Photo Courtesy of Second Life Adventures

HEY HEARTUN~ Can you still be friends with someone after you’ve cybered? Even if you don’t want to cyber with them any more? ~FRIENDS FOREVER

DEAR FRIENDS~
The short answer is ‘no.’

But it’s more complicated than that.

Cyber sex is the safest thing out there, and lets face it… it is convenient. Assisted masturbation can be very exciting,  but if that’s all you’ve got with your partner — that partnership may fade with time. (Perhaps in minutes).

It sounds like that is what happened here — from what little you gave us to go on — and I’m guessing you just don’t want to be a jerk and drop your boring lover like an adult would. So you’ll pull the ‘lets be friends’ routine and meet with the predictable results. Your erstwhile lover will know they are being spurned, get pissed off or clingy, and give you a reason to drop them where you can blame THEM for the breakup.

After all, you still wanted to be friends and they got all ‘weird’ on you. Right?

Be an adult. Just tell them you are no longer getting what you want out of the relationship and need to move on. After a cooling off period, if you run into them again, try being FRIENDLY (i.e. civil and kind). And as for your next conquest, try being friends first — if you really want the whole package, and not just a dalliance. See if you have something in common besides mutual masturbation and one handed typing.

The key here is that adults have a fair idea of what they’re looking for before they engage others in ‘more than friends’ play. Sure, they get it wrong, but they’re trying. If you don’t have a clue, you are doomed to hurt others and be frustrated with whatever you get.

~HEARTUN BREAKER

EXTRA~ Author Caroline Takeda masterfully covers the art of cyber sex on the site Second-Life-Adventures.com 

• Second Life Sex — The Definitive Guide
• Emotes in Role-Play and Virtual Sex

DEAR YOUR~ I share your pain. My God, girl, I came across a Bio where a young woman railed against “prejudism” — a word that just doesn’t exist. The thing is, Your, when you cross the line between feeling superior to these morons and actually pointing out your superiority to them you are displaying a deep seated mental flaw of your own. I don’t know how it started. Maybe your daddy didn’t love you enough. Maybe mommy forced you into toilet training too early. Regardless (irregardless to the true moron), when you contact a stranger and rub their nose in their own ignorance it is you who are the moron. It is antisocial and you need to stop it now. Class dismissed!

~HEARTUN BREAKER

It made me laugh — hanging around in the public sandbox, seeing the stupid things guys say when they PM girls. I had no idea!

Photo Courtesy of OMweb

Then a female acquaintance invited me to a lesbian-only club and I’ve been hanging out there a lot ever since… because I fell in love. Do I let my new lesbian ‘girlfriend’ know that I am really a man? ~ HANGING, BUT NOT OUT

DEAR HANGING ~ Sure. Tell her. I’m sure her sexuality up to this point in her life is merely the result of not having met the right guy.

While you are at it, you should broaden your horizons. Start hanging out at Shemale Quickies so you can meet the right guy  too!

The ‘right guy’ will surely change your orientation.  ~HEARTUN BREAKER

HEY HEARTUN~ I am Spanish. I do not speak English. The people who speak here English are cruel. They say that “they speak English or they go.” She is that I leave the Second Life? ~VISTA GLOBAL (translated from Spanish using AltaVista’s Babelfish)

Photo Courtesy of FuelFandango Designs

DEAR VISTA~ I spoke briefly with Liaison Lizzy Linden and she said there is no “official language of Second Life.” While the majority of SL ‘citizens’ speak English it’s non-English speakers that are the hoped-for salvation for Linden Labs. After personnel expenses, server space and connectivity top the expenses that keep Second Life running. And they’re fairly fixed costs too. If you double the number of Americans playing SL, you have to boost server space and connectivity or service suffers more than players will tolerate.

However, if you pull in players who aren’t from he same time zone they end up playing at different times, effectively distributing the server and connectivity workload. More players, same capital costs. Venture capitalists love that, and Linden Labs is out hunting for more VC right now. The money they brought in last winter is running out — and while management can downsize customer service workers like Lizzy to boost the bottom line they can’t cut infrastructure.

“There are four fucking languages going on all at once in here and its pissing me off,” yelled one Welcome Area Regular in Ahern recently. “I’ve got a problem with all these foreigners — it didn’t used to be this way!”

Xenophobic sentiment like this is bound to increase in the Second Life Welcome Areas because while language-specific sims are on the increase the WAs are common ground. We Americans are going to have to admit to ourselves that we don’t travel the world much, we don’t speak any other languages and our world view is rather narrow. That kind of introspection makes us uncomfortable. Meanwhile the non-Americans get a chance to answer their favorite question: “Who are these Americans who keep electing bomb-flinging psychopaths.” And they’d better be nice about it too because America has a lot of bombs, and a lot of Bushes. (Jeb 08-16, Neil 16-24, Jenna 24-32, Barbara 32-40 and so on.)

