I've just come across a picture from #LbsaPlaza which shows a sign that reads all the avatar-related things that are forbidden on the Plaza sims on #OSgrid. Quote:

• No nudity
  
• No child avatar/NPC/etc
  
• No sex
  
• No sex toys
  
• No BDSM devices
  
• No spankers
  
• No exposed underwear
  
• No diapers
  
• No lingerie
  
• No private parts
  
• No exceptions

The sign also says that all OSgrid Plazas are rated G. Remember that the General rating in #SecondLife corresponds to PG, but in #OpenSim, there used to be and still are sims that are unironically both Adult-rated and G-rated, for the Adult rating is often only used as an attempt at keeping child avatars (= paedophiles) out.

So far, so good.

Now you might argue that this list is a counter-measure against rampant trolling, and that the sims which represent OpenSim's oldest and biggest grid should really be squeaky-clean. But the mods at Lbsa Plaza have been described not only as so ultra-conservative that they're openly, unashamedly and aggressively racist, sexist, ableist, homophobic and transphobic, spewing hatred at whatever opportunity they get, but also as prudish, up-tight, strait-laced pseudo-Puritans. "Pseudo" because real Puritans actually weren't as up-tight as commonly believed.

So not only is this list meant seriously, but it can be expected to be both taken to its logical extremes and expanded and escalated further in the near future. Both can easily mean trouble for female avatars.

"No private parts" in combination with "no exceptions" should be expected to mean that female avatars can't go commando on the Plazas. Sounds hard, but still fair enough. Keep in mind, though, that there are plenty of "Athena-rigged" mesh skirts and dresses that cling to the body so tightly that any mesh knickers will clip through.

But if whatever can be seen when camming under the skirt of a female avatar wearing underwear counts, then "no exposed underwear" plus "no exceptions" essentially means no skirts or dresses. At all. For under a skirt or a dress, underwear is always exposed. Only to whoever can look up the skirt or the dress, but still always. And with camming, anyone can look up any female avatar's skirt or dress and see what's underneath. Remember, "no exceptions!" Your underwear must NOT be visible from ANY angle.

Now, keep something else in mind: Some of those big mixed freebie sims that offer Second Life clothes don't offer any jeans or trousers or leggings or outfits containing either, only skirts and dresses. Maybe the sim builder considers them too concealing and therefore not sexy enough, maybe the sim builder simply hasn't found any. If you do all your shopping at such sims, you're stuck with skirts and dresses. And this often also means no skirts or dresses longer than micro-mini where the hemline doesn't go lower than three inches below your crotch.

What can you do then?

Well, you may go look around for freebie stores that offer jeans or trousers, and be it in outfit boxes. Wear these instead of skirts. And to be safe, go find long enough tops that neither bare your midriff (you'll never know when that'll be banned) nor collide with your jeans.

If you absolutely have to wear a skirt or a dress, you have two choices.

Either forgo underwear and alpha out your entire hip area. But you have to remember alpha-ing it out whenever you go to a Plaza, any Plaza actually. In fact, if you're an OSgrid resident, alpha it out before logging out, for when you log back in, your home sim may be down, and you may end up at Lbsa Plaza.

Or put more effort into covering up. Forget knickers, wear leggings. Or opaque tights if you can find any.

No, not nylon for three reasons:

One, nylon is sheer. It lets your underwear shine through which remains a bannable offence.

Two, nylon could be filed under lingerie. This means you could be banned if a little bit of it is visible on your ankles between your jeans and your shoes. "No lingerie" isn't explicitly limited to lingerie in plain sight, it isn't limited at all.

Three, all this doesn't matter anyway to anyone with a Second Life body who only ever wears mesh clothes. You cannot wear mesh nylon tights over mesh knickers, you cannot wear mesh nylon tights underneath about 99% of all skirts and dresses, and you cannot wear a mesh skirt/a mesh dress over mesh nylon tights over mesh knickers at all.

Most female avatars on the Hypergrid would never wear layer clothes. They either have a pre-BoM mesh body, or they do have a BoM-enabled mesh body, but they still don't wear layer clothes. Maybe it's because they believe that BoM is just a fancy new way of applying skins, make-up and tattoos. Maybe it's because they consider layer clothes as outdated as alpha masks. Maybe it's simply because they don't know where to get any layer clothes. Today's freebie stores are all mesh only except for the few pieces of lingerie in the Athena 6 body boxes and that one Athena 6 box with some additional layer lingerie. So they're stuck with mesh.

