Second Thoughts

Rental Dementia: Have a Cup of Tea in the Orangerie

Long ago in 2016 when I started my Bed & Breakfast rentals, I decided to test the theory of customer service in a virtual world. How far would it go? How much would people ask? What would be a reasonable price to charge? If you offered customized things like ordering different furniture or removing furniture or doing annexes to builds -- how much would it take of your time and effort? What would people be willing to pay?

Answer: endless amounts of your time; and nothing.

For awhile, I ran "Ravenglass Customized" for only 25L per bulk delivery, and insanely cheap price. Then I ended it. It wasn't used that much and when it was, it took too much time and energy -- "Do you like this? Or that?"

This customer lives still in a Germanic idealist world from her country's rich tradition of romantic philosophers which in some ways got them into trouble, but that's a debate for another day. I certainly have read up on Hegel and Heidegger and Nietzsche and understand all their brilliance and potential, but like some Russian and French philosophers (and for that matter members of the Squad in Congress), there is this grand human aspiration to make reality adjust to the high vision in the mind -- no matter the time, effort, and even violence required to do so. In the virtual world of Second Life, you can do a lot of this -- that's why the Second Life logo is an eye in a hand like the Hand of Fatima symbol, and means "eye see, hand do". 

Personally as someone who managed to flunk not only math but art class in high school, who got 400 on the math part of the SAT and 750 on the verbal, I'm not a "hand do what eye imagine" kind of person. I have trouble making a straight line on Paint, and if you couldn't line up prims by typing in numbers on the XYZ axis, which is something Barnesworth Anubis taught me on Day One in Second Life, I couldn't line up prims to save my life, especially due to the spatial optical illusions on land.

Even so, I have come to grasp some basics:

o Mesh houses don't have easily editable prim walls and floors to be able to take them out or texture them, although you do get lucky on that sometimes.

o They are often in a kind of molded "all-in-one" piece, and that piece doesn't always make sense, i.e. it's not just a door and door frame but a door frame and a wall on the other side of the building, who knows why, with no pieces to take out (it's sometimes "one land impact") and no faces to edit.

o They have UV maps or AO maps or whatever those damn things are called that take a picture and wrap it around a 3D object in space. So that's why you can't slap a texture on it -- the entire thing gets textured unless it happens to have made one "face" for only that area, i.e. the top of a table. But often it doesn't feature that, as it is extra work.

So if I don't like the grungy furniture in "Storyteller's Burrow," which really annoy me because the rest of the build is so fabulous (it's like the best and most popular gatcha of that era), I can't retexture them -- unless of course, I do, because I don't mind if books become plaid-covered like the throws on the couch. I just pretend they are like those cloth book covers that the Catholic School used to make my children cut out and stretch on to their books every year.

o Mesh houses take more land impact than prims did -- a dirty little secret of mesh that has crept up to astounding proportions. Makers like to pretend mesh land impact is only about the user wishing to expand an item foolishly. But it starts with the foolish mesh itself, which often makes objects to tack on for detail, rather than textures to stand for detail as in the old prim-heavy days. (PS sculpties generally don't increase land impact when stretched so the scorn of them is really misplaced, they are wonderful especially for fantasy and nature builds). So to reduce that problem, the item is put on "convex hull" which is a way to change the physics. High prim objects can be cut in a third or even half if put on "convex hull" today with the later features of SL -- but that comes with a problem.

o If any empty volume of space is required, such as a doorway or a room, "convex hull" makes it impossible to walk into that space. So convexing a 238 prim table with legs and crenellations all over it works, but not a prim house -- you can't walk into it.

o Even an originally mesh item which is on convex hull automatically, so to speak, has these problems. To solve that issue, the maker puts the house on "phantom" so you can walk through the prim without problem, into those "closed" volumes of space like rooms or hallways. But now another problem is created -- you fall out of a house up in the sky, or you walk through walls in unpleasant unrealistic ways you don't want; hence the "physics shell," which is the joined pieces the maker then layers over the house and does NOT put on phantom -- but puts on "invisible" so you can't see it.

o Sometimes if there is still a problem you can edit and remove one of these pieces; sometimes not. Changing that pre-made physics shell even if editable then can make it behave in unexpected ways. You unlink a piece, it loses "full bright" that was its previously attached piece, etc.

Pictures also don't stretch well over large curved domes or even small Surprise Egg domes as anyone can tell you who has tried. You can use "baked on mesh" features if you know how to use Blender and such and make a texture that will work on those eggs or I imagine, even a dome, but you need a lot of skills. Example: to make a scene even on a large prim box of 64 x 64, even, not a curved mesh dome, to have a scene wrap all around a build in the sky, I had to cut up a photo into 32 pieces, then arrange 8 panels on prims all around it. Someone with more skill might get this to work; for me, it had gaps. I might get one wall to work, and have in Crespo with images of the Peruvians' amazingly joined stones not using cement; my grand idea of taking the paintings of the 19th century Russian painter Ivan Aivazovsky of Crimea, which are just wonderful, and turning them into a giant stage set -- well, not so much, although when I have more time I may try again.

I have lots of domes. None of them attempt cityscapes. Cityscapes are often found on a slightly curved prim or mesh tacked on to an apartment skybox. I have even made them myself, although not as successfully as a skilled maker like Apple Fall. But I think even Apple Fall would not attempt a complex non-tiling cityscape on a dome. That is, maybe some skylines lend themselves to be non-tiling, I don't know. If I took a photo of the 59th Street Bridge and East River outside my window and tried to port it into SL, it won't work very well without a lot of jiggering, and really pre-editing with math, which I'm not good at, did I mention? I now have a set of 14 large panoramas that Marvel made which tile well or are non-tiling, for only $289, and I can try slapping them on a dome. I think we both know this won't work. I could put them on a curved prim, and that sort of works on one side of an apartment building, although not really super well. You have to repeat the image and fool the eye "just so" -- that's not in my skill set.

Someone who has only been in SL for a year or two can't be expected to know all this or even if they were here 10 years -- you shouldn't have to pay attention to it at all. It should "just work". It should "just be there". So in one sense, the tragedy of Utopia, as I shall call her rather than to use her real name, is one not inherent in her or me or German philosophers or American politicians but just "physics" or "Linden Lab," if you will, although honestly, they have experimented to the hilt with making these things work and generally get them to work pretty well, certainly better than Facebook Horizons, where you don't even have legs.

Even so, I publish this to call out an attitude that I find more in Europeans and Asians than Americans, although really, it can appear anywhere. And that is class consciousness, and the idea that anyone in a service role is someone you can ask to do endless work and impossible work, and remain cheerful, never tipping them (Europeans don't like tips; they put the tip into the bill), and even becoming irritated and angry if that long-suffering service person works hours for them without pay, in a rental for which they pay -- wait for it -- US $10.08 per month. Per MONTH. That's 8.69 euros. That is, the price of two or three lattes. They imagine that if they profusely thanked you with exaggerated praise and began talking about the soul, that this spiritual food is sufficient for your time spent.

So why not just say "no"? After 17 years as a virtual rentals agent I can spot this type coming down the track without even looking at their profile. So why? I find that with the cheapest seats paying US $1.50 per month in a 35L skybox, I just say no, and rudeness has to substitute for service because people can't understand "no," they are crazily entitlement happy. They have been given this amazingly cheap subsidized thing with a build on the ground that is nice, a skybox sometimes even with furniture, and if that is not enough, they need to look elsewhere for someone whose hobby is waiting on spoiled global youth. 

But yes, for US $10 a month, I am willing to do more -- who doesn't want to retain customers? Who doesn't want to get a sim's tier paid at least with 17.5 of such person per month? It's not so many' most of those 17.5 people never ask you to do a thing, ever. You never talk to them. Months -- years go by. You never look at their profile -- I never do, anyway. Then I happen to IM one and say, "Are you still renting? The rent is due" -- when it's way overdue, in fact. I don't automatically return prims. Then this person says sorry, she had to work a lot of shifts lately and didn't log on.

Oh, what line of work are you in, I ask.

"I'm a COVID nurse. How sad is that?"

And you know something? I believe her, although many might lie about this heroic role, in SL. I believe her because it's not on her profile, she never told me, I learned only by asking, etc. And so for a few brief hours a month, she wants some respite in my rentals. So you can be damn sure her prims will never be returned even if three months late, you know?

But other people who aren't COVID nurses and probably don't even wear masks to help out the COVID nurses with less patients, are more demanding. They ask and ask -- and then it's madness.

So...why get so crazily involved? I mean, to put down a skybox; to add a teleporter; to knock out one wall -- those are reasonable things. But when someone begins to ask you to repair the badly-made corridor with a convexed hull wall you can't walk into, even though doors open into it, then enable someone to walk physically between one skybox to another through walls with realistic doors, you should say "no," because the maker of that skybox didn't make that possible, or even fix her own original build, although she actually charged $7850 (US $31.40) for this rather badly made item that wasn't really all that, except for having so many rooms that it was like a maze, and some nice wallpaper.

The solution to wishing to travel from one skybox to another is usually "a teleporter". But I thought hey, what an interesting problem to solve, to walk from one lovely Parisian apartment to another lovely Parisian apartment that has an orangerie (the first one didn't, although actually had a room that could serve as one). So I took it on, to my shame.

The weird hallway had an oval physics shell in it that looked like it might have even housed an elevator, but there was no elevator in the item as sold. Maybe it was taken from a store build at once time, but whatever, it has a major flaw that should be fixed. Yet as you can see, while many demands can be made of a lowly landlord humping physics shells around a lot, Utopia fears to question the Madame who made this overpriced pile because One Doesn't Do That in that culture, I guess, who knows. If it were me, for that price, I would be banging down the doors and arranging a boycott if I didn't get answers -- and have done so in the past (ionic, I'm looking at you, and your damn rare hotel which you couldn't even walk into, and it wasn't on mod.)

[2021/10/26 14:39] Second Life:  [X] paid you L$700.
[2021/10/26 16:01] Second Life:  [X] paid you L$700.
[2021/10/26 16:38] Utopia: Welcome
[2021/10/26 16:38] Prokofy Neva: Hi let me know if you want an autumn texture
[2021/10/26 16:38] Prokofy Neva: or your tp locked
[2021/10/26 16:39] Prokofy Neva: brb
[2021/10/26 16:39] Utopia: I'm sorry, I don't speak English, it takes a while for me to translate, I have problems
[2021/10/26 16:39] Prokofy Neva: no problem
[2021/10/26 16:39] Prokofy Neva: I'm just saying the ground there can change from summer to autumn leaves
[2021/10/26 16:41] Utopia: I have two problems, one with tp portoeanie and the other problem is I wanted to make walls with a texture, such a dome with the texture of the city of Paris, but I do not know how to go about it
[2021/10/26 16:42] Prokofy Neva: well I have domes with just the sky but making one with the city of Paris is actually quite hard as I have discovered
[2021/10/26 16:42] Prokofy Neva: all I have are windows with Paris on some of my skyboxes
[2021/10/26 16:44] Utopia: could I see these windows with Paris, is that a problem for you
[2021/10/26 16:47] Prokofy Neva: there are two of them, you can cam into them
[2021/10/26 16:47] Prokofy Neva: or I can tp you in
[2021/10/26 16:48] Second Life: Teleport offer sent to [X]
[2021/10/26 16:48] Prokofy Neva: they aren't all that
[2021/10/26 16:48] Prokofy Neva: oops wait
[2021/10/26 16:48] Prokofy Neva: sorry!
[2021/10/26 16:48] Prokofy Neva: forgot to change the group
[2021/10/26 16:49] Second Life: Teleport offer sent to [X]
[2021/10/26 16:50] Second Life: Teleport offer sent to [X]
[2021/10/26 16:50] Utopia: these apartments are very nice
[2021/10/26 16:51] Utopia: a moment just take a look around
[2021/10/26 16:51] Prokofy Neva: well I'm glad you like them, they are good as skyboxes and nice and spacious, the view of Paris is not that special, you really have to work at making these, I can show you a little one I made that works, but to make one in a dome, you have to fit together 16 photos perfectly and make them bend, it's a chore if you aren't a good creator
[2021/10/26 16:53] Utopia: you are a wonderful creator
[2021/10/26 16:53] Prokofy Neva: no these aren't mine, these are Apple Fall and Skye
[2021/10/26 16:53] Utopia: I have problems with the door
[2021/10/26 16:53] Prokofy Neva: I can put both of them on your platform if you want
[2021/10/26 16:54] Prokofy Neva: they are skyboxes, the doors don't open
[2021/10/26 16:54] Prokofy Neva: I mean to go outside3
[2021/10/26 16:55] Second Life: Teleport offer sent to [X]
[2021/10/26 16:55] Prokofy Neva: here's the other one
[2021/10/26 16:55] Utopia: it means that you cannot go out to the garden (terrace, conservatory)
[2021/10/26 16:56] Prokofy Neva: unless you put in a teleporter
[2021/10/26 16:56] Prokofy Neva: you could also buy these and put them on a prim https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Marvel-City-Skyline-SEAMLESS-Vol-2-15-fullpermed-awesome-textures/5271804
[2021/10/26 16:56] Prokofy Neva: and put it in front of your windows on the other one
[2021/10/26 16:57] Prokofy Neva: oh the door to the conservatory was locked, that can be opened
[2021/10/26 16:57] Utopia: this one too beautiful, I know him. The big one is great, but if you can't go out on the terrace, it's a pity. this orangery is all the charm
[2021/10/26 16:57] Prokofy Neva: I mean to go outside isn't feasible
[2021/10/26 16:57] Prokofy Neva: no you can hang on
[2021/10/26 16:57] Prokofy Neva: it has a Kool door
[2021/10/26 16:58] Prokofy Neva: ok I put those on open
[2021/10/26 16:59] Prokofy Neva: ok I did both sides
[2021/10/26 16:59] Prokofy Neva: try now
[2021/10/26 17:00] Prokofy Neva: it should work
[2021/10/26 17:00] Prokofy Neva: it is put on "everyone"
[2021/10/26 17:00] Prokofy Neva: brb
[2021/10/26 17:02] Utopia: (Saved Tue Oct 26 20:01:59 2021)if I can, I would really like this apartment, it's a pity that she spent so much on my skybox apartment
[2021/10/26 17:02] Prokofy Neva: oh dear
[2021/10/26 17:03] Prokofy Neva: well you could spend $289 more and buy the panoramas
[2021/10/26 17:03] Prokofy Neva: and put them on a prim with texture change
[2021/10/26 17:03] Utopia: can I think about it, I'd like to leave the two apartment on this skybox
[2021/10/26 17:04] Prokofy Neva: ok sure
[2021/10/26 17:04] Prokofy Neva: make sure you can open the doors
[2021/10/26 17:05] Prokofy Neva: there is a way to make this door phantom so you can walk through it, if you decide to take it, it just takes a little work
[2021/10/26 17:05] Prokofy Neva: I mean to go outdoors
[2021/10/26 17:05] Prokofy Neva: I have to relog, can't get my avatar to work
[2021/10/26 17:06] Utopia: no problem, I'll wait and think
[2021/10/26 17:10] Prokofy Neva: Let me take a chance on that skyline, it's only $289 hang on
[2021/10/26 17:11] Utopia: well i'm waiting
[2021/10/26 17:12] Prokofy Neva: ok put out your apartment again
[2021/10/26 17:14] Utopia: only that today I don't have a penny, tomorrow, if it is possible, I will pay for this texture
[2021/10/26 17:14] Prokofy Neva: it's ok
[2021/10/26 17:14] Prokofy Neva: hopefully I can use it elsewhere
[2021/10/26 17:21] Prokofy Neva: I am putting the panorama on "share"
[2021/10/26 17:21] Prokofy Neva: so you can move it around into place where it will look good
[2021/10/26 17:21] Prokofy Neva: it can't be right up close, it has to be moved out about 4 meters maybe
[2021/10/26 17:22] Utopia: Thank you very much, it is a pity that my apartment does not have such a beautiful conservatory as yours
[2021/10/26 17:23] Prokofy Neva: well you're welcome to take that one, you decide
[2021/10/26 17:23] Prokofy Neva: btw curved sometimes works better, I made a curved one
[2021/10/26 17:23] Prokofy Neva: you can move them in to place or if you don't like them return them
[2021/10/26 17:24] Prokofy Neva: I'm going to make one that has 14 different ones to change in awhile
[2021/10/26 17:24] Prokofy Neva: I have to go do some other chores now
[2021/10/26 17:24] Utopia: can your apartment copulate with mine, then it will be perfect
[2021/10/26 17:24] Prokofy Neva: well I can make the wall phantom to walk through
[2021/10/26 17:24] Prokofy Neva: it can't be cut up but it can be made phantom
[2021/10/26 17:25] Prokofy Neva: there's one problem if you want to have a radio stream tho, you can only have it on the parcel you rented, this square
[2021/10/26 17:25] Utopia: Thank you very much for your help and I'll try to do something here
[2021/10/26 17:25] Prokofy Neva: you can extend things out past the squre in a group, but then it's already another parcel with its radio stream
[2021/10/26 17:25] Prokofy Neva: so if you don't mind that it's doable
[2021/10/26 17:26] Prokofy Neva: you see how this Parisian of mine has a big end, that's because to make a panorama work, it has to be large so you can't see around it
[2021/10/26 17:26] Utopia: if it was possible that it is an orangery, we can cut everything here
[2021/10/26 17:27] Utopia: For me, this panorama is not a problem anymore, but which apartment to choose
[2021/10/26 17:33] Prokofy Neva: to make the two link, you have to make a wall on your apartment phantom to walk through in the hallway, do you know how to do this?
[2021/10/26 17:35] Prokofy Neva: I don't think it will be possible to link them up flush, only to put both of them with phantom walls to walk out of
[2021/10/26 17:35] Prokofy Neva: move yours all the way to the edge so the other one can go down side by side
[2021/10/26 17:36] Utopia: moment
[2021/10/26 17:39] Utopia: I put it to the very edge, but I don't know if it's what is needed
[2021/10/26 17:42] Utopia: I do not know how to thank you for your work, this does not happen often in sl
[2021/10/26 17:44] Prokofy Neva: ok this is how it has to be placed because see how the big part has to hang off the edge, it has to have space to make the window panorama work
[2021/10/26 17:47] Utopia: did I set it right?
[2021/10/26 17:47] Prokofy Neva: no you have to move it move so it isn't merged with the other
[2021/10/26 17:48] Utopia: is it okay now?
[2021/10/26 17:49] Utopia: Can I take you on my friends list?
[2021/10/26 17:49] Prokofy Neva: ok
[2021/10/26 17:49] Second Life: [X] is offering friendship.