Second Life is the opportunity we all have to find out about each other without actually going to war but it starts in the Welcome Area. So if someone gives you shit for speaking Spanish, Dear Vista, write up an abuse report because I’d hate to see Jenna send B-52s into Barcelona some day. And that cracker best learn some Spanish or learn to shut up because they probably don’t want to see that either.

~HEARTUN BREAKER

Photo Courtesy of Ripped Winkler

HEY HEARTUN~

I cheated on my wife with 3 dogs, a monkey and a half gallon jug of KY Jelly. Should I tell her?

~RYMES WITH ‘CHORUS’

DEAR CHORUS~

I don’t see why not. Sounds like a good Second Life party… maybe she will want to join in next time.

Photo courtesy: Kai Shadow Design

HEY HEARTUN~ I’m lonely. I came back to Second Life after several years off because Covid isolation was getting me down. Before the Pandemic I went out with friends for board game nights, trivia nights, hanging out at their homes or mine, and loads of laughter at coffee houses and restaurants.

That ended months ago. I live in a hard-hit area that has seen no decline in the numbers. It’s the 3rd leading cause of death in my county, and I personally know two people who have died from this disease and dozens who have gotten it — some with serious conditions after their initial symptoms went away.

I’m not prone to depression but I came back to Second Life in an attempt to socialize with someone, some how — to shake off the blues.

It worked a bit, but either Second Life has changed since I last was here — or I have. The level of mean spirited drama, argument and paranoia from some Residents seems much higher than it was a decade ago. Worse, there used to be a pie-eyed optimism, and a feeling that we were doing something new and important, and I swear it’s all just sex and commercialism now.

I have made a few friends. But I’ve also had some I considered friends hurt me with drama and disfunction. Second Life has never been perfect, but I’m just not finding what I need here this time.

~LONELY LIVES

DEAR LONELY~ First off, you aren’t alone. This topic has been one that’s come across my desk several times in one flavor or another. I hate all the ‘year in review’ crap that every freaking media organization puts out this time of year, but you hit on some themes common to most people who played Second Life in 2020.  Here’s a few articles that address civility, depression, alcoholism and loneliness. I hope they help.

• Spiraling From Covid Isolation — A reader returns to SL, and the bottle.
• Second Life is a Lie — What little civility SL ever had is in decline.
• Second Life is Like an Acid Trip — Culling out chaos and drama through ‘block’ is simple self care.
• Stalking Carmen King — YouTuber brings thousands to SL; boosting the surge from Covid isolation.
• Stuck With Burning Anger — When coming to SL isn’t enough, there’s counseling (both in and out of SL).
• Voice – The Final Frontier of Intimacy — Trans girl yearns for real intimacy in SL, and studies show voice may be the missing link!
• The Unnecessary Man — Visiting author, Sheree Honeyflower, throws down a gauntlet of an op-ed over a lack of civility from men.

One more thing, Lonely… however bad it’s been, and it has been bad, this too shall pass. Lean on your social groups. Cull people who don’t contribute to your happiness. And continue to reach out.

~HEARTUN BREAKER

I just got a teleport offer from someone I don’t know, and took it,  but the guy said I was the ‘wrong one’ and he unceremoniously ejected me from the sim. I’m stuck mid air! Hahah!

But seriously, what the hell was THAT all about?

~HANGING AROUND

DEAR HANGING~

I contacted your Lothario and he sent me the chat log — so it looks to me like it was an honest mistake. Your name is rather common, and there are several very close to it in an in-world search. The guy acknowledged his error and apologized. In my opinion, that meets the bare minimum of respect and amends within the context of Second Life.

His booting you was, according to him, just a tweaking of his sim permissions — not an overt booting. Plausible. Reasonable. Not drama inducing. Sure, he could have been far more gracious — especially if he had looked at your profile and seen how new you are. That would have been nice, but it isn’t required.

Pick-up artists abound in SL (If that is even what your dude was up to) and many of them are horrible at it! While I was writing this, I got a PM from a friend and reader who — dressed as a nun — got the following private message:

Photo courtesy Pratidin Times 

“hi mmmm nice avi” he opened with a compliment, so he probably thought he was ‘being nice’ but followed with “I know someone who likes to sodomize sexy nuns like you.”

And it just went down hill from there.

In Second Life terms, I hate to say it… but even THIS is probably not the worst pick up line ever. I don’t even know what that would look like, but sodomy rape would probably just be the warm-up offer.

I polled some female friends, and here are some of the ROUTINE private messages from random strangers they report getting as opening PM contacts:

• Sup?
• Mmmmmm!
• Tasty!
• Your cute!
• Hey sexy.

