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Jupiter Rowland @JupiterRowland
Germany (Real Reality™), Dorenas World (virtual reality), OSgrid (secondary virtual reality)
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Far-travelled on the Hypergrid and convinced of Roth2 v2. |
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"It is an immersive world for role-play."
It's that for you, it's that for me, it's that for a precious few other users, those whom I like to refer to as "character-centric" users.
Sadly, for most other users, it's just a glorified chat app with animated 3-D profile pictures which they use to get into contact with other real-life people. I like to refer to them as "user-centric" users. They generally don't immerse; they don't even know what that is, and if they did, they'd call those who do silly. And they keep trying to look past the avatars straight at the users behind them. They're barely interested in the avatars and even less in the world around them.
That's also why most OpenSim beaches suck at being beaches, but except for myself, Allie Dawson and maybe a few more, nobody notices, much less cares. And it's why the majority of sims is neither immersive nor even remotely realistic.
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It's that for you, it's that for me, it's that for a precious few other users, those whom I like to refer to as "character-centric" users.
Sadly, for most other users, it's just a glorified chat app with animated 3-D profile pictures which they use to get into contact with other real-life people. I like to refer to them as "user-centric" users. They generally don't immerse; they don't even know what that is, and if they did, they'd call those who do silly. And they keep trying to look past the avatars straight at the users behind them. They're barely interested in the avatars and even less in the world around them.
That's also why most OpenSim beaches suck at being beaches, but except for myself, Allie Dawson and maybe a few more, nobody notices, much less cares. And it's why the majority of sims is neither immersive nor even remotely realistic.
I have a farm that is immersive - at least I feel that way about it. You can come by one day and help me out with the farming and feeding of the animals. Just don't go to the beach area...I don't have showers nor changing rooms set up yet. But I do have a market there with ice cream! :P
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Yup. Like I said, this can be more than a costume party chat site. At it's best, OS is an immersive world for role-play.
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It's difficult.
When they're still fairly new, both kinds of users don't even know that the respective other kind exists. Chances are that discovery ends up rather painful for one or both sides (character-centric user breaks user-centric user's heart in what they believe is just a role-play; user-centric user shatters character-centric user's immersion by blatantly going OOC due to not even having a character in that sense). But if they're lucky, they just find out that people may see avatars differently from how they see avatars without any nasty side-effects.
"Painful" may pretty well describe a situation similar to what Bob Marley described, only that it'd be a result of misunderstanding in OpenSim. Boy and girl meet at a party of sorts, interesting kind of conversation ensues, and it eventually leads to sexy times.
So far, so good.
Now, the boy is the avatar of a character-centric male user who basically just wanted to make a little interactive porn with the girl, expecting her to be just as character-centric as himself.
The girl, however, is the avatar of a user-centric female user who, over the course of the party and the conversation, got completely and utterly smitten over the boy. Or rather her mental image of the user behind the boy, based on a lot of projection plus a little wishful thinking. For her, the virtual sex wasn't just some smutty online role-play, it was an expression of love. Or the kind of obsession that people sometimes mistake for love.
According to Bob Marley, anything the male user would do now that doesn't lead to a long-distance relationship with that female user would be cowardice. (Strictly speaking, women with male avatars who end up being taken for real-life men are exempt from this quote.)
However, if you as a character-centric user experience such a situation, when you notice that the user behind that other avatar has started obsessing over your avatar and their projection of real-life you, it's too late. You're past a point of no return. You can't easily nope out of this whole thing anymore.
Seriously: If such a situation happens, going all the way first and then ghosting the other avatar/user is the best you can do. It's even better than faking a viewer crash and then not coming back which is actually more cowardish and more blatantly so. Or rather than actually ghosting them, you may also announce your likely absence and then actually stay absent like you've announced.
Tell them you aren't online that much, especially not during times when they're online. If they haven't befriended you, you may come online, but stay on your own turf or hypergrid with caution so you won't meet them. If they have befriended you, keep that particular avatar offline when it's likely that they are online. Especially as a character-centric user, you should have at least one spare avatar, preferably one with a wholly different identity that she would never suspect to be an alt of her target of obsession. Keep away from them for a few weeks until they got over you, found someone else or got so disappointed that they'll leave you alone henceforth.
Also, try to resist accepting their friendship offer. If you accept it, they can see whenever you're on and start stalking you.
Telling them in the heat of the moment (and this can still be before the actual sex) that you aren't interested in anything serious and/or permanent will either hurt them and leave them unsatisfied. Or they'll ignore it just as much as when you try to tell them that your real-life gender is not necessarily what they oh so firmly believe it absolutely has to be. People with a rather attractive opposite-gender alt that they let out of the closet every now and then may have experienced the latter first-hand already.
Giving them what they desire, especially if it's a long-distance relationship between two real-life people just based on two avatars meeting and a lot of imagination and projection on one side, will be uncomfortable for you. This has little to do with cowardice. Even less if you're a woman, and another woman is smitten over your handsome male alt and wants to meet the alleged man behind him in real life.
In all seriousness, this isn't all grey theory. I know what I'm writing about. I've had guys obsess over a female alt of mine (I'm not saying which) at least twice already, being absolutely certain that I'm a woman IRL.
The first one was literally the first time one of my avatars got into such a situation. It was at a nude party, she was naked, and he actually stripped down to talk to her. He ended up inviting her to his place. There he kept nagging and nagging me (via her) to tell him everything about my RL, even after "doing it", which I refused at first. The way he talked (or rather wrote) made it seem to me like he was already envisioning a white wedding with my female alt.
Later, I decided to be so honest and tell him my RL gender. He was sick and disgusted and felt like having been tricked into gay sex by a gay man. I understood that, from his POV, it wasn't his avatar fucking mine, it was HIM cyberfucking ME. Or rather him cyberfucking his imagination of who and what I am.