So they have to go and find mesh leggings. Even if they do find a box with leggings, however, they'll end up discovering that these leggings clip through all of their beloved skirts and dresses. So they have to go and find skirts or dresses that leave enough space to wear something underneath.

Of course, everything would be easier with layer clothes. BoM enables you to wear a mesh skirt over layer leggings over layer tights over layer underwear with no problems at all. It lets you wear leggings or tights underneath everything. No more clipping than if you go commando. You just have to know where to find that stuff, and you must not have a problem with wearing something that's potentially even older than Athena. By the way, it comes with the advantage of definitely being legal. To my best knowledge, nobody has ever stolen layer leggings or tights from Second Life.

Speaking of Athena, there is one big problem with this body that may make wearing layer leggings futile. Athena has a pussy slit in its mesh. Mesh leggings can cover it up. Layer leggings can't; they'll give you a cameltoe. I can see cameltoes or even layer legwear on mesh bodies being banned next, especially if people start obtaining old layer leggings, putting them on their Athenas and then walking around Lbsa Plaza with cameltoes just to troll the mods.

At least a ban on cameltoes won't hit smooth-crotched #Ruth2 v4. A ban on layer legwear on mesh bodies would affect that body undeservedly. A general ban on layer legwear would lock out every last classic avatar, male or female, unless they got themselves mesh clothes from somewhere. In fact, it would make all avatars illegal that are decked out in only what can be obtained from the Plazas.

Okay, so you want to wear mesh jeans instead to be on the safe side? Well, just about all "Athena-rigged" mesh jeans are skin-tight. It's only a question of time until they're being considered too risqué.

For those of us who play immersively and dress their avatars accordingly (like wearing something warm on winter sims), next summer will become difficult, for covering up sufficiently under skirts or dresses will mean wearing too much in the heat. Better get yourselves some shorts, but not too short ones. That is, unless they'll get banned, too, for being too skimpy. Or keep away from the Plazas for two or three months.

By the way, these rules also ban working on outfits within the confines of your home if it happens to be on one of the three homestead Plazas. That's right, you have to constantly cover up underneath your skirt even inside your house with closed opaque curtains. If a mod comes in and decides to cam into your bathroom while you're putting together a formal evening outfit, and he can see your knickers under your floor-length evening gown, you're toast. Banned from all Plazas on the spot and forever. In fact, even changing clothes isn't allowed on the Plazas because your undies may be exposed for a few seconds. You have to do that on third-party sims.

Last but not least: Cary Bean's old Deva Moda sakko outfits, as "business formal" as they are, are forbidden at Lbsa Plaza, too, if you wear them the way they're supposed to be worn. Yes, even if you wear them with the included pair of trousers instead of the included miniskirt or the additional pencil skirt that you can hardly cam underneath. The reason is because the layer tops that come with these outfits don't fully cover up the lace that ligns the upper edges of the bras. This falls under exposed underwear, at least for those who know these garments well enough to be able to tell what on the avatar's skin is underwear and what isn't. If you want to play it safe, leave the bra off.

#OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #VirtualClothing

Okay, so you're part of the #TwitterMigration. You wanted to get away from the #birdsite as it started to gradually turn into another Nazi hive after the #TwitterTakeover. Luckily, you've been pointed at the #Fediverse, i.e. #Mastodon. You go there with the following mindset:

• Mastodon is a 1:1 #Twitter clone, just without Elon Musk, but otherwise absolutely identical to Twitter. I mean, how could a microblogging service possibly be any different from Twitter? That's just as strange an idea as a desktop operating system that isn't exactly like Windows. Unless you're a Mac user, that is.
  
• Mastodon.social is Mastodon. Because that's the website you've been pointed at on Twitter.
  
• Also, the Fediverse = Mastodon. Only Mastodon.

Now you try to register an account on Mastodon. Which means on mastodon.social. And you discover you can't do that because registrations on mastodon.social are closed, because mastodon.social is full.

