Pixel Scoop

Thankfully, the British Government has just announced proposals to criminalise possession of cartoon or computer generated images of child pornography. (Full story here). This follows an investigation carried out in Second Life™ by a Sky News journalist which uncovered some pretty sick stuff.

My question is this. Why has it taken so long for people to actually wake up and consider this a criminal act? Anyone who gets any sexual gratification from age play, in my opinion, whether it be pixelated or otherwise, has paedophilic tendencies and is therefore a danger to children.

To be honest, I find the whole kiddie avatar thing all a bit bizarre. Admitedly, SL is a place everyone can come to, roleplay and enjoy an escapist atmosphere. But why would anyone want to run around pretending to be four? I just don’t get it. Even those who have absolutely no sexual intentions whatsoever surely must know they will stumble upon those who do! And ok, I know it isn’t fair that those without the intentions should be asked not to roleplay just because of the sick few who do, but let’s exercise some common sense with this!

Well, reading back over this I got a little serious today. I can’t really end something like this on a witty note though, I guess, so we’re all serious today, it seems. Ahem.

Normal service will resume tomorrow.

Avatar birthdays? Really? What on Earth is all that about? Ok, any excuse for a party and all that but you can throw a party in Second Life™ to celebrate Monday! Throwing a party to mark the date of your avatar’s birth just seems a little attention-whorish!

“Yay me! Look at me! Look at me having a party because I am marking a year since I essentially just registered for a website”

If this fad is really going to take off, then I demand a party to mark my signing up dates to Hotmail, Yahoo, Ebay…. (Ok, there’s three free trademark violations for you). But you get the point. Ok, I signed up to SL™ on 15th August 2007. My birthday, however, is in October. If anyone buys me a birthday card on August 15th I will remind them that they’re 2 months early.  Your signing up anniversary is not your birthday. It is just the date that you scrolled down a limited list of bizarre surnames, gave Linden Labs your email address, possibly signed up to an eternity of financial rape and then learnt to navigate your avatar around in a straight line (if you were lucky).

Avatar birthdays. Something else to add to the list of things that wind me up.

Second Life™ has some beautiful places with some sound effects and visuals that make for a really ambient atmosphere. I love places like that.

Then again, there are some absolutely horrific noises out there too, that really can ruin even the most beautiful place. I will focus on those because whingeing, moaning and general complaining is a lot more fun than praising.

Picture this, your avatar is taking a sunset stroll along the most beautiful beach. There’s grass covered cliffs to one side, the ocean to the other. The place is landscaped perfectly. In fact, you’re about ten second away from IMing the owner to ask who their landscaper is so you can send that person a giant hug (maybe not, but bear with me). And then…. out of the blue, from the ocean jumps up a beautiful dolphin. Aww, isn’t that nice? Yes, it is…until you hear the abomination of a noise it plays during its mechanical jump. It’s a cross between a giant drunk bird and some sort of ape being strangled. If this were a typed noise, it would look like this: squaaaaawwwwwwkeeeeeooooooooouch. Wow. I have never, in real life, heard a dolphin sound quite like that.

Some creators really have gone all out to make their creations sound authentic. Dolphins that actually sound like dolphins, waves that sound pleasant, dogs that bark like, well, dogs! Wind effects, rain effects….there are some really great sound effects out there that make for a realistic and all round pleasant experience. But some people obviously got to the sound effects stage and thought ‘Sod it.’ Which is where chimpanzee-like dolphins (dolphanzees, as I dub them) and waterfalls that sound like people dying come in and it is a shame to reduce the volume on all sounds just to cut out the awful ones. This means clicking like crazy to mute the appalling sounding objects! But it’s nice to have the option. Isn’t it a shame there isn’t a mute button in real life?

I have sufficient reason not to like in-game security systems. Flying around sims as part of my in game job, the ‘Get out or be teleported home’ type messages are something of a pain in the backside.