The other one who comes to my mind asked me about my real life, too. Again, I told him it's none of his business. This time, I stuck with that. I didn't want the above situation to repeat. Unlike the example above, this one actually expressed that he was absolutely certain that I'm a woman IRL, it couldn't be any other way. I tried to tell him that he can't know my RL gender for sure, and I may or may not be a woman, but he said, yes, he could, and I'm definitely a woman. I said that's nothing but wishful thinking which he denied. I told him if he absolutely had to find out about my real life, he could look it up on the "1st life" page of my avatar's profile (which, of course, wasn't blank, albeit not too informative). He said he couldn't be bothered to read profiles and wanted me to tell him everything which I kept refusing.
I did let his avatar fuck mine. I neither wanted to pass up on that nor dump him right before it after first having agreed to it before I knew just how much he'd obsess over whom he took me for. That is, again, his real-life self cyberfucked his projection of real-life me instead.
He had already told me when he's on and when he isn't, and after having sex, he wanted to meet me again in that same place as soon as possible. I had my avatar say she can't promise anything, and she isn't on that often. Unfortunately, I had accepted his friendship offer out of good manners and keeping up the act for as long as I still had to, so he'd know when she's online.
The best I could do then was to keep that particular female alt offline when he'd be online, not to mention away from that place, for a number of weeks. The next time another avatar of mine saw him, he seemed to be chatting up another lady. Success on my side with no substantial damage done to the other side.
The first guy may have been aware that there may be male users behind a female avatar. The second guy told me he was. But both believed they "knew" that this could impossibly be the case with my female alt.
So here's one more advice for the male users: If you want to create a female alt, don't make her a Venus flytrap. Don't make her too attractive. Don't make her stand out too much in a positive way. At least not when she's among other avatars. And don't make her look like she has indeed been created by a female user. That helps avoid such situations.
Also, never tell them where to find you usually. Especially never give them landmarks to your usual hangouts. And don't let them know where exactly you live in-world, neither by landmark nor by OSW link nor by having your home as a pick in your profile with a hop address that leads directly to your home. Otherwise, chances are they'll stalk you. I've experienced that as well.
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When they're still fairly new, both kinds of users don't even know that the respective other kind exists. Chances are that discovery ends up rather painful for one or both sides (character-centric user breaks user-centric user's heart in what they believe is just a role-play; user-centric user shatters character-centric user's immersion by blatantly going OOC due to not even having a character in that sense). But if they're lucky, they just find out that people may see avatars differently from how they see avatars without any nasty side-effects.
"Painful" may pretty well describe a situation similar to what Bob Marley described, only that it'd be a result of misunderstanding in OpenSim. Boy and girl meet at a party of sorts, interesting kind of conversation ensues, and it eventually leads to sexy times.
So far, so good.
Now, the boy is the avatar of a character-centric male user who basically just wanted to make a little interactive porn with the girl, expecting her to be just as character-centric as himself.
The girl, however, is the avatar of a user-centric female user who, over the course of the party and the conversation, got completely and utterly smitten over the boy. Or rather her mental image of the user behind the boy, based on a lot of projection plus a little wishful thinking. For her, the virtual sex wasn't just some smutty online role-play, it was an expression of love. Or the kind of obsession that people sometimes mistake for love.
According to Bob Marley, anything the male user would do now that doesn't lead to a long-distance relationship with that female user would be cowardice. (Strictly speaking, women with male avatars who end up being taken for real-life men are exempt from this quote.)
However, if you as a character-centric user experience such a situation, when you notice that the user behind that other avatar has started obsessing over your avatar and their projection of real-life you, it's too late. You're past a point of no return. You can't easily nope out of this whole thing anymore.
Seriously: If such a situation happens, going all the way first and then ghosting the other avatar/user is the best you can do. It's even better than faking a viewer crash and then not coming back which is actually more cowardish and more blatantly so. Or rather than actually ghosting them, you may also announce your likely absence and then actually stay absent like you've announced.
Tell them you aren't online that much, especially not during times when they're online. If they haven't befriended you, you may come online, but stay on your own turf or hypergrid with caution so you won't meet them. If they have befriended you, keep that particular avatar offline when it's likely that they are online. Especially as a character-centric user, you should have at least one spare avatar, preferably one with a wholly different identity that she would never suspect to be an alt of her target of obsession. Keep away from them for a few weeks until they got over you, found someone else or got so disappointed that they'll leave you alone henceforth.
Also, try to resist accepting their friendship offer. If you accept it, they can see whenever you're on and start stalking you.
Telling them in the heat of the moment (and this can still be before the actual sex) that you aren't interested in anything serious and/or permanent will either hurt them and leave them unsatisfied. Or they'll ignore it just as much as when you try to tell them that your real-life gender is not necessarily what they oh so firmly believe it absolutely has to be. People with a rather attractive opposite-gender alt that they let out of the closet every now and then may have experienced the latter first-hand already.
Giving them what they desire, especially if it's a long-distance relationship between two real-life people just based on two avatars meeting and a lot of imagination and projection on one side, will be uncomfortable for you. This has little to do with cowardice. Even less if you're a woman, and another woman is smitten over your handsome male alt and wants to meet the alleged man behind him in real life.
In all seriousness, this isn't all grey theory. I know what I'm writing about. I've had guys obsess over a female alt of mine (I'm not saying which) at least twice already, being absolutely certain that I'm a woman IRL.
The first one was literally the first time one of my avatars got into such a situation. It was at a nude party, she was naked, and he actually stripped down to talk to her. He ended up inviting her to his place. There he kept nagging and nagging me (via her) to tell him everything about my RL, even after "doing it", which I refused at first. The way he talked (or rather wrote) made it seem to me like he was already envisioning a white wedding with my female alt.
