I’m in total agreement with some people making comments thinking they’re stating their opinion but clearly baiting you. Morgana, I don’t know you and have never seen anything you’ve written, I assume you write for something because you seem very comfortable sitting on your high horse and dispensing advice in a condescending manner.

Maybe I’m biased because like you all I stuck with it and now can’t remember that foggy time before SL, but it’s a fantastic way to create, socialize and just have fun. And I don’t mind the sex articles because really, I’ve not had much experience with the sex side of SL, same with roleplay, and it’s all news to me

Good examples. But you forgot to mention the Tijuana Bibles. lol!

Actually, Jack Thompson tried to.

Come on, even if SL *IS* 80% sex, does it matter? No.

Sex sells, everyone likes sex (try an honestly deny that you don’t like having sex at all), and without sex, no-one of us would be around to complain about it.

Sex is human nature, it’s not a big deal. no wait, it is a big deal, as it’s one of the most important things to keep our species going: producing offspring.

Lighten up everyone… Sex is NOT a bad thing. So stop treating it as such.

Starwood hotels built up a beautiful version of their hotel, but I mean, what’s there to do in it? Hotels are necessary in real life because people need a place to sleep when away from home, but in second life, there’s no point to it. The only conceivable use of a hotel in second life is as some sort of sex place, which of course they’d want nothing to do with.

American Apparel, also had a beautiful build, and it had the right set up to be successful in SL (clothing) but it misunderstood the fashion business and marketing in SL, by making carbon copy versions of their real life lines, often designed more for comfort than style (and what’s comfort in Second Life?), and priced them at higher than normal prices. I know I for one am not interested in paying 400L$ for a pack of boring blank t-shirts when I could get interesting and whole outfits for half the price.

If Time had done some research, they might have seen stuff like the L Word sims, which are always busy with people, or the IBM sims, and how much IBM seems to have taken to SL, but I guess they preferred to jump on to the “Let’s hate SL” band wagon.

I also noticed they had graffiti in the background from the “Second Life Liberation Army” who the hell talks about the Second Life Liberation Army now, or for that matter, ever? It obviously shows a lack of real research or understanding.

That kind of proves my point. Even without any coordination there is an abundance of sexual-natured articles all over the Herald as well as other SL news sites (except the Insider who seems to be the one professional SL news site).

I personally could care less either way because I know what SL is about which is different than what it’ll be about for others. But you can’t complain about how SL gets a bad rap for being a virtual sex machine and yet prepetuate that perception by writing about all the niche fetishes that go on in SL.

As far as the hating so rampant in the forum/blog SL clique, I guess it’s like someone that abuses their child or spouse. You get mad when someone else hits them!

In contrast the a NY times article that was written about in the Herald on Aug 10th http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/09/garden/09second.html seems to be by someone who actually spent time in SL and and actually talked to regular players not just griefers and whiners. Both articles are probably “factually” correct but the NY times one is much more informed. This is also shown in the lengths of the articles as the time magazine was one page and the NY Times was 6 plus pages (on the web site anyway).

And if my post there looks similar to this one it’s because it makes its point in both articles.

Oh and good work Tenshi, glad to see you branching out, don’t let anybody bait you though, thats what half of them are tiring to do on here.