A little while ago someone told me that 95 per cent of the industry in Second Life is sex driven, well I'm sure that they may have been right at the time, but there are lots of other aspects to using the virtual world coming to the fore lately, with education, medical research, charity organisations, all sorts of real life commerce, plus the arts now playing a massive part in the Metaverse. The Second Life sex industry though, continues to be a popular market.
I went to a CNN meeting a couple of weeks ago and the discussion turned to animations (ao's) and I realised that a lot of new people to SL probably don't realise just how animations can let you do anything, including being able to lead a full virtual love life, if that's the way you want to go, in SL (even if it is just a bunch of pixels!). I'm sure though, that the majority of people soon realise what is available once they start looking round the shops that sell the ao's, as the illustrated posters leave no doubt as to the purpose of the items.

As I explained in a previous report, animations program your avatar to move in a certain way, overriding your normal everyday actions. Therefore animators can give avatars the ability to interact with each other in various poses. It may be anything from a hug or a kiss to all the love making positions copied from real life. Indeed if you look around furniture shops in SL you will often see 'sex beds' for sale that offer a menu with many animated poses for couples. There was an actual real life court case some months ago where a sex bed inventor had his product copied and sold at a cheaper price. He had obviously been making a fair amount of real life money out of his design to warrant taking the copycat offender to court.

You quite often meet newbies in SL who ask people how they can have sex. Hopefully they soon realise all the other things that SL has to offer after they settle in a bit. But of course there are many 'Mature' sims that offer all sorts of practices that people like to take part in, so they use SL to carry out their fantasies (As avatars in SL should be adults, and anyone below 17 years old should be on the teen grid, plus they have the ability to log out, this should not cause too much harm). There are some areas that are banned of course, as they should be, for instance anything involving child avatars. Luckily the sims are marked as 'Mature' so people who do not want to get involved with anything of a sexual nature can stick to 'PG' sims, of which there are many.

There is a thriving business for 'Escorts girls' in SL, there are red light districts where the escorts ply their trade and this is supposed to be a good way of earning Linden dollars if you don't mind that sort of second life. A word of warning for the customers though, things may not always appear how they seem. Someone told me that he has many male friends in SL who don female avatars to earn money as Escorts, so you can never be too sure of the gender of the person you are having a wonderful time with. Perhaps having a chat with them in 'voice' might be a good idea if it worries you.

Of course with its vast population SL, has many couples who get married and set up a home just as they would in the real world, so lovemaking would just be a normal part of married life for them. Animators are clever people who make your av do whatever you want it to, who can blame them for investing in all the different tastes and requirements of the Second Life masses. As for me well, I have a nice ao that lets me drink a cup of coffee and another one that lets me hug my friends, it's nice!!!