Something that has been of concern to me for some time is the growing problem of Second Life transmitted diseases. It is estimated that 1 in 3 Second Life residents* are now afflicted with one of the many diseases transmitted on the grid. However, despite the fact that there is every possibility that someone YOU know if afflicted by a STD, there is little by way of awareness.

I am dedicating a series of posts to raising awareness of these heinous diseases by informing you, my fellow residents, of the causes, symptoms and cures. I’ll start today with DRAMATITIS.

Dramatitis

Dramatitis, a curable disease, spread through unprotected pixel intimacy on poseballs, is transmitted from a carrier to sexual partners. Carriers cannot be cured, though do not exhibit symptoms all of the time and can live relatively normal lives. Sort of.

Primary Stage Dramatitis

If a non-carrier comes into intimate pixel contact with a Dramatitis carrier, he or she is likely to notice no immediate symptoms. However, infection is instant.

There is a small possibility at this stage that, providing you have no further intimate contact with the carrier, you may never see symptoms and the infection may indeed rectify itself.

Secondary Stage Dramatitis

Secondary stage Dramatitis occurs, in most cases, after the second or third encounter with the carrier. This stage of the disease is the first at which you would ordinarily see visible symptoms.

• Irritation – often in the form of persistent and consistent four, five, six or even seven times hourly IMs from the carrier.

• Ear ache – caused by the screeching of the carrier upon your failure to respond to their many, many, many, many IMs instantly.

• Headaches – as above.

Tertiary Stage Dramatitis

Tertiary stage Dramatitis is potentially fatal for your avatar. The carrier becomes particularly furious as you try to withdraw your intimacy in a bid to cure the Dramatitis. The Secondary stage symptoms become chronic. However, the symptoms at this stage have the potential to transfer from your avatar to your RL body. Immediately upon login to Second Life you may encounter the above symptoms, previously associated purely with your avatar, as the carrier ups their efforts to lure you into repeated acts of intimacy.

Dramatitis can ultimately lead to the permanent logging off of your avatar if not cured.

Prevention

The only absolute certain prevention for Dramatitis is to avoid intimacy with carriers. While it is not always possible to spot carriers of Dramatitis, indicators of a carrier may include:-

• He or she has at least 15 alts dating back to 2004, many of which he or she refuses to use these days.

• He or she has been partnered in excess of 8 times and all of the former partners cry out in terror when you even mention the carrier’s name.

• He or she has ‘drama free zone,’ written in their profile.

If you’ve suffered from a SecondLife Transmitted Disease and you’d like to share your story, get in touch with Josue Habana in world.

*Research by the Bullshit Institute of Virtual World Statistics That I Just Made Up. Survey took a cross section residents amounting to three.

Alrighty, let’s answer all questions from various IMs, notecards and emails in one fell swoop and then we can get on with life. Sound good?

Disclaimer: by ‘frequently asked’ in this context, I actually mean ‘asked once.’ I just like to make it sound a bit more dramatic

OMG did you, like, die?

Nope. I did not die. I did not have a near death experience and I was not in a coma for 12 months. I have a pulse (yep – still), I’m still breathing, got all my major organs and it’s all working fine, thank you.

Did your wife make you leave SL?

First up, I didn’t leave Second Life.  I just logged in less. Much less. Like once every blue moon less. But it wasn’t a big dramatic ‘zomfg I am so like leaving…. I better have a virtual funeral.’ Nope, I was just in RL more and SL less.

And no. That was nothing to do with my wife. For a start, Chloe and I were not even married when I started spending less time in world and she has never once asked me not to use SL.

Will you be in world a lot?

Define ‘a lot?’ I used to be in for 12 hours a day regularly until late 2010. I will not be repeating that. No way. For a start, I have a business to run and I have two children to take care of. My idea of parenting isn’t sitting a baby on my lap while I have voice conversations with strangers in pixel clubs. I wouldn’t inflict that sort of neglect on a child and I wouldn’t inflict my child’s screaming down the mic on said Second Life strangers.

I’ll be around more. Whether it’s 15 minutes a week on a Saturday afternoon or a few hours during the week depends on life. It’s a hobby. It doesn’t need scheduling.

Did you come back for a relationship with [insert any one of about 6 different female friends’ names here]?

