Persephone Emerald

I missed that.

A laugh emoji isn't intended to be a scorn laugh. It only seems so from context. Linden Lab isn't responsible for how we choose to use the communication tools we have at hand. We have only 4 reaction emojis built into the system. If we didn't have the laugh one, how would we laugh at people's jokes? On the other hand, we can always post one of the many emojis from text or add a picture or gif to express derision if we wanted to do so.

Waking up at 2 am & spending 2 hours here on the forums with all these amusing and clever people, with all the feels.

This is true even without autism. People are complicated, and trying to figure out what they really meant or feel is even harder without visual and tone clues.

Peeve: When one person is forever attacking others and another is forever feeling like the victim, you know this isn't going to go well. The children's birthday party imagery was great though. Kudos on that! 🪅 🦇 (I couldn't find the right kind of bat emoji.)

That's probably where the expression, "getting a little long in the tooth" comes from.

Examples don't have to be about touchy RL issues. Can you find an example that relates to SL?

Sometimes how a person expresses their ideas can change people's minds. They may bring up good points. On the other hand, if they repeatedly overreact or say ridiculous things, then even if their original idea seemed to have some merit, we might stop supporting it in a discussion.

Here's another example of why I might leave a laugh emoji. It's called a call-back by comedians. I'm sure Theresa understands that I'm not leaving a scorn laugh, but others who don't follow this forum closely might not understand why I think this is funny.

^ Thank you, for once again expressing what probably many of us were thinking so succinctly and eloquently. My past experience with people on this forum does color my opinion of them and thus how I initially want to react to their posts, but I try to respond to what they're actually saying and give them credit for a well expressed idea, sometimes even if I don't entirely agree with it Case in point: Damn it, Zali, I want to leave a laugh emoji because this is so funny, but I don't want you or others to think it's a scorn laugh. You hit the nail on the head, saying what I also think but with your usual sarcastic spice that I would never have the guts to use here. When someone expresses a thought that I think is stupid, of course I'm gonna want to leave a laugh or confusion emoji, but if I think doing so might hurt their feelings or look like I'm picking on them, I might just not respond instead. If multiple people react with laughter or derision to a post, it might just be because they all think it's a stupid idea.

I have to disagree. Some of it is definitely in my boobs too.

People will sometimes react in a childish or overly reactive way. Telling them that they're over-reacting or acting childishly seldom changes their behavior. I think the best we can hope for in a public forum is that other people see their behavior and take note of it. I've had someone go back and put confused emojis on a bunch of my posts that had nothing to do with the post they actually took exception to. That kind of behavior just shows that they're being over-reactive and childish. It doesn't actually render a verdict on anything I posted. Within certain limitations, none of us are obligated on this forum to contribute to a polite, fair and thoughtful discussion. If someone wanted to post nothing but 💩 emojis, they could probably do that, but then they'd look like a toddler, rather than an adult.

What did people do before gravity was invented? Did that keep ships from falling off the edge of the Earth?

If whether or not we should be able to hide our account age had come up as an issue before on the forums, it would've been posted in my "Warning: Forum Poop or Quagmire Ahead" thread. We have exhausted pretty much every SL issue that commonly comes up.

I've had a neighbor on Mainland who seemed to have insufficient tier for their land for months, if not years. I wouldn't count on LL not taking the land though. I think it would be easier to cut off a piece to sell or abandon it.

Perhaps the sound should be changed to the endless screams of the infinite well at the Fantasseria community region?

This is also a use-case for creating a young and "innocent" alt, aka a baby sock puppet.

I doubt the US government is as organized and cohesive as it was in the 1960's. Congress can barely elect their own party leaders now and leaks show up in the media at the drop of a hat.

Saying another forumite is not nice.

@Extrude Ragu, @Solar Legion Asking for clarification is certainly appropriate in a forum discussion, but because some people prefer to just leave an emoji reaction, rather than type out a response, it's generally advisable to not ask what they intended to mean with their emoji. Some people like to leave emojis that are intentionally vague or confusing. It's also possible to accidentally check the wrong emoji. Rather than getting upset about why they left a particular emoji response, it's better to just ignore it. As for taking a discussion to private messages, I find this to be most helpful when politely asking for clarification, for information that might not be appreciated on the public forum, or suggestions for changes someone might make to a thread title, thread location, or post. Once the exchange has already become heated publically, it rarely gets better in private, unless one of the participants wants to apologize.

These are good ideas as to how LL could hide account age if they chose to do so. Personally, I don't want to hide my account age, but I can imagine some people might feel uncomfortable about others knowing they are "oldbies" or "newbies", especially when these terms get thrown around on the forum as disparaging terms similar to how "boomer" and "millennial" are used elsewhere online. Whatever happened to respecting experience? Is age to be the next artificial distinction to divide us now, along with race and financial status? Account age isn't even a real indicator of RL age or SL experience. Some people started in SL as teens. Some started after they retired in RL. Some gave it a try years ago, abandoned it, and have only recently come back.

We already have the ability to lie about everything else about our real lives in SL. We can lie about our gender, age, race, marital status, financial status, where we live or what we do for a living. SL data such as online status or account age can easily be discovered with scripted objects, however, so hiding it could actually *show* who is both hiding information and assuming we aren't smart enough to know how to check them. I still have candles in SL that can check if any avatar is inworld. I mostly used them to check on whether a RL boyfriend was trying to hide when he was in SL. Of course we can also join a group someone is in and check their online status from the membership list. I'm sure it would be easy enough for someone to create an object that can similarily check the account age or status of any user, so trying to lie about such things would be useless.

Wait, has someone actually proven that lizard-people are controlling the world's governments? So, the Earth is actually flat then?

You're wrong on this point, @Rowan Amore. Not revealing information is not the same as lying about it. You've made the same assertion yourself in regards to a person's RL gender. Not revealing one's RL country or state of residence is not lying about it. Not revealing one's real age is not lying about it. Not revealing one's financial or account status is not lying about it. Assuming that one has alterior motives for not revealing information is a slippery slope that can lead to people oversharing personal information. It seems akin to me of people wanting RL names on social media or the government being able to listen in on phone calls if they wanted. "If you don't have anything to hide, you don't have anything to worry about." The pertinent questions here seems to me to be 1. Is this personal information? 2. Would it be possible for LL to hide this information without breaking functionality. and 3. Does showing this information serve a purpose that most SL users want. The avatar name is considered non-personal, identifying information in SL. It can be changed, but the user ID cannot be changed. LL has elected to make it impossible to hide one's avatar name, because being able to hide it makes griefing and misrepresenting one's account being different than it really is too easy. Account age is considered non-personal, non-identifying information that is necessary for some of the functionality of SL. It allows region and parcel owners to restrict younger accounts and give freebies only to younger accounts. Most users don't seem to care that it can identify them as having been in SL longer, and if they want to appear as someone who has not been in SL that long, they create a younger alt. For the last 20 years, hardly anyone has complained about their account age being visible to other users. Account status - Basic, Premium, etc. - has only fairly recently been shown in the SL viewer and is not shown in the Firestorm viewer. This would be considered non-personal, non-identifying information from a legal perspective. It is necessary for SL functionality because it determines which accounts can enter some regions and which can obtain certain Linden Homes or Mainland parcels. I don't think showing it on profiles by default serves a good purpose, however. If it were a choice, on the other hand, it could show who likes to display their wealth as a kind of status symbol, which I think could be helpful in deciding who to avoid dating.

If I see an avatar with a young account age (under 1 month old) that seems like they might need help (eg. wearing a starter avatar), I ask them "Are you new in SL? Do you need help with anything?" (Of course I wouldn't say this at the Welcome Hub central region, because there are usually Mentors there to help them.)