Wollen wir Freunde sein?

(By default, you will be able to see each other's online status.)
[2021/10/26 17:49] Second Life: Friendship offer accepted.
[2021/10/26 17:49] Prokofy Neva: I have to find a door to mark the place you walk through
[2021/10/26 17:53] Utopia: I don't know how to make a door in my house, it will be best if you do it, unfortunately I have no idea how to go about it
[2021/10/26 17:53] Prokofy Neva: well I can't edit your object
[2021/10/26 17:53] Prokofy Neva: but I will walk you through it
[2021/10/26 17:53] Prokofy Neva: where did you get this house?
[2021/10/26 17:54] Utopia: good, but if you have enough time, I'm not good at building
[2021/10/26 17:54] Prokofy Neva: where did you buy it?
[2021/10/26 17:56] Utopia: I bought from "CHINA & GOODIES" in the Marketplace
[2021/10/26 17:56] Prokofy Neva: I didn't see it on the MP is why I ask
[2021/10/26 17:57] Prokofy Neva: holy Toledo, $7850
[2021/10/26 17:57] Prokofy Neva: I'm afraid I couldn't buy that
[2021/10/26 17:57] Prokofy Neva: at least it's copy mod
[2021/10/26 17:57] Prokofy Neva: did you make a copy or keep a copy?
[2021/10/26 17:57] Utopia: I always manage to find something, I spend a lot of time looking at different pages
[2021/10/26 17:58] Prokofy Neva: geez for that price she should have put a goddamn panorama on the thing
[2021/10/26 17:58] Prokofy Neva: if you are sure you have a copy then I can walk you through editing
[2021/10/26 17:58] Utopia: I don't know if I have copies, I don't know how to check it
[2021/10/26 17:59] Prokofy Neva: well right click on the apartment now andn choose "copy"
[2021/10/26 17:59] Prokofy Neva: well she has re-deliver too so that's ok
[2021/10/26 18:00] Prokofy Neva: now I will show you the prim you need to work with
[2021/10/26 18:00] Prokofy Neva: right click and select "take" to put it back in inventory
[2021/10/26 18:00] Prokofy Neva: the copy I mean
[2021/10/26 18:00] Utopia: I can copy it if you want I can give it to you. You just have to tell me how he will do it
[2021/10/26 18:01] Prokofy Neva: you can't because it's not on transfer
[2021/10/26 18:01] Prokofy Neva: no one would put a $7800 item on transfer
[2021/10/26 18:02] Utopia: You're right, but I wouldn't have a problem with that, I would give this copy to someone
[2021/10/26 18:07] Prokofy Neva: you can't physically do it, it is not on transfer
[2021/10/26 18:07] Prokofy Neva: so see where the door has to go? I put a plywood prim
[2021/10/26 18:08] Utopia: just like you think
[2021/10/26 18:08] Prokofy Neva: oh actually she has a physics shell so that is a problem
[2021/10/26 18:08] Prokofy Neva: well do you mind walking out another way?
[2021/10/26 18:09] Prokofy Neva: do you know how to turn on highlight transparent
[2021/10/26 18:09] Prokofy Neva: then you can see the issue
[2021/10/26 18:09] Prokofy Neva: she has a transparent physics shell as many do to prevent you from falling out of the house
[2021/10/26 18:10] Utopia: do you mean such a red highlight
[2021/10/26 18:10] Prokofy Neva: the problem with mesh unlike prims is that it is all one piece, hard to edit, if we take the wall where I wanted and put that on phantom to walk through, that entire end is on phantom and you fall out, which means you then have to put a prim around it, which I can do, I just did on the other one
[2021/10/26 18:10] Prokofy Neva: yes
[2021/10/26 18:10] Prokofy Neva: red highlight
[2021/10/26 18:11] Prokofy Neva: but it looks to me on the other side you just remove one of her red panels and you can walk through, maybe not, in which can you have to edit the other wall to put it on phantom, unlink it, and check phantom
[2021/10/26 18:11] Prokofy Neva: but the biggest problem is that her physics shell over the windows makes it hard to walk out here, so I would remove that or put it on phantom
[2021/10/26 18:12] Prokofy Neva: if you want you can give me editing permission on your friendship card and I can try to edit myself
[2021/10/26 18:13] Prokofy Neva: that may be easier
[2021/10/26 18:13] Prokofy Neva: go on my friendship card
[2021/10/26 18:13] Prokofy Neva: go to the little cog at the top
[2021/10/26 18:13] Utopia: I really have no idea what you are talking about but I depend completely on your knowledge
[2021/10/26 18:13] Prokofy Neva: well you can revoke it afterwards
[2021/10/26 18:13] Prokofy Neva: you give me temporary permission to edit your objects
[2021/10/26 18:14] Prokofy Neva: left click on my friendship card
[2021/10/26 18:14] Prokofy Neva: go up to that little wheel on the top right
[2021/10/26 18:14] Prokofy Neva: above groups
[2021/10/26 18:14] Utopia: I'm giving you permission, I just don't know how to do it
[2021/10/26 18:14] Prokofy Neva: scroll down to "permissions" and check "edit my objects"
[2021/10/26 18:14] Prokofy Neva: well I'm telling you
[2021/10/26 18:14] Prokofy Neva: just go step by step
[2021/10/26 18:14] Prokofy Neva: left click on my friendship card
[18:14] Prokofy Neva: go up to that little wheel on the top right
[18:14] Prokofy Neva: above groups
[2021/10/26 18:15] Prokofy Neva: scroll down to "permissions" and check "edit my objects"\
[2021/10/26 18:15] Prokofy Neva: click "save"
[2021/10/26 18:17] Prokofy Neva: can you see it?
[2021/10/26 18:17] Utopia: moment
[2021/10/26 18:19] Utopia: what I was doing there but I don't know if it's okay
[2021/10/26 18:22] Second Life: [x]  has given you permission to edit their objects.
[2021/10/26 18:22] Utopia: ok
[2021/10/26 18:23] Utopia: whether it worked?
[2021/10/26 18:29] Prokofy Neva: yes
[2021/10/26 18:30] Prokofy Neva: ok hang on
[2021/10/26 18:30] Utopia: ok
[2021/10/26 18:39] Utopia: I think the passage to the conservatory does not fit in the bathroom
[2021/10/26 18:40] Utopia: in this place where I stand now, the wall can be broken
[2021/10/26 18:41] Prokofy Neva: why do you want that wall broken?
[2021/10/26 18:41] Utopia: it is best to tear down the entire wall
[2021/10/26 18:42] Prokofy Neva: this is just the problem, you cannot do it with mesh
[2021/10/26 18:42] Prokofy Neva: it is all one piece, the house
[2021/10/26 18:42] Prokofy Neva: not just this wall like a prim
[2021/10/26 18:42] Utopia: preferably such large, spacious doors
[2021/10/26 18:42] Prokofy Neva: the door is merely a marker of a place you walk through, any door can be put there if it is on phantom
[2021/10/26 18:43] Prokofy Neva: you cannot have an actual door because of the issue I am explaining, it's all one piece
[2021/10/26 18:43] Utopia: best do as you see fit
[2021/10/26 18:44] Prokofy Neva: you cannot take out one wall, the wall is connected to the ceiling, the door jambs etc etc
[2021/10/26 18:44] Prokofy Neva: it's not a prim house but mesh
[2021/10/26 18:44] Prokofy Neva: so the only thing possible is to turn it phantom to walk through
[2021/10/26 18:44] Prokofy Neva: you can't make doors into a mesh wall
[2021/10/26 18:45] Prokofy Neva: you should click "finish" on the rezzer to get rid of the building scripts
[2021/10/26 18:45] Utopia: should I delete this house?
[2021/10/26 18:45] Prokofy Neva: why?
[2021/10/26 18:46] Prokofy Neva: you can have these doors and walk from one to the other
[2021/10/26 18:46] Prokofy Neva: or let's see if the windows can be walked out of
[2021/10/26 18:46] Utopia: ok
[2021/10/26 18:48] Utopia: we have a problem, the feet are hidden in the floor in this apartment, maybe I did something wrong
[2021/10/26 18:48] Prokofy Neva: ok over here, there is a window that can be a door
[2021/10/26 18:48] Prokofy Neva: well it's just the physics, it has to be all shored up with prims once you put it on phantom, it takes awhile
[2021/10/26 18:48] Prokofy Neva: anyway here's a window that became a door
[2021/10/26 18:49] Prokofy Neva: so there's a door to walk outside, and I will leave the other door you can walk through
[2021/10/26 18:50] Utopia: ok
[2021/10/26 18:51] Utopia: can you see our feet now ;)
[2021/10/26 18:59] Prokofy Neva: look, the feet is the least of the problems and easily fixed
[2021/10/26 18:59] Prokofy Neva: first you have to get the unlinked prims to line up again, I have to do that first
[2021/10/26 19:00] Utopia: I'm a bit ashamed that I can't do anything, I've been in the service for a very long time and I really have no idea about anything. I don't know how I can repay you for what you do. You can always count on me
[2021/10/26 19:09] Utopia: I wonder that there are so many great creators in SL, each of them in real life could make a career in their field
[2021/10/26 19:11] Utopia: If I was the owner of, for example, a fashion house, I would come to SL and recruit fashion makers;)
[2021/10/26 19:15] Prokofy Neva: Hi, you need to click "finish" on the rezzer
[2021/10/26 19:15] Prokofy Neva: so that it can be edited
[2021/10/26 19:15] Prokofy Neva: click on the rezzer and select "finish"
[2021/10/26 19:15] Prokofy Neva: or "store"
[2021/10/26 19:16] Utopia: ich tat es
[2021/10/26 19:19] Utopia: It's a pity that the avatars don't have a soul;)
[2021/10/26 19:19] Utopia: it's a joke
[2021/10/26 19:25] Prokofy Neva: you know there are so many adjustment problems at this point, I should delete this and start over
[2021/10/26 19:25] Prokofy Neva: the problem is once you unlink a house it develops all these allignment problems
[2021/10/26 19:25] Prokofy Neva: so I would start with the window/door first
[2021/10/26 19:25] Prokofy Neva: so let's rez it again
[2021/10/26 19:29] Utopia: whatI pressed the finish
[2021/10/26 19:29] Prokofy Neva: yes click finish
[2021/10/26 19:29] Utopia: I pressed the finish if I did it right
[2021/10/26 19:29] Utopia: ok
[2021/10/26 19:29] Prokofy Neva: I'm puzzed about this one part she has you can't walk in
[2021/10/26 19:29] Prokofy Neva: and it's not because I edit ed it
[2021/10/26 19:30] Prokofy Neva: did you notice that before
[2021/10/26 19:31] Prokofy Neva: rez another copy on top of this one please
[2021/10/26 19:32] Utopia: should I do something now?
[2021/10/26 19:33] Prokofy Neva: rez another copy on top of this one
[2021/10/26 19:33] Prokofy Neva: so I can see why it is doing that
[2021/10/26 19:33] Prokofy Neva: whether editing the railing even slightly causes you not to be able to walk out the door elsewhere
[2021/10/26 19:33] Prokofy Neva: just stick it out to the side or on top doesn't matter
[2021/10/26 19:35] Utopia: now i'm lost, what should i do now?
[2021/10/26 19:36] Prokofy Neva: look you need to rez it ON TOP so that I can SEE it, ie ABOVE
[2021/10/26 19:36] Prokofy Neva: or to the side
[2021/10/26 19:36] Prokofy Neva: ok start over completely then
[2021/10/26 19:36] Prokofy Neva: I will try to see why you can't walk in that one part
[2021/10/26 19:37] Prokofy Neva: rez and click finish
[2021/10/26 19:37] Utopia: ok
[2021/10/26 19:39] Second Life: Teleport offer sent to [X]
[2021/10/26 19:40] Prokofy Neva: see what I mean
[2021/10/26 19:40] Prokofy Neva: this is how it is unedited
[2021/10/26 19:40] Prokofy Neva: and I wonder why
[2021/10/26 19:40] Prokofy Neva: because the door opens
[2021/10/26 19:40] Prokofy Neva: also the floor doesn't look finished
[2021/10/26 19:40] Prokofy Neva: maybe you are not meant to walk out
[2021/10/26 19:40] Utopia: I couldn't get in here from the very beginning, there are probably stairs to the apartment
[2021/10/26 19:41] Prokofy Neva: well that's what I mean
[2021/10/26 19:41] Prokofy Neva: it's like that
[2021/10/26 19:41] Prokofy Neva: I thought it *got* like that because I edited the physics prim
[2021/10/26 19:41] Prokofy Neva: but it's like that to start with
[2021/10/26 19:41] Prokofy Neva: does it have more pieces?
[2021/10/26 19:41] Prokofy Neva: you could just live with it
[2021/10/26 19:41] Prokofy Neva: my God this is a huge house and it's like a maze
[2021/10/26 19:42] Prokofy Neva: so that issue I don't want to mess with because these houses are not meant to be edited, ask the house maker
[2021/10/26 19:42] Prokofy Neva: meanwhile I will put a window to a door, and add the doors you can walk through and call it a day
[2021/10/26 19:43] Utopia: at first I thought it was a mistake, but after thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that the person who built this apartment did not make the transition there deliberately. It's a pity you can't go in there
[2021/10/26 19:44] Prokofy Neva: I think there is more to this house tho reading the descrdiption
[2021/10/26 19:44] Prokofy Neva: did you put out all its parts?
[2021/10/26 19:44] Prokofy Neva: the only way to make it possible to go out there is to put the physics shell on phantom, then you fall through all the walls
[2021/10/26 19:44] Prokofy Neva: then you have to put prims on every wall and floor which is a long job I can't do now
[2021/10/26 19:44] Prokofy Neva: and it's not worth it
[2021/10/26 19:44] Prokofy Neva: just live with it
[2021/10/26 19:45] Prokofy Neva: pretend there is a ghost of a murdered maid there or something lol
[2021/10/26 19:45] Prokofy Neva: if you make it possible to go in there, you also have to put a rug, the floor looks unfinished
[2021/10/26 19:46] Utopia: I do not know if I will write to the creator of this apartment, I am not able to professionally describe what I mean
[2021/10/26 19:46] Prokofy Neva: does she have it on display in her store
[2021/10/26 19:46] Prokofy Neva: for $7800 she should be coming here in a limousine to fix it lol
[2021/10/26 19:47] Utopia: it's an expensive apartment but I really like it, I couldn't resist
[2021/10/26 19:49] Utopia: what should I write to him that I cannot enter one room ?
[2021/10/26 19:49] Prokofy Neva: yes say that the physics shell is preventing the entering of one room, but you can't put it on phantom or you will fall out of the house
[2021/10/26 19:49] Prokofy Neva: it's her bad editing, she needs to re-do it
[2021/10/26 19:49] Prokofy Neva: I can't do it without messing up the entire house again
[2021/10/26 19:51] Utopia: Could you write to him, so professionally, I would like to ask. It may be that he will not write back, I have already met such people here
[2021/10/26 19:52] Utopia: you can mess up as much as you like
[2021/10/26 19:53] Prokofy Neva: well let me check if one piece of it can be unlinked
[2021/10/26 19:54] Prokofy Neva: if she comes and sees it is edited she will say it's our fault
[2021/10/26 19:55] Utopia: I rather doubt that he will come here, you have to reckon with the fact that he may not have time or will
[2021/10/26 19:55] Prokofy Neva: yes few merchants make house calls
[2021/10/26 19:55] Prokofy Neva: but my God for $7800 she should
[2021/10/26 19:56] Prokofy Neva: that's nearly US $32
