecraft, including the production of a working CPU actually in-world. The idea of porting one game inside another is also a really interesting concept. The article doesn't get into that sort of thing, but it seems to me that this is definitely another way in which users craft spaces for themselves outside of the confines of the platform design.

I am going to gently but firmly request that we not pursue this subject here any further. The article makes literally NO mention of the LGBTQ+ community in SL. It's simply not relevant to a discussion that has, so far, been wide-ranging, informative, interesting, and mostly very civil. Anyone who wants to discuss the LGBTQ+ community in SL can start their own thread, but please don't derail this one with a digression that will surely bury it in flaming and unwelcome drama.

I do get that you are a gallant and brave Culture War Warrior, and enjoy turning every thread into a crusade, but do you think, just possibly, you could help keep THIS thread "clean of political and social agendas"? Because so far, after . . . 2 posts? . . . you're the main contributor to the promotion of "agendas" here. None of this is relevant to the article in question. Please take it elsewhere.

Interesting way you define "stink." Speaking of agendas. Paul, you were looking for a proper definition of "heteronormative"?

I am not "defending" anything, Paul. I've offered many criticisms of this paper, beginning in the OP, and I've agreed with numerous other criticisms produced by others. I was simply informing you that you were mischaracterizing and incorrectly defining a particular word. The paper is certainly not arguing that LL is fighting repression. It is arguing that users are co-opting and subverting the platform itself, which is not quite the same thing as marching on Washington. It also, however, argues that in doing so, users are creating spaces for themselves within the platform that are in some sense "liberating." That's actually one of the criticisms of the paper I've already made a number of times: the enforcement of a certain kind of conformity on this platform derives at least as much -- I'd actually say more -- from the mechanisms by which content creation and the SL economy work as from the code itself. To use an analogy, we don't so much groan beneath the repression of a fascist government, as allow ourselves (myself included!) to be happily seduced into a complacent conformity by the workings and products of the free market.

This is by far the best and most relevant critique of the argument the article makes that I've seen yet. It's also one that I'm not very qualified to make myself, because I simply don't have enough experience of other MMOs. The whole piece is premised on the idea that SL's imperfections and glitchiness make it "special" because it frees users from the constraints of design in a way that is not possible of other, better-designed games. If you're correct -- and I have absolutely no reason to doubt you -- then the subversive elements that it sees at play in SL culture are common to MMOs in general, even if not necessarily to the same extent. The basic thesis -- that the struggle with poor interface design, broken code, etc. paradoxically empowers the user and their communities -- might, if this is the case, be better applied to MMOs in general, rather than setting up a contrast between more controlled and less controlled environments. Maybe the real point is that all users are always to some degree engaged in what I suppose one might dramatically call "resistance" to the machine, working to find "cheats" and adapting the best laid plans of games designers to their own nefarious purposes. So, yes, excellent points. Also a good point, although on this one YMMV, so to speak, as there are also endless laments here, and in-world, about SL's ancient code base, its apparent inability to keep up with the graphic quality of other "games," etc.The debate over PBR is maybe a case in point: there are those celebrating its advent as a step forward, and those who think that SL is in this regard unreclaimable. I also really liked your description of SL's older, legacy sites. And I've never read a better and more apt description of the ridiculousness that is our mesh body system!

I think that this is a really good point, and one that the article doesn't really touch on. We've developed a kind of shared language which is the result, not merely of our shared experience of the platform, but also of its glitches and failures. "It's just SL being SL again . . ." That kind of thing. And I agree that, to a degree, that's strengthened the bonds within communities.

I am sure it's individual in lots of ways, actually. But there are limits to how "different" you can be with a standard Maitreya Lara, simply because of the restrictions built into the mesh on how it responds to sliders. For instance, it's still pretty hard to reduce the size of the Maitreya butt. And reducing breast size much below 45 or so on the slider produces distortions. The limitations are built in: we're all somewhat prisoners of the code. (And that is, to a very large degree, the point that this article is making about the failure of code in SL: that it doesn't limit us as much as it might if it were "better.")

lol, sorry. Avalon is probably the most popular because it's the easiest to use. I went through about 4 different LeLutka heads trying to find one I liked for my alt, Laskya, and eventually I just broke down and bought Avalon (which I'd been resisting precisely because it is so popular). And voila! I almost immediately found a look for her I liked. Mesh bodies are much the same of course. At the moment, there are basically two main flavours: the "slim athletic" look you can get with Maitreya or Legacy (or Reborn if you use a LOT of deformers), or the "curvy" look which was, for a time, dominated by Hourglass and then Kupra, but which is now very much the property of Reborn. There's also a sizable, but still much smaller, market for the smaller-breasted body (Maitreya Lara Petite, and Legacy Perky). There are other bodies, of course, but basically there are three main ones that now totally dominate the market. And that inevitably breeds some conformity.

