Height Commissars Continue Their Battle

Not surprisingly, "Mike Moderator" has sent me a "warning" for my post opposing Penny Paton's short avatar oppression (*sigh*) and all my refutations of Penny's authoritarian little gambit have been removed -- good thing I saved at least my first post.

Of course, what's *really* abusive and oppressive is insisting that everyone in the world has to resize themselves to accommodate the minority identity politics of child avatar boundary-pushers and edge-casers, and the Short People's Liberation Front.

What is this *really* about? In part, yes, indeed, it is about the child avatar lobby -- the argumentation that all the world is "out of scale" is one they use constantly to gaslight people on their legitimate moral revulsion. It's also about obsessive and neuralgic little geeks who get math correctitude up their ass and begin to want to impose it on everyone out of a sense of "what's right".

Penny has merely upped the ante in using an argument used before that height "uses up more land and prims." All this comes on the eve of some kind of change from Linden Lab about prim counting -- when mesh comes in, if it is scripted, this will "count as more prims." What I'm not clear on is whether prims, as distinct from sculpties or mesh, that have scripts in them, will suddenly "count more" or what's up. The idea of charging for script usage like prims is something I myself have advocated -- I think it would help to curtail the massive script abuse we see, in many areas, and lately in the Scourgemobiles of AnneMarie Otoole -- imagine if the rez zones got charged for how many scripted items were rezzed per day (the question of how to charge scripts is interesting, because they are always "counting" on the sim's performance, even when not executing and in use, so I wonder if this will be calculated over time.)

But what's this REALLY all about? It occurred to me today that if it weren't about height and proportion, it could be about almost any other thing -- the Scourgemobile "vehicle rights" that AnneMarie Otoole is demanding to impose on the entire grid, even on other people's land; on ARC scores; on who knows, avatar toenail polish. Someone could start complaining that it's unfair that you can't paint your avatar's toenails in appearance mode, and have to buy workaround tatoos that take up attachment areas... Attachment areas themselves are political, as the third-party viewers put in more of them and the clamour goes up to put them in the official SL viewer. Only a few years ago, the big bugabear was this supposed "impediment" that caused builders to have to change the default *protection* of permissions and intellectual property that is *server-side* into one that would enable builders to permanently reset their own default to always-on perm-free creations. This was one of the two JIRAs I opposed that led me to be banned from the JIRA. Interestingly, Lindens who first signed up to work on this, including even employee no. 2 Andrew Linden, fell away. The JIRA never got done. Good! There really wasn't any builders' demand for it -- it was the open source cultist lobby, amplified by the copyleftist Techdirt that was pushing it.

So again, what are these things REALLY about? And why are they happening now?

Well, they are about the ever-green and avaricious yen of coders and designers to rule the virtual world. They want CONTROL of the look and feel and functioning of the world, they are used to being given their way when they whine and lobby with JIRAs and blogs, and they are rearing their heads now because they feel threatened.

What is making them feel threatened? Well, it isn't just the disruption about to happen with the entry of mesh, which will have the usual windfalls and SL winners and losers and gnashing of teeth that every undemocratic, forcible change causes. It's this: more people are joining Second Life, it's getting easier to use, the viewer 2 is getting better, more new, ordinary people are coming in the world, and as always, this threatens the power base of the FIC, the coders and designers who feel the world should exclusively be "theirs" and never cater to mass taste, dumb down to mass use, become accessible to more amateurish creation or even simple consumption.

Always at times of growth in SL, this Feted Inner Core of coddled and privileged folks who have the ear of the official devs and put in features and bug finds with political zealotry themselves begins to howl.   "Just wait until the world grows!" Cocoanut used to say in many a forums argument with these people, because she knew that their sectarian and elitist arguments would wither when more and more and more normal people -- ordinary, everyday people who use virtual worlds instead of build them -- came in the door and challenged the insanity and cultishness of these freaks.

So that's why we're getting this huge, bald grab for power on the height question, because the world is already established as favouring mass taste in becoming more idealized and taller, the world is already rightly revulsed by creepy child avatars or simply unimpressed with men who make infantalized female robot avatars as their Cyberpunk Ideal based on all the stupid war games they've played. Generations of skin makers have in fact catered to the desire for tallness -- and that's ok, it's a virtual world, you get to do what you want, hopefully, and not what some nerdy little nuisance in the Buildings and Textures section of the forum wants -- with his little coterie of abuse-reporters.