Later, I decided to be so honest and tell him my RL gender. He was sick and disgusted and felt like having been tricked into gay sex by a gay man. I understood that, from his POV, it wasn't his avatar fucking mine, it was HIM cyberfucking ME. Or rather him cyberfucking his imagination of who and what I am.
The other one who comes to my mind asked me about my real life, too. Again, I told him it's none of his business. This time, I stuck with that. I didn't want the above situation to repeat. Unlike the example above, this one actually expressed that he was absolutely certain that I'm a woman IRL, it couldn't be any other way. I tried to tell him that he can't know my RL gender for sure, and I may or may not be a woman, but he said, yes, he could, and I'm definitely a woman. I said that's nothing but wishful thinking which he denied. I told him if he absolutely had to find out about my real life, he could look it up on the "1st life" page of my avatar's profile (which, of course, wasn't blank, albeit not too informative). He said he couldn't be bothered to read profiles and wanted me to tell him everything which I kept refusing.
I did let his avatar fuck mine. I neither wanted to pass up on that nor dump him right before it after first having agreed to it before I knew just how much he'd obsess over whom he took me for. That is, again, his real-life self cyberfucked his projection of real-life me instead.
He had already told me when he's on and when he isn't, and after having sex, he wanted to meet me again in that same place as soon as possible. I had my avatar say she can't promise anything, and she isn't on that often. Unfortunately, I had accepted his friendship offer out of good manners and keeping up the act for as long as I still had to, so he'd know when she's online.
The best I could do then was to keep that particular female alt offline when he'd be online, not to mention away from that place, for a number of weeks. The next time another avatar of mine saw him, he seemed to be chatting up another lady. Success on my side with no substantial damage done to the other side.
The first guy may have been aware that there may be male users behind a female avatar. The second guy told me he was. But both believed they "knew" that this could impossibly be the case with my female alt.
So here's one more advice for the male users: If you want to create a female alt, don't make her a Venus flytrap. Don't make her too attractive. Don't make her stand out too much in a positive way. At least not when she's among other avatars. And don't make her look like she has indeed been created by a female user. That helps avoid such situations.
Also, never tell them where to find you usually. Especially never give them landmarks to your usual hangouts. And don't let them know where exactly you live in-world, neither by landmark nor by OSW link nor by having your home as a pick in your profile with a hop address that leads directly to your home. Otherwise, chances are they'll stalk you. I've experienced that as well.
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In order to try and understand Devarious, it's necessary to know that there are two ideas of what an avatar is.
Some users see their avatars as virtual roleplay characters in a virtual world. They like to immerse themselves into the world, and they act accordingly. Their avatar isn't them, it's a fictional character, a role they play. They aren't interested in your real life, and they won't tell you anything about theirs. At most, they may give away a little information they deem necessary on the "1st life" page of their avatar profile. They're likely to have alts that are different characters again. I call them "character-centric".
When they have virtual sex, it's their avatar having sex with another avatar. It's basically interactive porn. They don't mind if the user behind a female avatar is a guy as long as the character is hot, and the user behind that female avatar is clearly character-centric, too. Character-centric users tend to have sex more easily because it's never them who has sex, it's always only their avatar.
Many more users, however, see their avatars as nothing but 3-D profile pictures in a chat app and the virtual world surrounding them as not much more than decoration for that chat app. They don't even know the concept of immersion. They're the kind of people who put real-life photographs and real-life information on the "2nd life" page of their avatar profile. They have a hard time accepting OpenSim users having avatars of the opposite gender, and their belief is that all crossplayers are closet transpeople or at least homosexual. I call them "user-centric".
When they have virtual sex, it's two real-life people, namely themselves and the real-life user behind the other avatar, having cybersex. This also means that the gender behind another avatar is very important to them. If they're a guy with a male avatar, having their avatar have sex with a female avatar with a male user amounts to gay sex to them because they'd have cybersex with another man, regardless of the gender of his avatar.
These two approaches to avatars are incompatible to one another. And what really makes all this a problem is that many user-centric OpenSim users believe that everyone is user-centric. They don't even know that character-centricity exists. They can't imagine the very concept. And thus, even if they meet someone who is very obviously character-centric, they fail to see, much less comprehend it and treat them as every bit as user-centric as they themselves are.
On the other hand, the character-centric user refuses to switch to full user-centric when meeting an avatar with a user-centric user. That's also because their avatar is not them, is not supposed to represent their real-life self in OpenSim, but a wholly separate person, a fictional character.
It isn't unlikely for character-centric users to have multiple alts of various sexes, every single one of which has a distinct in-world personality, and none of which represents their real-life selves. User-centric users will always believe when encountering such an avatar that this is the actual real-life personality of the user behind the avatar. The advantage is that they won't easily suspect these avatars to be alts of one another.
Some character-centric users, in turn, aren't even aware that user-centricity exists. They believe that everyone in OpenSim just plays a virtual character that's separate from their real-life selves.
When both kinds of users have their avatars meet for sex, this can get dangerous. Let's say we've got two avatars, male Usain, a straight, user-centric male user's only avatar, and female Charlene, a character-centric male user's female alt.
Now let's assume they meet at some nude event, and they want to have sex with each other.
For the user behind Charlene, it's just an erotic act. As I said, interactive porn with two virtual, fictional characters involved. Charlene happens to be horny from all the naked guys around her, she needs some satisfaction, and when Usain shows up and appears to be a nice enough guy, she agrees to do it with him. It's more fun with another actual avatar than with some NPC rezzed from a beach towel or a massage table and disposed of afterwards. The user behind Charlene sees Usain as another virtual, fictional character that's completely detached from his user. He isn't interested in the real-life person behind Usain at all. That'd just ruin the immersion.