No, 99% certain it is not. I've read scores of pieces like this. I don't mean specifically about SL or even about games (although I've read some of that sort of thing as well), but in terms of its approach and theoretical allegiances. Frankly, I wasn't through the first paragraph before I had a pretty good idea of where it was going, and more or less how it was going to get there. I don't mean to suggest that this is merely formulaic (although a lot of academic and sub-academic writing frankly is), but rather that I found it immediately recognizable and familiar. Almost comfortable, in fact! If you want to read more stringently academic pieces (by which I mean, peer-reviewed, employing proper citation, etc.) that employ a somewhat similar approach, check out the Journal of Virtual Worlds online. Or any number of articles, either in academic journals or elsewhere, that apply Queer Theory, Cultural Materialism, and related theoretical approaches. I am sure that as a coder, you can sometimes look at a snippet and recognize the approach to its task that it's taking? This is the same thing.

Yeah. I'll say again that I think there are some serious issues with this article, but on the whole it's interesting, thought-provoking, and different. And the "different" thing may be a problem, because this article was not written for us. It was written for a much more select audience of people with backgrounds in the kind of discourse, and the approach, that she is taking. To point again to her use of the term "heteronormative," it's not a shot fired in a culture war: it's a specifically academic term that has a very deep history and set of meanings associated with it. It directly evokes, and calls up as part of its meanings, the theoretical work of people like Judith Butler, Michael Warner, and Lauren Berlant. In fact, there are literally 1000s of articles and books whose ideas underlie the use of this term in this article. Which is why, I think, so many people seem to think that this article is attacking Second Life. It isn't: it's suggesting, on the contrary, that SL has survived because it is a place where we, the "users," have been able to exert our own independence over an interface that frequently fails to "control" and limit us in the ways that it's supposed to. I think there are lots of legit criticisms of this article to be made. But a "hit piece" against SL it is not.

I think that's somewhat true. But I think most of us would agree that Catwa, LeLutka, Genus, and maybe some others all have very distinctive "looks." I might not be able to guess that you're using Avalon (which about 90% of LeLutka users do use), but I bet I could tell you that it WAS LeLutka. A glance at the garments for both men and women on sale at events, or weekend sales, will reveal an apparent variety that masks an awful lot of sameness. If I had a L$ for every LBD on sale over the weekend, or hoodie for men, I'd . . . well, I'd not be rich, but I'd have some L$s! It's also about other kinds of trends. You don't have to look far here on the forums to find people complaining about skirts or dresses that are "too short," or cutaways in garments, or "Juicy" this or that. I am continually hearing (and actually experiencing) the complaint that, among all that apparent variety, there is an awful lot of "same old same old," or just repetition of the styles, features, colours, etc. Just like in RL, really.

As someone pointed out above, this isn't a "game review." It's not saying "SL is bad because of the following things." What it IS saying is that many of the things that don't work well in SL have created within this platform an inventive and creative community that has learned, not merely how to manage those problems, but how to adapt and exploit them to make a new kind of experience that is unavailable on other platforms where a properly function interface design works in effect to limit what players and users can do. So, it's not saying there's something "wrong" with the ability to unlock camera constraints, and it's certainly not advocating that that be restricted. It's saying that the ability to cam places independently of the embodied presence of your avatar is characteristic of the kinds of freedoms that SL's slightly wonky and unusual (and glitchy, and out of date) code permits. The author doesn't really voice an opinion about whether SL should be "fixed" or not. She's simply describing the culture that has developed around the existing system. I suspect, however, that she'd see it as a loss to the platform if changes "locked us in" to particular ways of doing things by producing a better functioning, but therefore more restrictive, interface. (Again I'll say, though, that I think she's missed the ways in which the consumer culture of SL has actually sort of already done that.)

Trust me. I'd have done a better job of it.

And (emphatically, in a very insistent shouty voice) NOT ME!!!!

Thank GOD we never hear anyone complaining about the lack of things to do in SL here on the forums or in-world!!! Or about the increasingly glitchy and aging code base, how TPs are borked, group chat doesn't work, etc.! Whew! 😏

Um. You do realize that this is essentially what the article is arguing, right?

This is correct, more or less. Heteronormativity is a term from the early 90s that derived from a particular field of academic work -- Queer Theory -- with very definite ideological "leanings," if you like. It values diversity of all kinds, and argues strenuously that Western culture has worked hard, for literary centuries, to suppress alternative values, identities, and lifestyles. The rest of your post is frankly ill-informed, simplistic nonsense. Heteronormativity isn't a "cuss word" or an insult created to be thrown about on social media. It is, again, a term with an academic origin that relates to cultural systems, not to individuals. It has a very complicated and rich field of meanings associated with it, and figures prominently in certain kinds of academic writing. If someone "accuses" you of being heteronormative, they aren't "accusing" you of being heterosexual. They are accusing you of being, knowingly or not, a homophobic bigot, and someone who supports a culture and ideological system that works very hard to suppress alternative voices and perspectives. Literally no one cares whom you sleep with, Paul, or what turns your crank. They just don't. They do care if you're complicit with a repressive political and cultural system.