Meet the Rockspiders

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Filed under: News items, Second Life, Virtual worlds

Periodically, Linden Lab shuffles out old Second Life last names, and shuffles in new ones. Unlike the offline world, where you can have hundreds of thousands of people with the same combination of first-name and last-name, in Second Life (and indeed in pretty much every other virtual environment we can think of) a person has to have a unique name.

The surprise this time around is the surname 'Rockspider', which is widely known as underclass slang for someone who sexually molests children. Spend ten seconds with Google, and you'll see what we mean. We're sort of guessing that nobody actually checks the names before they get put in the rotation, and that this isn't actually intentional.

You'd like to think there was someone working to make sure that names in the list aren't Urdu words for sex-acts or popular Australian terms for child-molesters. Apparently not. Way to go, Linden Lab!


Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop. Meet the Rockspiders originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 28 Aug 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.




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