I’ve been mulling over this for the past few days after checking on all things Second Life on Twitter and seeing this ad somewhere in my feed:

Now, this isn’t earth-shattering horrible, but what it also isn’t is positive. Hear me out on this one.

Not long ago, it used to be more difficult to find the “innuendo” ads and Second Life was portrayed more as a place for possibility. A place for teaching. A place for business. A place that enabled those who had Real Life limitations. But, as most platforms do, it started focusing more on skirting the more “sexual” themed ads. And I honestly can’t blame Linden Labs solely for this, because a simple search on Google shows we are also doing ourselves a great disservice.

While researching ads, tons of Marketplace listings were all over the place with sexual images, implications of interactions with animals that didn’t involve kosher acts and tons (and I mean tons) of women in lingerie. So, are we pushing Linden Labs to jump on the “sex sells” train?

Don’t get me wrong; I do see ads that are positive in the sense that they’re like “oh, check out this fun place, you can shop and meet people and explore” or “here’s some gorgeous images from some random place”. That’s great, but again, selling us short as a whole.

At the most recent Lab Chat Ebbe took a moment to respond to my question regarding whether or not there would be a focus on promoting the potential for education and other progressive opportunities in Second Life as was once done before the technology was ready. While I appreciate my question being used, it wasn’t actually really answered.

With the release of Sansar coming out, I really don’t want us to go down that slippery slope towards non-users thinking this is another game that promotes hooking up and just general foolishness. What that would do, really, would be of no justice to the amazing potential Second Life has and bring in more folks just aiming to be there for less interesting reasons.

Second Life can empower people, bloom creativity, educate, heal and so much more. There are already enough of us that think that Second Life is “just a game”….so why not try to catch the attention of those who would become advocates; Second Life’s biggest cheerleaders? Why not promote the documentary efforts of some of our most passionate bloggers and vloggers, rather than try to get another person that would come into world screaming “yay, virtual sex”?

Second Life is an amazing place with amazing people in it. We need more of that. It’s 2016, and we clearly have still only scratched the surface of everything we’re capable of doing. It’s a wonderful platform that, in a sense, has the power to impact two worlds at once. So can we see more of the education-centric promotion? More of the positive promotion that would entice businesses and organizations to consider the potential of investing in a virtual world? Maybe it’s time to go back to those roots, because now Second Life is more streamlined and ready to embrace those ventures.

Promote the progressive again, get more progressive people, and maybe we can start to shake this public perception of Second Life being “just another sexualized game”.

Bria Oceanside
ZoHa Blogger/Social Media