Happy Birthday to Me (or, It’s my party and I’ll invite who I want to)
Say, have any of you heard about the kerfuffle surrounding the SL 5th Birthday celebration and statements made by Lindens pre-declining any builds submitted by SL kids that are intended to showcase the SL kid “community”? There are enough links to this laying around and you all know how to google so I am not going to do the searching for you. Anyway, having read several blog posts and many many comments concerning this issue has put the subject of SL kids back on the front burner for me so here are some disjointed thoughts on the matter.
First, the kid “Community” is so fractured that I don’t see how any build could celebrate it. I can see various kid cliques submitting builds that celebrate their own particular take on what SL kids are all about (which, of course, in their eyes is synonymous with the community itself.) This kind of “my faction is the community” thinking is unfortunately a fairly dominant mode in Second Life so I don’t want to appear unfair by singling out the kids.
The Lindens certainly do have the “right” to present their events as they see fit. It’s crazy to think otherwise. It might hurt to be made to feel the creepy outsider by their decision but we aren’t real kids, after all, so suck it up and do your own thing. Many kids are doing their own thing as a result of this and more power to them, I say.
What disturbed me about the decision to ban kid-themed builds was the realization that the Linden Corporate is a thorough going Platformist/Augmentationist. The purpose of the SL5B is to showcase grid technology to the outside world (I wonder if that world will bother to take a look-see but anyhoo) and not meant to celebrate the crazy-ass diversity and weirdness of our beloved world; kind of, look what we can do rather than look who we can be. Oh well, as any rabid fanboy will tell you, the company owes you nothing, NOTHING, NADA because when a world already has a King, the customer can go begging.
I am always puzzled by the often stated belief that SL is an Adult World and therefore representations of children should not be permitted. Ok, if by Adult, people mean “SEX” then ya i agree. I doubt anyone would argue that kid avatars should be allowed in Red Light District (or whatever that sex-only virtual world is called.) If by Adult they mean that everyone on the grid is ostensibly 18+ then only the most brain-dead literalist would make the case that since we are adults in real we have to be adults in SL (appear to be adults, I should say.) I have often heard that one and it’s usually espoused by recently morphed adults (i.e. just turned 18, etc) who are so insecure about their freshly acquired adultitude that any hint of the childhood they oh so recently escaped sends them into a shrieking rage and, more importanly, are far too young to realize that the “real world adult world” is up to its eye teeth with children!!!! In fact, I can’t conceive of any possible Adult World that wasn’t dominated by children. If by Adult they mean they want an escape from a world dominated by concerns for their kids then I can buy that; however, since that is a reasonable position then they ought to accept the reasonable position that other adults might want to escape that very same world by pretending to be kids.
This has been so poorly written but I think you take my meaning.
The problem with the argument that the “commons should be free of creep” is that there is no common definition of what is creepy; however, I have always argued that SL kids ought to be adult enough to recognize that a sizable proportion of SL residents do find us creepy so when in public don’t force your kid roleplay on the strangers that you meet there. Of course, there are many who find just the mere appearance of an SL Kid to be a kind of creepy forced roleplay but I make no apologies to them because I don’t yell at them to remove their slave silks.
Alas, you can’t talk about SL Kids without talking about ageplay. This is more due to the strident advocacy of ageplay by it’s most virulent practioners than any other factor but that’s the kind of leap these people just can’t seem to make. My take has always been if they would just shut up about it then maybe just maybe the automatic association of “kid avatar’ and “child molestation” in the minds of SL residents, and, more importantly, in the minds of the Lindens would eventually fade. Let’s face it. The reason the Lindens originally decided to ban kid builds from the birthday “party” was precisely this - KIDS MEAN AGEPLAY. And you can argue till you are blue in the face that that ain’t true but the vocal extreme minority has burned that meme deep into the consciousness of Second Life. Congratu-fucking-lations.
p.s. please don’t tell Momma I sweared 
Here is a blatant example of the kind of rabid hysteria that comes from the anti kid av camp:
“here are adults only ‘craving’ to be one. They ‘must’ have that right, right ? “Here .. have a child-avatar .. fight for our rights to not think over what our need implies.” Sickening. Just don’t be one. Is all it takes. But you ( yes.. all you schmuck child-avatars ) just can’t , can you ?”
You literally can hear the guy frothing at the mouth. Not that there is much to dissect here but let’s take a look. Apparently the decision to have a kid avatar is the result of some “craving” and “cravings” as we all know are always malignant at best. But, then it’s the result of a “need”. Which is it? A craving or a need? Crave help, consult a dictionary, dude. Of course, it all boils down to one thing; apparently, kid avatars are “sickening”. At least Prokofy lets us off with “creepy” and frankly I don’t mind the “creepy” because it’s a matter of personal taste; however, when you think that all kid avatars and the “reasons for being one” are “sickening” then I immediately think that someone is perhaps projecting a little too much or at least is making far too many assumptions about something they clearly know nothing (ok, very little) about.
I have explained this to my friends. I will make it more clear. I often (not always) but most often think of and relate to my child avatar as MY OWN DAUGHTER - not as me, not as someone I want to be, not as someone who needs regression therapy or any other psycho-babble but as a little girl I spend time with (she on that side and me on this side of the monitor screen) and I look after her, and I clothe her in pretty clothes, and I take her places and show her things and I let her play with her friends and the emotional appeal is that of being a proud and loving mother. Ok, it might be weird but I fucking dare you to call it “sickening” to my face.
Personally, I think the mother-daughter image is empowering, wholesome and really rather beautiful. (But then I’m the kind of sensitive and optimistic fool who likes that sort of way of looking at the world.)