[2021/10/26 19:56] Prokofy Neva: did you click finish
[2021/10/26 19:58] Utopia: can you just write to him why this one room can't be used, is it intentionally done so
[2021/10/26 19:58] Prokofy Neva: no I don't want to get into it
[2021/10/26 19:58] Prokofy Neva: the building is on "lock" too, can you unclick "lock"
[2021/10/26 19:59] Prokofy Neva: click "finish" and make sure "lock" is not checked, I see it checked
[2021/10/26 19:59] Utopia: you can also live without this room;) there are quite a lot of them
[2021/10/26 19:59] Prokofy Neva: I would urge you to do that
[2021/10/26 20:00] Utopia: moment
[2021/10/26 20:00] Prokofy Neva: because if I unlink the physics prims either I have to make the rest phantom and then you fall through walls or it is still impossible to walk due to another problem, it's on convex hull
[2021/10/26 20:00] Prokofy Neva: if you're not going to add the elevator or stairs I could remove it
[2021/10/26 20:02] Utopia: I did not understand what should I unlock now?
[2021/10/26 20:02] Prokofy Neva: the entire house is on "lock"
[2021/10/26 20:02] Prokofy Neva: right click in "edit" and uncheck "lock"
[2021/10/26 20:04] Prokofy Neva: ok you can walk in that hallway
[2021/10/26 20:04] Prokofy Neva: but the doors are made so you cannot open them from the other side
[2021/10/26 20:04] Prokofy Neva: it wasn't meant to be walked in, probably it is supposed to have an elevator or something
[2021/10/26 20:05] Utopia: I pressed terraform, but I don't know if it's good
[2021/10/26 20:05] Prokofy Neva: no
[2021/10/26 20:05] Prokofy Neva: not the rezzer
[2021/10/26 20:05] Prokofy Neva: the house itself
[2021/10/26 20:06] Prokofy Neva: right click on the house itself
[2021/10/26 20:06] Prokofy Neva: go into edit
[2021/10/26 20:06] Prokofy Neva: find "lock" at the top and uncheck
[2021/10/26 20:06] Prokofy Neva: it's not vital
[2021/10/26 20:06] Prokofy Neva: it's just to help you not accidentally delete it
[2021/10/26 20:06] Prokofy Neva: but then you can't edit all of it like change the wallpaper etc
[2021/10/26 20:08] Utopia: sorry but where should I put this catch?
[2021/10/26 20:08] Prokofy Neva: never mind
[2021/10/26 20:08] Prokofy Neva: it's not worth it
[2021/10/26 20:08] Prokofy Neva: not needed now
[2021/10/26 20:12] Prokofy Neva: ok I have done all I can here
[2021/10/26 20:13] Prokofy Neva: you have a door to actually walk out of, and two to walk through
[2021/10/26 20:13] Prokofy Neva: so if you find a part of the house where you fall through or can't walk, mark it with a prim, I will adjust it
[2021/10/26 20:13] Prokofy Neva: I have to go help another tenant
[2021/10/26 20:15] Prokofy Neva: ok either you live without this hallway
[2021/10/26 20:15] Utopia: it is a pity that these houses cannot be connected together
[2021/10/26 20:15] Prokofy Neva: or you have walls you walk through completely not just a door
[2021/10/26 20:15] Prokofy Neva: you see?
[2021/10/26 20:16] Utopia: check everything in a moment, I got a little tired;) thank you very much
[2021/10/26 20:20] Utopia: hooray i'm in the middle :)))
[2021/10/26 20:21] Prokofy Neva: it's too hard to texture the floor because it's in pieces, maybe put a rug
[2021/10/26 20:21] Prokofy Neva: she had it coloured brown only
[2021/10/26 20:21] Utopia: perfekt
[2021/10/26 20:22] Utopia: You are a wizard
[2021/10/26 20:22] Prokofy Neva: ok well let me know if you see problems, I have to go now
[2021/10/26 20:22] Prokofy Neva: good luck!
[2021/10/26 20:24] Utopia: Thank you very much once again and you are just wonderful.
[2021/10/26 22:49] Prokofy Neva: Don't forget to revoke the permissions you gave to me, go on the cog wheel and uncheck permissions box.
[2021/10/26 22:49] Second Life: User not online - message will be stored and delivered later.
[2021/10/27 14:39] Utopia: (Saved Wed Oct 27 12:47:46 2021)Hello, I hope I'm not disturbing you, if you find some time, please let me help you. I have a problem with one of the rooms, it had beautiful dark blue walls but unfortunately they are gray now. Maybe I will put this apartment all over again and if you had time, you could help me with this problem. I must add that all the walls are brighter than the original.
I thought about the conservatory, I know that it is not possible to connect these two objects together, it will not look perfect. I have a question and a great request to you, are you able to build a conservatory suitable for my apartment, naturally I will pay you for this work.
[2021/10/27 14:39] Utopia: (Saved Wed Oct 27 15:39:32 2021)I have one more request, you could take your items from my property, I wanted to send them back to you, but it doesn't work. I thought it over, your apartment unfortunately does not match mine. In addition to your cottage, there is also the door you put into my facility yesterday. I need these Prims, so I would ask for your intervention quickly. :)))
[2021/10/27 14:42] Prokofy Neva: Hi, no, I'm not a builder, and cannot build a house like that, I can only modify them. No, it is not possible to join these two buildings without having to turn everything phantom to walk through, and spending hours of work putting prims in everywhere which I cannot justify doing. The management prims don't count on your count, so you don't have to worry about them taking away your prims. But if you want the Parisian apartment and doors removed anyway, they can be removed. I don't know why the walls are grey, I will have to investigate it but I didn't change anything. But when you unlink a building to do one thing, other problems can occur elsewhere. So I will check it soon.
[2021/10/27 14:50] Prokofy Neva: Hi, so I'm seeing the blue walls exactly the same blue as they were yesterday, I'm not sure if that's because you rezzed another copy of the apartment out -- it looks like you did because of all the flickering textures on the roof. If you don't see it as blue, it's something to do with your viewer. Here is how it looks:
[2021/10/27 14:50] Prokofy Neva: https://gyazo.com/8cbcd692088964da01ab4c2f9d2d5187
[2021/10/27 14:51] Utopia: hello unfortunately I can't delete your apartment if you could take it. There is no problem with this building, but if you could move the teleport to my house, I'll show you where. How can it be just this panorama from Paris
[2021/10/27 14:51] Prokofy Neva: if you want me to check the modified apartment underneath, I need you to remove the second copy and give me back permissions again to try to change to just that colour
[2021/10/27 14:51] Prokofy Neva: you can't delete my objects or return group set objects or people would delete or return rental boxes and lots of things, there is no such power given out
[2021/10/27 14:52] Utopia: You don't have to change the color anymore, that's fine
[2021/10/27 14:52] Prokofy Neva: ok but if you rezzed a new copy, I need to delete the old copy I spent hours working on so that you don't have all this flickering texture
[2021/10/27 14:53] Prokofy Neva: and also so that you don't use up 202 of your prims on a 2nd copy. But I can't see it to delete it with the other copy on it
[2021/10/27 14:53] Prokofy Neva: so you have to raise your second copy up
[2021/10/27 14:53] Utopia: I just wanted to introduce the teleport to the house, I don't have stairs;)
[2021/10/27 14:54] Prokofy Neva: well look Utopia, you're proving to me again that when you do one favour for people, they endlessly ask you more and more and never even give you a 25L tip which is what I usually ask for small jobs, although what I did yesterday was spend hours
[2021/10/27 14:54] Prokofy Neva: so once again, you have to lift up your new copy so I can delete the old copy
[2021/10/27 14:54] Utopia: what am I supposed to do now, in order
[2021/10/27 14:54] Prokofy Neva: since you decided to live with the house as is for the sake of the blue walls apparently
[2021/10/27 14:54] Prokofy Neva: although they could likely be put back, I'd have to see
[2021/10/27 14:55] Prokofy Neva: just pick up the new copy you put down so I can see the old copy I modified
[2021/10/27 14:56] Utopia: You are a very strange man, I don't want to do anything anymore, I just want to stop the teleport, I would be very grateful and you really helped me yesterday
[2021/10/27 14:57] Prokofy Neva: I'm hardly strange after helping you modify your houses many ways for hours yesterday? Are you serious? If you want to live with your house as is, and don't care to have two copies flickering which is annoying, and using up 202 more prims, that's your call
[2021/10/27 14:57] Prokofy Neva: as I said, my extra sandbox does not count, you can have that without counting, but if you don't want it, I can remove it
[2021/10/27 14:57] Prokofy Neva: as for teleporters on your floors, I can't do that right now
[2021/10/27 14:58] Prokofy Neva: if you want the teleporter moved from the platform into your house for some reason, I will put it on share, you can move it where you like it
[2021/10/27 14:59] Utopia: this apartment of yours is really beautiful but I paid too much for my one and therefore please take your apartment. Two apartments look a bit strange;)
[2021/10/27 15:00] Prokofy Neva: well in a skybox you don't look outside. And it could also be put underneath the platform if you do look outside, and a teleporter put between them, which is really what should have been done in the first place
[2021/10/27 15:01] Utopia: great with this teleport, how can i move it?
[2021/10/27 15:01] Prokofy Neva: you right click and move it like you move anything, it's put on share
[2021/10/27 15:01] Utopia: moment
[2021/10/27 15:04] Utopia: the teleport doesn't work and I have one more problem. I had to delete this apartment, because in one of the rooms there was a changed wallpaper and now this room that you made yesterday so that the power to enter there does not work
[2021/10/27 15:04] Prokofy Neva: well that was fixable but anyway, I'm done trying to fix your $7800 apartment, contact its maker
[2021/10/27 15:04] Prokofy Neva: you need to make sure you have the group tag on to be able to move an object in share
[2021/10/27 15:05] Prokofy Neva: you just right click and move it like anything
[2021/10/27 15:05] Prokofy Neva: I put it in the hallway, just come closer to it and move it
[2021/10/27 15:07] Utopia: If you can see me where I'm standing, that's where I wanted to put this teleport
[2021/10/27 15:07] Prokofy Neva: then you will move it there, it's on share
[2021/10/27 15:08] Prokofy Neva: right click, drag it, you need to learn simple things like that
[2021/10/27 15:09] Prokofy Neva: ok now there is the apartment underneath so you can't see it, and it is the location "Orangerie". So when you want to go there, you will just click on the teleporter and select "Orangerie". The end!
[2021/10/27 15:10] Prokofy Neva: it does not count on your count
[2021/10/27 15:10] Prokofy Neva: I have to go help some other customers now
[2021/10/27 15:10] Utopia: I would like to thank you again for everything and I hope that I will live well here
[2021/10/27 15:11] Prokofy Neva: I know that you will refund by tomorrow because I have vast experience in my 17 years of working as a landlord, and every once in awhile I test the idea of whether people will endlessly keep asking impossible things forever, and the answer is: yes they will lol.
[2021/10/27 15:13] Prokofy Neva: there is a simple lesson you need to learn which hopefully you will learn: if you unlock mesh houses with physics shells, you risk parts of it changing in unexpected ways. But those changed parts are fixable usually by merely checking or unchecking "full bright" on the edit menu, that's all. But I'm afraid I'm done experimenting on your ridiculously expensive house, you really should not fear contacting the merchant with complaints after paying that huge sum, write in any language, they should translate, not you, for those prices.
[2021/10/27 15:15] Utopia: I don't understand what's going on with the money, what am I supposed to return by tomorrow? I've already paid my rent for the whole week. Maybe I missed something
[2021/10/27 15:19] Prokofy Neva: well use Google translate, you don't have to do anything. What I'm saying is that I find it very common when I do a lot of custom work for customers that they simply refund the next day, they cannot be made happy. But if you are happy then you stay, it's up to you. Fortunately my rentals are refundable.
[2021/10/27 15:20] Utopia: unfortunately the teleport does not work, I landed on the roof of your apartment
[2021/10/27 15:23] Utopia: that's how it is in SL, that people often change their place, you are a bit strange today, I have to be very cool not to explode;)
[2021/10/27 15:23] Utopia: what will happen with this teleport ?
[2021/10/27 15:30] Utopia: I don't know if you are doing anything to me on purpose today, I have never done anything to you. Teleport does not work as it should when I'm in another place and want to my apartment, it loads on the roof of your apartment
[2021/10/27 15:52] Prokofy Neva: You have got to be kidding me. My behaviour is completely normal. The normal reaction anyone would have after doing hours of work which was then deleted. But I'm used to it. Nothing has been done to you deliberately. The teleporter was put on the floor normally. I don't know why you are landing on the roof, it makes no sense, but likely once again it is due to the physics shell on your expensive apartment. So the solution is simple, to move it farther down, which I will do.
[2021/10/27 15:52] Prokofy Neva: The physics shell displaces avatars
[2021/10/27 15:52] Prokofy Neva: also I can't be sure you moved the teleporter that goes in your apartment to the right place? Did you?
[2021/10/27 15:53] Prokofy Neva: I just tested your teleporters and everything worked normally for me
[2021/10/27 15:54] Utopia: maybe you can have a cup of tea :)
[2021/10/27 15:54] Prokofy Neva: I think that's what you need hon, I'm fine, and everything is working for me
[2021/10/27 15:55] Prokofy Neva: I am moving the apartment down further in case your AO or physics are interfering for you
[2021/10/27 15:55] Prokofy Neva: Honest to God, it is working absolutely normally
[2021/10/27 15:56] Prokofy Neva: call one of your friends to test it if you don't believe me
[2021/10/27 15:56] Prokofy Neva: there is no landingn on a roof or anything
[2021/10/27 15:56] Prokofy Neva: so it's on your side, perhaps an AO or something else. So I moved the apartment down annd away from your ridiculously expensive apartment.

