- 100% of all females who contacted me about the height thing welcomed that the issue gets addressed
- one third of those males who contacted me about height, took offense. Yes. They took offense. That they were called overly tall. By an automatic script that gives a message to them in IM (not even a public message) that they are taller than RL would suggest.
- one third of those males who contacted me about height, tried to belittle the issue with "reasons" like:
- it is an uphill battle
- everyone is taller
- it is a man thing, we want to be the tallest
"Uphill battle", and "everyone does it" are the typical defense mechanisms if there are no valid reasons left. And that men define their ego about size.. i thought that is a bad joke? Really? Not kidding now.
- one third of those males who contacted me about height, showed genuine interest and also adjusted their height
I don't think it is a bad result. 1/3 of all males and 100% of all females who wanted to talk to me about that, agreed.
To get the message across faster, i encourage everyone to these steps:
To get the message across faster, i encourage everyone to these steps:
- Join the group "height" inworld. Now.
- Grab there the free tape measurement item. It shows the real height of avatars.
- Distribute it. Talk to people.
The different reaction from men and women is interesting but, on reflection, perhaps not surprising. I suppose the height thing is a macho statement for some men. It is always nice to meet men who take a genuine interest in the question and who modify their size - and it makes playing so much more fun too!!
ReplyDeleteI've noticed a pretty similar reaction with the same gender relationship in the types of responses.
ReplyDelete(Funny thing, the gender relationship seems to be more determined by avatar gender than real world gender. I've gotten positive responses from female avatars with men behind them, and vehemently offended responses from men I know to have women behind their keyboards.)
A man IMed me last night to have a conversation about scale and he made all of the same arguments YT mentions above, going further to suggest sims which encouraged smaller avatars would fail, which is funny because I know several such sims which are fairly popular.
It'll be interesting to see what happens if LL starts providing properly scaled starter avatars.
I have been thrown out of several sims for being to small. They say I am a child avatar. I don't know when 5 foot 9 was a child size, but it troubles me quite a bit.
ReplyDeleteIt's an uphill battle? I don't see it that way. I don't see it as a battle at all. You are not trying to change the world, you are trying to enjoy your space in it, you have a place put together for the enjoyment of you and your friends, and others that like the similar. To me, if that was a battle, then you have already won. Don't change a thing. If others want it to be an ongoing battle, then let them, you have plenty of people willing to support, even fight their battle. I always enjoyed uphill/losing battles personally anyway.
ReplyDeleteEveryone is taller? This is as false as pulling a percentage from a person's ass to validate a moot point. Just because a person might only interact with a tiny portion of their reality, doesn't mean everyone else is that same way. There can be no higher level of generalization and false facts then starting a sentence with "everyone". Ask these males that say that, "If everyone was a female, would you change to be a female? If everyone had their dicks cut off, would you do it as well? If everyone submitted to being the anal-sex slave to an horny bull elephant, will you?" If they say yes, ask them to prove it, if they say no, then they are hypocrites, and can either stop complaining, or you should just ignore them as a waste of cum.
It's a man thing? So what. When i first made my avatar, I realized how off Lindens sizes were, I just didn't realize their math was also wrong. I adjusted my avatar to a realized reported size then even. Only when it was shown to me that Lindens math was wrong, did I readjust to the real size. Yes, at first it bugged me, because to me, it felt I was going to be seen as child size, but then after a couple weeks, I seen how much better the animations fit between two people, I seen how much the avatars better fit clothing designs (no stretched textures and attachments were easier to adjust). I went to other locations, and realized, just how abnormal lindens avatars are. It's not a man thing to be taller in size, it's a man thing to be taller in person, in character, in presence. A person can be 7'8" and still be a midget in intelligence. and any man who thinks that being physically tall, is what defines being a man, is the smallest man alive.
If a person wants to be taller then real, let them, let them pay twice as much for their land plots to support their homes, let them pay twice as much for decorations, have to have twice as much room for half the fun. I'm sure the linden's bank books appreciate their idiocy. I know mine would. But I'm here to make the most of my fun, to spend my time with those who I enjoy it with. So I ask you to not make any "enlargement" changes. If a person doesn't want to play there, let them go elsewhere and miss out on some of the best experiences.
You are not their ego psychiatrist, you are not there to make them feel like their idea of a man, you are not there to be their mom or teacher. You are there to enjoy yourself, to have fun, and if they have a problem with it, it's their problem, not yours.
And if they continue to want to complain, I'll be happy to , debate with them, hours, days, weeks, it makes no difference. It's not an uphill battle. The battle was already won, you were victorious; all that is left, is cleaning up the leftovers and either keeping them, or trashing them.
The idea that taller avitars somehow costs more is clearly incorrect.