But my main gripe is that they have no point whatsoever. Ok, bravo, you can stop someone from standing on your pixel roof. But people who complain about needing security systems so as to stop people from being able to look inside their houses really need to realise that privacy in SL™, reglardless of security system, really isn’t attainable on a shared sim. Welcome to a world in which we can see through walls. Welcome to a world in which we have virtual cameras to spy on anyone around us without needing to stand on their land at all! No, I’m not some sort of psycho. I don’t phone people up in the middle of the night saying, ‘I can see you’ while doing my best impression of Freddie Kruger’s voice. It’s just a simple fact. This is Second Life. People (unless you give them mod rights of course) can’t walk into your house and take your things. They can’t trash your place. You can stop them from being able to even rezz things on your land at all. And if you do have object creation enabled for all, then once again, your security system will not stop them rezzing things from outside the boundaries. In fact, the only thing your security system will achieve is a minor inconvenience. If someone wants to watch your pixel person changing from one virtual outfit into another and peek at your pixelated nipples in the process (shock, horror) they’ll do it whether they stand on your roof or whether they stand just off your parcel boundary. I wouldn’t worry too much. I don’t think anyone is going to be that bothered about whether you’re wearing a skin by Naughty or by FNKY. I don’t think anyone will care about the virtual tattoo at the bottom of the back. And I am quite sure that the world’s major tabloids will not be publishing screen shots of you changing under the headline, ‘Oh my God, Pixel Body Exposure.’ And if you’re still that concerned about showing off your skin (worried someone might recognise it as a freebie?) then just drag the new clothes on over the old ones. Et voila. A change of clothes without any risk of next door’s weird friend having spotted your hip seams.

And for those who claim to need a security system in order to record the names of people who dare venture over their land, well… what exactly will you do with this highly confidential, valuable information? Hand it to the police. Somehow, I can’t see Betty McAvatar topping the FBI’s most wanted list for flying over your virtual yard. Can you?

My inventory is 3272 items at the moment. Although, I confess, this is because I have boxes full of the stuff I knew I really did not need to keep but could not quite bring myself to throw away! One such item I kept is my pair of saggies! Of all the random, bizarre, completely crazy freebies floating around Second Life™ this is one of my favourites! Whether male or female, nothing says ’screw dignity’ like running around with flexi prim boobs knocking against your knees!

Kudos to creator, Deekay Xavier, for sheer amusement!

Well, that’s all for today! I just couldn’t possibly get my saggies out and not share the moment with you.

Well I’ve just been on the bad news page (sorry, sorry! I mean the ’status’ page) reading back over the May posts. Just to summarise for you:

May 1st:
[Some regions not coming up or have broken region presence]
[Partial phone support disruption]
[Second Life in-world service issues]
[Transaction history unavailable]

May 2nd:
[Login and other db-related services slow]
[Some webservers not showing current transaction history]

May 3rd:
[Database disruptions]
[700+ regions currently unreachable]

May 4th:
[Phone Support down]

May 5th
[Database Issues]

May 7th
[Support portal temporarily unavailable]

May 9th
[Second Life traffic issues]
[Partial Grid Disconnect]

May 11th
[Asset Server problems]

May 12th
[LindeX and Land transactions failing]
[Number of asset servers offline]

May 13th
[In world services disrupted]

May 14th
[Outdated map data]

May 16th
[Asset, map, login and teleport issues]
[Traffic calculation issue]

May 19th
[Residents unable to login]

If you’re still alive and have not committed suicide owing to boredom after reading that list, then we shall continue. I’m not one to expect things to run perfectly all the time. Especially not within a system as complex as this one. However, call me a naive optimist here, but to only have 7 days in 19 without problems of some sort is getting pretty diabolical. But anyway, there isn’t a great deal I can do about it other than stand back, point and laugh at the misfortune of those responsible for trying to fix this! But, once again, allow me to offer my suggestions for a press release about the May issues!