The user behind Usain is vastly different. He wants to have cybersex with the user behind Charlene. For him, Usain and Charlene are profile pictures used by real-life people in a 3-D chat app. Just from seeing sexy naked Charlene, he starts obsessing about the real-life person behind her. He keeps nagging and nagging and nagging Charlene about her real life which she refuses to tell him anything about because that's none of his business. He either demands confirmation that the user behind Charlene is a woman which he won't get because Charlene says that's none of his business either, or he projects Charlene's gender onto her user and blindly assumes and convinces himself that the user behind Charlene is a woman. She absolutely has to, it can't be any other way.
After having sex, the user behind Charlene will have to keep his real-life gender a secret even more than before. For if the user behind Usain found out that "Charlene is a guy in real life", he'd be deeply disturbed and utterly devastated because he'd find out that he has just had sex with another man.
Again: The real-life user behind Usain has had cybersex with the real-life user behind Charlene, at least according to him. For him, it's sex between two real-life people via the Internet.
According to the user behind Charlene, however, his fictional role-play character Charlene has had sex with the fictional role-play character Usain. For him, it's like 3-D animated porn or a sex scene in an erotic video game, but much more interactive.
If the sex was good, the user behind Charlene would love to repeat it some day... if it weren't for the user behind Usain still obsessing over Charlene or rather the user behind her. Usain will try to get into contact with Charlene again and again so that his user can have more cybersex with what he assumes to be her user whom, in turn, he assumes to be a real-life woman, not to mention squeeze out more information about Charlene's real-life self.
For this very reason, the user behind Charlene will instead have her keep a distance to Usain, maybe even keep her offline for a while or only log her in when he knows that Usain won't be on. He hopes that, with the non-availability of Charlene, Usain will turn to another female avatar to have sex with and obsess over.
Devarious is clearly character-centric. Otherwise, he wouldn't be able to have multiple avatars with different, distinct personalities. However, he uses his character-centricity and his many alts to his advantage by tailoring alts to the tastes of other avatars/users. Now it's fair to mention that not all character-centric users are like him.
I'm not sure about his intention, though. Either Devarious is unaware of user-centricity, of avatars actually being the people behind them, and assumes everyone just plays a role online, and he seeks out virtual, fictional characters for his own virtual, fictional characters to have sex with.
Or he's fully aware of user-centricity, he knows how user-centric users tick, he knows how naïve they often are, and he uses this knowledge to his malicious advantage. He plays his alts like user-centric users' mains to trick those user-centric users into cybersex who would never expect an avatar not to be the person behind it. He makes them believe they've found like-minded real-life people via OpenSim, he makes them obsess over the real-life persons which he pretends are behind his avatars, he seduces them with ease, and when they're done, he ghosts them.
Poor Cyberglo, in turn, sound fully user-centric to me. Not only that, but I guess that he didn't suspect something like character-centricity to even exist before he encountered Devarious, and that he assumed that each avatar is a virtual representation of its real-life user.
Cyberglo was Usain, and Charlene was one of Devarious' alts, but in this case created for rather sinister purposes.
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Some users see their avatars as virtual roleplay characters in a virtual world. They like to immerse themselves into the world, and they act accordingly. Their avatar isn't them, it's a fictional character, a role they play. They aren't interested in your real life, and they won't tell you anything about theirs. At most, they may give away a little information they deem necessary on the "1st life" page of their avatar profile. They're likely to have alts that are different characters again. I call them "character-centric".
When they have virtual sex, it's their avatar having sex with another avatar. It's basically interactive porn. They don't mind if the user behind a female avatar is a guy as long as the character is hot, and the user behind that female avatar is clearly character-centric, too. Character-centric users tend to have sex more easily because it's never them who has sex, it's always only their avatar.
Many more users, however, see their avatars as nothing but 3-D profile pictures in a chat app and the virtual world surrounding them as not much more than decoration for that chat app. They don't even know the concept of immersion. They're the kind of people who put real-life photographs and real-life information on the "2nd life" page of their avatar profile. They have a hard time accepting OpenSim users having avatars of the opposite gender, and their belief is that all crossplayers are closet transpeople or at least homosexual. I call them "user-centric".
When they have virtual sex, it's two real-life people, namely themselves and the real-life user behind the other avatar, having cybersex. This also means that the gender behind another avatar is very important to them. If they're a guy with a male avatar, having their avatar have sex with a female avatar with a male user amounts to gay sex to them because they'd have cybersex with another man, regardless of the gender of his avatar.
These two approaches to avatars are incompatible to one another. And what really makes all this a problem is that many user-centric OpenSim users believe that everyone is user-centric. They don't even know that character-centricity exists. They can't imagine the very concept. And thus, even if they meet someone who is very obviously character-centric, they fail to see, much less comprehend it and treat them as every bit as user-centric as they themselves are.
On the other hand, the character-centric user refuses to switch to full user-centric when meeting an avatar with a user-centric user. That's also because their avatar is not them, is not supposed to represent their real-life self in OpenSim, but a wholly separate person, a fictional character.
It isn't unlikely for character-centric users to have multiple alts of various sexes, every single one of which has a distinct in-world personality, and none of which represents their real-life selves. User-centric users will always believe when encountering such an avatar that this is the actual real-life personality of the user behind the avatar. The advantage is that they won't easily suspect these avatars to be alts of one another.
Some character-centric users, in turn, aren't even aware that user-centricity exists. They believe that everyone in OpenSim just plays a virtual character that's separate from their real-life selves.
When both kinds of users have their avatars meet for sex, this can get dangerous. Let's say we've got two avatars, male Usain, a straight, user-centric male user's only avatar, and female Charlene, a character-centric male user's female alt.
