Deltango Vale

While writing a recent post, in which I described Disneyfication as toxic to Second Life, something nagged at me. There seemed to be a contradiction with my earlier arguments against merging Second Life with Facebook. I have long argued that Second Life and Facebook are incompatible because they are different products with different purposes serving different markets. At the same time, I was arguing that Second Life and Disney were equally incompatible. How, then, could two fantasy worlds (Second Life and Disney) be incompatible? I have moved the original post here: ------------------------------------------------------ I think 'Disneyfication' is self-explanatory and universal. I'm not in any way suggesting that Disney as a brand is bad; quite the opposite: Disney provides a clean, safe, cheerful set of products - targeted primarily at children - within a tightly controlled framework. My cousin worked as an actor in Disneyland. The themepark is spotless, supervised, regulated, policed and maintained with near-military efficiency. The actors must conform to strict codes of conduct and perform with maximum enthusiasm precisely on schedule. Personal behavior and attitude is monitored both on and off site. Nothing is allowed to tarnish Disney's clean, PG image. Under no circumstances are politics or sexuality permitted anywhere near the brand. Controversy is abhorred. Safety of mind and body is paramount. Copyright is defended to levels verging on national security. Under no circumstances will the company allow the brand to be stained by RL unpleasantness. Fair enough. That's Disney's philosophy, business model and brand. It works. It provides millions of families with an opportunity to have safe, clean fun. I love Kung-Fu Panda and Pirates of the Caribbean. I know with absolute certainty that I can grab any Disney DVD and take it next door to babysit the kids. Granny loves them too, giggling when the charming prince is prevented from kissing a girl on the cheek by a rambunctious squirrel - well, maybe a kiss on the cheek is allowed, this time, but you know they are gonna get married, so it's okay. Outside the gates of Disneyland, beyond the carpark, off-screen is...cue sinister organ music...RL. That Disney is not RL defines its very existence. Disney is the quintessence of not being RL - of isolating itself and protecting itself from RL. Again, no problem. Hooray for Disney! Why not provide such an escape form the problems and hardships of RL? I think it's wonderful. The process of Disneyfication is the conversion of 'RL' into Disneyland - of treating adults like children. There's a Disneyland in Paris now. Great. Seriously, it's nice. BUT, some things should not be Disneyfied. Second Life is one of them. Second Life is about as incompatible with Disney as it's possible to get - unless one wants to compare Disney with, say, genetic research or military strategy or trade-weighted exchange rates. Second Life is an adult world based on fantasy: sexual fantasy, roleplay, experimentation, gender-reversal, gender-denial, mythology, self-expression and commerce: the production and sale of metaphorical goods - many of them linked to fantasy. At a more comprehensive level, Disneyfication is about removing risk, uncertainty and individual responsibility and providing instead safety, certainty and 'paternal' responsibility. It is about replacing the messiness of life with order. It is about control and efficiency. It is about wrapping creativity in a blanket of conformity. It's about recreating the innocence of childhood - excellent! - but it's toxic to Second Life. ------------------------------------------------------ Here are the main points: Disney is a fantasy world divorced from RLSecond Life is a fantasy world divorced from RLFacebook is a real social network embedded in RLAnd here, in my opinion, is the solution to the puzzle: Second Life and Disney represent utterly different fantasy worlds, both of which seek, by definition, not to be RL. Second Life is a self-projecting metaphorical interface with a user-generated economy based on a sophisticated private property rights structure. It is an open, organic, international world targeted primarily at adults. Disney is a physical and conceptual themepark. It is a closed, controlled, US-centric world targeted primarily at children. Off in the distance, unrelated to both Second Life and Disney, is Facebook. A core policy of Facebook is to prohibit avatars. Facebbok is clear about its mission: it is a RL social network containing RL information about RL identities. Facebook is not a virtual world. It is not a fantasy world. It does not compete with Second Life or Disney. With this in mind, Linden Lab would be wise to avoid strategies and policies that seek to merge Second Life with either Disney or Facebook. Second Life, Disney and Facebook are three incompatible products serving three different markets and, in my opinion, the sooner Linden Lab comes to grips with this fact, the sooner SL will prosper. See also, A Strategic Assessment of Second Life

Most likely, the group you belong to pays L$30 per week to list a parcel of land it owns in search. That fee is divided among the group members.

