I feel the same way, Osprey. I read Gwenyth's comments and several other blog post recently. I'm starting to realize that SL is going the wrong way - at least for my tastes. I dont want to be my real self in SL - I want to be something different, something more, something less, something NEW

I hope that the trend spotters are wrong and that there will still be room for fantasy and play in SL. We already have one 'real world' why should we build it again in SL?
 

Well, I doubt she's correct about it. The universe contains all kinds of people - so why should a metaverse contain only one type of user? I agree with you that merely recreating the real world seems pointless and lacking in imagination.
 

After all, as an artist, I am her "immersionist" in real life. There's a lot of heavy pressure against this kind of life (and others too) by society but it doesn't change what I do. I may not make much money (imagination-impaired person's judge of how successful one is) but I believe what I do contributes a great deal to society.
 

The thing really is about tolerance and acceptance, not that it will be "forbidden"...

For instance, in my country, I can run around on the beach topless. It's perfectly legal and legitimate, and a few women do it all the time. However, if I did it "all the time", I'd be criticised by friends and family that would certainly frown upon that kind of behaviour, and would ask weird and strange questions, and, ultimately, ostracised: I'd have to leave the beaches I like to go and meet only with other topless friends on remote corners of unpopular places if I wanted to go topless.

So it's obvious that the immersionists will not be forbidden to have their nook in the woods, so to speak — "freaks", delegated to "immersionist islands", disconnected from the rest of the augmentist mainstream SL residents, and forgotten by them.

Whereas right now, there is no real difference between both types, and the ToS even forbidded revealing RL data, something that will also change (in the sense that LL will not enforce in any way if you spread around RL data from other people).

"Freedom from expression" — meaning that you can use SL in the way you wish and nobody has anything to do with it — is quite a different thing from "mainstream tolerance". Once upon a time, immersionists were the majority, but they didn't ostracise augmentists — as long as they respected the immersionists, which they were even compelled by ToS to do so. Right now, there is mutual indifference — thus the comments from Osprey that "the universe contains all kinds of people" — and that both groups mingle and basically don't mind anyone's ideas (so far as you don't force them upon anyone).

But the future will shun immersionists. They'll be the "weirdos and freaks abounding in SL", even if this doesn't mean that everybody else will be using voice and exchanging RL data all the time . But they will do so spontaneously. The ones refusing to do it will seem strange, or hiding something (age, gender, accent, RL data), or pretending to be something they're not, and they will be genereally mistrusted and shunned. Probably not outright forbidden, but as ostracised as the sole smoker in a large dinner party of a hundred anti-smoking activists...
 

I honestly feel that the Grid is big enough now that there are, and will remain, enormous immersionist continents. For instance, the Elven lands are huge - and there are many who simply never leave that continent.
Because SL used to be so tiny and now is huge, I get a kind of "running to catch up" feeling that, in my head, I know is ridiculous. In real life I don't need to be part of everything, everywhere, all the time. I recognise that I need to change my - not thinking - feeling.
As people started to lament the rise of money, corporations, etc., I thought, "But we can still do everything we ever could..." I don't think that will change, although it will probably go, in the overview, from a paradise for artists to something more like the real world where artists, who operate by a different set of standards, are on the periphery.
That's where I've lived my entire life, so I reckon it won't bother me too much.
 

The other thing is that those Augies and Immersies are, to some extent an overlapping population. Part of what drives avatar enhancement is that one may buy a, for instance, bitchin' spider avatar and role play in CoLA. That may just be a part of one's SL, but an enjoyable part.