the teleport works only when I am on another island and want to return to the apartment, unfortunately I am on this platform and not at the house. I don't have stairs and that's a bit of a problem. I don't want to disturb you, you have a lot of work to organize it all
[16:05] Prokofy Neva: Utopia
[16:05] Utopia: ?
[16:06] Prokofy Neva: if you mean "teleport the function" and not "teleporter the item," that's for YOU to change
[16:06] Prokofy Neva: you stand on your land where you always want to land to come back home, and you click "set landing"
[16:07] Prokofy Neva: the rental is set to land on the ground and use the teleporter; if you want to land in the sky in your house or any place, you yourself set the landing point after you have changed to resident tag to use that power
[16:07] Prokofy Neva: you need to learn how to change your title so you can access the powers of ban, media, set landing, change parcel name etc
[16:07] Prokofy Neva: if you didn't read the cards I sent you, understood, I will send a picture
[16:08] Prokofy Neva: as for stairs, I cannot help you. If your skybox has two floors, ask the maker whether he has stairs or an elevator
[16:08] Inventory item 'NEW How to Change Group Title' offered
[16:09] Utopia: Thank you, I will try to do it, I have one more question if I can put my apartment in the dome instead of a platform, then I have the option to put a view outside the window or just the stars;)
[16:10] Prokofy Neva: 1) change your group title from Inquilix to Residente on the group mennu 2) stand inside your house where you always want to return 3) click on the "i" at the top of the screen nto get the "about land menu" and tab over to "options" and click "set" at landing point
[16:11] Prokofy Neva: if all this seems hard, understood, but you are living in cheap Mainland rentals for 0.7/prim, on self-service. So you have to learn how to do a few things to serve yourself.
[16:11] Prokofy Neva: If at any time you are unhappy with your self service, you refund
[16:12] Prokofy Neva: As for a dome, that will be 25L to add to your house. It has no city scapes, only skies. It is very hard to put panoramas on to a large, curved dome as I explained yesterday. I certainly won't spend the time making one. Look on the MP to see if someone has made one for sale

[16:25] Utopia: I will be looking, maybe I will find a suitable one, now I am in my second house;) I also like it very much. It's hard for me to give it up, I don't know if it was a good decision with this apartment, so much greenery here on the island.

[16:28] Utopia: maybe you know how much your own island costs

[16:43] Utopia:  https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/TD-Star-Dome-Texture-Changing-Dome/2607174

[16:43] Utopia: will this dome be appropriate?

[16:51] Prokofy Neva: It's cheap and not high quality and only has skies with stars

[16:52] Prokofy Neva: it does not have cityscapes

[16:52] Prokofy Neva: you can't just stick a cityscape picture into it and have it work, although it's on mod, you could try

[16:54] Prokofy Neva: Utopia, you are not on an island. You are on the Mainland. It is contiguous. Go downstairs and look at it, it has other sims adjacent to it

[16:55] Prokofy Neva: it cost me $32,000 Lindens because it was abandoned and no one wants it. It was a stark pink mountain that cost tens of thousands of Linden dollars to decorate and put houses. Learn the value of things. If you have the money to buy a $7850 skybox, then move to an island where the Concierge will do everything for you, but then the rent is way higher.

[16:57] Prokofy Neva: To buy an island from Linden Lab you need US $349 set-up fee and tier $229 per month after that, but Mainland is only $1/m or less and only  $175 tier per month.

[16:58] Utopia: I know that I am on the continent, in my first years in SL I visited islands and continents. I thought you might be concerned about how much your own island might cost, I mean the whole island but no problem if you don't.
I will be looking for a suitable dome, maybe I will be lucky and I will find a suitable one.
[17:01] Utopia: In my opinion, this is a dirty rip-off, such prices
[17:07] Utopia: Ich habe eine passende Kuppel gefunden
[17:07] Utopia: https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/AT-Nature-Sky-Dome-2-Sizes-64x64-100x100-meters-Panorama-SkyGlobe/4751089
[17:12] Utopia: https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/AT-City-Sky-Dome-2-Sizes-64x64-100x100-meters-Panorama-SkyGlobe/5156202
[17:20] Prokofy Neva: No, it's not a dirty rip-off because there is no socialist paradise willing to pay for all this, it costs money, it costs servers and labour, and it's actually quite a reasonable price for what it is

[17:21] Prokofy Neva: You are on a lot that is roughly 64 x 64 paying 0.7/prim, $700/1000 prims. You cannot put a 100 x 100 dome meant to cover an entire sim, not just one parcel, on your rental, no
[17:22] Prokofy Neva: I do not have entire sims to rent, you can go look for them, they cost a lot more
[17:22] Prokofy Neva: try to learn to be happy with what you are willing to pay for
[17:23] Prokofy Neva: the largest dome that you can reasonably put on your parcel is 52 x 52 perhaps although 64 x 64 is ok because it can overlap a little but certainly nothing 100 x 100, that's not on
[17:23] Prokofy Neva: I have to go now

Resident Mainland Communities Set the Example for the Lindens of What Mainland Could Be (Not the Other Way Around)

Chin Rey's now-deleted community in Langdale. Photo by Yuumo Ichibara

By Prokofy Neva Virtualator

From this thread in the forums.

Therese Tammas: I have this view as well. Bellisseria is Mainland- an example set forth by Linden Labs of what Mainland could be.

I'd really have to beg to differ. I think it's exactly the other way around. For years on end, various groups of us formed communities and STRUGGLED to get the Lindens have some law and order on their grid. Remember, the world was built as an afterthought to test Philips original VR googles rig -- kind of like Elon Musk's world now is an afterthought to test the self-drive cars and the AI.

There were quite a few of us who made communities FIRST and tried to get the Lindens first to fix their ostensibly Linden-zoned sims, then battled the abuses on all those early forms of Linden zoning, long before there were any Linden Homes or Bellisseria, which came in 2019. Scroll above and look at the photos of Coniston. Who had nice houses on nice commons on the waterfront, years and years before Belli? Chin Rey. So I think that has to be remembered.

So the history went like this:

o various early communities like Lusk or those around Nephthalaine Protagonist who built the Cathedral in Mocha or other colour sims groups made builds

o the group tools were utterly inadequate for running projects that weren't hippie communes -- in the original iteration, the roles were not differentiated enough, so that all income went equally to all members; all member could trigger an "officer recall' and vote officers out of the group who were originally elected with voting tools -- these have since been removed, but not before I triggered one of the last group votes in SL in the Concierge Group of 8,000 people regarding whether people approved or disapproved of various LL policies at the time.

Such group voting tools might seem like democratic socialist heaven, but it wasn't, as griefers used it to get people off their land they had purchased and paid tier on -- while you were subject to officer recall, all your powers were frozen, and others could seize the land. I explained this in my famous "pizza guy blog" which helped persuade Cory Ondrejka, then CTO and Philip finally to change the group tools -- "officer recall" is long gone.

There were long torturous meetings with various political factions -- I remember Lusk was upset that owners weren't perfectly equal, i.e. there would always have to be first one owner, who then made others owners in a cascade. Ultimately the groups were reformed and re-coded but not without bugs, i.e. the fact that any object on "share" can be returned even by people without the power to return group-set object - which Lindens viewed as a feature.

o In Brown and Boardman, Ingrid and Barnesworth Anubis made nice craftsman style homes and sold them or rent them and persuaded Jack Linden to spruce up those Linden-run sims which were the first version of a "Linden home" -- no terraforming was allowed and no skyboxes, it's in G. Jack Linden re-built the marketplace and took out some of the dead pine trees but left various things like the early Ryan Linden home which is more like a merchant shelf than a home.

o Around this time I bought Ravenglass on the auction, divided up parcels to sell, spaced around a 10,000 m common. I commissioned houses to be built by Barnesworth, Lordfly and others. People bought the land, ditched the houses, and put up security orbs and laggy junk. Meanwhile, a neighbour put a giant King Kong on the waterfront in the next sim and Starax's statue of an eagle grabbing a fisherman right at the Ravenglass waterfront -- because the Lindens didn't really try to cut up these sims to leave coherent waterways and avoid griefing vectors. This triggered the famous "I don't get it and they sure don't" thread by a neighbour of Ravenglass who felt everyone should be free to make a creative sandbox out of their sim, and not have to please people who wanted little houses with picket fences. I felt there should be some basic decency and that sandboxes could be in the sky or put in various distinct areas without paralyzing the view everywhere.

Eventually I ended up buying all this land in Ravenglass back, but not before a giant refrigerator and a Soviet Palace of Congresses were also staged on the waterfront by various griefing factions.

o the Lindens installed Schermerhorn and other section which were more elaborate than Brown and Boardman but because building was open, even with more streets and parks to set the tone, it went to the dogs, and even so was very expensive.

o Somewhere in here, Chin Rey builds her Coniston and other communities and there are other people who building communities like Brian Engel who left in a huff all of a sudden some years ago when he said Lindens "took away his special powers," something I never understood, as his rentals seemed like ordinary rentals without any special features, although perhaps he was given the power to kick from the whole sim (as on an island) rather than parcel by parcel (as on Mainland normally).

o then Linden built Nautilus, with plenty of easements, interesting old builds, the Magellan legend, a depot with clothing , textures and props for free from the Moles, etc. This became hugely expensive, and still is, but many (like me) were forced out by the propensity of some people to build giant towers, which obstructed the views of those around. I always thought Nautilus was really the Moles' finest work in many ways, but it was hard to keep nice.

o There was Bay City -- but not before many early builders like Lordfly, Traxx and others built huge towers and a city sim look (Ingrid's store was there) in the city sims. THAT came first. THEN the Mole-built Bay City and that community that sprang up there.

o And I could cite more examples, but all through this period a group of us Mainland landlords were fighting ad farming, extortionists, griefers, the Bush Guy, and other things meant to annoy and make the land unlivable. It took four years to get the ad farm policy from Jack Linden (then in charge of Concierge with a total of VP).

So let's not forget the struggles of everyone who came BEFORE Bellisseria, BEFORE Linden homes even before the first controlled Linden sims after Boardman/Brown -- which a group of people took care of and tried to get the Lindens to make better. I remember they had these laggy, annoying mailboxes at each house with this ugly green SL logo looming out in a zoom texture thing -- FINALLY they ditched that. 

So if anything, you could say that all kinds of people from Ingrid to Osprey Therein to me and Timo Daehlie made communities and tried to get the Lindens to put in group and land policies to make those communities possible AND THEN they began making their Linden homes and taking away business from some of us.

Let's make sure the record is straight here.

WE set forth the good example of what the Mainland could be that the Lindens *finally conceded* and then copied and built their own.

How to Play the Gatcha Game in the Remaining 8 Days? Carefully...

The glorious Chakra set from 3rd_Eye Perceptions

By Prokofy Neva, Virtualtor

So there are eight days left to play the gatcha machines of Second Life, also spelled as gacha, from the original Japanese gum ball machine called gachapon.