Now let's assume they meet at some nude event, and they want to have sex with each other.
For the user behind Charlene, it's just an erotic act. As I said, interactive porn with two virtual, fictional characters involved. Charlene happens to be horny from all the naked guys around her, she needs some satisfaction, and when Usain shows up and appears to be a nice enough guy, she agrees to do it with him. It's more fun with another actual avatar than with some NPC rezzed from a beach towel or a massage table and disposed of afterwards. The user behind Charlene sees Usain as another virtual, fictional character that's completely detached from his user. He isn't interested in the real-life person behind Usain at all. That'd just ruin the immersion.
The user behind Usain is vastly different. He wants to have cybersex with the user behind Charlene. For him, Usain and Charlene are profile pictures used by real-life people in a 3-D chat app. Just from seeing sexy naked Charlene, he starts obsessing about the real-life person behind her. He keeps nagging and nagging and nagging Charlene about her real life which she refuses to tell him anything about because that's none of his business. He either demands confirmation that the user behind Charlene is a woman which he won't get because Charlene says that's none of his business either, or he projects Charlene's gender onto her user and blindly assumes and convinces himself that the user behind Charlene is a woman. She absolutely has to, it can't be any other way.
After having sex, the user behind Charlene will have to keep his real-life gender a secret even more than before. For if the user behind Usain found out that "Charlene is a guy in real life", he'd be deeply disturbed and utterly devastated because he'd find out that he has just had sex with another man.
Again: The real-life user behind Usain has had cybersex with the real-life user behind Charlene, at least according to him. For him, it's sex between two real-life people via the Internet.
According to the user behind Charlene, however, his fictional role-play character Charlene has had sex with the fictional role-play character Usain. For him, it's like 3-D animated porn or a sex scene in an erotic video game, but much more interactive.
If the sex was good, the user behind Charlene would love to repeat it some day... if it weren't for the user behind Usain still obsessing over Charlene or rather the user behind her. Usain will try to get into contact with Charlene again and again so that his user can have more cybersex with what he assumes to be her user whom, in turn, he assumes to be a real-life woman, not to mention squeeze out more information about Charlene's real-life self.
For this very reason, the user behind Charlene will instead have her keep a distance to Usain, maybe even keep her offline for a while or only log her in when he knows that Usain won't be on. He hopes that, with the non-availability of Charlene, Usain will turn to another female avatar to have sex with and obsess over.
Devarious is clearly character-centric. Otherwise, he wouldn't be able to have multiple avatars with different, distinct personalities. However, he uses his character-centricity and his many alts to his advantage by tailoring alts to the tastes of other avatars/users. Now it's fair to mention that not all character-centric users are like him.
I'm not sure about his intention, though. Either Devarious is unaware of user-centricity, of avatars actually being the people behind them, and assumes everyone just plays a role online, and he seeks out virtual, fictional characters for his own virtual, fictional characters to have sex with.
Or he's fully aware of user-centricity, he knows how user-centric users tick, he knows how naïve they often are, and he uses this knowledge to his malicious advantage. He plays his alts like user-centric users' mains to trick those user-centric users into cybersex who would never expect an avatar not to be the person behind it. He makes them believe they've found like-minded real-life people via OpenSim, he makes them obsess over the real-life persons which he pretends are behind his avatars, he seduces them with ease, and when they're done, he ghosts them.
Poor Cyberglo, in turn, sound fully user-centric to me. Not only that, but I guess that he didn't suspect something like character-centricity to even exist before he encountered Devarious, and that he assumed that each avatar is a virtual representation of its real-life user.
Cyberglo was Usain, and Charlene was one of Devarious' alts, but in this case created for rather sinister purposes.
My sentiments exactly Jupiter. In their words "Oh god it's sooo hard and boring and my brain hurts and like I need you to only type in short bursts of less than 20 characters before my ADD kicks in, ya know, like totally!". lol
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There are people who need many words to say very little. They just love hearing themselves.
Plonk 😛
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Plonk 😛
As always, very detailed and in depth reply. Though this time I must disagree in some aspects. One in particular would be the fact that someone's avatar is cybering with another avatar. While that is technically true, the human element and connection is being dismissed. For some, MOST require and interact with the human interaction element. As I usually put it simply. Of course every female is a hot voluptuous babe in world. In real life, they may be a lardass train wreck 20 years older than they claim. So you are able to get past that to enjoy THE PERSON because their AV is a hot piece of ass. Yes this applies to the dudes too. I am sure most chicks wouldn't touch a few of these short fat old bald guys with pinky peckers in real life. But here they look like Ahhhnold in his prime. lol
So it is up to them if they want to pursue a situation with someone gender bending their av. However some honesty up front on the gender bender should be the considerate thing to do leaving the other to make a choice before persuing.
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So it is up to them if they want to pursue a situation with someone gender bending their av. However some honesty up front on the gender bender should be the considerate thing to do leaving the other to make a choice before persuing.
Oh, there's much more cybering by proxy of avatars than you may believe, not to mention obsession over users just from their avatars. It's often quite obvious. And I'm speaking out of personal experience.
Guys trying their hardest to get female avatars to confirm their gender assumption. "But you ARE a woman in RL, right?" And then they take the lack of an answer as a yes and carry on. They try to convince themselves that the user behind that female avatar HAS to be a woman based on whatever they deem evidence. "It's impossible, absolutely unthinkable that a man can make such a beautiful female avatar!" Or no evidence at all. "I know that behind every other female avatar is a real-life guy. But behind THIS avatar, there's a woman! It just HAS to be! I KNOW it!" And yet, they're fully convinced that this is not wishful thinking.
Now, they are actually fully aware that users don't look like their avatars. "I don't care if you're 60+, I'm 60+ myself." They do consider that the user behind that female avatar isn't an exaggerated 3-D hentai caricature of Kim Kardashian. But they still deny the very idea that the user behind that female avatar is not a woman.
