Did you know that nearly US$4 million has been raised in Second Life for the American Cancer Society across the many in-world fundraising events, since they first started in 2005? It’s an impressive feat.
The 2020 Relay for Life fundraising event for the American Cancer Society opened today, June 6th, 2020.
This year’s Relay for Life track runs through dozens of specially-built and landscaped sims, decorated by various groups in Second Life! The entire route is lined with luminaria, which you can light in dedication to a loved one with a small donation.
Today, RFL teams are walking, running, or wheeling their way around the track to raise funds in the ongoing fight against cancer. Here’s a list of today’s events, including a list of all the themed laps.
For more information about Relay for Life in Second Life, you can visit their website, check out their wiki, or watch the following video. Strawberry Singh recently interviewed the organizers behind the massive Relay for Life event on her talk show, Lab Gab:
It can sometimes be difficult to find free and inexpensive clothing for male avatars in Second Life, given the overwhelming number of stores, shopping events, and hunts that cater to female avatars, and have mostly women’s apparel, footwear, and accessories as gifts or prizes.
Today, we take a look at a hunt devoted exclusively to men’s fashion, the Menstuff Hunt. You are looking for a blue T-shirt, and each hunt prize is either free or L$1. You do not need to join any group to participate in this hunt.
At the starting point of the hunt, a fountain in the ‘stuff Groups Shopping Plaza, you can pick up this free, casual Dalmatian Dashiki tunic, which comes in standard sizes and a variety of fits for various male mesh bodies:
Hawker’s House
The free hunt prize from Hawker’s House consists of blue sandals, bell-bottom jeans, and an ombre tank top as shown. The tank had both tucked and untucked versions, and all the clothing prizes come in standard sizes as well as sixes to fit a wide variety of male mesh bodies.
UnderDogs
The free haul from UnderDogs Clothing is ten different items, a entire mini-wardrobe! Here I am showing you the BadBoy jeans (which come in three colours) and Saso’s Aviator Jacket, which you can wear with or without the shirt:
And here are the Corbin shorts and the Insane T-shirt from UnderDogs, both of which come in fifteen different colours and patterns each!
Please note that all the UnderDog clothing prizes come in standard sizes only (but you should still be able to make them fit most male mesh bodies using the alpha sections on your HUD).
Munereia
The free Menstuff Hunt gift from Munereia is the Mio outfit, consisting of the shirt, pants, and suspenders (the HUD allows you to change to the colours to a variety of lighter tones for the shirt, and a variety of blue tones for the pants; you can also pick a couple of colours for the suspenders, or turn off the suspenders and the shirt separately as you wish):
If you like this style, be sure to pick up the free Stay at Home gift for men in the Munereia store; the Stahd outfit is the same shirt, pants, and suspenders outfit, but in brighter, jewel tones for the shirt and a wider variety of darker colours for the pants!
Amazing Creations
For your L$1, one of Amazing Creations two gifts in the Menstuff Hunt is this men’s wardrobe staple, a men’s white dress shirt which comes with a HUD to all you to tint it any colour you desire:
The shirt comes in tucked and untucked version, and each version can be either a tighter or a looser fit, for four different versions overall. There are sizes to fit EMACHINA Davide, Signature Geralt and Gianni, Belleza Jake, David, and Slink male mesh bodies. Here is what the tucked version of the shirt looks like:
There’s also a free men’s Winter Coat which comes in 19 different fabric textures and a HUD to tint it any colour you want.
Design 9 Men’s Clothiers
There are a trio of free hunt prizes as your reward for diligent hunting for this hard-to-find Menstuff T-shirt: the Gabe tank top, the Gabe boxers shorts, and the Kaleb brown leather sandals! All come in either Belleza Jake or Signature Gianni sizes.
boyberry
The free hunt gift from boyberry is this fun, colourful summer shirt in sizes to fit Aesthetic, Belleza, Signature, and Slink mesh bodies:
Swank
From Swank, the L$1 gift is this Madras Collection set called Montego bay, consisting of this T-shirt and shorts. Again, this gift comes in standard sizes, plus sizes to fit most popular male mesh bodies.