The part that disturbs me is that if persistent behavior proves utility, this crap must be getting these people SLaid once in a while — or they would not do it!

Threats of rape sodomy can be reported to Linden Labs, and I understand they try to address threatening behavior like that… but even if they ban the asshole, there are alts. Blocking the transgressor may be your best bet, but whatever you decide to do — don’t let it ruin your time in Second Life. And if you come up with a solution for really piss-poor pick up artists, or how to best deal with them, drop me a line or leave a comment below this article.

~HEARTUN BREAKER

This article is something some people have been asking me to write, only, I don’t like to sit puddles of misery, so I brush every request or suggestion away to focus on why I came to Second Life and why I remain. There are indeed many amazing and wonderful activities and people in Second Life to put my effort to. However, with the crazy last four years almost come to an end and the nastiness it brought to many of us on a global presence, I thought I would write something for this publication.

The issue is of course, men. Not all men, but those who use their computers to harass women using online medias. Often the medias are social platforms like Facebook and Twitter. For the sake of this article, I will be concentrating on Second Life. As I once said on Twitter, I have no problem with most men but the number of men behaving wrongly does seem to be growing in numbers, regardless of cultural background which tells us this is globally systemic.

When we log into Second Life with our viewer for the first time and make our way to the greeting centre, we are met with a crowd of people. For women, this crowd here and beyond feels like a tsunami of sexually frustrated men who were never correctly socialized as a child in the environment they lived out their childhood and nothing afterwards to mold them into civil beings. I have received messages from men who tell me their experiences when they created an account with a female avatar, giving them an insight into what women experience in our day to day lives. I don’t mind this. This would be a good exercise for all men so they learn and then hopefully they would evolve. And yes, there are predatory women who are just as toxic as the men this article is about.

One type of men we all know about is the man who believes that telling us we have nice tits or other body part will see us blush and melt at their feet, all hot and wet, ready for uncontrolled sex with them or they write some other weird lines which is often creepy and disturbing. They need to stop watching porn and listening to their high school friends for hints.

The second are those who become angry with us for not opening our legs for them. Some become abusive. Women act politely. We pretend to laugh at their stupid jokes because we don’t know which man will be the next to go into a rage. Online can be just as dangerous and hurtful when they harass or intimidate. Some demand answers. These things in our first lives can lead to assaults against us. Online actions can and do lead to public humiliation. In Australia, where I live, men harassing women online has lead to threats considered real enough that they have left Australia for their own safety, some unable to return because men are waiting to hurt them for the crime of holding a different point of view to them or not opening their legs for these men.

Second Life is no different; when people are harassed, they stop logging in to meet with their friends.

Of serious concern is how the victim, most often a woman, responds. Nobody can see what anyone is going through in their lives as technology makes us physically invisible. When someone is harassed, sexually or otherwise, we do not know if they are also a real-life victim of a similar crime or sexual assault. We do not know if they have anxiety, PTSD or any other personal matter. We cannot see if someone is triggered by a bad event against them and when I have raised this with both men and women in Second Life, I feel at a loss when the response is that it is only online, as if there are no emotions involved online, or they should just stop using the Internet, which only further enables the bullies who are given free license to continue their bad behavior.

I am known for posting screenshots of messages I receive, generally with the senders identity censored. If I show the person’s account identity, it is because they have said something so stupid that I believe they should be known. Recently a man chose to send me a message offline to say he was Donald Trump’s brother. All of my polite no’s were rejected with a change of tact until I spoke directly. On came the angry raging male. This man gave me the idea of creating a picks tab ‘For Men’ which nobody should have to do.

Has male behaviour become increasingly worse?

I would say, yes. Yes, because I have known many bi-sexual women in first life and Second Life who say that they have had it with men. Many stopped dating men all together. Others say that if they weren’t with their current boyfriend or husband, they would never date another man again. Men are blaming feminism for this rejection of them but it is their behaviour. Women should not have to hear men apologize for their gender.

In Second Life, we learn where it is safe for women to go and for most of us, this excludes beaches since beaches somehow means sex. I personally don’t want sand inside my vagina.

It is not difficult for people to be considerate of each other. No matter the religion. No matter the pigmentation of skin. No matter the age, sex, gender or sexual orientation. There are so many activities in Second Life to enjoy. There are so many different people to meet and learn from each other. It just takes a small amount of effort to respect each other than sitting at our computers with a tomato head and inflamed fingers from angry keystrokes.

Respect one another. Enjoy life.

Sheree Honeyflower

(On Twitter,  Virtually Sheree)

A meal with friends takes on special meaning in 2020.