Hamlet has -- outrageously -- proposed monetarizing the height issue by *charging* for avatars above a certain "proportionately-scaled height," i.e. the 7-foot avatar. Can you imagine that?! What an *asshole*. That shows you the deep, deep creator fascism/communist coder roots that Hamlet ne Linden Au, once notorious at The Well, comes from. Yes, that red-brown coalition is common in the Silicon Valley amalgam of ideologies -- monetarize for me with some oppressive, fascistic idea, force the masses into conformity with some coder collectivization ideal like this height nonsense.

Some of the comments under Hamlet's piece make sense -- how can you possibly say there's a "standard" in a virtual world anyway? The notion that you "must" import real-life standards don't make sense in a world where you can be anything you want to and fly and build any outlandish thing you want. Of course, coder-cultist Melissa Yeaudoux claims in fact "meters" *are* the standard. But units of measurement aren't the issue; the notion that an avatar "has" to be a standard, average size based on real-life sense of proportion is the issue.

Doreen Garrigus argues that there are no standards in SL, it's a mish-mosh, and that has to change. Well, why? There is a typical average -- and the idea that there isn't, and that it can be scientifically proven by measuring the total mass of avatars is misleading. Look at most gatherings of avatars, look at the heights most people tend to chose. Sure, if you take the total population of everyone who pulled a furry or cardboard box or robot skin on themselves in their day-long sojourn in SL that never repeated, you might find some lower height. Sure, if you collect enough random data, you can make stupid points like "the number of avatars of 6 feet is equal to the number of avatars of 7 feet". But if you actually ask people what they want in a democratic and transparent poll, and actually study what they *chose* inworld, you will see that the Short Liberation Front is just a sectarian shill.

Perhaps the mesh lobby is in on the SLF, too, because they have to think of a way to make all old content obsolete -- since introducing mesh alone will not likely achieve that. What better way than to insist that everything that came before was "incorrect" and we must have a "New World Order" that "correctly" sizes people? If the Lindens actually fell for that gambit, they would demolish all old content and devalue everyone's purchases. They are capable of such a thing, of course, but I actually don't think they will go for this -- it's too complicated, and they likely instinctively know it would piss off too many people.

Then comes the smiling and cunning Penny to protest prettily that she isn't really overthrowing the world with a sectarian gambit, but just, um, adjusting a few things and "making the world better":

My stance is not to limit avatar sizes, but to provide better starter sizes, correct size information (there's actually a bug in the appearance editor misrepresenting avatar height), and better camera placement. This would allow people more freedom in deliberately choosing their avatar size, rather than being forced into one extreme just to be "average".

Correct? Says who? And if you impose a "correctness," that *will* in fact limit sizes. Changing camera placement options would literally force a view on the world. The idea that this actual authoritarian forcible change to the world would "allow people more freedom" is just a typical Orwellian Newspeak. How does it allow people "more freedom" to undo the organic nature of the world that accommodated most people, that was freely chosen by most people, and which, if changed, would break oceans of content?! What's *forced* is changing the majority of people to be shorter, to make the shorties here "feel like they are the center of the universe."

Ann Otoole's idea that sliders enable better automatic proportioning is a separate issue. That seems fine -- because it's not about imposing a norm on the entire world but making creations more flexible, if I understood it correctly.

What is it about Hamlet that would make him suggest an idea to Linden Lab to piss off most of the population with a tax on their heights, chosen freely, as ideals in a virtual world? What *sheer assholery* would make someone suggest shit like that?! Again, it's that demand to have power and influence, and that hatred of the masses and the democracy of the average users that's really at stake. He's feeling the heat, and feeling all his beautiful wickedness melting -- the Lindens just cancelled his vanity email forwarding that still said "secondlife.com," and he's invoking his Well cred again.

Hamlet has been howling about a core base of users who refuse to change -- well, of course, he's among them, and it's not the group he thinks.

I suspect that the Lindens are not going to re-do their height system. They might improve the choices and automatic reproportioning options in appearance mode -- they might not, as it sounds like a lot of work. if Penny's little fascistic lobby gets any steam -- and I suspect it won't, beyong the ageplay lobbyists like Imnotgoing Sideways who are giving it an artificial amplification now -- the Lindens might throw a sop or accommodate it with some widget change, but I pretty certain the Lindens will never charge people for being tall, and they won't accept the argument that they are tier-grubbers because they let people be tall. The heart of Penny's Marxist-style and climate-change authoritarian-type argument is that we "must" reduce sizes because of her "science" involved in finding that tall people use up more prims and space and bigger builds.

 

 

 

Comments

[Steve Rogers]

Doors and ceilings in SL would be huge if we adopted "real" avatar sizes.

[Rex Cronon]

-"uses up more land and prims?" Really? I was thinking that bigger avatars use more land and less prims, while small avatars use less land and more prims. At least, this is what makes sense to me.
-In the new order of things that meshes will bring, one single mesh will count as one or more prims, depending on the number of vertices that the mesh has. That means a single very complex mesh could be counted as a hundred prims or more. i am not sure what is highest complexity for a mesh. I don't think that scripts in a mesh affect prim count for a mesh.

[melponeme_k]

These changes will never happen in Second Life. The build tools with stay the same. I don't think the Lindens will muck around with something as tricky as that considering it will break alot of things in world.

The "to scale" community however is small but very influential community. The first SL community I came across that adhered to standardized building were the SL Japanese builders. They do what they want but don't really care if anyone else follows. So they are not a part of the crowd calling for built in guidelines. But I do believe their work has influenced some people to scale their avatars. I know that I was influenced because I hang around their areas more than anywhere else.

Its all just a matter of taste. But I don't believe it should be forced on others.

[Prokofy Neva]

Hamlet's call for "monetarizing height," i.e. penalizing with a tax anybody who won't go along with this creator-fascism, should let you know what it's really all about.

It is a matter of taste. And the majority doesn't have this taste.

There is nothing to stop anybody from building and designing to the scale they wish on their sims.

That they feel the need to force the entire world to change around them lets us know the agenda isn't really about Platonic ideals of proportion, but about software hubris and coder power. That's all.

[Metacam Oh]

Sounds like this person has too much time on their hands. A height standardization lobby? Ummm, wow. Is everyone supposed to agree, make their avatars smaller, redo all their builds etc etc because someone feels small? ayy.

[Mariel Tigerpaw]

I still fail to understand the 'taller people need more prims and land' argument.

If I have, say, a basic 16-prim skybox that's 20m x 20m it doesn't matter if I stretch the walls to 5m high or 8m high. It'll still be 16 prims and it'll still take up 20x20m of land (or air, since it's a skybox).

How does an 8m high prim wall take up more land and prims than a 5m high prim wall?

On the subject of 'better' starter avatar sizes; that's all well and good as long as everyone sticks with the starter avatars. Which we all know everyone... doesn't.

[brinda Allen]

Most things heal themselves when left alone.

[Darien Caldwell]

it's all nonsense. 1 prim can be resized anywhere from 0 to 10 meters. it doesnt take more prims to make a wall taller.

And her statement that " forced into one extreme just to be "average" is completely silly. If taller is the average, it's not an extreme.

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

"And her statement that " forced into one extreme just to be "average" is completely silly. If taller is the average, it's not an extreme."

The range covered by sliders is [1, 100]. 1 and 100 are the extremes of that interval. Penny's statement makes perfect sense.

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

"Is everyone supposed to agree, make their avatars smaller, redo all their builds etc etc because someone feels small?"

No. If Penny is right, sim owners who scale their builds for realistic human heights will receive the benefits of it, newcomers will see that and outscale and inconsistently scaled builds will become less common. Residents can change their heights or not, depending on what's important to them.

It's easier for an individual to change his or her avatar than for a sim owner to rebuild, of course, so you'll see the changes there first--and in fact I see far more human avatars nearer average human height now than I did when I first came to Second Life.

In the meantime, could we at the very least not accuse avatars shorter than Sandy Allen or Robert Wadlow of being children, or make up moronic conspiracy theories?

[Laetizia Coronet]

In fact, you do take up more land. I found out while trying to make a camper van that you can't really have one in any realistic size because beds need to be about 3m long (real world: usually 2.10m). This means the vehicle has got to be wider than RL examples. Obviously the same applies for a house.
Possibly you lose prims when you want to keep the relative proportions of RL examples intact and you need to stretch beyond 10m to do that.
Mind you, I'm not saying it's a problem; it's simply a fact.