The same guys would be shattered and devastated if they found out there's a real-life guy behind that gorgeous female avatar. And seeing as how many emotionally unstable drama kings and queens we have on the Hypergrid, you never know whether they'll over-react, and if they do, in which ways.
By the way, another small piece of evidence of people actually cybering via OpenSim is that they always masturbate while their avatar is having virtual sex. A somewhat bigger piece of evidence is that their avatar cums when they do. And only then. A much bigger piece of evidence is that they assume that the same applies to their opposite. If you tell them you cum when you don't, at least not in real life, you lie straight into their face.
As far as "honesty up front" is concerned, I'm currently writing something regarding that. Honesty is generally good. However, blurting out your real-life gender right away is baaaaad style.
Lastly, I've always thought that it's obvious to the point of common knowledge that I've got at least one female alt. Maybe I'm still not dropping enough or not sufficiently obvious hints.
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Guys trying their hardest to get female avatars to confirm their gender assumption. "But you ARE a woman in RL, right?" And then they take the lack of an answer as a yes and carry on. They try to convince themselves that the user behind that female avatar HAS to be a woman based on whatever they deem evidence. "It's impossible, absolutely unthinkable that a man can make such a beautiful female avatar!" Or no evidence at all. "I know that behind every other female avatar is a real-life guy. But behind THIS avatar, there's a woman! It just HAS to be! I KNOW it!" And yet, they're fully convinced that this is not wishful thinking.
Now, they are actually fully aware that users don't look like their avatars. "I don't care if you're 60+, I'm 60+ myself." They do consider that the user behind that female avatar isn't an exaggerated 3-D hentai caricature of Kim Kardashian. But they still deny the very idea that the user behind that female avatar is not a woman.
The same guys would be shattered and devastated if they found out there's a real-life guy behind that gorgeous female avatar. And seeing as how many emotionally unstable drama kings and queens we have on the Hypergrid, you never know whether they'll over-react, and if they do, in which ways.
By the way, another small piece of evidence of people actually cybering via OpenSim is that they always masturbate while their avatar is having virtual sex. A somewhat bigger piece of evidence is that their avatar cums when they do. And only then. A much bigger piece of evidence is that they assume that the same applies to their opposite. If you tell them you cum when you don't, at least not in real life, you lie straight into their face.
As far as "honesty up front" is concerned, I'm currently writing something regarding that. Honesty is generally good. However, blurting out your real-life gender right away is baaaaad style.
Lastly, I've always thought that it's obvious to the point of common knowledge that I've got at least one female alt. Maybe I'm still not dropping enough or not sufficiently obvious hints.
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Greetings from Juno, she has already visited your store and found a lot to pick up. Especially the Damien Fate clothes are great for recombining.
How much alpha is required depends on your shape. But alpha isn't much of a problem with Ruth2 v4 because you can use alpha masks.
One suggestion, by the way: If you texture Clutterfly clothes, you may want to texture all sizes and not only one of them.
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How much alpha is required depends on your shape. But alpha isn't much of a problem with Ruth2 v4 because you can use alpha masks.
One suggestion, by the way: If you texture Clutterfly clothes, you may want to texture all sizes and not only one of them.
OH thats great to hear. Yes i was just wanting to get this all out , and the clothes work with the shape i made. I will lokk at doing sizes later. Id love to see some pics of her in any of the clothes.
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The very reason why Nico is doing all this is because the entire CopyKat grid is offline until further notice. The same reason why you can't access your account.
If you want to get to CK Alt Island, you first need an alt on another grid.
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If you want to get to CK Alt Island, you first need an alt on another grid.
Yes, it's Alt Island of necessity for CK exiles. But what if we suggested that everyone in all of OS come visit Alt Island with....wait for it... THEIR ALTS!
I think we are going to have a Best In Alts Event, and soon. We need a DJ who will play only cover songs... I'll be asking around.
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I think we are going to have a Best In Alts Event, and soon. We need a DJ who will play only cover songs... I'll be asking around.
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Had to delete and redo the configuration on one machine to make it run in the first place, but otherwise, no new issues. And the config had been b0rked anyway.
My main problem is that I've been unable to create subfolders under Outfits (regular subfolders without the coat hanger icon as opposed to outfit subfolders with the coat hanger icon), but this started as early as Firestorm 6.5.3.
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My main problem is that I've been unable to create subfolders under Outfits (regular subfolders without the coat hanger icon as opposed to outfit subfolders with the coat hanger icon), but this started as early as Firestorm 6.5.3.
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Had to bump this: If anyone is looking for beaches that have got next to nothing in common with your typical tropical beaches, try Swedish beaches. Pebbles instead of sand (bring sandals), no palms, no Tiki decorations, no pool floaties (either the currents or the pebbles would get the better of them), lots of mosquitos instead (bring repellent), and if there are wooden huts, they're likely to be painted red and white. And these beaches aren't so hot that your swimwear will dry on your body more quickly than your bladder will complain, so pack spares and think about where to go to change.
You can find some of them in the Pangea Grid. Sverige (https://opensimworld.com/hop/84528) has a larger one, Waterworld (https://opensimworld.com/hop/87359) has several smaller ones.
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You can find some of them in the Pangea Grid. Sverige (https://opensimworld.com/hop/84528) has a larger one, Waterworld (https://opensimworld.com/hop/87359) has several smaller ones.
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At least you haven't vanished without a word. That's good.
And some of the items in the shops can be found elsewhere meanwhile; check SeaPrior Plaza, for example, if you're looking for layer clothes.
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And some of the items in the shops can be found elsewhere meanwhile; check SeaPrior Plaza, for example, if you're looking for layer clothes.