Either you can't be bothered to read what the pop-up says. Then your understanding is that Mastodon itself is full. And you're back at Twitter. Avoidable mistake; see right below.

Or you can be bothered to read what the pop-up says. Then you discover the blue button that takes you to a list of public Mastodon instances on the actual Mastodon website.

Um, instances? Servers? What the...? What's that?!

Okay, this'll be hard to wrap your mind around if the entire IT world has only consisted of commercial, corporate-owned walled gardens so far. Windows/macOS, iOS/manufacturer-provided Android, Microsoft Office, Photoshop, Adobe Reader, Internet Explorer/Edge/Safari/Google Chrome, Google Search, Google Maps, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Spotify, maybe iTunes, your Microsoft/Apple/Google cloud etc. You couldn't even imagine that alternatives to these exist, much less alternatives that don't belong to yet another U.S. gigacorporation. Or even alternatives that aren't as monolithic as these.

Mastodon feels like a revelation to you, an epiphany. All this commercial, corporate-owned stuff is, in fact, not the entire IT world. It's a bubble. And there's a world outside this bubble. And this outside world is strange.

For starters, Eugen Rochko is the core developer of Mastodon. And yes, he is also the admin of mastodon.social. But that does not make him the owner and overlord of the entirety of Mastodon, just like Elon Musk is the owner and overlord of Twitter.

Also because Mastodon is, in fact, not mastodon.social. Not only. Mastodon.social is only one out of many Mastodon servers or instances. Thousands of them. Literally. Those listed on the official website are only those recommended by "the makers" of Mastodon. Here are even more.

There are instances for all kinds of special interests. There are also instances for lots of places in the world. People have set up instances for cities; Chicago actually has two of these.

Mind-blowing, right?

Okay, so you still absolutely have to join mastodon.social because that's where people went whom you know from Twitter. You want to stay in contact with them. So you can't join a different instance.

Wait, wait, wait, calm down. You can. And you can still get back in contact with your acquaintances on mastodon.social.

Even more mind-blowing, right? How can this possibly work?

Well, I take it you use e-mail. You need an e-mail account to use Mastodon after all. Most likely, you're on Google Mail. Are all your e-mail contacts on Google Mail, too? Do you only ever receive mails from accounts on Google Mail? Does Facebook send mails from a Google Mail account?

No, Facebook doesn't send mails from a Google Mail account. Facebook runs its own mail service. And yet, Facebook's mails get through to your Google Mail account. And that has probably been perfectly normal for you.

This is made possible through a technological miracle known as "federation". Basically, all e-mail servers in the world can communicate with one another, send mails to one another, receive mails from one another.

It's the same with the Fediverse. After all, the "Fed" in "Fediverse" comes from "federation". Generally, all Mastodon instances can communicate with each other. Unless one instance has "defederated" (completely blocked) another instance. There are actually Mastodon instances which are defederated by most other public Mastodon instances. But otherwise, everything connects to everything.

Once you've joined an instance, you'll discover first-hand that you can, in fact, follow people who are on mastodon.social. Or just about any other instance, all without having accounts there.

There goes the second bullet point.

And the first one will quickly start to crumble, too. First of all, Mastodon looks nothing like Twitter. Also, everything is named differently. Tweets aren't named "tweets" but "toots". You don't retweet, you don't even "retoot", you "boost".

And Mastodon works quite a bit differently from Twitter.

• You've got three timelines. Next to your personal timeline which lists whatever your contacts have tooted or boosted, there's the local timeline which lists what the other users on your instance have tooted or boosted (this is how and why special interest instances or local instances make sense), and there's the federated timeline which is the local timeline plus what local users' contacts on other instances have tooted or boosted.
  There is, however, no timeline for the entire Fediverse.
  
• There's no full-text search for the entire Fediverse. Deal with it.
  
• There's no secret algorithm telling you what to read or whom to follow. All timelines are strictly chronological.
  
• This also means that there's no secret algorithm shoving your toots into other people's faces. If you want people to discover your toots, use #hashtags. On Twitter, hashtags are a gimmick. In the Fediverse, they're vital.
  
• There's a #newhere hashtag. It matters. As someone who is new here, you're expected to write an introduction, use the #newhere hashtag in it and then pin your introduction so that it's always on top or near the top of your personal timeline for others to read.
  
