Stuart Dredge jokingly said as one of the trends for Second Life in 2008 ‘nobody talks about sex‘. And its true, sex is still the biggest taboo for serious entrepreneurs at the moment. The most popular locations, sales, and overall content in Second Life is dominated by the Adult Entertainment Industry since gambling has packed its bags and left.
Every time you pitch Second Life, or talk about it as an opportunity there is always the question ‘what about the sex, wont that affect our public image?’. With the reports of child abuse and such a large part of Second Life being adult content many companies shun Second Life like the plague for this very reason.
But is it really that different from the web today? Only this year, for the first time since its existence, we had more clicks on non ‘adult’ websites then the rest of the entire internet. Looking back in the history of media, or technological advancement the adult entertainment industry has always been a push factor. Internet, VCR, DVD have all been financed and made popular by the sex industry.
The problem however, with Second Life is, you have no choice. Just like the early days of the web where you would find banners for porn sites on nearly every commercial website, all (successful) sites in Second Life itself have either shops, or advertisements for adult content. Its up to the ‘land owner’ to flag their content or advertisements as ‘mature’. Since the default search setting exclude mature content many will choose to just leave their content unflagged, even if it contains mature content.
Linden Labs has already taken some steps to separate the adult content from the regular ‘clean’ content more thoroughly.
- Teen Grid - The main Second Life grid is for adults only. To offer the Second Life experience in a controlled evironment they have made the ‘teen grid’ for childs.
- PG vs Mature sims. You can flag a sim (large slack of land) as either mature, or ‘PG’ . PG means there can’t be ANY adult content (including conversation or avatars) on the land.
- AgeVerification - The heavily debated real life data verification of your avatar. Your avatar won’t be able to enter ’sims’ (places) flagged as mature as long as you haven’t proven you are over 18 (or 21 depending on county)
- Make the sim/land owner liable for persecution - Its the land owners responsibility to make sure no minors are exposed to adult content.
- Take a stance against digital rape/child abuse enactment - Linden Labs has clearly stated role played assaults or child abuse (also known as ‘ageplay‘) will not be tolerated. Even when both parties are verified adults, and agree to the specific scenario.
Altogether, once you are logged in its not hard to see this just isn’t enough. That is why I hope to see a community being able to flag sims as mature themselves (like the system Second Life’s webshop SLexchange.com uses). With enough ‘flags’ by its visitors the land will be rated mature (maybe even various ranges of mature content), and removed from searches who want to exclude mature content.
Posted on: December 8, 2007 | Share on:
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