First, if you or a loved one is suffering from gatcha addiction, come to Shaman's Hut Gacha Addiction Treatment Center which has a helpful tutorial on buying and selling gatchas still relevant after the ban, and various pays you can take to address the issue, along with many prizes along the way. Now there's a BBB stamp as well. I have run this site since 2016.

To cut straight to the point for the tl;dr crowd, MOST merchants have "Goodbye Gatcha" or "Gatcha Eclipse" or "Gatchapocalypse" type sales you can find on seraphimsl.com or in various group notices or at their stores. MOST have put out even their old machines for 25L or 30L a pull. 

But some refuse to do this, and they should be called out, with some commentary:

STILL 75L PULL BUT WORTH IT -- OR NOT

o Half-Deer - has even raised some to 75L which were 50L before the announcement. Since Half-Deer makes many sets and no-transfer items and doesn't appear to make their living from gatchas only, this seems half-assed. Are they in a poor country? No idea. I don't have *quite* the supply of two-headed cats that I need for my quest, but so few find that particular challenge that I will get by, truly I will, and make a two-headed cat myself if I have to at those pull prices. H-D has a ton of little creatures, some on squirmy and not animesh, which I hate, and stuff that I did buy once, like the Carved Animals but which I find don't sell or at least I personally don't need them.

o The Looking Glass - 75L. TLG makes mainly non-transfer sets and gatchas are occasional and seemed a side-line. There are some very high-quality items here that are worth 75L -- the Torch Singer, for example. You still can't win the rares as she sets the chance low evidently, but everything is good in the set, i.e. the lanterns.

o Thor - Thor lives in a poor, COVID-riven country and makes his living almost exclusively from gatchas. So go pay the 50L or more, they are worth it, and have high re-sale value I have found. He has matter-of-factly, without complaint, changed to a mode of $1700 packs with individual items on $75 or $125 or $250 that used to be the "commons" (see his booth at Shiny Shabby). That's fine, and the price is right, but they are on no-transfer. I hope he will take the cue from Silas Merlin, also at Shiny Shabby, Jinx and others putting them on TRANSFER but of course each to his own. At Shiny you can see the new types of gatcha-like vendors approved by Lindens -- the "conveyor" style, which puts items randomly, but you can see them before you buy them, and thus the rare is only randomly available. And then the key-vendor, for lack of a better term, a gatcha-style key where you click on the individual item pictured -- as you would at a yard sale using this method -- and just buy that one thing. All the more reason to HASTEN to Thor's very fine gatchas and pull and pull, as pretty much everything is good (well, ochre mugs are unsellable ok) and it is easy to get the rares. Why? Because even if he fatpacks them, chances are he can't take the time to do ALL of them, some are likely to be retired and his items will not be on transfer -- they are not now, in the new dispensation, and as far as I can tell, he will not be changing this. PS Thor has a few gatchas for 69L on the Cosmopolitan sim so as you can see, he is not in "25L Tuesday" with that price.

o Beetlebones - Perhaps you never heard of this fine artist who has only a few gatchas and in a temporary store that is disappearing soon so hurry. I very rarely collect animals. They are cartoony or overcute. I make exceptions (Silas Merlin makes fine sculptures, garden statues and animals that may be "cartoony," but have this kind of soulfulness and angst in their eyes that rescues them from kitsch). Beetlebones are not high prim and are animated and not overly cute but dignified. Like all of Jinx. They are still 50L and 100L and worth it; some animals are avatars.

o Neva (Rekt) still has some 50 and 75L gatchas although some are set to 25L. Neva as the Russian-river name indicates is in Russia, a poor, COVID-ridden country where many of my friends and inlaws live. So I would tend to buy from Neva although I personally can't take the overdone wrinkled carpet-cracked leather boots-stacked cups-macaron thing too much. I actually don't recall ever seeing dacha scenes like that even in Peredelkino but apparently I didn't go to the right dachas. I tried to get the Soulcatcher guy screaming out of the briefcase and failed, I have one copy I think somewhere. Most of these have high re-sale value.

o Sorgo - I don't know where Arscene Dubrovna is based. A Muslim country, judging from his many gatchas and clothing items with the Islamic theme? Perhaps Bosnia or Spain or somewhere with Muslims but in Europe (lots of euros in the gatchas and his name is sort of Yugoslav). Who know! Chances are HIGH that he is in a poor. COVID-ridden country so I think he deserves support. His store was closed for a long time and I IM'd him to make sure if he was alright, he assured me he was, and was revamping his store. It's still under construction but you can find the high-priced gatchas in the back. I think they are among the most unique and high-quality gatchas of SL, of the "golden story-telling age". They are weird, and I like weird. He has the "Grand Budapest Hotel" as a gatcha, and other things of the sort of heist and RL honcho male or cult collector theme. I think these are worth it. Resale value seems to be good although certain things crash in price as commons (like the towels from the Kebab set).

o E.V.E. I fear Noke Yuitza died in real life. Why? He has not logged on since 3/29/20, more than a year ago. I happened to talk to him that day in his store, and he told me he was going to visit his mother in a small Spanish town because she had COVID. He has had to go to that place in the past and it had very poor Internet service. Spain is a country with poverty and difficulties after 30 years of fascism. His colleagues at E.V.E. have somehow kept the store open and must pay the tier obviously. Both they and others who were close friends of Noke say they do not know where he is and fear the worst. We can find his real name and look him up and I have tried in El Pais and obituaries and such, but it is hard and not everything is recorded. There is no new content. The gatchas are on 50L. I don't know how long they can keep this store going. Many left the group. So get these amazing gatchas now, as they are unlikely to appear ever again. I don't know how long this store will remain open, so get anything else you like as well. Don't be frustrated by the annoying vendors there and think they don't work. They are the kind you have to first click, get a menu, then select "buy in Lindens" and push through to actually buy. 

I don't like things in chains and a little sparkle goes a long way with me, but even while he was active inworld, I under-appreciated Noke's work at first. Then I realized he was a great artist. Sadly his gatcha from a Steam event last year never got repacked in the store, and it's my absolute favourite gatcha of all time, the one with a story (like all the great gatchas) of a cat, Gatto.  I have it out in the tidal pools in Atis in Shaman's Bluff.

I can't think of any other 75L or higher pull merchants to call out as good or bad atm so stay tuned as I will likely find more. But then there's this...

25L PULL AND STILL CAN'T GET THE DAMN RARE

Then there are those who have put their gatchas FINALLY on 25L, after waiting two weeks while you hurried to pull for 75L thinking they would not do this (sigh), but you still cannot get the rares, just like you couldn't all these nearly 10 years they have been in existence. 

o anc - anc is notoriously customer-service-free and silent, possibly due to lack of English, but he has nice stuff plus he is on the Mainland, always a plus for me because I will favour Mainland merchants over island any day. He has finally moved his gatchas to 25L. You will never, ever win the Snow-white Mermaid Dog or whatever the hell that thing is. Trust me, I have tried for the five or more years this gatcha has been in existence. anc has a fuck-you final gatcha with shit-brown rugs (ok, guess they are sepia-toned) and a...gachapon machine as the rare. Actually two, one with a green-leaf garland. You will never ever get the green-leaf garland -- see above, Mermaid Dog. The commons to Mermaid dog sell really well, which I totally marvel at, because I didn't know there were hundreds of people who needed a "navy" Mermaid Dog (hundreds, being what you needed to put up with on your way to Mermaid Dog Prince with his fur stole). If you are trying to get the rare octopus platter or whatever that gorgeous elaborate sushi thing is, well, don't. It took me many years. To be sure, I was casual, only pulling a dozen times if he happened to have a Fifty-Linden Friday sale, where, along with the rest of the hapless throngs, while we tried to FIND his FLF offer (which he always hid well), I would pull. It is not possible. Go on the MP. if it is not on the MP, do without. I was lucky that one time. You will not be.

o ionic/Spell - I thought perhaps I was the only one boycotting ionic for years after spending an amazing $12,000 or $26,000 to get the rares in past years which I blogged about. This was to prove just how impossible it is, because yes I KNOW about the law of chance and the law of averages. And I totally get that you really might never get a rare even set at 25%. Except...that is unlikely, when you have pulled $25,000 worth of times, and that has to be because the rares were set at 1% or 5%. It's statistically likely. But it wasn't the crazy lack of chance for getting a rare at ionic, known to all. It was because that one rare time I got the rare house (a motel), you couldn't walk into it, although it was meant to be walkable since the rest of the set were the props for it. So silly me, I should have known better, I wrote a few times and then sent her the item, thinking she won't fix it and send me one until I send back the rare. Well, guess what, I never heard from her. So that was the end of my ionic phase of SL. I once had a house in Winnipeg entirely made up of ionic items, some repurposed so they would fit into rooms where they were not intended. No one ever rented it so I took it down.

I then discover recently that everyone hates ionic and thinks that lakua Arriaga, named for a village in Spain and evidently in Spain with her partner Hideki, is a total bitch. I ordinarily have a lot of time for poor designers in poor countries making their living in SL (and that can include Texas), I think they deserve support. In her case, I think she has been coining money from gatchas long enough that I don't have to, but more to the point, it's not just the customer service which is lacking. She had various events she ran including Chapter Four which we all loved, which were ended because the other merchants simply could not get along with her. So that's that. If you are a high-strung creator who thinks you are above everyone, fine, then hire a clerk to deal with the public so you don't have to, you should be able to afford that with your earnings. That's what Apple Fall does? And lots of others who can afford it less.

If you thought oh, NOW I will get the dragon eggs or the rock collection or the Córdoba Portal Into Nothingness or whatever the hell these rares are, fugeddaboutit as they say in Brooklyn. You will not. If you think, oh, now that it's only 30 and not 60 or 75 as normally, let me try, let me suggest that you still have that one tiny chance you always did with ionic, so after maybe 3000 worth of pulls, or 10000, you might get a rare or two. It may not be the rare you want.  Save your Lindens for better gatchas made by better people.

o Hideki is marginally better, and I see he is putting his items to Saturday Sale for 75L so there is in one sense no point in playing his gatchas now even for 25L. He is mainly all about gatchas, with some buildings and other no-transfer single items, but no question that his living game from gatchas. If you think NOW I will win his houses finally -- nope, you won't. I have tried. I don't want to spend more than a certain amount I set aside so you can go try -- good luck. 

* * *

Let's leave aside the hideous forums thread, which I tried to oppose and suffered first a 3-day, then a 5-day ban, first for "spamming" (opening a second thread with 10 demands to the Lindens, 2 of which they have now fulfilled, surely not because of my post) and second, for "personal attacks," which, following the usual Linden pattern amounted to pushbacks on the personal attacks on me, which for the most part were left to stand, or, if removed by zealous mods, did not lead to bans for those august personages.

Let's have a conversation with the majority of people in SL who aren't on the forums or fear to post there, and who do play gatcha machines, or have received them as gifts, or buy them at yardsales. My polls show that only a small percentage of people have not heard of gatchas or don't play them. 

WHAT SHOULD WE BE DOING NOW?

For various reasons, which I'll put in another post, I myself have not played gatchas much this year, although I don't oppose them or have some animus toward them as a style of manufacturing or vending. It's clear that the era of the great "story-telling gatchas", as I call them, has long been over, and the quality has gone down as the pull price has gone up. It's instructive to me that two friends of mine who seriously played the Marketplace to make up sets and sell especially retired sets for huge figures like $50,000, seemed to lose interest in the last year and even left SL, to go to real life or other games to do their buying and selling. Some big-time merchants like Apple Fall stopped making gatchas completely 2-3 years ago and took their machines out of their stores; Zaara made them in 2012 and perhaps a few years after but ceased making them; certain others have a few gatchas and never really got into them as a "thing". Are their gatchas now "worth more"? 

Most of the regular makers of gatchas have told their customers of one policy or another. They may be retiring all the gatchas completely (Nomad) and selling them for 25L (Nomad); or you can buy them for the same price in their shops now, 50-75, and they seem likely to move to a fatpack system (Thor). Some waited a few weeks to move to the 25L or 30L price point (like Petrichor) and it's not exactly clear to me anyway whether they are making fatpacks of ALL these sets or retiring them all -- after all, Petrichor seems to make mainly clothing and jewelry and accessories, not gatchas.

One principle I find worthy as a reason is to support the maker, whose livelihood depends on it. 

Raindale, unlike less transparent gatcha makers (the majority) has honestly told us in her group notices that she makes a living primarily of gatchas, and they are now 25L in her shop. Some she will retire, some not -- it's a lot of trouble to re-package all these individual items, check their permissions and re-offer them. Raindale (keiralans) sounded very upset at first (she is in a COVID-ravaged authoritarian country) and pondered whether she would have to stop selling and maybe take her talents elsewhere on the Internet, although we know competition is fierce.

Example: I have a Shutterstock account, and I recently canceled the cheaper $29/mo plan which they FORCE you to take if you accept the plan after the free offer -- you cannot cancel it without paying a penalty which they will charge your card or seek endlessly in debt collection, I imagine, I didn't wait to find out, and kept the account, but found that as an amateur, I couldn't use all those textures. SO now I get the more expensive $49 one-time 5 picture version occasionally if I absolutely can't find something on Wild Textures or hey, on the Marketplace for far less. If I want a deer theme texture, I pick one that a) is by a Russian or designer in a poor country making their living this way or b) who have never sold that texture so I will be the first (and possibly only one) buying it. I know people who try to make a living on Shutterstock and other big sites, but it is extremely hard because of the huge percent the platform providers gouge out of their prosumers.

I can second  the concern of gatcha creators about the re-packing. I have my one and only successful gatcha (my first gatcha machine attempt had only one customer in an entire year and I am so glad he won the rare Shaman's staff of that era). It's called Dinkie Tea Ceremony and has 18 pieces with 9 animations. WHAT was I thinking. It was goddamn crazy. I spent days on end making that thing. The sales paid for the textures and my booth donation or fee and events, then I had a tiny bit left over to make the next thing -- except I was too exhausted.  When Mieville had a Last Chance Gatcha Sale, I couldn't find the machine I had out at Fantasy Faire and elsewhere, and stuffing a new machine was TOO MUCH WORK as I have the fatpack for sale for $199. I could probably wrest some 10L sales out of my fellow Mievvillians but why? They can either get the fatpack or I will have some of the items for 10L separately, and yes, on transfer. I am merciful that way -- mod and transfer is an absolute must, especially if you are an amateur. Let someone mod it or sell it when they are sick of it.