• There's no quote retweet. And there will never be. Eugen Rochko has a very strong opinion on that, he doesn't want that popular trolling tool on Mastodon, so this won't happen.
  
• Privacy settings per toot. You can choose who can read your toot. If you write threads, it's common practice to only set the first toot to public and all other ones to unlisted so that they don't clutter the public timelines.
  
• Delayed toots. You can choose when your toot goes out.
  
• Content warnings (CW) that blank out your toot. And yes, they're taken very seriously. People are likely to demand you use them when you don't.
  
• Alt-text for images. Again, people are likely to demand you create them when you don't. Some people on the Fediverse are blind and use screen readers, and they, too, want to know what that picture in your toot is.
  
• Not to mention that toots can be almost twice as long as tweets, namely 500 characters. Unless the owner of an instance has changed that number.

Speaking of the latter: As the first bullet point from the beginning crumbles to dust, the one about Mastodon being Twitter minus Elon Musk, you may have been rubbing your eyes in disbelief already.

How can I possibly write more than 500 characters in a toot? How can you write in italics on Mastodon? Or use lists with bullet points in a toot? Where on Mastodon are the buttons for that?

Well, you are right now having a glimpse at the Fediverse beyond Mastodon. As in: There is a Fediverse beyond Mastodon. The Fediverse is not only Mastodon. There are other projects out there which are federated with Mastodon just like Mastodon instances are federated with one another. This is possible because they speak one common language: #ActivityPub. And they're all decentralised themselves with multiple instances each. For example:

• Not all of them are "not Twitter clones", i.e. microblogging services. Pleroma is another one which was created out of disagreements with how Mastodon works. Akkoma is a Pleroma fork which came to exist because someone didn't like where Pleroma went. There's also Misskey. Obviously, they aren't "Mastodon clones" either, they were designed to be different from each other. And there's GNU social, the oldest one on the list.
  
• Pixelfed is "not an #Instagram clone".
  
• Friendica is definitely "not a #Facebook clone" because, while created for a similar purpose, it's still vastly different. And it federates with just about everything that moves including e-mail or WordPress. It even used to federate with Facebook itself eons ago. By the way, #Friendica makes everything possible that I've done in this post which is also why it's usually filed under "macroblogging". But I'm not on Friendica; I'll get to that. Also, Friendica is the second-oldest one on the list.
  
• Mobilizon is "not a #GoogleCalendar or #Doodle clone".
  
• Funkwhale is "not a #SoundCloud or #BandCamp or #Spotify clone", also because you're unlikely to find mainstream commercial music on it. Castopod: ditto, but specialising on podcasts.
  
• PeerTube is "not a #YouTube clone".
  
• Owncast is "not a #Twitch clone".
  
• Lemmy is "not a #Reddit or #HackerNews clone", although the "not a Reddit clone" part can be debated.
  
• WriteFreely and Plume are "not #Medium clones".
  
• BookWyrm is "not a #GoodReads clone".
  
• Flockingbird is "not a #LinkedIn clone" at all, also because rather than being a service of its own, it piggybacks on the rest of the Fediverse by picking up hashtags.
  
• Hubzilla was a successor to Friendica, but it's much more than "not a Facebook clone". It's also not a clone of whichever CMS and/or cloud service you use. It can provide you with your own personal organiser including a #CalDAV calendar (next to the public event calendar) and a #CardDAV addressbook, your own #WebDAV cloud space, your own online photo album, your own website, your own blog and/or your own wiki on top of just about everything that Friendica does. It's the third-oldest on the list and still older than Mastodon.
  
• And there's much more.

Thanks to ActivityPub, these services are federated with Mastodon which means that you can follow their users from your Mastodon account. You don't necessarily need accounts on these services. Okay, you need them to fully make use of them. You can't start discussions on #Lemmy or upload videos to #PeerTube without having an account there, but you can follow and comment on PeerTube channels and reply to discussions on Lemmy from your Mastodon account.

Want proof? Well, this post came from a #Hubzilla channel. You can still read it on Mastodon. And if you reply to it, I can still see it on Hubzilla.

And there went the misconception that the Fediverse is only Mastodon.