Believe it or not, marriage is a concept I take seriously. And although I truly believe everyone is entitled to their own opinion, I am of the opinion that a virtual relationship is still infidelity if you are married in real life. If you form a romantic emotional bond with someone, whether they’re next door or 6000 miles away, it compromises your marriage.

I don’t think that is acceptable on any single level. It’s hideous, to me.

So needless to say, I am not back in SL for a relationship with anyone. That includes any of my formers, any of my friends or any randomers. I’ve got female friends, none of whom I am getting pixel jiggy with.

I’m a great believer in platonic friendships. Guess what? Conversations between a guy and a girl do not mean they’re jumping one another’s pixel bones on a Lovescene poseball set the second that they are alone.

FYI.

Are you depressed?

Right, because people only ever go in SL when they’re depressed right?

Well, I assure you that were I depressed I would be seeking professional help. And by that I mean counselling from real doctors in the real world. I would not be hiding my problems in a virtual world.

I’m fine : )

Will you be getting a freebie store again?

Most of the IMs and notecards I’ve had over the last year have been ascertaining to freebies.

I won’t be getting the freebie store up and running in its previous form but will be rezzing out freebies at spoken word venue, Hemingways, in SL. When this is all taken care of, I’ll stick it in my picks and you’ll be able to get everything from there.

How did you get so damn pixel sexy?

Nobody really asked me this one. I was just wishful thinking!

Are you just as arrogant in RL?

Yes.

Woot!! So now, then…. what did I miss?

A few months back, I mentioned on the blog that Pixel Scoop was to change hands.Well, now I get to do that really uncool thing of saying ‘actually, change of plan.’

Yes, I changed my mind, essentially. But I promise I’ll only change my mind this once and I won’t flip flop back and forth like ‘I’m selling it, no I’m not, yes I am, no I’m not’ in a manner reminiscent of the biggest drama Kings and Queens in world declaring over and over again their intention to leave world and never ever, ever, ever return only to pop back up the next week. Note to those people: leaving really is as easy as CTRL+Q and ‘uninstall.’ There’s really no need to make an epic drama of it.

Anyway, I made the decision not to proceed with the sale of the domain after it became clear that my understanding of its usage after it changed hands was different to what the actual intended usage would be. Once you complete a sale, of course, what the new owner does with a domain is most often their own business. But I feel something of an affinity with Pixel Scoop having put so many years of effort into maintaining a Second Life blog here.

As such, I have decided to keep the site on. The same time constraints do apply in my RL (perhaps more so as my wife recently gave birth to a beautiful little girl… meaning I’ve now got two children and a business). But I am going to make some time to post here and accept some contributions from some other fantastic SL writers and bloggers as well.

Why?

Well, because as much as I might like to pretend I don’t particularly give a crap from time to time, I’m still quite fond of SL.

So keep your eyes peeled for tasteless, unfunny-but-so-trying-to-be-funny, occasionally offensive posts and pictures of semi naked blingtards here again in the very near future.

Cheers, guys!

So often, online games and MMORP games are viewed as either forms of entertainment or ways for youth to slack off in their spare time.  It is great to see Second Life put to such a productive and meaningful use.  Hopefully this will be just the first in many such programs to help the virtual world have a meaningful impact in the real world.

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed Pixel Scoop for three years now. Writing about Second Life and engaging with readers has been an incredible thing for me.

However, I no longer use Second Life for more than half hour every few weeks or so. Life has changed for me. I am running my own business, I’m getting married in a couple of weeks, my wife-to-be is pregnant with our little girl and I spend my non-work time with my son now, rather than online. That’s not to say I think any less of Second Life. I still absolutely love it. But my leisure time is spent differently now.

I continue to be amazed and wowed every single time I log in by the creativity of the Second Life residents. And no matter what happens in the future with Linden Lab or the SL platform, I’m sure its residents will continue to make it the virtual world it is.

Pixel Scoop is changing hands. The domain will be passed on to someone else. I am assured, however, that the previous content will remain live and that virtual worlds content will continue to be a part of the blog. I understand the focus will be switching though to incorporate some other elements as well, but I will leave all that with the new Pixel Scoop-ers to elaborate on when the handover is complete.

