Well, I’m sat on a bench at the moment patiently waiting for the Linden Q & A to begin later today.  (It starts in approx 6 hours time, but seeing as I have to write a piece for ‘The Avastar’ on it I really don’t want to be getting there at the last minute only to find myself unable to get in.  I expect I’ll have serious bum-ache, lol:)  It’s been a mixed bag of a week this week.  Halloween was so much fun in world, with plenty of opportunity to dress up and party hard. Our metaverse really seemed to come into it’s own this week for the celebrations, what with all the sims dedicated to haunted houses and spooky goings on, it was just so much fun to explore.  This is what SL is all about-fun.  So it was with a lot of sadness that I saw the reports on Sky news this week about age-play.  To begin with when I read the reports and then saw the accompanying video I was quite angry, because I really thought that the whole thing had been edited to be as sensational as possible. (For example, nowhere did it mention that the people involved would have to have been over 18 to be on the grid in the first place)  It was a news story that exploded out of nowhere and was the ‘breaking news’ item on the Sky news website until something far more interesting came along…I thought it a tad shoddy but alas, it hit upon a very important point..sex with people pretending to be kids is not a pleasant thought for most people, but there is going to be a minority who do enjoy it.  Age-play is completely foreign to me-it’s never crossed my mind and I expect the areas featured in the news report were actually flooded with curious avs after the piece aired.  I wasn’t one of them, and it was good to see that the Lindens reacted strongly by closing ‘Wonderland’ down…but of course this has probably only pushed the problem into different areas.    So what can be done about it? Well, the only thing you could do would be to ban child avies.  Can you imagine the hoo-har that would result from that? There are people who legitimately like to live their second lives as children and although I can’t get my head around it  if that’s what they want to do then fair enough. So will the Lindens ban child avies? Doubtful, valuable revenue would be lost for a start, and then what..next week Sky news runs a report on ‘sick’ furries in game? The Lindens cannot ban child avies( and obviously won’t) as it would be too problematic for them, and could spiral out of control leading on to other issues which would inevitably lead to the end of Second Life….But they absolutely HAVE to address the issue of sex-play with child-avies in game.  I hope that some serious brain-storming sessions have gone on this week at HQ to see how they can address the issue, but I’ll be honest- I don’t know how they can prevent it. This is a HUGE can of worms.  EG, what about people who sell adult avatar versions of schoolgirl uniforms? Heck, you can buy those in RL as well, so why aren’t the banned? See what I mean? It’s a difficult subject with no easy answers.  I sure as hell don’t have any.  I’m sure the question will come up many times at this afternoon’s Q&A session. .(Incidentally, Sky have followedup their initial report. They aren’t making as huge a fuss over it like before, but they basically discovered that even though Wonderland had been closed, it was still happening)