Child's Play

This might be my only visit to Zindra. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.
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After all the hullabaloo regarding age verification and moving all things “adult” off the mainland, Linden Labs has just released the following information on their June 27, 2009, update on the new “adult” area known as Zindra:

9) Are child avatars allowed on Adult land? Child avatars are allowed on adult land as long as they are account verified like any other Resident. Those choosing to represent themselves with a child avatar do not represent a minor as the account holder. Not all adult land is going to be hosting adult content either. There is plenty of protected land on Zindra that will technically be adult but safe in terms of content. This however does not change any prior policies regarding child avatars. Sexual ageplay is not allowed anywhere on the grid, regardless of rating.

Yes, we’re going to ensure that only adults are behind the avatars, but we’re going to let those adults don the persona of children to frolic in an area that has been made especially for “adult” content. (Or does this mean that the adult content is going to banned there, too?)

I readily admit that I don’t understand why people use child avatars in SL. I also understand—and support—the idea of creativity and individuality. Even though I enjoy seeing realistic-looking avatars, I also welcome seeing furries, zombies, robots, and any other oddity that might appear on the grid.

With that said, I must say that I question the purpose of having a child avatar on a sim that is designated “adult.” More specifically, it reeks of the idea of pedophilia. After all, if a “child”—in this case an adult posing as a child via the child avatar—is roaming around an area that is otherwise free of anything childish, how many purposes would it serve to have the “child” there? For what reason would a person want to role-play a child in an adult landscape? For what reason other than one of a sexual nature?

Although Linden Labs has repeatedly made it clear that sexual role-playing is prohibited using child avatars anywhere on the grid, I don’t understand why they would increase the chances of risking such a thing by allowing child avatars there in the first place.

Lately they’ve been repeatedly making moves to clean up parts of the grid in an apparent effort to make it more palatable for users—both current and potential—who favor PG-rated content and words. They’ve gone so far as to say that profiles must have PG- or G-rated words in them. For example, if you have a “pick” that is an adult-level location, you can’t have any words in its description that might be on Linden Labs’ super-top-secret naughty word list.

So you’re going to have a super-top-secret list of bad words that are going to be censored on profiles that have been made by people who have not only agreed to the terms-of-service that state the user is 18-years-old or older, you’re going to also require a second-round of age-verification of those users, but then you’re going to allow child avatars in adult-rated areas?

The irony is that I probably won’t even visit Zindra once it’s up-and-running. I’m honestly not a regular at any adult-content area. (And I’m not referring to the beaches that I mentioned in my previous post. My classification of that as being R-rated as opposed to X-rated is because it can be nude but non-sexual. I know people in real-life who view some health books as being X-rated simply because they show illustrations of human reproductive organs. You can see how subjective this becomes.)

I must say, however, that I’m confused by this contradictory approach to what’s allowed and what’s censored in SL. It appears that the potential pedophiles are given more leeway than those of us who aren’t questionable SL users, who are clearly adults, and who clearly have no reason to be treated like criminals when we’ve done nothing wrong.