I'm sorry ahead of time that this is going to come off as more of a vent, because it actually is.

But I wanted to broadcast something a little more beyond the friend circle by saying how Linden Labs, the creators behind Second Life, seems to support trolls and bigots. I make such a claim, based off of my recent experience with handling their rowdy forums.

I am permanently banned from ever accessing SL, due to months-long and a year-long series of incidents where people have actively stalked me for no particular reason. Other than they believe the internet is still free reign to antagonize and instigate issues with people with no problems, expecting no retaliation to come their way from doing it.

SL gave me the ability, to be the non-binary/genderfluid individual I was meant to be. I fluctuated between being an androgynous avatar and a female avatar. I felt free and I felt like myself. I started this journey back in 2020, but I've been on SL since 2013 so that's 13 years and it's only been 6 of them where I pursued my identity.

Doing so, revitalized my life in both realms and helped me come to any and all terms as I was developing. It's gotten me like minded friends, it helped me develop and create relationships with similarly minded people. It was great.

But now I don't have that anymore. It's all gone thanks to a collaborative effort by trolls and bigots on the SL forums to take all of it down. And LL has such a backwards way of handling issues, you'd think you're back in school where the bullies terrorize your life day in and day out, you finally do something about it, you go to people about it. But all you keep running into are people who feel these problems aren't covered in their paygrade so they allow a lot of it to slide until things escalate.

That was exactly my experience. I was stalked, I was disrespected, I was discouraged time and time again to 'contribute' to a platform that has allowed these unchecked problems to go on for however long.

I had every reason and within right to have reacted the way I did because I felt like I was fighting yet another losing uphill battle with tone-deaf moderation that simply didn't give two shits about people of my identity who're victimized like this. They focused rather on my attitude with choice of words, the "abuse" of the ticket and report system when I was just simply trying to stop the problems from happening. Any side-stepping thing they could do to justify getting rid of me, they took, while they allowed bigots and trolls to continue on their platform.

And it fucking cost me. 13 years, $5k invested in the platform. All gone. Thanks to this bullshit. Which is why I advise anyone to avoid this platform and do not support LL.