I can remember when I was a lad in Second Life that I had a PG parcel. One day, I noticed that next door a Gentleman’s club had opened and I wasn’t happy about this. The outside of the building and even the wording on the parcel was more risque then explicit but hey, this isn’t PG I thought. Stepping onto the parcel I realised the parcel was in a neighbouring sim and on further examination I realised that the neighbouring sim was mature. This was back in the days of only having maturity ratings of PG and Mature.
Now this made the PG rating of my parcel, meaningless, however the neighbouring parcel was not breaking any rules. I decide to pack up shop there and sell the PG parcel. I mentioned the silliness of this situation to a Linden, who agreed that said situation was silly and had been discussed.
Quite a few moons later Linden Lab unleashed the adult category, as with many Linden Lab ideas it had good intentions but was delivered in a very poor fashion. However now we have three maturity ratings, the issue of General sims neighbouring Moderate sims still exists, but adult sims are in their own category and we can filter adult results in our preferences, we can exclude them totally, this is a better situation than we had before because Mature or as it’s known now, Moderate, has quite a wide scope, so excluding adult helps to avoid the more extreme content.
I’m reminded of this because I’ve just read an article, which I’m not going to link to, that complains about extreme adult content in Second Life and in this article, to demonstrate that extreme adult content exists, the author set their preferences to adult and listed events, which included adult content. They also searched for a particular type of extreme adult content and then published the results, with outrage. I’m sorry but if you go out of your way to search for extreme adult content, you’re hardly in a position to complain about finding it. The author could try unticking safe search on Google and searching for similar results, the results will be shocking too.
Those who seek offence, will easily find it and this is the situation with this article. There is content within Second Life that I find offputting, but I know that if I search with adult filters turned on (no pun intended) that I’m likely to find adult content amongst the search results and some of that content may not be my cup of tea.
I recently blogged about visiting a roleplaying sim that had the sort of content I’m not a fan of, I was grateful this was explained via the welcome notecards at the sim landing point. The sim in question was adult, to have complained about said content when I knew ahead of teleporting there that it was an adult sim, would be churlish in the extreme.
The author also complains that this content puts off serious business and educators. Tier pricing and justifying usage puts off educators, but a cursory search for education in Second Life retrieves more results than the search term the author of the other article was offended by:
Educators are still using Second Life and as for big business, they ignore the extreme adult content on the world wide web because they can make good business use of it. They would do the same in Second Life if they could make good business use of it.
There are from time to time reports of activity that breaches the Terms Of Service, this sort of activity should be reported. However there’s also content that some people simply don’t like, urging people to abuse report said content is not responsible, nor is it helpful. People may well want to campaign to have content they don’t like removed, personally I move along, as I always have when I see objectionable content, but if you want to campaign about content you don’t like, raise sensible points, don’t go around urging people to abuse report content that does not fall outside the TOS.
Scylla Rhiadra used to be a very vocal critic of certain types of content in Second Life and would argue against its existence. Scylla was part of SL Left Unity and its offshoot of The Left Unity Feminist Network. I’m not sure how active such groups are in Second Life these days or if Scylla is even still around. There are ways and means of making your points, but I don’t agree with AR parties for content that isn’t against the TOS.
Second Life has a very grown up attitude to adult content in the main, Linden Lab accept that it’s here, they provide us with filters, it’s a sensible compromise, going out of your way to find content that will offend you, isn’t very sensible.
Scylla Rhiadra?
She needs to change her display name to Hakn A Tshaynik.
Best ignored.
-ls/cm
Hi Ciaran
I’m somewhat late responding to this — I only just received an email from someone pointing me to it. I debated whether or not to respond at all, to be honest: I haven’t been active in SL for nearly 2 years, I think. Or something like that. I don’t know if the SLLUFN is still active — I think the SLLU is, as I still seem to get notifications from them.
Your remarks seem to imply that I led “AR parties” around SL. It got a little tiresome, I remember, responding to that continued accusation when I was active in SL, but I’m a little surprised at it coming from you, as we interacted frequently enough that I’d have thought you’d know better.
To be clear, neither I nor anyone in the Left Unity Feminist Network ever, during my time there anyway, went on “AR parties.” I think that I probably sent a total of maybe 5 ARs in my 2 or 3 year in SL, and at least three of those were against griefers who were disrupting an event. I think that my stand on this sort of thing is nicely summed up in what I said back in 2010, in the notecard introducing my exhibit on representations of gender violence in SL:
“While I am deeply disturbed and dismayed by such role play, and fear for its broader impact on such things as attitudes towards gender and rape, I am also an anti-censorship feminist. I abhor this kind of behavior, but believe it is the right of those who so choose to engage in it.” (Is This Turning You On?)
I raise this point not out of self-defence or self-justification: I’m not in SL anymore, and it doesn’t really matter to me personally how I am remembered. But the accusation of censorship that is still often raised against feminists is both a red herring, and badly outdated. The height of the anti-porn pro-censorship movement in feminism was about 30 years ago, during Second Wave feminism. Few feminists now argue in favour of banning or censoring porn (although instances, as in snuff films and the like, which involve REAL violence are, of course, a different matter, for different reasons).
That said, being anti-censorship does not imply complacency or quietist acceptance. I dislike the Conservative Party of Canada intensely, and am very loud in my opposition to its despicable policies and ideology. That does NOT (emphatically) mean that I want them “banned” or legislated away. It DOES mean that I will continue to voice, as loudly as ever, my opposition to them, and the reasons for my dislike. That’s how democracy and free speech work.
The same is true of pornography. I believe that it, and most especially violent porn, can be socially harmful. I believe it reinforces backward, repressive, and sometimes dangerous attitudes. And I will say so — I DID say so, as you note, pretty frequently in SL. It does NOT mean that I ARed such material, or ever advocated its banning.
As for Crap, I’ll devote exactly as much screen space to his comment as it merits:
I’m sorry Scylla, my post is badly worded, I was citing you as an example of someone who was critical in a sensible fashion (whether one agreed with the criticism or not is another matter), rather than suggesting you were leading AR parties, that should have been in a different paragraph.
Edited my response here to add that the reference to leading AR parties was in reference to the article I’d read encouraging people to do so, rather than aimed at you.