Second Life is an amazing place. AMAZING. I mean it, truly! Where else can you find yourself in a fun spot with tinies, furries, robots, cartoon avatars, regular people of all shapes, sizes and colors, winged people, angels, demons, creatures of anyone's imagination -- all enjoying the same things and expressing themselves in the way that they are most comfortable?I think it's completely mindblowing, and it's one of the things I absolutely treasure about the SL metaverse. The ability for anyone to be anything that they want, at any time.

That being said, I don't know if I'm just feeling particularly gripey this week or if I am legitimately surrounded. I feel like I'm surrounded by attention whores. Like I am surrounded by and constantly bombarded with people who are pushing the edge of what's commonly decent, or what's acceptable socially, in order to make themselves stand out.

SL has so many ways you could make yourself stand out if you really wanted that much attention. Do you want a neon green skin? PAINT YOURSELF! You can have shocking neon blue hair and bling shooting out of your ass, if that's what you desire. You can carry signs that say "Look at me!" and "Pay attention to me!" and "I am interesting and deserve a second look!" There are even, although annoying, gestures that make noise, and animations that make you flop around like a breakdancing fish with a broken back, if that's your thing.

And if you are talented, creative, amazing, like so many of the people that I've been fortunate to meet through SL blogs, SL flickr, and SL itself, you can make yourself stand out by your choice of avatar (giant robot, anyone? TINY robot, anyone?) or your building skills or your scripting skills or your design skills, contributing amazing ideas and items to our Second Life world.

And then there's just the people who choose to stand out by being trashy.

I was gone from SL for about a week, on a RL vacation. I don't know if I got re-sensitized to it while I was gone or not -- but I have been bombarded upon my return, it seems, with people who choose to trash themselves out by acting in ways that would get them ostracized in any civil RL human environment, to attract attention in SL. And I find it to be more and more annoying, and less and less acceptable in my own mind.

What's acceptable about walking up to someone in the middle of a crowded club and saying, "I fucking love you, you dirty crackwhore bitch?" Even if your partner-in-crime responds, "I love you too, you tramped out cuntbag," does that make it any more entertaining to everyone else who becomes subjected to your inside joke? Can't pushing-social-boundaries things like that be kept to IMs? Or is that suddenly against the whole idea of SL?

Reading profiles that say, "I'm a bitch, and I'm going to say whatever I want to you," doesn't strengthen my faith in SL-humanity much either.

What about people who insist on attracting attention to themselves by being whorishly physical in emotes or language in public? Talking to someone in a crowded public area and telling them you want to take them home and taste their naughty bits, or emoting that you're tugging on someone's nipples or licking the crack of their butt, is probably something that could be done in private. Emotes *DO* work in IMs, believe it or not, and the message would still be adequately conveyed to the other party.

I am no more comfortable in SL dealing with people being boorishly expressive than I am in RL. If someone walked into a crowded party with my friends and me and proceeded to have sex on the living room floor, I'd either ask them to leave, or leave myself. If someone walked up behind me while I was waiting in a line/queue and said to someone else, "Lick my ass, you skanky whore-ass bitch," I reckon I'd be more than a little uncomfortable.

But see, that's why these people do it. They do it to stand out. They do it because they feel like they're one-upping the people around them, and they fall back on the excuse "This is just how I am" or "I'm just having fun." In a world where we have so many resources at our disposal, these people lower the bar and treat SL like it's one neverending episode of Jerry Springer. They shout above everyone else with their vulgarity, and then bounce around preaching, "You don't know me, you can't judge me" if they are confronted.

SL is a pretty enlightened place. I'm glad I choose to hang around the folks I consider to be enlightened folks. I'm lucky that my SL friends are made up of amazing creative thinkers, people who are fun, and outgoing, motivated and exciting to hang around. Some days, I just wish there were a way to round up all the SL Trash and take it to the curb. I don't like them stinking up this beautiful world.