First, could we please have SL join dates on our avatars instead of the date we joined the old Jive forum? The Jive date carries zero information; it's useless clutter. SL join date contains much information - and displaying it saves having to log inworld to get someone's join date. Second, the choice of badges is pretty poor. Could we not have a set of simple badges without all the bells and whistles? Y'know, black text on an uploaded image or white text on an uploaded image - that sort of thing? Oh, and maybe move badges to the Avatar tab where 99% of the human race would expect to find it :smileywink:

@ Void Looking back, it seems that Linden Lab intended to bring underage players onto the Main Grid from June 2006 with the introduction of anonymous accounts. That the restriction on alts at the time (5 alts max at US$10 per alt, system crosschecks on email addresses etc.) was relaxed over subsequent years such that there are now no restrictions whatsoever, shows willingness on the part of Linden Lab to open the door to underage players. As everyone knows, unrestricted, anonymous accounts have been the primary conduit onto the Main Grid for underage players for the past two years. Personally, I believe the strategy to bring underage players onto the Main Grid began in earnest in 2007 and gathered pace throughout 2008 as a result of 1) the moral panic surrounding the ADR news story of May 2007 and 2) VC and Board pressure as a result of SL's initial growth phase. No one can deny that 2007-2008 saw a massive change in the philosophy and direction of Second Life, culminating in the infamous 'Adult' Policy of 2009 followed by the Teen Policy of 2010. In other words, the strategy of Disneyfication can be traced back at least three years. This is not to say Linden Lab didn't make other policy errors - the Openspace pricing error, for example, had nothing to do with underage players, nor did the VAT mistake - but mixing underage players with an adult resident population in a virtual world that boasted advanced sexual game play ranks up there with opening a pig farm in Saudi Arabia. Rather than close the farm, Linden Lab is trying to convert everyone to bacon.

@ Mags OP Yes, it has made a huge difference. The mistake is to think the difference can be measured as a single event at a specific time. In truth, the difference is represented by the aggregate of incremental changes over the course of three and a half years. Compare Second Life 2006 to Second Life 2011 and the difference is mind-numbingly obvious. If one drops a frog into boiling water, it immediately jumps out, but if one puts a frog in cold water and heats it slowly, the frog eventually boils to death. Every senior manager and politician on Earth understands and applies this method of incremental change. It is particularly effective if the constituency to be influenced has a short membership cycle - a short collective memory. Has the arrival of legally underage players made a difference on the ground? Yes, but it's like asking if the 1952 election of Senator Joseph McCarthy or the 1932 election of President Roosevelt made a difference on the ground. The difference wasn't felt on Election Day or even with their first pieces of legislation; the difference was felt by the whole society, for good or ill, after they had been in power for many years. Both failed in their initial attempts to bring about change through brute force; both succeeded through slow, persistent, incremental change. As a historian, I am alert to change through time, which is why I continually remind people of the history of Second Life. It is not surprising, therefore, that those who have been in Second Life the longest tend to complain the loudest at Linden Lab's campaign to convert Second Life from an adult (grown up) virtual world into an increasingly paternalistic vanilla playground. See A Strategic Assessment of Second Life. The problem is general, diffuse and nebulous, not only as an aggregate of incremental change over time, but in the way it permeates people's attitudes and beliefs. These fora are a good example. Auto-bleeping specific words is considered almost normal by many new residents, yet it would have been dismissed as lunacy in 2006 not only by residents, but by management itself. The question, then, is whether the arrival of legally underage players has made a difference to Second Life. The answer to that question is yes, monumental, and, in my opinion, not for the good of either Linden Lab as a company or Second Life as a world. As I said two years ago, "Please remember that Second Life is virtual, voluntary and adult and understand that Disneyfication will buy you at best a temporary advantage before the whole edifice slides gently into banality."

I find that rebooting my router solves many problems, particularly this one.