Thank you to everyone who has read the blog and commented on the blog. You guys made it the fun it was.

I know I’ve not been around for a while! I don’t log in world much these days – free time consumed with family activity However, I maintain a keen interest in what is happening in virtual worlds and was delighted to receive a request from Allison Gamble (content writer for psychologydegree.net) to post here on Second Life and its relationship to psychology. This post is from her.

Since its advent in 2003, Second Life (produced by Linden Labs) has garnered a great deal of academic and media interest. While other massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) like EverQuest and World of Warcraft (WOW) got (and continue to get) their fair share of attention, the fascination with Second Life seems to run deeper. Second Life has even become a popular subject in some psychology degree programs. Maybe it is such an object of fascination because, unlike EverQuest and the others, Second Life isn’t a structured game with any particular objective, but a virtual reproduction of the world. Like real life, Second Life simply exists, developing organically, mostly driven by its own users, in very much the same way the human world grows.

Yet although Second Life reproduces the human world, how close is that reproduction to real life? Obviously we can’t fly or teleport in real life (yet), but there are more subtle levels of difference. Second Life is a mediated world, which is to say that something exists between the user and the environment in which the user interacts. Even if someone can become deeply immersed in Second Life, that mediation is always still there. This factor has hugely significant bearing on understanding the psychology of Second Life, but may be overlooked by some researchers.

Second Life has grown quite popular as an observable environment and virtual testing ground for social psychologists. In fact, not only does Linden Labs make special provisions to accommodate psychology researchers and educators, but their presence has been well known for some time. Even the Association for Psychological Science has noted that Second Life users have learned to be wary of undeclared psychology researchers or graduate students asking intrusive questions or behaving provocatively in order to elicit reactions. This awareness (or suspicion) of observation could itself prove problematic to researchers in addition to the issue of mediation.

Some research projects seem to show a marked lack of concern for the question of how the mediated environment may impact studies of psychology in that environment. The professor leading one project that aims to study extreme social psychology situations to explore things like the infamous bystander effect simply noted that “Other studies have already shown that real people tend to respond realistically in virtual social situations,” and apparently assumes that researchers can anticipate completely normal real life responses from users in Second Life’s environment.

Even if those other studies are sound, and even if Second Life users generally do respond in socially realistic ways, that’s no assurance that the mediation inherent in the virtual social situation isn’t affecting their responses. For example, we can easily imagine someone who in real life lacks self-confidence, may have body image issues and is shy and withdrawn, but who in Second Life loves themselves as their avatar and exhibits totally different social behavior. Or, more subtly, even a user who models his avatar on himself and on the whole doesn’t act like a different person in Second Life may still behave differently in the virtual environment because he feels his actions have less consequence. These kinds of dissonant social behavior carry their own insights, but show clearly that psychologists shouldn’t take Second Life as simply a virtual recapitulation of the actual human world that perfectly replicates its social interactions.

If nothing else, getting used to a mediated environment isn’t always easy, even for someone with previous virtual world experience. That learning curve and the difficulty of achieving immersion highlight the fact that Second Life users of all levels are aware of the mediation of their interactions. Studying people’s behavior in Second Life and other virtual environments is definitely a worthwhile pursuit (particularly as our experience of real life itself becomes more and more mediated), but psychologists should proceed with care and avoid assuming that Second Life is just real life all over again.

Chloe and myself were listening to a Noah and the Whale album last night. For anyone who hasn’t heard them – they are freakin’ amazing.

Then this song that I haven’t previously heard came on. I was listening to the lyrics and I said to Chloe, “Wow, this sounds just like someone talking about a Second Life lover.” Then I checked and the title was “Second Lover.” The lyrics refer specifically to clicking boot heels too lol which cemented it in my mind.

A read around online tells me a few others have picked up on this too but there’s no mention of it from the band themselves.

/me wonders which of Noah and the Whale fell in love in SL! For anyone who has been in a SL only relationship this might well ring true

Song is not a dedication, reference or mention of anyone or anything! Just a song I heard and thought relevant enough to share on this SL blog

I’m feeling incredibly festive this Christmas, for the first time since I was a kid! So when Celestial Elf sent me an email pointing me in the direction of this video, I was only happy to go take a look!

