The SL false dichotomy

So, once again, there's a bit of a "thing" happening in SL circles -- especially in the SL "reporting" circles (and I do use scare quotes very much on purpose) -- about how someone wrote something nice about SL and someone else wrote something not nice about the nice thing and... and of course, once again, it descends into the very common Second Life false dichotomy.

Which one?

This one:

The above is a comment made on plurk. Who made it doesn't matter, what matters is that it's representative of a common theme that bugs the hell out of me: Second Life has two sides, the pretty side and the adult side.

Utter bullshit.

That's a completely false dichotomy.

Can we please stop doing this? Seriously, can people start being adult about this and understand that these things are not mutually exclusive? Can we please drop the narrative that everything adult in Second Life is ugly and extreme and borderline illegal or even about sex at all? Meanwhile, can we also accept and acknowledge that all of the pretty static photos that use static poses and mesh clothing that looks fantastic but only really makes sense as long as you don't move, that's photographed with machine-crippling viewer settings, also isn't a realistic view of the grid?

Even better, can't we acknowledge and accept that these two things, and a thousand other facets of the grid, overlap? And, better still, some results are awesome, others are horrible, and it's all a matter of taste?

Can we?

Please?

No?

Didn't think so.