“Dear Residents of Second Life,

Here we are approaching the end of May. And it has not been quite as successful a month as we may have liked. However, you’re all still being charged as during a 19 day period there were only 21 separate issues that may have caused you some minor inconvenience. In order for us to reimburse any monies paid to Second Life there has to be at least 199932098 separate instances of problems on the grid. Allow me to refer you to this clause in our Terms of Service:

Clause 99.1111: In signing up to Second Life, you agree that you will pay for a service you may not actually get. Sometimes you will not be able to log in. Sometimes you will not be able to teleport. Sometimes you will pay for things you will never actually receive and on occasion we will overcharge you as well. Regardless of anything failing, any overcharging, anything going completely wrong or the essential breakdown of the entire service, upon checking that box at the bottom you agree that Linden Labs have the right to financially rape you for the rest of your sorry existence…or at least until we have some real competition from somewhere. PS you will probably require a magnifying glass to read this clause.

Furthermore, please allow me to clarify definitions of some commonly used terminology on the status site. Firstly, ‘Resolved’. Taken from the Linden Dictionary, this term means, ‘Temporarily hidden.’ In addition, the phrase ‘Asset Server Issues’ means ‘Absolutely 100% completely broken’.

Well, thank you once again for another great banking month for us. I will leave you now, as I have a limousine waiting to take me to the airport where I am going to depart for a 6 month long 5 star luxury holiday with fifteen Playboy bunnies. Plus, before doing this, I have several mansions to purchase for the staff…. bonusses for their successful operating of Second Life, you know. Anyway, such a hard life. Thanks once again and all that good stuff and we look forward to continued financial rape.

All the best,

The Big Guy in Charge.”

I have never cared to count the number of random friend requests I receive in game. This is largely because it is now a reflex action to just decline them. But when I was wandering around earlier on I encountered a somewhat persistent offender.

“Such-and-suchabody CompleteStranger wants to be friends. Accept or decline.” Well that was a no brainer. Decline. If somebody doesn’t have enough courtesy to send me an IM to introduce themselves before requesting my presence on their ego-boost list, then I don’t have any need to see their name flash on my screen everytime they sign in and out. However the same person tried again a couple of moments later. I declined. Again. This was followed by an IM a few moments later saying “U be my frend.” This cemented it. I am a linguistic snob. If someone who claims English is their first language cannot spell ‘friend’ then I can’t hold a conversation with that person without wanting to poke toothpicks into my eyes repeatedly just for entertainment. I ignored the IM and continued browsing the store I was in. The aforementioned avatar then turned up right in front of me. Perhaps he thought that the fact he had shoulders the width of Russia would intimidate me into friendship. Perhaps he just wanted to show me that he had found the slider on the male avatar appearance editor to increase bulge so much that it is now visible from the moon. Maybe he thought I’d love to be his friend because he had a gun in his belt, which of course means he is tough and an absolutely essential addition to anyone’s buddy list.

‘Hi,’ he said. ‘U be on my lizt.’

‘No thanks,’ I responded and then l teleported away.

But it did get me thinking about random friend adds. I can understand it from newbies who, perhaps, just want to establish a couple of people they can talk to from time to time. But people who have been in game a while and still wander around trying to add random people they will probably never even speak to to their list baffles me. Despite how it might sound, I am actually not adverse to having friends lol! But people I don’t speak to who just add me tend to be the most frequent blind teleport offenders! They hang around in clubs where they get paid 1L to spend 3 hours there pretending to enjoy themselves. Then when the host tells everyone to teleport all their friends in, while most people don’t bother, these people actually do! And I hate that! I actually have written on my profile (not that anyone pays any attention),

‘DON’T tp me blindly please. If someone said to you in RL, ‘here, put this blindfold on and get in my car,’ would you?! No, me neither.’

So yes, a sweeping generalisation though it is, I find random adders tend to be the people who send the blind teleports and I can’t stand it! I don’t mind people adding me when I know who they are! But out of the blue strangers bothers me. It’s like me wandering around in real life handing out a card with my name, telephone number and ‘Let’s be friends!’ followed by a list of my available times printed on it. It’s all just a bit…. desperate!

