CoronaVerse 13 – Pr0nathon
July 12, 2009 by Stuart Warf · 10 Comments
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Topics Discussed
Zindra… It’s Alive
SL6B
More Zindra
People On This Show
Way too many people to count
Sponsors
CoronaVerse is brought to you by Moo Town Games at http://mootowngames.com or in-world at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Ariantica/26/138/654
and by Mechanized Life at http://www.mechanizedlife.com/ Gear on your virtual life
Corona Cay in Second Life
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Corona%20Cay/119/128/27
Send feedback & comments to coronaverse@gmail.com
I’m sorry, but this was painful and embarrassing to listen to.
If you’re not interested in the adult content in SL, don’t cover it. If you don’t know a single thing about adult groups, adult hangouts, or adult content creation and have absolutely no interest in learning, then don’t cover it.
If you think adult continent has no place in SL, then say so. Provide legitimate reasons why SL should do away with adult content, instead of this same old nervously homophobic ridicule about males playing female avatars.
Don’t randomly accost avatars on the adult continent, expect them to get into voice chat with you and be recorded for purposes they knew nothing about, and when they don’t immediately comply with your sudden and intrusive demands — as no sensible person ought to do, for any number of reasons — brand them as perverts and fakers. Then damn the whole continent along with them.
If you took this deliberately belligerent and willfully ignorant approach towards any other SL community you’d be rightfully shamed. Well shame on you.
Wow, that was not the response we were expecting to receive from this edition of CoronaVerse.
“If you’re not interested in the adult content in SL, don’t cover it. If you don’t know a single thing about adult groups, adult hangouts, or adult content creation and have absolutely no interest in learning, then don’t cover it.”
I don’t know if you’ve listened to our shows much, but we have a major intrest in the adult continent on Second Life. If anything I have been a strong supporter of the adult grid happening ever since 2007 when I discovered that somebody I knew was underage and working in the strip clubs in Second Life. I have tried to read in to these issues as much as possible and found an excellent resource in the slapt.me wiki which documented the unveiling saga of the adult restrictions in Second Life.
The fact is the adult continent is JUST what the grid needs. Despite what everybody says about it being a segregation of content. I think it’s pretty obvious that Linden Lab got into some legal snafu and had to implement this, and fast as you can tell by how quick they took in implementing the servers, even at the expense of stability.
“Don’t randomly accost avatars on the adult continent, expect them to get into voice chat with you and be recorded for purposes they knew nothing about, and when they don’t immediately comply with your sudden and intrusive demands”
Admittedly we wasn’t expecting too many people to speak on the show. We are still trying to experiment with the concept of on-the-spot reporting from various incidents. If you listen to CoronaVerse Episode 10 when we went to Oatmeal (which FYI is part of the ongoing adult continent saga) you’ll note that we did the same exact thing. If anything it wasn’t a sudden intrusive demand, it was a request to talk about the issues and give people a channel to voice their opinions. They were more than willing to contribute to the discussion in text chat and we faithfully accepted and spoke what was written out. I think I even recall people asking if they could voice their opinions.
“as no sensible person ought to do, for any number of reasons — brand them as perverts and fakers. Then damn the whole continent along with them.”
I guess I must be a faker and a pervert as well, since I am actually Age Verified as well so I can explore the adult grid. If we “branded” people as fakers and perverts, it was totally done in a joking manner.
“If you took this deliberately belligerent and willfully ignorant approach towards any other SL community you’d be rightfully shamed. Well shame on you.”
If anyone took this episode the wrong way, I am totally sorry for that, we never intend to upset people with these shows, OK so we are a bunch of crazy guys but that’s us and you’d notice that if you listen to some our other shows.
“instead of this same old nervously homophobic ridicule about males playing female avatars.”
Again, totally a joke and quite frankly calling us homophobic is quite frankly annoys the hell out of me. If anything, we at Corona Cay just yesterday was discussing the topic for CoronaVerse 15 (14 is still in production) and basically we are on a mission to remove a neo-nazi group within Second Life.
“instead of this same old nervously homophobic ridicule about males playing female avatars.”
*shrug* They have yet to ridicule me.
Annoy me, yes. Bore me, hell yes.
But not ridicule me.
-ls/cm
Apparently Kanomi hasn’t seen RezzedNecks. We’re so homophobic we make parodies of homophobic rednecks (Keeme still sends me love letters). Hell, most of us have a female alt or two. I think Kanomi is taking this personally for reasons I can only guess but won’t go into here but if she wants to come on the show IN VOICE and respectfully discuss it she knows when we are recording and is welcome to stop by.
We invited (INVITED, not forced) people standing around a public space to participate in an audio podcast recording. We told them what it was for and didn’t abduct anyone against their will. All we asked was if they wanted to participate that they really should do so in voice since clickety-clack typing sounds are pretty fuckin boring when it comes to listening to a podcast. I didn’t care what gender their avatar was. I didn’t even look to be honest. We weren’t interested in their gender (real or otherwise) or what they do behind closed doors. We were interested in hearing (HEARing… not READing…) their options and providing an opportunity to share them with others.