Stay tuned until next time when I explain to you how "Facebook's #Metaverse" (it's called #HorizonWorlds, in case you don't know) is not and will never be #TheMetaverse, and that free, open-source, (largely) non-commercial, decentral #VirtualWorlds exist already now.

Obligatory hashtags: #Pleroma #Akkoma #MissKey #Pixelfed #Mobilizon #Funkwhale #PeerTube #Owncast #Lemmy #WriteFreely #Plume #Flockingbird

So the famous #SecondLife mesh body creator Slink shut down today, practically from one minute to the next. If you still have a Slink body, it won't be supported anymore. That is, if you still have a Slink body, your whole avatar is outdated several times over in a virtual world where you're halfway expected to sink thousands of Linden dollars into a new body, a new head, new hair, a new skin and all-new clothes twice a year because you're ugly otherwise.

Let's see what'll happen once this gets known around #OpenSimulator.

On the one hand, I can already hear people all over the #OpenSim community say that Adonis, Decadence-HG and BBHG are "legal" now. (No, they aren't. Legality doesn't depend on whether or not there's someone who can DMCA the living hell out of you. And many don't care whether something is legal or not.)

On the other hand, I think the only ones who might care are those who haven't caught wind of the several more recent Second Life payware mesh bodies that have found their ways onto the #Hypergrid over the last few months, including two bodies that are every bit as exaggerated as Slink Physique Hourglass. Everyone who has will see the bodies from the 2010s as old ugly crap.

Usually, these bodies aren't being renamed anymore and are offered under their Second Life names unless whoever offers them wants to imply they've created these bodies themselves. With one exception which is offered full-perm, they're all offered no-transfer and exclusively from one grid.

Either agreements with the original creators have actually been made with no-transfer being a requirement. However, if this is the case, why does literally nobody inform their customers about it? Besides, I've got my doubts that the makers of the currently most popular several-thousand-Linden-dollar mesh bodies let people offer just these bodies as freebies elsewhere, knowing pretty well how easily no-transfer can be circumvented in OpenSim.

Or it's just like it has always been since at least 2019: Freebie sim owners and grid owners along with them want to boost the popularity of their own places by stealing the newest, hottest premium luxury stuff from Second Life and offering it exclusively. Whoever wants that stuff has to come to their grid and their sim and their freebie store to pick it up. At least until someone god-modes their no-transfer products into full-perm or copybots their stores wholesale and then slaps their boxes against their own store walls.#Metaverse #VirtualWorlds

I've made something for those of you who either have or would like to have a #Ruth2 v4 mesh body:

Nail polish. The first third-party nail polish for this body.

As you can see, it comes in two boxes. The one on the left contains the same 22 colours previously available as presets in the nail polish applier for Ruth 2.0. As a bonus, there's a mint nail polish derived from the standard setting on a copy of the same nail polish applier which I found in the #RothToo box.

The one on the right contains the 8 colours from the Ruth2 v4 HUD that aren't meant to be nail bed colours. Using the HUD for actual nail polish is a kluge anyway because it leaves the same white tip that's necessary for a proper nail bed. BoM nail polish, on the other hand, covers the entire nail.

Altogether, it's 31 colours.

Now, nail polish for Ruth2 v4 is not only based on Bakes-on-Mesh, it also makes use of so-called Universal Wearables which weren't available before #OpenSimulator 0.9.1.1. Unfortunately, older #OpenSim versions can't ignore Universals. Instead, if you try to teleport into a sim running an OpenSim version that's too old (including 0.8.2.1 as well as Arriba), you'll get the message that "your avatar is too complex".

Also, obviously, the nail polish won't become visible until you switch your nails to BoM with Ruth2 v4's own HUD. But it's all explained in the Readme notecards that come with the boxes.

As of now, the only place where you can get the boxes is my bodyshop in the Westend on #DorenasWorld (

; dorenas-world.de:8002:Westend). I've also submitted them to @Austin Tate / @Ai Austin to be added to the official #RuthAndRoth sim (hg.osgrid.org:80:RuthAndRoth). @Juno Rowland and I are going to deliver the boxes to other sims that offer Ruth2 v4 by and by.

#MadeInOpenSim #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds