- Russian Content Creators In Second Life, Now Sanctioned & Unable To Cash Out, Contemplate Bad Options In Both Realities
- If Meta Couldn't Launch A Virtual Currency Because If Its Reputation, What Hope Does Meta's Metaverse Have?
- This Artist Creates Stunningly Dramatic Headshots Of Second Life Avatars
- Watch: Inventor Creating 8 Foot Real Robot Controllable From Within VRChat!
- Will Linden Lab Block Payments By Second Life Users In Russia, Like Epic & Other Game Companies Are Now Doing?
My Patreon Supporters
Hypnotic Romance, an SL sim with secluded spaces for couples. Click here to teleport.
The Virtual Worlds Museum. Click here to teleport to their Second Life hub with tribute to sunsetted worlds!
“TV POWWW!” by Tom Boellstorff & Braxton Soderman. Read about the first televised videogame here.
The Fitting Room: Try out new SL fits in a secure, private space. Click here to teleport.
Breedables CoOp, helping the SL pet community grow through shared resources. Go here to get started.
-
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Morgana Thierry’s blog carries her name and is on Tumblr. I will confess I have never gotten the hang of Tumblr conversations which seem to me just a bunch of line #227 Milan. But thankfully, most of the reaction to her posts are likes so it’s easy to understand what’s happening. Skin Fair is starting soon and she is focusing on that in this blog post. I love the formal elegance of this picture. I love the contrast between the vintage hair style and the modernist details on the dress. Here are her credits. I wish she had included that gorgeous dress.
- • Hair: Studio Exposure – Vintage Hairbase + Mesh Bun Red 23 + Hainpin
- • Head: LeLUTKA – Milan Head 3.1 – Evolution X Line at @Skin Fair 2022 New! (Soon)
- – Skin Fair opening date: March 11th @ 12:01pm (NOON) SLT
- • Skin: DeeTaleZ – Esra LeL EVO X (Browless Version) at @Skin Fair 2022 New! *Demo at Mainstore
- – Lipstick Red and Blushglow included in Basic Pack
- – Dimples and Moles included in AddOn Pack
- • Eyebrows: Nuve – Laura Eyebrows
- • Earrings: [Spectacled Chic] – Zia Earrings Group Gift
- • Rings: [ kunst ] – Maria Rings
For that gorgeous dress, click here:
-
Though Linden Lab has not yet announced any plans to ban payments from Russian users on its virtual world platform of Second Life, the US and EU banking sanctions have already taken their toll on SL content creators in Russia — especially those who depend on Second Life for their livelihood:
“After the blocking of PayPal,” as reader “Alex” explains in a recent comment, “all Russian creators were deprived of the opportunity to receive money from sales in SL. For many of them, working in SL is their main and only job.”
All this happens as Second Life users around the world create pro-Ukraine/anti-Russian images and the Second Life island of Moscow has been inundated by so many anti-invasion protesters, the owners resorted to posting a massive billboard in virtual Red Square, imploring visitors to refrain from activism (above).
In group chats, Second Life content creators based in Russia are now privately discussing their options, but are reluctant to air them with the Second Life community at large:
“[O]ut of sympathy and compassion for what is happening in Ukraine,” as Alex puts it, “Russian creators do not bring their problems into public discussion… Many [Russian SL] creators and their families are already left without a livelihood.”
Alex believes that some creators in the short term will continue creating in Second Life, even without a cash-out option, but “we will not be able to do this for a long time and will not be able to support our customers in the game as we have always done.”
Russian creator Akirakiyoi Resident (pictured) tells me a similar story. In a painful irony, he was among the many Russian Second Life users who rallied to support their brethren creators in Ukraine.
Putin’s base of supporters in Russia, he tells me, are “elderly people who don’t know what Netflix for example or Second Life is. Younger generations playing games and drinking Starbucks are not the people who vote for him, or who support him.”
Many of them not only play Second Life but in recent years, as Russia’s economy continued to falter, have turned to virtual world content creation into a career.
“Most of these creators don’t have a real job since SL was their full time and we expect a major crisis in the country with high unemployment rates,” says Akirakiyoi, who then adds: “But of course the first thing that needs to happen is this invasion to finally stop.”
-
Remember Libra and Diem, the virtual currency project launched by Facebook/Meta in 2019? (Here's what I wrote about it back then.) The Financial Times has a great inside story of what happened to cause that project to collapse. Basically, Facebook happened:
What emerges is a picture of Silicon Valley executives who thought they could charge into finance and make billions, if only they could surmount technical and regulatory barriers. What they failed to realize was that the very fact Facebook had conceived the idea, doomed it. As one government official involved in the process puts it: “Diem spent years trying to reverse engineer their project to fix all of its faults. But they could never fix being linked to Facebook. It was their original sin.”
Read the whole thing here, which ends by casually noting that Meta is now working on making a Metaverse. Left unsaid there is the painfully obvious point:
-
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Legolas Baxton’s photostream is a collection of stunning headshots, portraits of people revealed by skillfully and artfully revealed light. “I took a pill in Ibiza” caught my eye because it breaks one of the most-followed rules of composition — having the subject look into the frame. By having her look out, there is less active space in front of her. Most of the picture is dead space. That’s a risky move, but it works here. It gives her an almost uncanny look, as though she is only pretending to look out to the left, but really she’s looking straight at the viewer. Look at it long enough and you will swear she’s looking at you. The title is the same as the song he links to in the description. [To listen, click here.] It’s interesting that the music video uses light in similar ways to Legolas’ revealing and hiding the people in it.
For more extraordinary head shots, click here:
-
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Fernando Lozatt gives us some popular, but often bad, advice with his excellent picture, “Don’t ever show your weaknesses.” I love a lot of things in this picture. The lighting feels natural, coming from above. The slight angle makes it seem as though someone is about to go up the stairs and Fernando seems more in the way than if it were shot straight-on or from the right. The advice? Who is going to see the weaknesses? It’s bad advice for relationships and so-so advice for battle. After all, if you know your weaknesses you can prepare defenses that may lay a trap for your opponent. Also, Lao Tzu suggested “'Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.”
For more great pics, click here:
-
Bundle for Ukraine is an epic sale of indie games with all proceeds benefiting the International Medical Corps in Ukraine and Voices of Children, a Ukrainian NGO which helps kids in the region. The Bundle comes with nearly 1000 games valued at $6520, all for a minimum donation of $10. (But you can and should pay much more than $10, of course.)
Click here to see the full list, which includes hits like the excellent bullet-time masterpiece SUPERHOT, and the critically acclaimed Baba is You.
