I like to write about fun in SL or at least some harmless silliness. Or point out beautiful spots avs should visit. But I’m just not in that kind of mood. The last straw was someone in my Tiny Empires kingdom referring to Jesus as a zombie on Easter Sunday.
Only someone else with fibromyalgia could understand the amount of pain I was in at the time. That I was too sick to go to a RL church that day only made matters worse. Thanks goodness for churches in SL so I wasn’t alone on this incredibly important day! But it was that pain that prompted me to close out the chat window without comment. I read that guy’s profile later, and it was just sad. It was as if he was trying to impress everyone with just how nihilistic he could be. I prayed that I would have the strength next time something like happened. It could have been an opportunity.
So let’s talk about what happened last time I did speak up. Lent was about to start, an event most people in SL think of only in terms of Mardi Gras parties. The talk in Elf Circle turned to making fun of Lent. Elf Circle is not a group for any religious faith, although recently there had been many open expressions of pagan beliefs in chat. I wasn’t upset about that but I did feel it was a double standard to welcome positive expressions of some faiths but not others. So I asked if we would be moving on to making fun of Wiccan beliefs next. I tried to make my question as polite as possible. I think good manners are even more important in SL than RL because of the lack of body language and tone that a RL face-to-face interaction brings.
The responses did vary. One person immediately went on to make bad puns about Wicca to show he was equal opportunity. Another took me to task for criticizing Elf Circle for the behavior of its members in open chat. I disagreed because this is the official and main group for the Circle, so why shouldn’t its own charter apply? So he proceeded to label me as oversensitive. I do so wish I had asked him if shouting out racial slurs in group chat would be fine using his reasoning. One of the instigators of this ‘humor’ apologized to me and said she meant only to make fun of the word Lent (evidently inherently funny because of lint) and said she had meant no offense. Then someone else followed her lead and apologized. But he immediately cracked ‘just one more’ joke, invalidating the apology.
I closed out the chat, sad that the members of this group had reacted so. Until then, I had found Elf Circle to be such a polite, respectful, and friendly group. I had even held up their behavior to Christian groups when their members couldn’t resist the urge to fight amongst themselves. Elf Circle is often chatty, especially about really silly topics. That’s just an Elf thing. But the humor doesn’t tend to be ugly or hurtful. The sad truth is that I had violated an important rule of how tolerance works for the politically correct. I had asked them not to denigrate Christianity. If I had made that same request for Islam or Wicca, the reception probably would have been much warmer.
I’m technically still a member of the group. But I don’t go to events anymore. I’ve blocked group chat (a Nicholaz viewer option). I no longer travel to its beautiful lands. Perhaps writing about it will help me put the incident behind me. Because I refuse to hide on a Christian sim in SL, I walk a narrow road. The question I keep asking myself is, “Do I have to leave Elf Circle behind to continue my journey?”