OneKingdom
The L$1 hunt prize from OneKingdom is this pair of formal pants, which come in sizes to fit most male mesh bodies (including Adam, Altamura, Belleza, EXMACHINA, Signature and Slink), and a HUD to apply any of 30 different textures:
D2T Designs
The dollarbie hunt prize from D2T Designs are these good-looking illustrated blue jeans, which come with a leather belt as shown. They come in standard sizes, plus sizes to fit Adam, Aesthatic, Belleza, Classic/TMP, Signature and Slink male mesh bodies.
There’s a much more complete list of the Menstuff Hunt prize pictures, compiled by the Second Life – FREE group (a group on Vkontakte, the Russian version of Facebook), which you can find here. (I always find it good to know exactly what I am hunting for, before I go through all the trouble of finding it!)
The Menstuff hunt runs until June 30th, 2020. Happy hunting!
June is traditionally the month when LGBTQ* Pride festivals happen in cities around the world, but of course, most such festivities have been cancelled because of the ongoing public health emergency that is the coronavirus pandemic.
Luckily, Second Pride, Second Life’s biggest Pride party, starts tomorrow, June 5th, and runs until June 14th, 2020! This year’s theme is Together, and there’s never been a better time for queer people and their allies to come together to celebrate in virtual worlds, when meeting up in the real world is difficult or impossible!
Many Second Life stores are giving away group gifts to celebrate Pride month. For example, if you join the Luas group for L$50, among the many free group gifts you can pick up in the Luas store is this new, versatile Claim minidress, which comes with a HUD to allow you to tint the top and bottom parts of the dress to any of six different colours, as well as choose one of six different stickers for the front (including a pair of rainbow lips for Pride). You can also choose to go logo-free if you wish!
As you can imagine, this is the time of year to pick up rainbow-coloured freebies! The rainbow flag was popularized as a symbol of the gay community by San Francisco artist Gilbert Baker in 1978. The different colours are often associated with diversity in the gay community, but actually have literal meanings as follows (source):
life (red),
healing (orange),
sunlight (yellow),
nature (green),
harmony/peace (blue),
and spirit (purple).
The store group for EQUAL is free to join for a limited time, and among the many free group gifts are these wonderful, rainbow Jensen sneakers, which come in sizes to fit Maitreya Lara, Belleza (male and female), Slink (male and female), Signature (male and female), Legacy (male and female), EXMACHINA, and Aesthetic mesh body feet, as well as an unrigged pair which you can probably adjust to fit many other avatars:
Fancy Decor has a trio of free, lovely decor items for your Second Life home. Head on down to The Arcade gacha event, and just inside the entrance to the arcade to the left (SLURL), the Fancy Decor gacha machine has a free gift of two different Pride coffee mugs. Unfortunately, they don’t come with a hold/drink animation, but they will still look fabulous in your virtual kitchen!
And, in one of the small white tents that circle the central stage on the Second Pride sim, Fancy Decor has another gift: a beautifully-decorated Pride cake on a platter! (Here’s the exact SLURL so you don’t go hunting all over the place.)
There are a few of the other freebies you can find at the stores at the Second Pride festival. Here’s a fun, spilled-paint rainbow shirt, courtesy of the Saint Elizabeth Catholic role-play university for women (who knew that such a thing even existed?), which comes in both men’s and women’s versions (here’s the SLURL of their tent):
The gift from Lucky Lola’s tent is this festive set of helium balloons (SLURL):
At both their tent (SLURL) and their store (SLURL) on the Second Pride sim, the Gay List is giving away oodles of free stuff from the Regimade Factory Store: animations, dance fans, particle effects and attachments, and a box which, when unpacked, gives you several hundred different dance effects to experiment with! Here’s a shot of one pair of dance fans, and one of the dance animations in the boxes:
RIOT’s free gift is a Pride flag you wear as a cape! It comes with a HUD to change the design to one of six different textures, in sizes to fit both men and women:
UPDATE June 11th, 2020: Cat Pink has just released another one of her videos, giving an overview of other Second Life stores that are offering Pride-themed group gifts:
*which, of course, stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer…and the asterisk at the end of the acronym is meant to cover everybody else who feels that the previous categories don’t include them. We queer folk are nothing if not inclusive!
I was one of the librarian volunteers working regular reference desk shifts at Info Island in Second Life* when the Virginia Tech mass shooting happened on April 16th, 2007, when an undergraduate student at the university shot and killed 32 people and wounded 17 others with two semi-automatic pistols. It remains the deadliest school shooting in the history of the United States, and was also the deadliest mass shooting by a lone gunman in U.S. history, until it was surpassed nine years later by the Orlando gay nightclub shooting.