We offer prestige mainland for rent in the heart of Second Life: - San Francisco Sims 2002 - Color Sims 2003 - Seacliff 2004 An exclusive address for discerning residents

Hooray! :smileyvery-happy: Many thanks!

SL is a social network x 10,000. It is a an S-class Mercedes compared to a Facebook Ford Fiesta. It is a Chanel evening dress compared to a Facebook facecloth. It is Windows 7 compared to DOS 3.1. Perhaps Linden Lab should quit washing the car with a Hermes scarf.

Thanks for the info. Needless to say, the category to remove is Estate Parcels for Sale. One cannot buy an estate parcel, one can only lease/rent it. Either have Estate Parcels for Rent or Estate Leaseholds for Sale Now would be a good time to fix this longstanding terminology problem. See: A Lesson About Land Ownership

For some reason, Phoenix is designed with intelligence and grace. Radar is brilliant as is double-click teleport. I have tried other viewers, but none are as intuitive and elegant at Phoenix.

Please create a Mainland Parcels for Rent category of the Buy and Sell Land Forum.

Peewee/Willie, I agree that selecting a name from a dropdown list slows the registration process. It took me an hour to choose my name (because I had a hunch I would be stuck with it forever). I also agree that one should be able to change one's name. At the moment, one can choose any name, but there is only one name space. At the very least, why not have two or three name spaces? For example, forename, surname or forename, middlename, surname.

A region is normally limited to 15,000 prims. If, for example, 14,995 prims were already rezzed and you tried to rez 6 prims, you would get that message.

I think it fair to say that the Display Names project was something of a failure. As Ishtar pointed out, the new intake of residents suffer from a dearth of coherent names because they are limited to one name instead of two (forename and surname) and because existing residents gobbled up most of the coherent names to protect their identity and brand. New residents are left with little choice but to scramble for the crumbs of Wendy723 or, in frustration, to whack at any combination of letters and numbers that might still work. The result - predictably - is names like jetghievui Resident or Samgfgfgfg12. Why this wasn't considered before implementation is a mystery, but the problem is here now and wants to be fixed. The question is how best to fix it. Since I am not an engineer, I will offer a conceptual approach. The core of the problem is having only one name (one text ID). That means new residents must cram into one single name space. Imagine if the internet were to eliminate all suffixes except dot com. Everyone would have to cram into the dot com space, which is already filled. That's why new suffixes are being added all the time. Linden Lab's databases can handle two text IDs at the moment (which makes going to one even stranger), so why not three or four? I do not know enough about the technology side, but can't Linden Lab, for example, add an extra 'field' to the name ID? The old system was actually quite clever by providing a dropdown list of surnames. It seems odd to now give all new residents the surname ‘Resident’. Why not create a middle name field instead with a selection of dropdown choices? Alternatively, let residents choose all three names? In any event, I think this thread could be a good place to help Linden Lab solve the naming problem. Any suggestions?

If you have registered a credit card with Linden Lab via your account page, you should see 'Payment Info On File' on the first page of your inworld profile. If so, all is well and you are age verified. Note, there are problems with the server software such that age-verified banlines sometimes ignore the fact that one is age verified.

There have been technical problems with groups for a couple days. Yes, it's frustrating.

Tickets are running about three months behind. My early November ticket has been addressed, but my mid January ticket remains 'New'. I'd say you have at least another month to wait.

I think the climate just changed. The thread has been reopened :smileyhappy:

Submit a Ticket to LL via Help -> Submit a Support Case. Briefly describe the nature of the transaction. LL has access to IMs and account records.

I suggest moving the Community Guidelines link to the top left of the screen (above the Second Life icon). One might want to view Community Guidelines maybe once or twice a year, yet the link occupies much space in a much-used area of the screen (between My Settings and Sign Out). It makes far more sense, functionally and esthetically, to have the Community Guidelines link above the Second Life icon (top left).

Before doing anything else, reboot your router. I find that many problems of connection and lag are cured by rebooting my router.

@Paladin Ah, I don't use viewer 2. Many thanks for this explanation. It might be a clever idea to have a tickbox on an SLA question that signifies which viewer a person is using.