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By the way, the trick with using several copies of the same tree without making it too obvious is to rotate each one by a different angle. It doesn't work too well with those really old-school prim-and-surface trees, but it works marvellously with detailled mesh trees like those made by Bibiana Bombinante (yes, that's a shout-out).
You may also want to resize some of the trees; remember to turn off "Stretch both sides" so your trees won't float in the air.
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You may also want to resize some of the trees; remember to turn off "Stretch both sides" so your trees won't float in the air.
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It's both actually.
A lot of stuff from the Big Supermarket was acquired by botting entire sims wholesale including the inventories of all avatars present, and what wasn't a sales box right away or could be thrown together into a sales box was dumped into Stuff boxes as it was in order to churn it out as quickly as possible.
I think some care has been taken for at least some avatar accessories. But a whole lot of sim decoration items that you can find standing around on sims came in via Stuff boxes and therefore untreated.
Add to that that many SL creators tried to crank up the "quality" of their items with ridiculously-high-res textures and by not cleaning up their models and reducing the number of vertices back in the day. Remember the Antony Pants? One of these adds 190,000 to your ARC. As good as they look, as versatile as they are, you'll feel guilty wearing them if you know how high their impact is.
But content made in OpenSim for OpenSim isn't safe either. Clutterfly mesh clothes have quite a variety from "you barely notice it's there" to "what was she even thinking". I think the Ruffled Bottom Dress takes the cake: Its ARC is just a bit over 500,000 which is sad because it can be made to look fairly good on mesh bodies made in and for OpenSim. Fortunately, other creators were more careful.
As for the viewer load, I think it has been agreed upon by now that the number of submeshes has a greater impact than what the ARC stands for. This can be witnessed in Firestorm at big parties with over 30 avatars where there's at least one avatar with a Ruth2 v4 body present.
You'll see lots of female avatars that can't even be recognised as humans. You can't make out the body. The head floats somewhere. The clothes and accessories are all distorted. These avatars often stay this way all the way through the party. A few mesh avatars, however, quickly look like they're supposed to. These are the Ruth2 v4s.
Now, why does this happen? It's less because Athena-based avatars tend to be tricked out to the max with unknowingly high ARCs. You can crank up the ARC of a Ruth2 v4-based avatar sky high, too. The ARC of the bodies themselves doesn't matter either because they're very similar.
No, it's because even BoM-capable Athena 6 is broken down into 208 tiny chunks to make the alpha HUD work. And that doesn't count the head in yet or the nails or the four invisible feet. Each one of these 208 chunks needs to be rigged into its proper place.
In comparison, where Athena 6 has these 208 chunks, Ruth2 v4 has only got 11. And she has only got two feet and ten toenails to rig. That's because, just like probably every modern BoM mesh body in SL, Ruth2 v4 is geared towards the use of alpha masks*. The alpha HUD is just a fallback which is why it's so coarse.
*Yes, BoM mesh bodies generally support alpha masks. It's your Athena 6 or Adonis 4 that doesn't. It can be fixed, though.
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A lot of stuff from the Big Supermarket was acquired by botting entire sims wholesale including the inventories of all avatars present, and what wasn't a sales box right away or could be thrown together into a sales box was dumped into Stuff boxes as it was in order to churn it out as quickly as possible.
I think some care has been taken for at least some avatar accessories. But a whole lot of sim decoration items that you can find standing around on sims came in via Stuff boxes and therefore untreated.
Add to that that many SL creators tried to crank up the "quality" of their items with ridiculously-high-res textures and by not cleaning up their models and reducing the number of vertices back in the day. Remember the Antony Pants? One of these adds 190,000 to your ARC. As good as they look, as versatile as they are, you'll feel guilty wearing them if you know how high their impact is.
But content made in OpenSim for OpenSim isn't safe either. Clutterfly mesh clothes have quite a variety from "you barely notice it's there" to "what was she even thinking". I think the Ruffled Bottom Dress takes the cake: Its ARC is just a bit over 500,000 which is sad because it can be made to look fairly good on mesh bodies made in and for OpenSim. Fortunately, other creators were more careful.
As for the viewer load, I think it has been agreed upon by now that the number of submeshes has a greater impact than what the ARC stands for. This can be witnessed in Firestorm at big parties with over 30 avatars where there's at least one avatar with a Ruth2 v4 body present.
You'll see lots of female avatars that can't even be recognised as humans. You can't make out the body. The head floats somewhere. The clothes and accessories are all distorted. These avatars often stay this way all the way through the party. A few mesh avatars, however, quickly look like they're supposed to. These are the Ruth2 v4s.
Now, why does this happen? It's less because Athena-based avatars tend to be tricked out to the max with unknowingly high ARCs. You can crank up the ARC of a Ruth2 v4-based avatar sky high, too. The ARC of the bodies themselves doesn't matter either because they're very similar.
No, it's because even BoM-capable Athena 6 is broken down into 208 tiny chunks to make the alpha HUD work. And that doesn't count the head in yet or the nails or the four invisible feet. Each one of these 208 chunks needs to be rigged into its proper place.
In comparison, where Athena 6 has these 208 chunks, Ruth2 v4 has only got 11. And she has only got two feet and ten toenails to rig. That's because, just like probably every modern BoM mesh body in SL, Ruth2 v4 is geared towards the use of alpha masks*. The alpha HUD is just a fallback which is why it's so coarse.
*Yes, BoM mesh bodies generally support alpha masks. It's your Athena 6 or Adonis 4 that doesn't. It can be fixed, though.
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Yes, it's one thing to get content from SL after asking the original creator for permission to do that and actually receiving that permission and then to a) declare that this content is offered upon permission by the original creators and b) credit the original creators by name.