Within days, a makeshift memorial was erected next to our reference desk, which was visited by hundreds of avatars, who left flowers and teddy bears, and lit virtual candles. Here is an image I took at the time, with the Info Island reference desk in the foreground, and the memorial wall in the background, with pictures of the 32 people who lost their lives that day.
Standing in front of the Virginia Tech memorial on the first day
After a week, the area next to the reference desk was a literal sea of flowers and candles. I loaded up my angel avatar and flew over the scene:
The owners of Info Island set up cubes (which you can see in this picture at bottom right) so people could sit and meditate. Some people stayed for hours, crying and chatting with each other. It was all incredibly moving, and I learned for the first time that expressions of grief and outrage in virtual worlds are no less powerful than in real life.
Virtual worlds such as Second Life have always been home to memorials and monuments to inform and educate people about episodes of terrorism, crime, and injustice. And so it is with the current Black Lives Matter Movement.
Today, I paid a visit to an art installation and educational exhibit intended to inform, educate, and raise awareness of the racism faced by Black people in America. The imposing Ministry of Truth building from George Orwell’s dystopian science fiction novel 1984 sits opposite a recreation of a Nazi concentration camp.
Inside the concentration camp is an exhibit of paintings done by David Olère, who was a Polish-born French painter and sculptor best known for his explicit drawings and paintings based on his experiences as a Jewish Sonderkommando inmate at the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II:
Scattered throughout are paintings by Bansky, and deliberately provocative quotes, sculptures, and images, drawing parallels between humanity’s history of racism and fascism, and speculative fiction such as Orwell’s 1984, with what is happening here and now in Donald Trump’s America:
(Here are sources for the Donald Trump quote on the wall in the picture above: Politico, USA Today, CNN).
The Black Lives Matter memorial is just around the corner from the Ministry of Truth and the concentration camp (here is the exact SLURL of the memorial wall; you will arrive at a common spawn point on the sim, just follow the large white signs with the arrows to locate the spot).
A number of Second Life vendors have donated free items, which you can pick up here at the Black Lives Matter memorial. Here my avatar is wearing a Black Lives Matter hoodie from BUNK and a BLM baseball cap by Snapz:
The hoodies come in four different styles, and fit classic avatars as well as Maitreya Lara, Belleza (Venus – Isis – Freya), Slink (Hourglass – Physique), Adam, Aesthetic, TMP/Classic, Exmachina Davide, Signature Gianni, Belleza Jake, and male Slink mesh bodies. The baseball cap comes in one size, but you can click on it to adjust it to fit any head. There are also shirts by Mossu, Blueberry, and Nerdy Princess to fit a variety of male, female, and children’s mesh avatar bodies, as well as some wall hangings and other items for your home.
At a time when mass demonstrations carry the very real risk of becoming infected with the novel coronavirus and developing COVID-19, virtual worlds provide a valuable space where we can gather safely and protest against the injustice, police brutality, and racism currently taking place in America and around the world.
Social Injustice Has No Place in the Physical or Virtual World
Like many of you, we are feeling a combination of horror and outrage over the history of racism against Black lives. What we continue to witness is deeply disturbing and demanding of immediate social change.
The killing of George Floyd seen on video around the world is only one in a long and unacceptable series of violent and racist attacks and discriminatory behavior directed against people of color.
We stand in solidarity with Black Lives Matter, all victims of systemic oppression and violence, and with Black communities across the U.S., the globe, and the virtual world in condemning racism and any and all actions that promote division.
How can you help? This weekend, you can participate in the Stand for Justice fundraising effort dedicated to raising funds for Black Lives Matter, Black Visions Collective, Campaign Zero, the National Police Accountability Project, and a Split Bail Fund benefiting 38+ bail funds nationwide. We also highly encourage you to sign petitions, text, call, or donate to show your support, acceptance, tolerance, inclusion, and equal opportunity for all.
Now is the time for us to come together as a community and to stand up for what is right, just, and decent. We hope that you will stand with us in our fight for a better world and in recognition that Black Lives Matter today and every day.
—The Linden Lab Team
*For a short history of the rise and fall of libraries in Second Life, please see this blogpost.
