Adult Content Warning!

I’m merely guessing, but I think on the 12th of March someone left the doors to the cages at Linden Labs open and the Communication department escaped for a while. Then, before they were all caught and returned to the cages, given their daily ration of decaf skinny latte and musli, or whatever PR people survive on, they managed to get this posted on the SL community blog.

If you work through the blandness of the first paragraph you eventually find out that LL is planning to introduce a third category to the two existing of PG and Mature. We will now, or eventually, have places tagged as Adult as well. I might have ignored this all had I not had a conversation In World with an escorting friend of mine – and then a little later get a note card passed to me by yet another, this time non-escorting friend.

If you think you’ve already guessed what their attitudes are, you’re wrong.

My escort friend was all for it. The other friend had entitled his card something along the lines of “Fascist takeover of SL by moralizing Lindens”. My escorting friend’s argument was basically that it was a god thing because there was a lot out there in SL that would make people quince and squirm. (I’d point out that in many cases that is just what people are looking for there, but whatever!) And she continued that restricting access to them would be better than making things like that Verboten.

The note card basically said that the decision, undemocratic as it was, just further curbed Residents’ rights to do what they pleased.

What surprises me is that this is a topic at all – and hence my suspicion that the Communications guys had escaped for a day. Sure, I’ve been surprised and sometimes aghast at things I’ve found in SL. But let’s take a place like Neva – a free sex sim – which will certainly fall under that category. Sure, it’s a boring place for boring people doing boring things – but if it astounded me and shocked me would I hang around to let that feeling sink in?

No, I’d TP away.

But that’s not the point. What was I doing there in the first place if I was so worried about my moral cleanliness? Had I typed “Church meetings” into search? Did I find it while looking for “Bible Studies”?

I think not.

It could be that certain sims of this sort do try to lure me in with descriptions of “Visit our wonderful beachside resort and talk to enticing other people about current affairs” – only to have me greeted by images of male avatars with erections reaching up to their shoulders.
Could be, but it hasn’t happened yet.

I do a bit of writing on the side and have some stories posted on the web. Now, two of them are tagged for 18 and older, the rest are PG (and the two first mentioned I would like to emphatically point out are tagged just because the characters use rough language at times). Now, guess which stories are most read?

Right.

Now, I think this will be what happens in SL as well. As soon as the Lindens install the Adult category landowners and merchants will be demanding to be tagged as that. Sex, as any public relations person knows, sells.

But, some would argue, if they do use age verification to allow residents access to those places, wouldn’t it reduce the overall number of potential visitors? Yes, it would. I’d like to suggest a different approach: Simply tell people that they are entering an Adult area and can turn back or cancel there tp. Certainly, it’s a pain to click away the window – but we’ve had to do that for years in thousands of stores and clubs.

---

Having Sax on a Sunday Morning

---

Some would say that I write too often about the Hot Sax Jazz Club and venture that this blog is just a case of non-too-clever product placement. It isn’t. Were I to be advertising for the Hot Sax Jazz Club I’d probably be getting money from hem (which I am not – though happy to negotiate something) or actually in their employment (which, again, I am not ).
And I’m not going to spend much time exalting all the nice things about Hot Sax, nor try to convince you to go there and donate Lindens extensively. I could, probably, do that for other fine clubs in SL – if I ever got around to discovering them.
Actually, what I’d like to blog about today is less Hot Sax as I know it : full of delightful and usually interesting people, offering – yet again usually - good music. Nor will I go into the fine choice of hostesses there (Twink, Cara, Fifi, Lindsay and “Just call me Sky, all my friends do”-Skyangel) who can be funny, cheeky and entertaining and deserve to be tipped a lot more then I remember to.
No, today I want to talk about the Sax I don’t know, but just discovered. The Sax of a (Greenwich Meantime) Sunday morning.
Have you ever, in RL walked into a bar hours after you should have been home in bed? Along the counter you’ll find maybe two or three… forms… one will undoubtedly be resting his forehead on the bar, another will be talking, quite energetically if not without an occasional slurring or words about something. It’s usually politics, football or why everone in the bar should migrate to Australia and start a new life. (I’ve never been to Australia so I have no idea what the third topic might be there at times like this).
Off to one side you’ll discover a couple who, most likely, four hours earlier hadn’t know each other existed and are now sharing secrets of their childhood. The bartender rolls his eyes as you enter – yet another night owl to contend with. He, or she, knows you’ll advance to the bar and pretend to be sober while you politely ask if it’s okay to order a drink.
Now, except for the facts that a) there isn’t usually a bartender at Sax on a Sunday morning and b) there aren’t three guys hugging the bar. Oh – and c) I’m not drunk - I couldn’t help but be reminded of that RL image just now when I logged on.
Two couples sway their slow dance in intoxicated passion. Over at the edge of the dance floor some avatar is slumped over with “Away” above their head – and yet once again I wonder why the Lindens have made the animation for being “away” look like you’ve had a bit too much to drink and are now trying to study your shoes.
In short: Sax is, at 230 AM PDT, a sad and sorry looking place.