“Suchandsuchabody Presumptuous has invited you to join their group ‘Some overblinged up club V.I.Peeeeeeez’, in which you will be spammed to death by SLURLs for best in bling events at the rate of one every thirty seconds from now until the end of time (or until you leave the group in the very least). Accept or decline?”

I am sick of being invited to groups without asking. The auto-inviters, though useful I am sure, are the worst offenders. While many of them are scripted to only invite an avatar once, I’ve been to a number of places where you are hounded by this invitation prim over and over until clicking on the decline button causes repetitve strain injury and you just end up leaving the place. However, although they are annoying, I find myself more irritated when it is a person doing the inviting, as it’s just plain rude. Just because I teleport into a place does not mean that immediately upon seeing my name on your avatar scanner, I have to be a member of your group, attend every event, be best friends with everyone who has ever turned up there and put up with the spam! I understand that clubs want group members. And that’s fine! But either have an open enrollment policy, or (if you prefer to keep out the join-to-spam types) have a sign up in your club advising people of who to IM to join! In fact, you can even have auto-inviters that aren’t activated until an avatar clicks them! But inviting people upon their arrival into a place is really very annoying. As if it isn’t annoying enough to be greeted by over-zealous sound effects and

“~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* Welcome to Club Whatever~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* JOSUE”

to have this then followed by an invitation to some group made up of the staff, newbies and those incapable of saying no really puts me off. And the final nail is in the coffin when, after declining once, someone else sends me one! Because if I say no once, of course I am likely to have changed my mind in the six seconds that elapsed since doing so. If I joined every single group to which I was invited, my group allocations would be full very quickly and I would end up committing aviecide following group IM hounding to the extreme.

“BEST IN BLACK (cos that one has never been done before. Going on now! Cum down NOW. DJ Ive-got-a-free-trial-of-SAM will be playing crap music and all da staff will be here in IM juz 2 make up da numbers. Some annoying idiot will turn up 2 spam da open chat channel wit his ad for his new badly designed furniture store and u wnt be able to read any public chat cuz of da symbols from da gestures. Within 20 seconds u will want 2 die cuz of all da sound effects. DON’T MISS IT.”

Wow. As tempting as that is, I am busy skinning myself alive with sandpaper right now. Oh well.

Something that has confused me a LOT in Second Life™ are prim babies. People role playing as children is one thing (also something I really don’t get) but prim babies take me to this whole new level of complete bewilderment. As far as I understand it, it’s just an overly scripted prim that screams and gargles loudly a lot. To me that sounds more like a griefing tool than a bundle of joy. So, in pursuit of education on this aspect of SL that is so far over my head, I went looking at prim baby places. One thing I did notice was some serious contradictory marketing. Of the places I checked out, almost all of them claimed to offer ‘realistic’ babies. However, they would then let you choose your baby? Neko with black hair anyone? Cute curly blonde? Little blue eyed boy? So, which clinic in real life is it that you can go in and place your order?

Woman: Hi there, we’re looking for a baby. We’d like a boy with a dog’s tail, a pair of cat’s ears. Preferably blue eyes.

Man: Actually sweetie, I think I’d prefer the dog’s ears with the cat’s tail.

Woman: What? But I thought we agreed the bushier dog’s tail was cuter?

Man: Alright, well why don’t we scrap the cat parts all together because I just am not keen on the cat’s ears, you know?

Woman: Hmm, ok. Well I think he would be adorable with some floppy labrador ears. What do you think?

Man: Definitely.

Woman: Ok, so make that one boy with labrador ears and tail, blue eyes, brown hair. Real cute, you know?

Assistant: Ok, I think I have just the thing you’re looking for. He’ll be $2500 and you can have as many copies of him as you like, but you can’t give him away.