[Micha Sass]

Once the world has been purged of over-sized avatars, I will no longer feel short at 6'1". This is great because I have no desire to appear as a child. All the people who wish to appear as a child will no longer appear childlike without further reduction of their height. In fact I think the height lobby will actually cause a reduction in people who look like children due to their comparatively short heights. Age-play accusations will be replaced by a disgust of people who are unnaturally tall..I will call this height-play. A perverse fantasy perpetrated by people who are less than satisfied with their RL stature and wish to tower over the normal people..the tallies are aligning themselves with other groups who like to dominate such as the Gorians. Perverts. Makes me sick to the stomach.

[Calvin Thomas]

I find all of this hand-wringing to be perversely amusing. Nobody is going to force you not to be freakishly tall and/or ill-proportioned. However, if a movement toward more sensible, real-world proportions were to take hold through common consensus, I think it could only help the grid as a whole. I, for one, would love to see fewer eight-foot-tall emaciated 'models' and tanning-bed-jerky hoochie mamas with wide hips and bookshelf arses.

Penny Patton has a very interesting and unique avatar. Not my thing, but clearly, imagination has been put to use. I know that she is quite obsessed with the proportion issue and the camera angle issue - but there are a lot of people who appreciate both of those ideas who aren't quite so fixated on them. Prokofy is obsessed with finding correlations with everything in SL (and tech in general) and the imagery and ideology of a long-since-failed nation-state. There are others out there who see problems with the open-source movement who aren't quite so obsessed with the past. You have extremes in every point of view. And then there's the great big wide middle where the rest of us dwell.

[Metacam Oh]

This is a world where people can fly, build anything they want, look however they want, etc etc, so why should anyone be concerned whether avatars are realistic height based on the SL meter system? Lets get rid of flying, rezzing prims out of no where, and anyone non human avatars as well, since we need to go by real life standards?

I mean really, standardized height of avatars in SL is about #1001 on my list of top 1000 things Second Life needs.

[Darkfoxx]

As a scale model builder in RL, I have of course taken that hobby as well as it's way of thinking with me in second life. And as such I can understand the desire to see everything in SL 'to scale', where a car is not one and a half stories high and a locomotive is properly huge. I guess its not very blatant to everyone and most people wont notice a subtle scale difference even when pointed out to them. But imposing a standard and even suggesting those who dont adhere to the 'correct' size or scale goes beyond too far. It takes away from the utter freedom which makes SL so great. (Yes i still think SL is fantastic despite its numerous problems)

As for me personally in my builds and av size I simply follow the SL meter. Its an advantage that I live in Europe, I use the metric system in my RL too. It does however pose one problem: Anything bought for my av that is prims is usually too big and unfortunately at times cannot be scaled small enough. And I'm not even that short, just a modest 1.75 meters. Not counting my ears.

Some creators have been very helpful and even gave me fullmod copies so I could make items smaller prim by prim and in other cases they refunded me. And now and then they couldnt or wouldnt help me and I had to do what this avatar height lobby has to do as well: LIVE WITH IT.

[height increase]

Height is a natural goal of human beings. I agree that the current situation is partly due to the glamor associated with high altitude. If this is something I call the height of the driver increases conduct would be contrary to the purpose. Since the real purpose of increasing the height contribute to the burning desire to reach our potential as far as possible.

[height increase]

The height also suggests an increase in the sound and the individual health. Probably the most important asset is the right position it can make a big deal about other family members. Some people are very fortunate to have an exceptional height. Thus some less fortunate are often asked about the height Several ingredients can affect the size of an individual. The heritage and quality of the two genes are the most important components that could change the height. Each race has different genes, geographical conditions and a proper plan which covers up significantly. All persons who are interested in increasing their height can do the work to reach it determinedly.

[safety glasses]

Great post, good work. It Couldn’t be wrote any better. Reading this post reminds me of my recent employer! He constantly kept talking about this. I will forward this article to him. Pretty sure he will have a delightful read. Thanks for posting!

[קעקועים גלריה]

The argumentation that all the community is out of scale is one they use regularly to gaslight individuals on their genuine significant revulsion.