---

Ve haf vays of making you dance

---

Women of the world rejoice!
At least In World. According to this piece of news from Reuters IT-geeks (and we know there are a number of them in Second Life) will now have the opportunity to learn how to flirt at the German Potsdam University. „The 440 students enrolled in the master's degree course will learn how to write flirtatious text messages and emails, impress people at parties and cope with rejection“, reports Reuters.

---

Instead of an excuse

---

[11:26] Matilda Pinion: whats going on with your blog?
[11:26] Matilda Pinion: except not much lololololol
[11:26] Eaton Waechter: I'm building up excitement
[11:27] Eaton Waechter: dunno what to blog about
[11:27] Eaton Waechter: I think I need to find fellow bloggers
[11:27] Matilda Pinion: where do they hang out normally
[11:28] Eaton Waechter: BSDM places usually
[11:28] Matilda Pinion: haha thats floggers lol

---

The right type of hype

---

The University of Leipzig has just published research on the attitude of youths to, among other things, Second Life. The study found out that 80 percent of the 1000 youths questioned during research knew of SL, but two thirds of those who had not yet entered the virtual world weren’t even interested in doing so.

What people reporting about the research appear to be overlooking is that it was done with youths between 11 and 20. Technically only those above 18 years of age can actually register with SL. But, as we all know from those “How r u, wanna dance, rofl, do u liek my lazersword?”-IMs, this is, sadly, not the case.

Recently, in fact yesterday afternoon, an acquaintance mentioned to me that the “hype of SL is a thing of the past” and then, even more recently, in fact yesterday evening, a friend IM’d me asking what had happened to the Jazz Club Hot Sax. At first (and in a moment of extreme panic) I though she meant it had disappeared. But what she meant was that it was almost empty of people.

This has all put me on the defensive - pretty much in the manner of someone who has been a regular guest in, let’s say, the hot spot in a smaller town and suddenly discovers that the place isn’t rocking as it used to. You’ve got two choices: Either you join the crowd of nay-sayers and add your voice to their chorus; or you sniff loudly and start pretending you didn’t want all of those other dumb people in the club anyway and finally, finally, things are getting back to where they should be before all those flighty, finical and fastidious strangers showed up.

I, for my part, am quite happy to take the latter attitude.

Still, I do wonder. Last Sunday SL reached 67335 users online at one time. I know that so exactly because I wasn’t one of them and had that number up on the login screen for quite a while. If SL is a club that isn’t that popular anymore, I wished they’d tell that to the other 67333 people (I need at least one other person, preferably Tia, to be logged in as well). If SL isn’t as popular as it used to be, I wish it would stop being so full.

---

Baby, I ain't lion

---

This is just almost funny. In fact, almost too funny to be true. In fact, almost too funny for me to do anything but just copy and paste the article here.
And, being slightly lazy I'd do that - but I'm also slightly more afraid of getting some mail from a copyright lawyer, so I'll just summarize it.
A woman from North Carolina has been arrested after trying to kidnap her SL boyfriend after he broke off the relationship after they had met in RL. Okay, that’s not really funny, more tragic.
What’s funny is that the article slips in little bits of information and wording on the side that just begs to be commented on. May I point them out:
„Ms Jernigan's boyfriend was a lion while she was a virtual woman.“ The article states. „The two began what police describe as "a full-scale relationship online" in the virtual community, but the man broke it off after they met in person.”
Two or three things immediately pop to mind reading that.
1) Okay, he was a lion, but she a virtual woman. Why the virtual in there – and if it is, why in front of woman instead of lion?
2) “A full-scale relationship online”: As a lion and virtual woman. Doesn’t that make you, well, just wonder?
3) He breaks off the relationship after meeting her. What were her feelings? It seems to me she should have been more surprised after meeting him. Where’s the mane? What happened to your fangs? Why don’t you roar sweet nothings to me?

---

Limerick 1. House of V

---

The House of V hosts a large spider
Who could be called, perhaps, a rough rider.
He seems so docile
Then gets incredibly vile
And puts parts of himelf inside ya.

---