It's something else to take these things without permission. Of course, you don't credit the original creators, not only because you try to make people believe that you've created these things from scratch, but also so that the original creators will much less likely find out that you've stolen from them and sue the living hell out of you.
But if you steal from someone who has never agreed to share their content with you and then complain that others "steal" from you because you've never agreed to share pretty much the same content with them, that's just hypocrisy. Even if you've put work into that content, well, the original creator put even more work into it because they've created everything from scratch. But you demand being credited, and you demand theft protection, but you grant the original creator neither?
And seriously, if you copybot something from Sarcasticarium that has already been stolen from SL and modified, offering it as your own creation with new box art being the only change, and trying to credit yourself as the original creator, that's an absolute low. In this case, the content has been stolen twice already before it arrived in your shop, in both cases against the will of those who have offered it. Any claim that you're the creator is a lie, any claim that you've modified the contents of the box (e.g. retextured them) is a lie, and besides, any claim that you've bought these items in SL before exporting them in order to white-wash your deeds is a lie, too.
But As We All Know™, stealing from SL and stealing stolen content from Sarcasticarium is absolutely necessary in order for OpenSim avatars to not look like clay figures. Right?
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It's something else to take these things without permission. Of course, you don't credit the original creators, not only because you try to make people believe that you've created these things from scratch, but also so that the original creators will much less likely find out that you've stolen from them and sue the living hell out of you.
But if you steal from someone who has never agreed to share their content with you and then complain that others "steal" from you because you've never agreed to share pretty much the same content with them, that's just hypocrisy. Even if you've put work into that content, well, the original creator put even more work into it because they've created everything from scratch. But you demand being credited, and you demand theft protection, but you grant the original creator neither?
And seriously, if you copybot something from Sarcasticarium that has already been stolen from SL and modified, offering it as your own creation with new box art being the only change, and trying to credit yourself as the original creator, that's an absolute low. In this case, the content has been stolen twice already before it arrived in your shop, in both cases against the will of those who have offered it. Any claim that you're the creator is a lie, any claim that you've modified the contents of the box (e.g. retextured them) is a lie, and besides, any claim that you've bought these items in SL before exporting them in order to white-wash your deeds is a lie, too.
But As We All Know™, stealing from SL and stealing stolen content from Sarcasticarium is absolutely necessary in order for OpenSim avatars to not look like clay figures. Right?
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The actual goal of "Sharing is Caring" was to conceal who got all those copybotted things into OpenSim. It would have been hard to tell who was actually behind all that if those things could be found in 500 freebie shops on 200 grids with 300 different creator tags. Each creator who had become a victim of copybotting, together with Linden Lab, would have had to DMCA each one of them, one by one, in many cases successlessly because the particular grid would have been hosted in a country where DMCA complaints don't work. Not to mention that, back in those days, the copybotters weren't the same persons as those who imported and spread the stolen content.
But here we're talking about 1 freebie shop on 1 grid. And the grid is hosted in a country with close connections to North American IP rights. Almost too easy to DMCA into total submission.
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But here we're talking about 1 freebie shop on 1 grid. And the grid is hosted in a country with close connections to North American IP rights. Almost too easy to DMCA into total submission.
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You could try to prove that you've created something by declaring it open-source and offering the source files to the public, source files that you could impossibly have obtained by taking something from SL which means not only textures. You could, for example, have your own Git repository for your source files.
But even then, others will have to trust the claim that the owner of that repository and those files is also behind the avatar who offers the end products in OpenSim.
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But even then, others will have to trust the claim that the owner of that repository and those files is also behind the avatar who offers the end products in OpenSim.
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Beginner's challenge: Pry yourself off of the cats near the landing-point that beg for your attention and explore the sim.
Intermediate challenge: Try to stay out of hospital for 30 minutes.
Advanced challenge: Meet Dian Fossey. As in actually go to her. Without using landmarks.
Expert challenge: Get a bus and drive it to at least one bus stop. https://opensimworld.com/post/92234
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Intermediate challenge: Try to stay out of hospital for 30 minutes.
Advanced challenge: Meet Dian Fossey. As in actually go to her. Without using landmarks.
Expert challenge: Get a bus and drive it to at least one bus stop. https://opensimworld.com/post/92234
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General seems to be for discussions about the world of OpenSim, excluding help requests and OpenSim itself, i.e. development or grid operation.
Help seems to be for help topics regarding the world of OpenSim, excluding OpenSim itself, i.e. development or grid operation.
OpenSimulator seems to be for the software itself and therefore only interesting if you're either a grid admin or an OpenSim developer, or if you want to use OpenSimWorld to try and get into contact with developers.
Satyr Farm is for the Satyr Farm, discussions as well as help.
Support seems to be on-site support for OpenSimWorld itself a.k.a. Ask Satyr.
Apart from the forums, there are also the groups; see the link right below or here: https://opensimworld.com/groups The groups are not only user groups, but also specialised discussion forums founded and operated by OpenSimWorld users. This means that anyone can start a group on a topic if it's worth starting one.
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Help seems to be for help topics regarding the world of OpenSim, excluding OpenSim itself, i.e. development or grid operation.
OpenSimulator seems to be for the software itself and therefore only interesting if you're either a grid admin or an OpenSim developer, or if you want to use OpenSimWorld to try and get into contact with developers.
Satyr Farm is for the Satyr Farm, discussions as well as help.
Support seems to be on-site support for OpenSimWorld itself a.k.a. Ask Satyr.
Apart from the forums, there are also the groups; see the link right below or here: https://opensimworld.com/groups The groups are not only user groups, but also specialised discussion forums founded and operated by OpenSimWorld users. This means that anyone can start a group on a topic if it's worth starting one.
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I textured all the things in the pics. Other than the jeans and shoes. Thats the Damien Fate dress.
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