Jinx - She hasn't said her living relies on gatchas but I think surely it must. She does make non-transfer items but her gatchas are very popular. She has a generous Lucky Chair with some of them but it's worth playing the machines. Other than Silas Merlin and Alia Baroque, she is the only merchant I have heard say that she will offer items on transfer, as she knows how important reselling and gifting is to her customers. Bravo!

libertine/Fallen Gods - Alia makes his living from SL, and to be sure, has many skins and loungers and such that are on non-transfer to make up his revenue, but surely his surprise egg gatchas are among his steadiest streams of revenue. I know I haven't managed to collect them all, even though he has always generously offered them at 25L after their first year at various weekend or event sales. He is, as noted, one of the few to blog about how important the resale is to his customers and he wants to find a way to continue it. Not merely resale but gift-giving as his eggs and various special Valentine etc. items are perfect gifts. He always has the freebie Christmas tree every year.  I have an awful lot of his eggs and they aren't well sorted. I guess I figure after 9/1 I will still be able to get them in some form, if no other way, at Fantasy Faire in the auctions. Even so, I'll get still MORE as they are good re-sale items and maybe I will make up some rares and sets I didn't have.

SO HOW SHOULD WE PLAY THIS GAME?

This is where I have really been stumped the last week. I set aside about 10,000L to make the last gatcha purchases. Where are they best spent? And what is the purpose to play them? I have several thousands left. But I am out of ideas. 

FULL PERM MERCHANTS BAR FREEBIES, HUNT GIFTS OR LOW-COST RESALE

In my case, I use gatchas a group gifts. Why? Because even if my own creations are something people want for free or very low cost, and they are sometimes, the people who sell mesh models on all perms, or textures on all perms often have a TOS: you cannot offer your creation made from their waves for free or as a hunt prize and you must sell it for a minimum of X. Sometimes this is only 50L but other times it is a formula based on what the full perm item cost. Needless to say, this kills off most items I make as freebies or group gifts. Will these owners finally change this self-defeating policy after the end of gatchas, when (presumably) more people will begin to make and sell things from full perms? Likely not, as the same creator-fascism and fear of copybotting and abuse will drive them, as they imagine more people will flood into full perm purchases without gatchas to resell. How can we change this -- again -- self-defeating policy? We can't except not buying from those creators. They will hardly notice as 100 more will be found to replace you.

I totally get the fear of selling full-perm items, that they will be distributed for free "as is", an obvious problem. But most people obey the TOS as they want to stay in business and not be banned or get AR'd. Because these creators do "secret shopper" checks and AR or DMCA take-down on those who violate their TOS and the Lindens do honour these ARs and it does work, especially if they are willing to give their RL name and address on a form. Some are not, which is why they feel like DMCA "doesn't work". They don't want to take the steps necessary that you need to take in a real business. They want everything to remain unicorn fairly land and for the Lindens to do all the policing. The Lindens are limited in their ability to pre-police and respond to abuse reports, and not always. I personally have filed protests on behalf of my builders who were copybotted by griefers and seen the content and accounts removed. Everyone has a story. But if this was the problem feared that creators hope to address by ever more convoluted and fierce TOS warnings, there would not be SO MANY full perm sellers. There are A LOT because they have found this is a really great market. Lots of people like me want to make stuff, but are poor in the "eye see, hand do" department and so we can be creative because others before us were willing to sell their creations full perm so we can make up stuff like a Shaman's Staff with a deer head, moon, berries, feathers, music etc. all from various creators.

I THINK I HAVE ENOUGH?

For now, I need gatchas a group gifts, quest prizes, gift givers at all my many venues, welcome gifts, etc. etc and I run through a lot of these in a day. While my quests are no MadPea games, there is a trickle of people every day getting the prizes and buying 10L gatchas scattered throughout the areas. While the majority of  SL Public Land Preserve locations aren't in Destinations and likely never will be (except for St. Paul's Church in Grace, put in without me requesting it and St. Thaddeus Monastery in Tethys, put in when I applied during Halloween some years ago). I have had requests to be in Destinations turned down every other time, so I have stopped requesting. I am never going to make the highly-stuffed, expertly-meshed and postcard-picture venues that are in Destinations. That's fine, I am still very happy in my Second Life where I don't overstuff as I don't have the prims -- I have to have tenants around or in many venues to help pay for them -- and I am never ashamed to use sculpty or prim items which sometimes are quite beautiful.

I think with my inventory of now 188,000, probably half of which are gatchas, I will have gatchas for years to come? I put some for sale on the MP and they never sell because I don't "work it" and price them lower constantly or front them with pretty pictures which you need to do to succeed on the MP.

I made a folder called "Stock Gatchas" which is only those items I have bought since the Lindens' announcement which I will use as stock in my stores, mainly with the fantasy/elf or housewares theme. It's at 1,414 and I think that's enough. If I give 10 away per week, I have enough for a year. And there's this to consider: everyone else has thousands they will be trying to sell -- forever. The price will come down and I can find more stock to sell at the same or somewhat lower price. To be sure, certain items will be retired, or will go up in price (Apple Fall's Ritual gatcha which surprisingly still has items for only 50L because not everyone wants a sprig of basil). But generally, as with the sionchicken food, I think I'm done. I once stood and bought sionchicken food for $1 until I had about 500 cases or whatever. He has left the world, ceased taking care of his creations, has no more vendors out, and the food will run out and the chickens will die -- I think by the end of this year. I sell the cases for $1600, which is what they cost before he put the $1 sale out (then removed the vendor), and I have no shortage of people buying them as they still like sion chickens. I'm one of the few re-sellers left. My little guys will starve, after giving me one more leg bump of affection, even as they cry that they are starving, bewildered that I am not feeding them, like I always did. It's hard to suffer, but remember I went through about 12 generations of Hope, my chicken who survived a griefer attack (kicking them offworld kills them), and in a secluded location, kept producing new generations (his sons to continue the sacred line were chosen by whether they headed towards the holy toys or not) -- until the last Hope was kicked even from the secret location (constantly moved) and the line ended. C'est la deuxieme vie.

Still, as I thought about how fast this stuff can go (all my 25L gatchas in all my stores have sold out in the current frenzy), I can pull some gatchas now to keep my stock. Here's the ones I decided on:

25-30L PULL NOW, WORTH GETTING THO EVERYONE ELSE IS, TOO

3rd_Eye Perceptions - all pulls are 25L. I already played most of these and already got the sets even in some cases, but they do make nice gifts as pretty surprise eggs and music boxes so I played to fill my "stock".  3rd Eye not only makes her living in SL, she has pictures of her kids in the store, so please get there ASAP and don't let her lose income.

Plaaka - 30L pull. I have played Plaaka til the cows come home in the past to get the full set of the ceramic stuff for my Mooloreum Glass Museum and probably will be selling little ceramic things until the end of time. Is there anything else here? I also won't play the one that has all these Japanese dishes -- I played it once to make up an outdoor kitchen, but I know full well food gatchas never, ever sell. Even if priced to $5 or $10. No one needs a stand-along food item that doesn't dispense, especially. Same with mugs or cups, especially the kind that you can hold but no one can get anything from (not dispensable if righted and placed in world).

So I thought to get some of these sewing and leather items for my quilt room in Crespo, which has AF and other stuff of that type, but this is typical of the reason why people hate gatchas: it's a mixture of things you'd actually like to re-create a scene in your house or venue, but then it is half food items you don't want or can't re-sell. Why put so many food items? Plaaka loves food items, and I totally get that, but since none of them dispense, I myself have to put hydrangea platters or cakes into her hydrangea soup or whatever.

Then it's one of those perverse gatchas where you get VINTAGE SEWING MACHINE RARE five times, though it's the rare. How does that happen? Do people never set these things right? Then I get Miepan Chocolate or some such 5 times I can't use -- then I stop, having gotten "Leather Pieces" only once. Of course here's where the knowledgeable person goes to the MP. But CAN you expect to do that in the future? I think so, as lots of people are playing now, lots of people played before, and there are incrementally increasing gatchas for sale every day on the MP and more inworld.

Black Sand I have a lot of time for Black Sand. They have 30L and 60L sales constantly which is all I buy, with an occasional exception like one of their high-quality couches with many textures. The "Russia Friendly" and "Arc" gatchas have really great decor, at least for my purposes. Black Sand is the only furniture store I have ever seen in my life (surely there are others?) that has ad boards for you to advertise your rentals in, so that after people buy all that furniture, they can come and rent your place (the clickthrough is pretty good there). So I bother with multiple ads there.

Epiphany is still running (it always seems to run forever and maybe is held over) where you should HASTEN to get one of the only two good gatchas there (in my view - of course there are things like Thirst's martial wedding set but I don't buy clothes). One is random matter's Curiosity Cabinet, which is high quality although not very unique as a set, and Black Sand's "Epic Historical Tables" which are truly that, and highly unique and really one of the greatest gatchas of all time -- what the golden "story" era was known for and of which few survive. For once, the $100 pull here is very much worth it, and all 25 times to get the Seed of Inspiration. I realize I don't have "Peru" and "Nigeria," the rare and have to get back there ASAP.

Petrichor - She waited until mid-August to put hers to sale at 25L, ok, they weren't her mainstay but she wants to get the value out of them. They are really finely-made and I keep them, I don't resell them, even with copies, as I have a lot of magic/elf type sites. The rares were a bit hard to get but I did secure some of the main ones.

Attic - Some of her gatchas I don't understand, and those I do have things I don't want in them, nevertheless there were a few I played endlessly to get the props for my Home & Garden Design Contest entry and other stories, namely the Cranes and the Water Spirit and Oxygen ones. These are all wonderful. I finally got the Spirit Flute or whatever to put in my Forgotten Realm/Fantisseria spot.

Nomad - Nomad has a Russian theme often and may even be in Russia, who knows, the sim is called Motherland yuk yuk. They are odd ducks for sure but popular and have good resale value. They are on 25L and AFAIK they will all be completely retired after 8/31. Nomad does not like gatchas and has other no-transfer things he sells, more and more. Can you get the Asylum or the Museum if you try hard? Well, I did, even before the 25L gatchas, with rather many pulls, and then I realized the Asylum is so huge and high prim that to decorate it properly (it has a zillion rooms) I will need a huge amount of prims. I am going to finesse this, just you wait.

Bamse - I never thought to look for a main store for Bamse until now, because he has the Cosmopolitan mini store where he is constantly in half price Tuesday sales and such. Now I discover there isn't a main store, and this is it, see, you take people for granted. And now he will not be putting his more expensive gatchas out for half-price Tuesdays because MACHINES (not the gatcha prizes themelves) are banned as of 9/1. So you better get to Cosmopolitan ASAP and get them now. They are very high quality and have good resale value. I personally don't need a lot of blood-spattered weapons, but many do in SL and that's why they are popular. I prefer the space/architect/criminal ones with more props of more imaginative type.  I think Bamse will fatpack it after 8/31 but not sure. Looking at them now, I realize I don't have a lot of the items and could use some.  If you can put together a full sword set with the rares, it will go for a lot.

zaara - zaara has not made gatchas in years and years but her few gatchas are very popular and you see them at every yard sale.  They are excellent, long-lasting heirlooms. No, "traffic frames" cannot sell even for $0, there are just too many from people playing and trying to get the rares, which seldom drop. The "ethnic lanterns" and "block print" furniture are very good quality. They came down in price as many played these gatchas trying to get the Jodhpur house. I'm proud to say I won two, and bought one on the MP over the years. It's an absolutely perfect house, its props are perfect, and I wish zaara were in the building business. But she prefers to make dresses and some men's Indian style tunics possibly because ultimately they sell better? I have never been able to win that boho hutch to replace the one I broke trying to make the doors open and close better. PS I have lots and lots of "fishermen's pants" and only one of those Beach Huts that no one could ever win. I put it out at the Hot Springs in Juanita. I have never seen anyone go in it. Please sit in it and send me a picture and you get a free week's rent.

tres blah - Tres (whom we remember back from our The Sims Online days in Sim Arts) makes very high-quality gatchas and also generally stopped making them years ago, I guess because clothes sell better. It's fairly hard to get the rare or commons you want, although some do drop. I guess I will have to live with just one Owl Trinket and hope I don't lose the other one. I stocked up on some of these as they are perfect as clutter on nightstands in hotels, B&B etc. Until someone complains, perhaps years from now, "Why are you putting out that old dated gatcha stuff? peaches has new, better clutter". OK. I think tres blah will remain a class for me and others.

 

SO WHAT ABOUT THESE OTHER WILDLY POPULAR GATCHAS?

8f8 -- he has talked about putting them all in fatpacks; he has talked about retiring some, to the howls of customers who, like me, have played them for years and never got the rares because a) he has a HUGE number of items in each set -- you are really spoiled, but chances of a rare are less with more items (because: math) and b) he has the percentage of chance set low. 8f8 seems not to make gatchas any more for the last year or so, and also always seemed to make other whimsical and ethereal and leafy things on no-transfer. My bet is he will fatpack these things that he no doubt made a large amount of his income from, and I gather he made a living here. I think he's in an Asian country but who knows where. His gatcha are currently at 25L and you have no better chance of getting the rares or even one you like than you did before all this. I personally just don't want to pull them any more for that reason, but also because I have a ton of grandma's chickens and storyteller burrow wall lamps when I want the 8 o'clock mints or whatever. I think it's safe to say that 8f8 makes the best gatchas in SL and has the most popular ones. I think he stopped making them for awhile due to real life difficulties/illness/who knows as many themes of crying, sorrow, depression followed in his non-gatcha autumn-leaf and tearful-figures items BUT he is back now with more cheerful things (like his summer island which is wonderful) on no-transfer. He should weather this transition.

Even so, I'm going to officially declare his Artist's house as the most impossibly fucking hard house to decorate in the Metaverse, even -- especially -- if you have all the props. There is no picture of the props assembled, and no example inworld on his sim. You simply can't tell what goes where. There are all these plant boxes/holders yet all the individual plants don't seem to fit in them.

There was one a short-term Destinations place that had some of it, but it was different than I did it, and I think the fact is -- no one knows. I have had tenants for whom I put the items on "share" give up and run away screaming. I myself have left that house unattended, not for rent, paying tier uncompensated, for more than a year. It's too beautiful to take down. Right? I think? So I should finish it...right?  This is the problem with certain gatcha "story" sets that overwhelm you. I could point out that Granny's cottage is much easier, and constantly stays rented. So does "Storyteller's Burrow". I think that's why 8f8, even being Asian, made a bunch of Western-type themes with "Christmas" or French pastry shops or things like that which were wildly popular. PS you can never win the koi pond. DO NOT try to win the koi pond. T-Spot sells a very nice set of full perm ponds that are really nice (despite some ignorant bad reviews) so buy those and make your own koi pond.