Man: Can we modify him?

Assistant: Physically, yes. But not his programming. Make sure you keep an original copy back though in case you make a mess during modification.

Man: Ok, will do. Thanks for your advice.

And how is that realistic? But anyway, I will stop being so pedantic! I mean, it’s fair to say that Second Life isn’t intended just to be realistic! So their marketing aside, I still found myself very confused. Looking at a number of the available prim squealers around informed me that they alert you (with some sort of noise, no doubt) when they need their diaper changing, when they need feeding or when they want to be played with. How is that appealing? Being harassed by a prim constantly and paying for the ‘pleasure’? I believe it borders insanity. And, if you ask me, most of them aren’t even cute. They resemble Chuckie from Child’s Play, and didn’t he stab people to death in their sleep?

I just don’t think I will ever get it. It’s grown men and women playing with dollies, as far as I can see. I am unenlightened.

We all do it, maybe just once, but we all do it. At some stage or another, I am sure any regular user of Second Life™ has used a gesture. In fact, I have a gesture that allows me to slap backsides and I use that fairly regularly. What I hate with a passion, however, is going into a club to find there is no public chat or what little there is is entirely illegible because of the gestures people are using. How on Earth is “!£$%^%^$£$£$%^&*&^%^**(HELLO%(&^)^&^@>?<$>?$%>^” necessary just to greet someone? To me it just screams out, ‘Notice me, notice me! Hey, you, look at me! Look at me, everyone. I’m here! Me, me, me!’ It makes me wonder how these people greet others in RL. Do they set off fireworks from their rear ends, sing a song, dance around, flash their bits and then say ‘hey’?

I do have my own answer to the hellish gestures being overused in so many clubs, in the form of my very own!
This is accompanied by a police siren. Yes, it’s terribly annoying.

It isn’t just the symbols though. It’s the accompanying sounds, devil children’s laughter, that highly irritating ‘hewwoooooo’ and ‘woo-hoo’ sounds that vaguely resemble Satan on helium. Why? The most annoying, however, are the symbols that people automatically do in place of ‘LOL’. Now ‘LOL’ is the most overused phrase on the Internet, I’m sure. It’s now more than just ‘laugh out loud’. It is also a substitute for having to make any intelligent input into a conversation whatsoever. Whatever someone says, a good number of people just reply ‘LOL’ simply because they can’t be bothered reading. Example:

Bob: I fell over yesterday.

Fred: LOL

Bob: Yes it was funny. But then I found out I’d broke my arm so I can’t go on a holiday I was supposed to be going on.

Fred: LOL

Bob: Which isn’t half as bad as the fact I also found out that I am being evicted from my home.

Fred: LOL

Bob: And in addition half of my family died in a car accident.

Fred: LOL.

Anyway, you get the point. But I’ve gone off on a bit of a tangent here anyway. My point was that ‘LOL’ in itself is annoying enough without people gesturing it! It’s three letters! It probably costs more in effort to activate the gesture than it does just to type in L, O and L. But of course, what on Earth is to be achieved by just getting to the point? It seems the gesture culprits think that:

~~~~~~~~^^^^^^~~~~~~~

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$@£$@£$ LOL £$@£$@£$

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~~~~~~~~^^^^^^~~~~~~~~

is the only way to be sure people know that you actually find something funny.

If I go to a club once and the public chat channel is swarming with symbols and I can’t hear the music for the irritating sounds, I tend not to go back. And if I’m invited back then I use an excuse…. such as, ‘Wow, I’d really love to. But right now I am walking over burning hot coals bare footed and gauging out my eyes with teaspoons. Sorry.’

I do have a suggestion, however, that I believe Linden Labs should incorporate in order to eradicate this hellishness. Every single time a person types more than 50 symbols in any 30 second period, a prim sign should automatically appear over their head and remain there. Eternally. Something along these lines…
Besides, implementing this would give them something else to do in their ‘problem fixing aversion’ calendar!