About fug...

The worst thing you can see on Second Life is a Fug Troll. :-p

Granted, not everybody is as quick mastering the fine details about SL, the viewer they use or the basic ideas of 3D. (Some of the people I know did learn within hours. Others are still learning after a year.) But I think you could be expected, having been on Second Life for a full year, to have at least managed to go beyond the typical "n00b" look, albeit by having it done yourself or having had help of some kind. Or simply having bought a decent skin and shape.

Skin and bones

A skin is something most manage to get. But their shape? Apparently, like in RL, they don't care much how they look like. One girl once even bragged to me that she had managed to make her avatar look exactly the way she looked in Real Life!!!! Hell, girl, I never knew people with saddle bags and a melon butt large enough to enable a bar full of guys to put their drinks on them! If you really looked like that in Real Life you'd scare the living daylights out of The Hulk!

Having been around in SL for quite a while now I think I'm allowed to say that people like this girl really do try their best.... They really do mean well and really do want to look good. However.... they're too easily satisfied with what they see on screen. (The front looks good? Ok! Save and we're finished.)

Scanning yourself

Let me ask you a question: How many sides of your avatar do you look at when you're fiddling with the sliders? One? Two? Four? Or perhaps you look at it from all directions? 360 degrees from all the axis? I do. Every time I move a slider. Every time. Maybe that's perfectionism or Narcissism. I don't know. And frankly, my dear, I don't care. (But hawtdang, my butt looks good! Drooliscious good!)

Looking like a star

It really doesn't matter if you want your avatar too look like Bieber (twinky), George Clooney ("hawt 50+") or John Goodman (Yummy Bear, not to be confused with gummi bears), or female variants Selena Gomez, Demi Moore and Oprah Gail Winfrey (before she became "svelte"). When you're tweaking: zoom, zoom, zoom. Look from all sides. Keep looking from more sides and different angles! When you're satisfied: save. Then go over your avatar again the day after. And the day after that. It took me three years and finally I have come to the conclusion that I haven't tweaked my shape in weeks, nay months... I like the way I look... finally...

So help me beautify Second Life: Away with fug! Zoom! Zoom! Zoom!