I am now drawing a blank, so I asked some friends and tenants who are very serious gatcha resellers of the things I care about (furniture, props, fantasy i.e. not clothing, hair, shoes etc) what they suggest. Here is the list:

vespertine - I already have most of vespertine having played it over the ages. I think you can never have enough of those little green tables and "Tiny House" items that re-sell well at least in my limited experience.

Second Spaces - if you do kitchens, and many do, this is your gatcha, but I don't like the photo-real style myself

Six o'clock - lots of good furniture sets

zerkalo - zerkalo was my very first gatcha ("Coffee on the Porch") and I have a lot already, especially as they are often in weekend sales. The original creator Daniel died in RL, which means you will never see again some of these particularly exquisite items -- lacy doilies on tables, Russian samovars (he was Russian) all kinds of nice stuff. His widow has bravely  continued the business (what a devastating loss to go through, a partner dying of brain cancer so young) and has made her own very nice items and has brought in other designers I gather. In any event, all of zerkalo, past and present is a good buy, especially past simply because Daniel is gone.

Sway's - I haven't bought anything from Sway's in years I guess because a certain kind of 30L sale item you get enough of, quickly, and they often repeat. I like the non-gatcha Sways more than gatcha personally but there are many nice things.

trompe - I bet trompe is telling everyone she doesn't depend on gatchas but is nervously looking at her bank statements. I have numerous tenants who put out her cheap gatcha houses and not her more expensive no-transfer cabins, which have gotten more and more strange and ugly as time goes on, although no doubt the Campbell Coast set thinks they are "edgy" or something (while likely finding them to violate the theme there ROFL). I boycott trompe due to her bad behaviour on the old forums. She was (still is?) a Linden contractor and when I would out and protest such favouritism, she would hate on me and then barred me from her vendors. That's fine, I can have an alt buy her houses if they seem absolutely indispensable to tenants, a few are. 

Bee Designs -- these are constantly on weekend sales and I personally just have way too much of that flowery kitschy stuff but you may not. Bee's partner M. Law, ditto.

What's Next - ditto

Serenity Style - expensive gatchas and expensive sets but very good quality. Don't know if they are on 25L

Broken Arrows - the last time I spent way too much on a gatcha last year was when I decided I "had to have" the complete set of his enamel mugs to put in my Linden Trailer. Eventually I got the whole set after many visits (if you don't win a rare in a bout 10-12 tries, leave the sim and come back another day. You may forget you ever wanted that thing. And somehow when you come back, the machine is willing to give you the rares now, it realizes which side its bread is buttered on).  I put out the whole set, added some from Soy's set and Thor's sets and...no one noticed. Cries. I then ditched my camper to get the Fantasy home. OK, so you missed my fabulous complete set of every enamel mug in SL. Your loss.

Sari-Sari -- excellent, story-telling gatchas, good quality, re-sale value. Set to 25L

Jian - I rarely have use for animals and Jian is always in weekend sales but if you need lots of shoulder pets, this is where you go.

Sayo - I liked his sets of years ago with themes and got a few but haven't lately.

Fancy Decor - all of Fancy Decor's sets look the same to me. Oh, maybe it's my computer settings lol. But you know, they are all alike, thin consoles with golden edges, a so-so abstract painting, and funny props that are hard to place anywhere except with his set. Oh, well. I remember he had this Exorcism gatcha awhile back which I got to put in my St. Stephen's Monastery and quest, in the sky in Tethys. There is also this candles gatcha which is nice but very hard to get the rares and then nothing re-sells. If you were trying a zillion times to get the clavichord in that set where you will get a zillion Mozart portraits, don't, go on the MP.

mish mish - Never heard of them but they make little animals apparently.

Kalopsia - I have Kalopsia's flamingo-y beach hut set up at the Hot Springs and not sure I got anything else except this really fabulous ruined train in the sand which I put in my Narnia quest. So I have to check that out.

dust bunny - they are in weekend sales so I don't feel the need to go look at their gatchas, which I can't remember now, although I do recall that incredibly high-prim Wanderlust set, where I did win the house but could never put it out. My feeling about dust bunny is their style is a bit cartoony/drawn but I generally like that and their food is better looking as a result than Apple Fall's, which looks dead, as in "Still Life Painting". But it never dispenses and so I tend to pass it by.

Soy - Soy is another one of my early gatchas so I have some of his houses and that fishing boat. Some of his items I have out in Shaman's Hut, they're great. I think I have everything and since he has a program of exchange where you could get the copyable version, there wasn't much call to re-sell on the MP. I imagine he will fatpack them? No idea. 

Schultz Bros - I have not thought of them in years. I have many of their no-transfer buildings, and some gatcha, like that fabulous hotel, which I put up in Ross. It used to stay constantly filled at $50 even in PG. Possibly that was one person on 5 alts, a frequent occurance because now it is mainly empty. I have all the props I think - but I will go check since I have not paid attention to them.

kunst and 02569 or whatever that number is that is their other brand name - why would you make a brand name a number no one can remember? Whenever I see a kunst gatcha at an event I give it a pass. Why? The key is so dark, and the items are so drab. They actually are sometimes better in person, but there are a lot of industrial items and nuts and bolts that I can only use so much of. I appreciate kunst. Truly I do. And I will visit them before 9/1.

ariskea - ariskea has gatchas? Who knew? I have some of her no-transfer furniture. This is worth checking out.

hextraordinary - he has very nice animals, birds and weird hybrid things, owls and whatnot, plus crystals and various English-y furniture. He is in weekend sales so I don't feel pressure to get gatchas that I think he will simply sell on no-transfer as singletons for 75 or fatpacks. Right? I mean who knows? I will say hextraordinary has been good with CS, to the point of once returning my query about what a "watery tart" was. I am not a fan of Monty Python. I know you're supposed to be, but I'm not. He explained, but then you know already, as you're one of the cool kids, too. Do I need another dogbird or mousefairy or whatever, maybe now in animesh? No, but it's on my list to check before 9/1.

Boogers - animals - which I don't care about generally. Plus I hate the stupid name.

Garbaggio - Like Boogers, Garbaggio is not a store name that I like and I wonder why people make a name like that, but we have Never Totally Dead and Fashionably Dead and Cureless and Suicide whatever -- all kinds of creepy and obnoxious store names in SL so get used to it. Garbaggio is famous for these realistic human-like dolls. These are great for story props I see, although I prefer getting the full-permed NPCs off the MP.

dM! - these are mainly clothes, but the few clothing gatchas I played because they had fabulous horses, staffs, etc. SO I will revisit but I imagine she will turn these into fatpacks as she sells clothing.

I could go on, and will, but I can't think of anything more now. And then there's this, once you have gotten the thing you like or can actually use, which for me have been the main draw from gatchas.

CAN YOU RE-SELL THIS STUFF?!

And 7500 words into thinking out loud, I have to say I am not rushing to any store now because....I don't know what I'm going to do with these gatchas. If they fit in my land preserve or quests, great, but I have a lot of that now. If they are good for quests and group gifts, great, but I have enough for more than a year (because beyond the ones designated for this just from purchases in the last few weeks, I have several thousand more.

Re-selling them is too much work, and please don't tell me about that stream-lining method on YouTube. We all get that. But it's still too much work. Mainly to find and put in the key, which I really believe in doing because no picture sows distrust, like you're some fly-by-night copybotter.

I personally don't think I will be good at joining the throngs of re-sellers, increasingly desperate not just to sell in a glutted market, but sell period, in a market with no new stuff that is on transfer.

That doesn't mean that I will give away packs of 100 to a charity sale now, because I think they are going to go up in value.

I marvel at the arrogant who say people will spend their Lindens, it doesn't matter on what. They fail to see that many people don't buy Lindens, as cheap as they seem, they make them inworld, and shop with the proceeds from their re-sales.

That's why I take it seriously as an issue, to which I will return, and understood it from the first hour after the Lindens' announcement, when I got refunds, including from someone paying a lot for a large lot, whom I wouldn't have believed to be someone needing to sell gatchas to pay her rent. Leave aside that I don't think she sold $1000 or $2000 worth of gatchas per week. What matters is that she felt threatened, she felt insecure, she felt that the world was changing and she had to retract. Like people who lose their RL job, and tell me they have to refund from a...US $1.44 per MONTH rental. Because when people lose jobs, even in America, suddenly every unnecessary expense seems to high.  So I have learned to take that seriously as a signal and believe in it, because it's true. The SL economy will contract, just when unemployment is running out for real -- despite what some say about how nobody is getting off it to get jobs which go unfilled. Do YOU want to go work at Home Depot with unvaccinated people now? OK then, shut up. I have relatives who have faithfully worked their Home Depot jobs and leveled up to better. Do you? I don't scorn people who work these jobs; I tip them heavily in the form of an Instacart or Whole Foods deliverer.

So you tell me which brands you think you can re-sell. I will reprint them merely as a public service in case anyone cares. I realize I have left out a huge percent of gatchas in the clothing, hair, make-up etc. line

Finally...

SECRETIVE, MYSTERIOUS GATCHA MAKERS

Quite a few gatcha merchants are utterly secretive and you never know where they are or who they are unless you happen to get to know them and talk to them as I do. But often not because why would anyone talk to blogger Prokofy? I assure you that I very much believe in keeping the confidentiality of a source who has requested it, and I have never had any complaints on that score.

Let me distinguish a source in journalism from my rule-breaking and TOS-abusing tenants, some of whom are total assholes and are called out sometimes by name in my RENTAL DEMENTIA columns. There's only a few every year that reach that point, but you would think it was everyone, the way they tell it, also claiming falsely that I have "broken the TOS" against publishing chat. Linden Lab has not (yet) obtained jurisdiction over the entire Internet, and can't punish you for what you put on social media or blogs, although I suppose if they get mad enough, for cause, they might do this, and there have been one or two Lindens over the years that believe that you do not have the right to criticize them outside their servers -- although of course you do. 

Ok, then. It's funny to me to see the Doux mesh head guy appear in RL on an SL talk show on YouTube with a RL shopper and vlogger. I guess it's a younger generation? But many people fear giving their identity on line, especially given the hordes of mainly American ignoramus who are not taught match in school and don't grasp the law of chance or the law of averages.

I personally don't believe this is as big a factor as claimed because not only are there a lot of Europeans and oh, Russians or Japanese who did get taught math in schools; the Americans who weren't taught don't care as they are wealthy and keep pulling and don't bitch because they re-sell the commons or they are smart enough streetwise to go on the MP and get the rares -- and wait until they appear as they always do after every event, as some dogged resellers go and make up sets fairly early on.

I think that some people have 3 or 10 bad CS experiences and have such thin skins they can't handle it and then become gatcha haters based on this tiny sample. PS they tend to be the ones completely retiring their gatchas or putting them on 75L

But even those who are known in RL or at least relatively well known in SL are being secretive ABOUT THEIR POLICIES .

Even if you join expensive $100 or $250 VIP groups, you don't know yet. You get double-talking from the likes of Hideki. You get obscurity from Thor. Etc. And I think it's time for us all to cease buying any gatchas where we don't have a POLICY, where we don't know if we are playing a machine that will entirely disappear -- or will be entirely made into a fatpack for a cheap price.

I totally get that people want to wrest as much as they can out of their customers. That's fine. I don't believe in the "carnie/mark/bunko" model that the atrocious Da5id Weatherwax favours. But I think those of you who come clean on this very clearly will see me buying more gatchas than less, simply to resell. Since most of you will not be on transfer after 9/1.

What is Happening to Campbell Coast?

Most of the artists' galleries are empty now in Campbell Coast in the sky -- and the ground -- but mainly in the sky, where they were concentrated to be "less laggy". 

Even before the Lindens devastated the economy with their August 3 announcement that gatcha machines would be illegal in SL as of 9/1/21, there were economic dislocations to see in the world, partly pandemic induced, partly induced by other reasons internal to the world which has actually seen a decline of the gatcha market in some ways in the last two years, even as more and more of them, at higher and higher prices, appeared, just like there are more and more and MORE weekend sales and events. 

(Whenever you see A LOT of something, it can be a sign of stress and  poverty. The famous example would be poor people with large families. Like we Catholic Irish would have 10 kids, like my grandmother's parents -- and as the 19th-century best-selling female author in America, Kathleen Norris, would explain, this was because some of them went to childhood diseases and died; some were given up to the priesthood or the nunnery, some became alcoholics or bank robbers; what as left? So few were left! You had to keep making more!)

So back in July, BJoyful, the owner of Campbell Coast, whose partner is rasterscan, known as Doc, sold the community to Winning Witte, a land dealer who had left SL for some years, then returned.

Thus ended a hopeful experiment on the Mainland many of us cheered and hoped would work, although hope triumphed over experience on the Mainland, as it always does, and in the end, a land baron got it.

Yes, I'm aware that BJoyful was forced to give this up due to RL illness and there's a back story here but let's focus more on the generics.

So this is the question to ask when you find a thread like this on the forums, to which I have returned after a 5-day ban, let me say with less enthusiasm than I used to have for the forums. 

What happened? What will happen? And as answers to these questions don't come from discussing it on the forums, where the Lindens now delete content without even a disciplinary action, or notice to you, and of course with ready bans for me and wrist slaps for their friends. So I go and look, and I write about them and ask them myself.

And not because it's my business, but because the survival of one helps the survival of any, or all, and it matters.

SHORT FORM

o I totally get that Campbell Coast is now not a community art project but is a business project with an art theme, and I don't have a problem with that as such. I'm not a snob or a socialist. I buy hotel art.

o I will keep my land in CC because there are tenants on it and even if they leave, I would put my home on it. It's a nice area and unless they move in GTFO and black box clubs, I would tend to keep it.

o I don't want to do the things there and the group dynamics but nobody has asked me to so it's all good.

o I'm not buying from Owl but that is over a separate, unrelated manner. Even so, if someone wanted a recommendation of where they could rent an art gallery for cheap, I would send them there if my rentals are full or even if not. It's $150/50; I charge $150/200. But then they are selling ambience, reputation, etc. and I am not really.

o Mainland communities have to get their tier paid. They should not have to go and turn tricks. So it means some commercialization. They can try to do that tastefully. Events do not pay tier. Tips do not pay tier. Rent and content sales pay tier. If someone finds it unaesthetic, they can pay the tier for the aesthetic. 

o If no artist I like or discover I like is there, I will go elsewhere; I'm not going to buy from Ineffable Mote (evola Courtois), a new Campbell tenant (!) because he is a serial liar and propagandist on the forums for the Moles/RR lobby (is he a Mole himself?), and maintains a weird grief -lot in Grote to harass me and my tenants, and has done there for some 5-6 ears. I used to just have the one notecard refuting all his crazy crap in Sikkima in a blue skeleton flamingo, and an occasional  social media post -- now I have a full, long blog documenting the crazy and refuting it with date stamps and photos. Somehow, I feel "why are we not surprised" that evola has turned up in CC, but you know, it's a small pond.