If some guy wants to play a female avatar for whatever reason I personally could care less. It doesn’t bother me if they are gay, straight, bisexual, transgendered or even a furry. I can respect that and will even respect their privacy if they want to speak on the condition of their avatar name be withheld. I can respect someone with balls enough to do that (no pun intended). And I’m not going to treat them like some degenerate.
What I find hard to respect is someone who wants to participate and be taken seriously but isn’t willing to accept the ground rules in order for that to happen. If protecting the illusion is that god-awful important they are welcome to keep it. Just know that they are going to pay price for it. In this case, they are going to draw speculation over their real gender. Don’t like it? That’s life. No one said the world was fair. It’s not that they are a pervert or a fake. It’s that they want to eat their cake and have it too.
Don’t worry, Crap bores us too. And look. If you don’t like it, don’t listen. I’m sorry, but there IS humor in 40 year olds playing cartoon porn, and if you can’t see it, you’re taking SL and probably everything else way too seriously.
Our viewpoints on the metaverse are as valid as yours, the difference is that, as adults, we don’t care so much what strangers think of us.
People who rebuke the viewpoints of others for not being open minded are really saying “I believe in diversity, as long as you think just like me.”
Of course there’s humor in youngsters and cartoon porn; there’s humor in everything.
But there’s kind humor and there’s mean humor (among other kinds of humor). I’m assured by a mutual friend that you are all really nice open-minded people who were just having fun, and that’s great. But you might want to take a little more seriously feedback from people who don’t know you, saying that the podcast (however well-intentioned and innocently-fun it was made) comes off as kinda obnoxious to an unknowing listener. I think you must to some extent care what strangers think of you, or you’d be just passing your podcasts around between friends, rather than putting them out where strangers can listen to them. Wouldn’t you?
It’s definitely *not* the case that every time A rebukes B for not being open minded, what’s really happening is that it’s B that’s the good guy, and A that needs to be more open-minded. That’s just silly.
Well, Dale, if you think it was mean, you’re entitled to your opinion. I for one am not apologizing for it. I am taking the feedback seriously – I analyze it, know that they think we were trying to be mean, know what we weren’t, and decide their feedback is wrong.
Fair enough?
Sounds good to me.
I didn’t mean to sound like I was demanding an apology or anything.
Talking to y’all and to Nika, and browsing around a bit about podcasts in general, I’m definitely wondering if there’s some difference in expectation and interpretation between people who communicate online mostly in text and those who use audio. And/or between the current crop of webloggers and the current crop of podcasters.
I suspect that I interpret podcasts as though I were reading the words, for instance. Whereas when (for instance) I read words that you and Stuart have written, they seem to be very different in tone than the words you say on the podcast; conversely I’ll bet you say things in the podcasts that you wouldn’t post as text to your weblogs. So part of what’s happening here may be an interesting clash of expectations.
I wouldn’t necessarily say that I’d say things I wouldn’t write, but like many people, you’re right that myself, and probably the others, speak differently than we write. I tend to write more formally than I speak, which tells you the low level of expectations you should have about my spoken communication.
I think the main thing here is just a difference in senses of humor, not necessarily in what’s funny or not (although I think that’s probably part of it) but in how it’s expressed. A lot of times things that I say sound funny to me because they’re ludicrous but people think I’m being serious. Other times no one takes me seriously and think I’m joking when I’m not. You can’t win ‘em all.
I honestly do think that, from my own perspective, I wouldn’t feel like spending a whole lot of time on an adult continent in a virtual world would make a lot of sense. I’m in my early 40’s, I have responsibilities, it’s weird enough just spending as much time in a 3d, game-like environment as it is, sometimes, and I will never be one of those who believes that they are their avatar. I understand role playing like in the Combat Samurai Island sims, or Insilico, or whatever, but to me, that really IS a game, and the people involved know it. Outside of that, I’m me, and my avatar is what I use in-world to communicate with people. I think a lot of people create elaborate characters that they use in what I consider non-roleplay ways, or maybe it’s that they treat SL as one huge roleplay opportunity. I don’t know. But sometimes with all the secrecy and anti-voice and anti-speaking anything about RL that goes on in SL, I wonder if people have lost perspective sometimes.
And that is my honest view. Agree or disagree, I don’t really care because everyone has to come to their own conclusions about what is a balanced, correct use of SL, but I just don’t subscribe to the hugely immersive line of thinking, honestly. To me there are gaming areas like the sci-fi or combat sims, and then there’s me and people I call friends, and I don’t want to hide behind a character unless I’m playing combat or cyberpunk or whatever. I just don’t.
Cheers.