For those who don’t follow Second Life/Linden Lab-related news, the Second Life 5th Birthday celebration is coming up…but the Lindens don’t want to see ALL of their various communities represented. Just the ones that they choose. No child avatars (sorry, Marianne…). No gor (a subculture I still don’t understand and probably don’t want to). And this is causing all sorts of problems.
Jacek Lives puts the question into a larger context, one that I urge interested readers to check out. In a nutshell, he offers this observation:
…Linden Lab, it seems, doesn’t want its Residents anymore. It doesn’t want a free, open, creative world. It wants a sanitized, media-friendly world, that universities and big corps won’t think twice about making major investments in. LL’s message for Residents now is:
Thanks for making us so popular, but go away now. You’re embarrassing us in front of the cool kids.
I just can’t believe that Linden Lab is doing this to themselves.
Filed under: opinion, Second Life |
Second Arts 
I think you are directly head on with this observation. I’ve been saying for months that SL is now all about private sims (not open to the public) being used by universities and corporations. The handwriting is on the wall for anyone that chooses to see it. I’m tiering WAY down. I’m not going to be a patsy left holding a bid of nothing when all is said and done. We continue to be marginalized, and its is just getting worse. I would hate to be a big land baron right now. They stand to lose everything. Linden as always said that their inworld Linden currency has no real cash value. That’s why I’m cashing mine out as fast as possible, while it still does have some RL market value. Soon, it won’t, is my prediction.
Let’s hope I’m wrong.
Princess Ivory
[…] Morris Vig (secondarts) – The Linden Department of Self-Immolation […]
And when you think you’ve seen it all, Lindens go over the expectations. Now, kids are allowed to attend the celebration but not to exhibit. As much as reasons for previous decision were crappy and direct opposite to diversity that is celebrated this year, now there is no imaginable reason not to allow somebody to show their work because of the shape of their avatars. I would really like to hear Robin’s explanation of the new situation.
The weirdest thing about the drive for a world empty of residents and filled with corps and schools is that it almost certainly rides on the assumption that we residents are a whiny lot and the nice institutional users will be so much more forgiving of the little quirks like outages, increasing hardware requirements, asset loss and viewer crashes.
I was asked to be part of running the developer angle… the solution provider presentation/display portion. I was thrilled to be asked, but simply cannot undertake it. Lots of responsibility.
Hi Morris,
The only restriction is that featured exhibits must be PG.
There was never any point when any Resident communities were banned, that sad rumor is simply not true.
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/SL5B
Thanks,
— Katt Linden
Katt –
Read the post. I never said that. I said that Linden Lab didn’t want the communities REPRESENTED. Big difference from banning.
While I respectfully disagree with your reply as it applies to my post, I appreciate the stop-by. Please don’t be a stranger…there are some great, creative things going on in Second Life that don’t deal with corporate shilling, and I try to show them off every now and then.
Remember, I complain because I love.
MV
Yes, nobody ever said that anybody is restricted from attending. We were collectively hallucinating.