Secondlife Enabled Monsters
[posting this here so I always have a reminder to never use SecondLife again. Comment response to this video]
I spent 13 years in SecondLife. I loved it. I loved the way that everyone pushed each other to create, to build on one another's previous work via modding and devkits and cool photos shared between friends. I was in awe at the systems people created, the way things just worked together near seamlessly if you were clever enough. Sometimes I miss it, but I refuse to go back.
Too many people would shrug aside rampant bigotry, or predatory behaviour, or racism with "Well it's not happening on my land, so why should I care?". So, I would block them. I would send in reports to LL if it was particularily egregious- and nothing happened. I distinctly recall finding out a popular horse scripter [Tapple Gao] ran a sim that encouraged nude child avatars with genitalia, all while claiming "its a nudist colony". Let me be clear- these were adults, spreading virtual CP between one another. While no "real" children were harmed, it was adults normalizing the viewing of naked children for their pleasure- and there's no garuntee that's where it stopped. They would say "its fine, and if you're weirded out then you're just a lying prude". This was the kind of environment I spent years trying to escape elsewhere, because as you have said "if its not secondlife, its discord, its closed forums"
While the platform does not create monsters, it's communities enable them with "look away if it doesn't effect you". So I did. I closed my eyes to the fact that I could name creators who would yell slurs, who would shrug off racism as "just a joke", who I knew would let predators into their communities because "they're nice!". I ignored the fact that our money was funding a dev team that shut down discussion of and banned people who mentioned this article, that refused to take down users, sims, and groups catering to bestiality, to incest and rape and pedophilia.
Earlier this year I found out Philip Rosedale is mentioned in the Epstein files. While a mention alone isn't enough- he was in contact with a known and convicted pedophile, years after his sentencing. While he did not go to the island, Rosedale was content to speak amicably with him, to give him land ingame. There was a reddit post, that amounted to "Philip is very sorry he scared everyone but nothing happened". i say was because it lasted a few days, before it was taken down and r/secondlife was marked mature. Any discussion of the day his name leaked is gone. The official forums are shadowbanning people who've discussed it. The userbase is no better when pressed to self moderate and step in where LL clearly won't... and it's a repeat of the 2024 article response all over again. it is all lies, or jealousy, with threats of legal action levied against people holding the evidence. And if it wasn't that it was claiming that these grown adults were just trapped, and asking them to do the bare minimum of reporting the dangers they come across was too much.
Too many people let horrific shit slide, because "it's online, who cares?".
Apparently the concept of keeping your community safe, of making sure predators don't gain a foothold is just too high a bar. I wanted to create. I have meshes in Blender, all nearly complete because in 2022 I pushed myself to learn it, to make a horse avatar, and then an animesh rideable dragon. I was so fucking excited to share my art ingame! I was prepping to buy land, to speak with creators, build a community of modders- and now the thought of logging in sickens me. I don't know what I'll do with my work now. Maybe put it on Sketchfab or OpenGameArt or Gumroad? I could always try my hand at self hosting an OpenSim server- but I am never returning to SecondLife again.
