Of Culture in SL!

Last Thursday, LnL hosted its weekly discussion. London was the moderator and the topic chosen "Where did Culture go?". In the group's opinion, there seems to be an imbalance between those who look for culture events in SL and those who would rather choose something like shopping, dancing, building, etc. Culture options seem to be varied and plenty; concerts, art exhibits, readings, discussions, libraries, museums, theater, ballet (despite the technical limitations of SL which cause huge problems to this type of presentation), even clothing styles and Roleplaying. The main problem related to culture in SL is that it does cost a considerable amount of money to set up/maintain a cultural event/sim and without Linden Labs financial support (something everyone agreed to be vital) it becomes very difficult to finance culture in the long run. One of the aspects the group focused on were the inworld classes. Some of the "old-timers" thought the number of classes offered in Events decreased and no new topics were added. Some of the newest members to SL defended that even old topics are needed for new residents and that the issue was the lack of time to go to all the classes! An interesting point raised by the group was whether cultural events have less advertising options (and less visibility due to the new Maturity Rating criteria in the dashboard), resulting in a smaller number of people attending them. One solution offered was to centralize cultural events and have them available 24/7 so that all timezones could benefit from their existence. Food for thought! It was a great discussion, with a fantastic group! Join us next week for a new topic in LnL's Discussion Area at 2pm SLT!