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An interesting issue came up in the GENERAL TOPICS forum -- some under-18 kid got caught using the main grid and now he's pissed off (also seriously illiterate, but that's his parents' problem). The Lindens have evidently told him they're shunting his account to the TEEN GRID, and he thinks that's unfair. Never mind that the SL age policy is clearly communicated on the signup page. Never mind that he KNEW he was violating the TOS. He thinks he's f*cking entitled to do whatever he damn well wants (and he's mad because he bought alot of M-rated items -- probably a scripted penis -- and now can't keep them; did you know that teen avs come with underwear that CANNOT be removed?). There is a related post by Robert Scoble on his blog, SCOBLEIZER: Rules and rulebreaking in Second Life, and a rebuttal post to Scoble's blog on NEWSOME.ORG: Why Scoble is Wrong About Second Life's Kid Policy.
I had an unpleasant encounter with such a "Trojan teen": One night I was out dancing at a nightclub (last November, I believe), and decided that the guy who was being DJ, who was just standing around, really needed to be dancing, so I wandered over to see if he was talking to the girl standing near him; as they were both standing stock still, I thought they might be doing some extremely personal IM-ing, but when I asked if he was busy, he said no. I asked him to dance and we started chatting a bit in IM. After awhile, I noticed the girl was still standing stock still right behind us, and asked her if she was okay. It turns out that the real owner of the av was passed out drunk on her sofa, and the av was being used to monitor her RL boyfriend's av, the DJ, by her teenage son, per his mother's orders before she passed out (she thought her boyfriend was cheating on her in SL, apparently. I had checked his profile before going over to ask him to dance, and there was no mention of a partner and no ref to any women, so I thought he was "fair game", of course. The son was a nasty and abusive little twit (went completely ballistic at me, and is probably a spitter in RL), and I told the DJ that I thought he was nice but his girlfriend (who finally woke up while her son was ranting at me, and was a viciously nasty drunk, about which I do know something, my mother having been another paranoid, abusive drunk -- thank the gods I take after Dad when I drink... I get silly and flirty) and her son were really more than I needed to deal with. I think that was the last time he used that account to log onto SL -- if he's still a resident, he's undoubtedly using another name and has at least one alt that his alcoholic girlfriend does NOT know about (if they're still together, which I doubt/hope not).
The use of adult-grid accounts by teenagers, whether they are the sons, younger brothers, or younger friends of adult residents (haven't heard of many teen girls getting caught, at least) is more widespread than Linden Labs knows, I believe. People who use the net alot tend to collect various accounts and passwords -- I bought a spiral notebook just to log all my accounts and passwords, JIC). People leave passwords on sticky notes on their computers, write them in notebooks they leave near the computer (like me, but I have no kids, and I seriously doubt the cat is gonna log onto SL while I'm not watching) or have sneaky kids who use keyloggers to get their parents' SL password. If you're talking to someone (particularly one of the GAMERZ or someone in one of SL's casinos or sex clubs, and they seem to be seriously immature, it's probably because they really are. Beware of TROJAN TEENS.
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