Second Life: The New San Francisco?

When I first moved to San Francisco, I was expecting a mecca littered with open minds and interesting and collaborative ideas; that I’d have to cut my way through the creativity and activism that would naturally blanket the city like it’s oh so famous fog. Of course I was being naive. Every place where human beings live there live the problems of those human beings. There’s still violence, racism, poverty, prejudice and community divisions. But here we have hope I think. San Francisco is definitely a breeding ground for many new and wonderful things and a true melting pot of ideas and cultures.

I feel the same way about Second Life. I don’t believe that I’ve written about Second Life before in this blog, but I’ve been a resident for more than two years doing everything from event planning to building, design, photography and volunteering for non-profits. It is a place where you can pretty much do what you want, look like you want, explore different aspects of your personality or discover new ones and collaborate with people around the world in an immeasurable variety of ways. A good friend of mine has a child avatar (Marianne McCann) in Second Life, simply to create a wonderful childhood experience. She swims and plays, carries around a teddy bear and explores to her heart’s content. There’s been plenty of controversy about child avatars in Second Life, many finding it difficult to believe that their intentions are not inappropriate and harmful. And throughout all of that, I’ve been especially proud of my friend for keeping her child avatar.

A recent article on massively.com states that Linden Lab (the creator of Second Life) is not allowing child avatars to attend the Second Life anniversary event this year. If this is indeed true, it is indeed sad and perhaps it is fear of the possible repercussions that has prompted this decision. My thoughts? Stand up and continue to give a solid representation of what is good and creative in the world. Actions like this can make people feel disregarded, disrespected and persecuted.

I’m curious to see what happens…

Read the article on massively.com here.

EDIT: Linden Lab update: “All exhibits, in substance and form, are PG on Linden Land. Any Resident can submit an application to exhibit. A team of Lindens and Resident organizers will review the applications, and if accepted, builders can be in any avatar form they choose (provided they are within PG guidelines).”

Read More @: http://blog.secondlife.com/…b-birthday-expanded-and-new-submission-deadlines/