Kind Readers~

Although I live in the same city as my whole ‘real life’ family, this year we didn’t get together. I dropped a couple special dishes off at my fathers, and one of my brothers… then went home to a roast instead of a turkey. Cooking for myself, I kept it simple. Then I called a couple other family members on Zoom as we all ate in our respective homes.

2020 is the Year of the Pandemic. It has devastated the economy, locked down whole communities, and disrupted industries because of radical changes in people’s behavior in response to Covid 19. And this holiday season, it’s kept me from my family.

So it was unexpectedly joyous when an Ahern Welcome Area regular, Jesús, decked out the public space with fall colors and a picnic table holding an entire Thanksgiving meal.

I know some of us are from countries and cultures that do not celebrate the holiday, but many of us do. And hanging out in Second Life this morning had the feeling of being in a casino on Christmas — fun, but wrong. Then Jesús put out his spread, quietly, and several of us just sat down at the table because it felt right.

The chatter turned to things we are grateful for, and family that we all miss. We talked about favorite dishes, and role played passing the gravy boat. The mood was instantly lightened and familial. We couldn’t be with the ones we love, but we were perfectly content to love the ones we were with. It was one of those magic moments that sometimes sneak up on you in Second Life — you don’t see them coming, but they are moving and you know you are part of a community.

Meat Carver molests a dinner guest with a pink dildo.

But it couldn’t last forever in Ahern, not with the griefers that congregate there. Enter ‘Meat Carver’ in a Mario avie, sporting a big pink dildo. Being completely unoriginal, he targeted a young woman regular for public sexual assault. She moved away several times, and asked him to stop. She tried sitting in a hard to reach place, and just avoid him, but he was persistent so she logged off.

Like a drunken uncle who is a registered sex offender crashing your party and no one can kick him out. A Second Life holiday tradition, and a perfect metaphor for 2020 — the Year of the Pandemic.

~HEARTUN

Photo courtesy of http://xahlee.org/

HEY HEARTUN ~ Please, Miss, do not start my letter off with “Hey Heartun.” Even when i am not role playing i would never say that. Why i am writing is that i am very subservient and i like strong women. i went to NOVA’s Lesbian BDSM Club  (oh, yeah, i am male in real life but female in SL) and offered myself to anyone who wanted me as their servant but no one seemed to take me seriously. Some even accused me of trying to pick up women — but i’m not looking for sex,  just a woman to order me around. ~ AT YOUR SERVICE

DEAR AT YOUR SERVICE ~ Yeah, technically you are not violating the rules there at NOVA’s. As I understand it — technically — they allow trans-SL women. (so long as their behavior stays in line with the conduct expected at that club) But you picked NOVA’s, and you are hanging onto a technicality? And rather than sit back, you’re firing on anyone? That place is a fairly up-scale club and may not be the free-range meat market you’re looking for.  I mean, why not hang out at the Degraded Factory of Pain in Hardwood? Or find some rando in a Welcome Area or a fishing village or a racetrack?

Also, when you say you offered yourself to anyone who wants you — well, that isn’t a great sales technique. You no doubt sounded needy. I’m sure the “Hey, I’m here… lets party!” technique of picking up a fetish partner works fine if you’re in a fetish where things are largely equal and there are other people looking for what you’ve got. Heterosexuals, homosexuals and Furries seem to have a fairly equal volume of compliments — but the sad truth is that many fetishes do not have equal counterparts.

If you are into pretending to be a big baby, and you like women, you’re going to have to stand in line. Like being a sub? Also stand in line — or be willing to share. Into Scat or Water Sports? There are far more receivers than givers.

What you’re doing is a longshot too, although not impossible. You may not be into sex, but you ARE looking for a woman and you picked a club full of women who are also looking for women — not necessarily you. Then you went and threw out your appeal broadly (no pun) and probably too soon when you should have just sat there and waited. Of course no one was interested when you said something like “I want to be the slave/servant/sub of any woman here.” You were confirming that you are a guy looking for a girl, and trust me — they’ve seen that before. Also, when you give something away for free and offer it to everyone without first raising that thing’s value you are devaluing it completely.

I’d recommend that you go elsewhere to look for your Mistress. Failing that, if you are insistent about staying in NOVA’s with your quest you should sit there and be quiet — for a few weeks. Think like a petitioner to a Shaolin temple — kneel quietly and only speak when spoken to. Watch others for hours. If asked, tell the questioner that you are looking for someone to serve in a non-sexual way. Be ready for rejection, but with patience — grasshopper — you could eventually find someone who wants to take you home to clean her windows. If you aren’t willing to be patient, go to a less discriminating club. And if you don’t want me to start with ‘Hey Heartun’ don’t fill in the form. Your desires do not change the rules in anyone else’s game. ~ HEARTUN BREAKER