And if any of you have not seen it yet, you should definitely, definitely watch it. It’s a video steeped in Norse tradition that really brings a side of Christmas we don’t much think of to life.

What a fantastically well done video!!

I was just catching up on the SL-related happenings I have missed in recent weeks and read the post on the teen transfer plan with some concern. We have, of course, known for months this was coming. While it makes perfect sense for teens, if they are to be on the grid at all, to hav restricted access, I am concerned by this:-

“For 16- and 17-year-olds:

• 16- and 17-year-old Residents will have access to all SL regions rated General (i.e., containing content appropriate for all ages), on the Mainland and private islands.
• These Residents will not be able to enter Moderate- nor Adult-rated regions, even if they have payment information on file and/or have used our Web-based identity verification system.
• These Residents will be able to communicate fully with and befriend all other users on the Main Grid. This includes local chat and IM.”

The main issue with the merger, as far as I am concerned, isn’t about 16 and 17 year olds being exposed to pornographic images or items you might find on adult regions (though that is of course a part of the worry) but actually it is some of the people!!! Second Life has been hit with plenty of scandal surrounding age play in recent years. There are too many people who think that it is acceptable to act out fantasies in the relative safety of a virtual world and quite frankly, when it comes to age play, I completely DISAGREE.

Having teens on the grid (permitted and allowed rather than just sneaking on) opens up floodgates for a lot of potential danger. And if these people can contact or be contacted by ANYONE on the grid, then the object of restricting their access to certain sims is entirely defeated. Does Linden Lab really think that the virtual predators will only hang out in mature or adult regions? Honestly?!?!

“There, there, would-be-paedophile, you stay on that adult region. No… stay! I said STAY!” As if.

This, to me, is a massive concern. I truly believe that these young people should have access to the same facilities and creative outlets that adults do, but the way in which this is being gone about is, as far as I am concerned, too dangerous. I, for one, would be concerned about the safety of a 16 or 17 year old in world…

I haven’t left Second Life… just to answer a question I have been asked a few times. I just have very little time on my hands to spend in there at the moment. I run two businesses (one of which requires an office based 9-6 commitment), was recently engaged and have a little boy and two absolutely insane dogs! So I have a lot going on.

That doesn’t mean I’m “too cool for Second Life.” It simply means it’s not the highest thing on my priority list. I still consider it something I absolutely love to do when I have time. I love to spend time exploring, learning new building tricks and catching up with friends. But like so many of my in world friends, my time in world has become less and less.

There are benefits to this, of course. I have almost forgotten what SL drama feels like (yay)! I’m not involved or commenting on any of the SL “politics,” and I feel now that when I do get change to go in world, I can actually really just enjoy the people I love from SL and the places without getting embroiled in any “omg did you hear what happened?”

Whenever people accuse me of thinking I am too cool or am too “important” to go in world, (which has happened) I answer,

“Second Life is one of the coolest things on the planet as far as I am concerned. But it’s a hobby. And hobbies always take a back seat when priorities take over.”

After all, would anyone spend less quality time with their children so they could do their knitting? Or so they could collect stamps? Or so they could play tennis? Would they Hell.

It’s sad in many ways to look back at how things have changed. In early 2009 I was spending hours upon hours in Second Life each week (before my son came to live with me). I talked to a lot more people in world then than I do now, though I keep in touch with the ones who remain important to me. But just because you know people through SL doesn’t mean you can only spend time with them in SL. It’s like meeting your wife to be in a bar but refusing to spend any time with her unless it’s in that bar. So the ones that really matter to me have my email, some have my phone number and we keep in touch outside of the virtual world platform. But still, thinking back to days when so many of us parked our avatar’s virtual butts by the side of a beach campfire, laid back listening to the cyber sounds of the pixel sea and talked over microphones into the early hours of the morning… well those are fond memories to me. I still keep my freebie store in world and pay the tier there… an emotional attachment maybe?

This post is a little bit waffly… and I haven’t really said all that much. I suppose I am just taking the opportunity to reminisce this evening. I miss some things about having more time to spend in world… but my renewed sense of life balance has been a welcome one.

I maintain, however, that SL is one of the coolest freakin’ things on the planet! And I’m not leaving Second Life… I’m just making SL work around my RL and not the other way around anymore.