DeleteIf you are correct, then a Petite (tiny mesh avitar) should cost you a fraction of what a "normal"avi costs. Yet when you make a house with a door, it takes just as many prims to make the complex shape. No cost savings.
By your own logic, you should become a tiny. It really doesn't work that way. Try it and see.
I have.
It's an interesting experiment. TRY IT.
Yeah, a lot of people don't understand that sharing information like this is not the same as trying to convince the whole world to scale down. It's exactly the same as creating a tutorial for using some 3D modelling software, or giving someone a recipe from a cook book. They're free to use that information or ignore it entirely.
ReplyDeleteThe vast majority of the world are not professional artists, does that mean art teachers and people who write Photoshop tutorials are wasting their time fighting an uphill battle?
The only people I've tried to actively convince of facts like these are the Lindens themselves, and that's just because it would benefit both them and use if LL understood design a bit better.
Building to scale allows for larger, more detailed environments to fit into a single sim. It makes even smaller parcels of land more valuable and desirable to potential landowners.
If SL looked better and people felt there was more they could do with even small, affordable pieces of land, then more people who tried SL would stick around, contributing to the community and the economy.
The problem is historical and is the result of the default camera position in sl which in a *normal* sized room will often leave you looking at the floor above, so people made rooms taller, then avatars looked too short. I too have been kicked out of a place for being too short in a default out of the box fox avatar . . . .Many avatars look dumpy when set to *rl* heights as they were made to be a little taller to look in proportion, I just try to make mine look right to me, and it winds up being too tall according to the scale :/
ReplyDeleteIf LL would put the default camera position to a more human height, everyone would see that a sim can become so much more space when you aren't looking at yourself from 2m away from you. A good example of this for the lazy person to see, is to put on an OpenCollar (they are free everywhere) collar and go into AddOns, Camera, select the Human setting. You will see the grid in a differant way.
ReplyDeletei role play at a school as a nurse and its just sad. The exam table is up to my shoulders! Two ways to fix it; either lower the table or build stairs. This exact reason is why all my builds i make are "human sized", meaning that you won't have an ultra california king size bed or a couch that is big enough to hold a family of 9.
I dont mind sizing down to a scale that equals rl, I do find we have a problem though with animations when one partner is quite a bit different in height. Unlike RL, laying down doesnt always fix the disparity in height problem. SO to have to reconfigure your animations for different height avatars is a royal pain in the ass, or would be if their equipment might be able to reach your ass which is somewhat doubtable under the circumstances. When someone comes up with a auto matching animator for size disarities among avatars that adjust poses balls 'on the fly'... then I think you might convince a lot more people to size down.
ReplyDeletePeople don't really understand the scale. And that is a LL issue. 50% for a female is still a giant. If, at 50% you were average height for a woman it would make more sense. And cap the max height at say the 90th percentile. We really don't need herds of 8 foot tall men running around, or women for that matter. If someone wants to be 9 feet tall, there are sculpties and mesh for that.
ReplyDeleteBut that is something that only LL can change. Changing minds is harder than herding cats.
1. What is a "male" or a "female" in SL? Recent data shows about 40% of "females" in SL are typed by men in RL. Personal experience on some sims makes this seem reasonable. Yes, I have a female alt, too.
ReplyDelete2. What is so great about RL? If I wanted to look realistic, I would be on Skype. I would not be a dragon, a horse, a teddy bear, a demon, or a young man.
3. As pointed out, SL should have unique architecture. We see via cameras hung above our heads at user adjustable angles. Our materials are infinitely strong. We have no sun or rain, and we can see right through walls. Why would we live in houses shaped like RL except to play dollhouse? (not a bad game, imo)
4. I am very short at what your sim says is 7 feet 0 inches or 2.136 meters. In my shoes, the top of my head sticks above a 2.1336 meter box. I measure my avi to be 2.1678 meters tall in shoes. I spend most of my time on other sims. I have my avi set to match the poseballs I encounter. For example, ballroom dancing.. I don''t enjoy walking on air except with.. one person. :) That happens in my mind anyhow.
5. I think you have put your finger on a very important RL social issue:
BODY DYSMORPHISM.
I think this is the issue to look at: people perceive an unrealistic body shape as more attractive than the obtainable.
that is a RL social issue of consequence, with many associated consequences.
now, the fact that men are not very considerate or interested in making their avitars look "realistic" or even nice.. huh! Wow! Wait! Um, no surprises, eh?
At 50% height and 50% leg length, women are 6'0". Just to check, I made a new AVI, chooing the Female Student template from LL. It comes out of the box at 6'5". So, it does seem to be a LL problem. Or at least encouraged by them.
ReplyDelete