I find it really crazy that some furry asshole would hold a grudge about anything for 6 years when he already moved to Bay City ages ago, but as I said: this is the work of an extremist lobby, a faction, and they will stop at nothing. ANYWAY.

So when someone whom I don't know says they are making a "museum of Campbell Coast" to "remember it like it was," I figured there was some breaking up of the community of some sort. Let me suggest that putting up a Museum of a community that supposedly changed hands and will "continue to thrive" doesn't exactly help sales. But ok.

Campbell Coast was an art colony near and dear to many of us. I had the first ever photography exhibition in my life there and did DJ sets. Many others were artists, performers, renters, and community members. I am eternally thankful to the original ownership for giving me that opportunity as it turned out to be the first of an increasing number of photography jobs in my real life. 

While Campbell Coast still exists, a change in ownership has made it a different place and resulted in many people choosing to move on. Change is inevitable, of course, and people do move on. That's just life.

But I'd like to see that community spirit memorialized and, ideally, continued before the original community of people evaporates and becomes too difficult to find. So, I've managed to acquire an original piece of the Campbell Coast real estate. I'm preserving as much of it as I can in its original condition and using it to start a Campbell Coast Museum in honor of the original place. I've also arranged to acquire an original Campbell Coast building to house it in. And even the land description info is being preserved as close as possible to the original. 

So this person has a 2048 with 700 prims of which half as been eaten up already by her Hisa house, and currently it has only two pictures, but I imagine it will grow and be an important way station on our SL journeys. PS My friend Therese of the Mainland Appreciation Society turned up to say she sold her land in Laserlight to this new Museum curator and has good hopes for it and is glad her former land isn't going to a chopping operation. Yet, anyway.

WINNING A LAND CHOPPER?

When Winning Witte bought Campbell, of course a bunch of us alte kakers in the Mainland sales and rentals business for years clucked and shook our heads and one said, "It'll be all chopped up, you watch."  They don't like WW and thinks he has unscrupulous practices. I think all who wander are not lost and perhaps redemption is possible even for land barons but I look at it with a now jaundiced eye, after 17 years on the Mainland.

Well, sure, look at a screenshot of his land chopping enterprise in one area:

Could this be, oh, the sort of arrangement Desmond had where the rental boxes are on land in a different group so no one can return them (Firestorm often seems to enable that when it shouldn't in a group).

I'll say this: in one sim where WW seemed to be going the chop-chop route, if you look now, the parcels are all pulled together, one a rentals, one a sale/rentals ad. All proper. Maybe because I watch and blog about that sim LOL.

For example of what "chopped up" means, go to Chin Rey's old rentals in Coniston and behold.

"Oh, is it chopped up?" she asked me on the forums. She hadn't seen. I told her not to go and look. Like they tell you at the funeral parlour advising against an open casket, "Better to remember him the way he was."

I kept saying to the other alte kakers that I didn't think Witte would chop. I thought while he might chop elsewhere, on sims where I am such as Adscita, and hold back certain land and charge more for it so that people who might pay $9.8 for a nice pond lot may pay much more than that to make sure an ad board wasn't next to it, but that he might want to make a jewel in his crown with CC. (Or maybe Adscita. Or maybe this other sim where he bought land I had for sale, perhaps not noticing the Tiny Empires up in the sky on the next sim. Well, they're on the next sim, why worry!).

(PS WW is a late-comer to the mess in Adscita, dominated by the giant, ugly GTFO build. I came 2 years ago with one of my "pond reclamation" projects which has worked in Hector and Itame and not so well other places (Dicycla) because you could put your backs to the GTFO, which never did, so to speak. I had one long time tenant with tier in the group; she disappeared, as many did in March earlier this year, possibly succumbing to COVID. Or unemployment. Another one had a store there but complained of lag, although his store caused most of it. Now he is lagging the other end of the pond on another sim in another rentals company. Oh, well! Win some, lose some.

Yet another tenant came in, and then complained because her entire skybox was returned. I was mystified, thinking it was a sim glitch. I now understand why. She overprimmed, and when I set one of the parcels to sale, even with plenty of a buffer of prims in a strip of land by her lot, her build got returned as builds do when there is less prims available suddenly. She had talked about buying the land; I gave her compensation, she said would move back in, didn't, and that's all fine. But without ANY tenants, even little ones on 3 docks I created there, it was time to move on, so all the land is for sale now for $5/m.)

"JUST REMEMBER HIM THE WAY HE WAS"

But I think even if he doesn't chop it, and tries to preserve its carcass, the way Soho landlords preserve the carcass of what was once the Soho art scene in NYC 30 years ago, it won't be the same. That is the tourists and new tenants may never notice, and may believe they're living in a fabulous coastal artist community, and if the artists in the galleries are more commercialized, and not those "edgy" and "alternative" ones, who will notice? 

I have no idea what the internal dynamics there are as I never got involved, and only chatted with BJoyful now and then who is a very nice person and had a very grand vision and the grit and determination to pursue it on the Mainland, which as we know, is a fool's errand, and it worked, sort of, but with illness, she couldn't do the 100 things you need to do all day every day to keep these things going and sold out to Winning, who had lived in the community 9 months before that so seemed trustworthy, like not just the latest land baron with a crass chop-up.

Winning Witte isn't my favourite, but then most land barons aren't. I'm not a land baron. I only sell land under duress, when it's time to downsize because of ruthless Linden policies, or because the view has gone south. I don't keep a trading tier; I have a group called Ravenglass Virtualty because grouped land gets a 10% tier bonus and I want to keep that on land I sell and not have the proceeds go to 500 tenants in a rentals group? Just to explain it to those who narrow their eyes in suspicion.

Land barons are a necessity in a free land market and people might not like their overpriced land, but they are more appreciative of them when they at least pay something when you are ready to ditch your land due to looming tier bills.

There aren't bots any more hardly. When I wanted to liquidate my land to "buy the view elsewhere" where it wasn't renting, or had too few clicks, Winning was the person in the middle of the night who came and got snow waterfront for 0.4/m and hilltop Corsica roadside for 0.3/m -- which is all its worth, sadly. I'd rather liquidate than abandon. Land barons play an important role in keeping land liquid, holding it to keep its value, etc. I appreciate all that. It's hard to do that and also be like Mr. Sirbu. What can I tell you. There are few --none -- like him, and now he's gone. In some ways, I can try to be like Mr. Sirbu, but I don't dance with my customers and I don't sell charm. I sell cheap rentals. I don't want to RP Concierge with you.

Apologies for crappy photos, but I can't stay for half an hour while textures rez. I can only say that having an entire sim? Half a sim? with just landscaping is a very big luxury. So it can't last. and rentals have to go there, in the sky at least.

THE EMPTY ART WORLD OF SL

So, a little back story. I didn't go to any of the events in CC, I didn't get them, they aren't my thing, I don't know what Glastonbury is, etc. etc. I'm a solo player. I hate going to scheduled things. It conflicts with RL and my job or family things. I can be in SL with the window tabbed down all day or all night or both, but don't expect me to wake up and come to a scheduled event. A new tenant who needs something? Sure. But they pay me at least some symbolic amount of cash.

In the last few months, for me, still in the pandemic, even with the vaccine (because of an immune disease, which meant its efficacy was unknown), going to CC was like going to RL Soho which I used to do years ago with a partner who is a well-known artist. He would rush through Soho with a weathered, professional eye, merely to see what the other artists were doing. They weren't competitors; they weren't even in his genre; still, he felt he had to follow "the scene". To see what sells, what is talked about, etc. I would be dragged along on these expeditions unable to keep up, not only with my shorter legs not able to walk as fast and cover as much difference, but because my inclination would be to stop and look more -- and this wasn't the program. The program was just to sort of take it in with one swift glance So years later, I would go to Soho on my own and look more -- but then these galleries have been closed completely in RL, and then I couldn't go into them anyway when they did open.

I really liked, therefore, to go to "Virtual Chelsea" or "Virtual Soho" or Campbell to have something of that same feeling of going to RL Soho or Chelsea although the real edgy scene now is somewhere else, out in Brooklyn or the Bronx, I guess. 

And I would find I was the only person in CC or most of these other places. NO ONE ELSE would be there. NO ONE. Occasionally an actual artist would come into to replace or put up a painting. That was it. I think there is something of a thriving art scene in SL, but it has had its bad period, more on this later. And I think it's mainly artists going to each others' shows, which of course is exactly what the old Soho was, too, as I just outlined.

There were certain artists I liked, certain I didn't, for totally subjective or practical considerations -- all of this has to become hotel art in my rentals -- but I liked Owl Dragonash, for example. I have no idea what her story is; is she Scottish? I liked her photo of SL scenes with owls or foxes; I liked also Eulennest which I gather she was involved in.

OWL DRAGONASH, GLASTONBURY AND DA5ID WEATHERWAX

But without hesitation, I dialed her up during this gatchapocalypse hate-fest on the forums and to tell her on Twitter publicly (and she may not have even seen it or cared): because she hosted Da5id Weatherwax, I would no longer buy art works from her. I saw her as the organizer of that community, and I felt it not likely I would go back there at all, but buy from other artists at their other venues.

She hardly will suffer without the 200L or 250L or 500L (that's 20 cents or one US dollar?) she collected from me for her paintings; the artists she featured in her venues which sold more also won't care. No one will care. I just think people have to understand: you are in a shared world, when one of your own, one of your Scottish brethren in your beloved CC with its Glastonbury (held on the Lindens' Bellisseria and not CC for reasons which remain obscure to me), savagely attacks the gatcha creators by calling them "carnies" and telling them to "fold their tents", I don't want to do business with you.

I mean this is the absolute worst kind of Scottish socialist cuntery -- in the British and American sense, and that's a word I use about once every 25 years. Here's a total fucking loser who by his own admission went out of business when mesh came in, and turned to being a "bard" but of course he's learning Blender and soon will be better than you, you who cannot sell your wares except through a "gambling device".  He ought to be horse whipped. I have neither a horse or whip, and I don't do griefing. I'm defending people here who don't even care if I defend them, many of whom don't like me, and it's not a class I'm in, as I don't make gatchas (except one) or even rent to people who them (except a few, for whom it was definitely a minority of their wares). To be sure, I have some tenants reselling gatchas, but even those, if they all refund tomorrow -- and some of them have -- will not make me "fold my tent". It's more of the principle of the thing.

His nasty-ass comment went all around the blogs, got lauded by Ryan Shultz and Chic Aeon and Shamlet and all the rest. It's THIS comment I boycott him and his for. It's still there. The Lindens did not remove it.

Not this one. If this is all that came from him, I couldn't care less. I get this all the time. Ashbourne's owner chimed in with a likey-like and I chastised her for it but I'd buy her plates again tomorrow (they were a nice freebee from SL18B). You have to realize that when you are in business in a shared world, you can't behave like this. We have no recourse to establish norms; this is how it has to work. If someone thinks I've behaved badly, they urge boycotts of my rentals in a heartbeat. I never apologize and I don't care, as I think my behaviour is justified. If they think theirs is, too, then we will live in separate worlds. The end.

 

SL Newser's Bixyl Shuftan has turned in the best editorial on this subject of the gatcha machine ban, asking all the basic, normal, necessary questions which none of the court stenographers on the Lindens' blog roll could bring themselves to ask.

I had heard that Winning was going to start charging rent from the artists. What a bad idea to open with, I thought. Here's a community apprehensive about what you will do, who were here rent-free, as the previous owners grasped that they were the main draw, the "rich content" to which you want everyone to "stick", and you try to bilk them for $200/wk? That's what I heard was the charge. Yes, it's low rent compared to say, Avalon (but look at Avalon's vacancy rates, huge). Look at all artist communities everywhere -- vacancy, and unpaid rental boxes. But I mean, who's going to return Judy India's paintings if her rent isn't paid? You know?

An artist whose works I have purchased and which I will go on purchasing. What is his status here?

Tip jars do not cover tier. Arrangements with artists to collect a percentage of each sale is hard to do, although I believe there are split vendors out there. But they took tacky when applied to an art work. So you have to have some kind of deal -- but enforcement is hard.

On the other hand, what, Apple Fall, one of the artists in CC on display drawing the tourists and renters at the ground level, what, HE can't pay $200/wk rent? Really, guys? And some of those other top sellers there.

Now I see there are rental boxes owned by Owl Dragonash for $150/50 prims. I myself charge $150/200 in my plazas, where sometimes I have artists with galleries including some good ones, but mainly more "commercial" or "mass taste" ones who sell more and therefore can pay the rent -- and as low as 0.25/m in my booths, but I don't run fabulous artists communities. I run Coney Island or Ravenglass Hall or Free Tibet. Different. Even so I think the pricing is off here. What would be right? $50/75? Everyone can pay $50 wk. When you have a system for poor people, like Medicaid, you still try to collect $10 or $5 a pop from those medicines that cost $180 or $380 for sick people like me. You try to get something, so that people contribute and OFFSET costs. But it's not a solution to expect the content draw to also pay, given that there is a wide range of ability to pay there, depending on how poor the country of origin in and frankly how many sales one can expect. How can you price that? Put all the people selling strange space stuff and grotesque naked women with tanks and bombs pasted in on the painting in one corner? Put the fractals and SL scenes in another? 

CC succeeded because it mixed up enough of these levels so that you could walk through the entire area, spend a little or maybe a lot, and it was an enjoyable experience. They also put in hunts now and then which were a draw.

So now it's nearly entirely emptied out. Only a few remain, and they don't have rental boxes, which suggests that either they didn't get the memo yet, or haven't left yet by a deadline, or were given some special arrangement -- I suspect the former, not the latter. If Owl owns the rentos, that means she decided to go along with the new management, for whatever reason. I had heard that she was seeking donations to help the poor artists -- I would have helped. But not now. Not after Da5id Weatherwax.

Two rows entirely empty. Will they fill up with new artists who weren't here before?

And here the cure isn't that he apologizes, as he did somewhat half-assedly to others on the forums, sensing he may have gone "too far" when no doubt he got some private reactions and maybe it even hurt his concert sales, who knows, unlikely. SL is nasty, with totally vicious nonentities in charge of the forums. No, what I consider a cure doesn't come from him, as he won't change, remains an asshole thoroughly, and is to be boycotted on moral grounds.

What I would require is Owl and her colleagues saying, "Yes, we thought that was awful. We don't share that view about our fellow creatives who made gatchas ". Or, "we appreciate gatchas meant a living for some people" -- although likely as not, Owl may indeed share those views of contempt toward the world of gatcha. But she can think whatever socialist/Scottish/Swedish/sectarian/whatever thing drives her and her works, as long as she says, "Yes, that was wrong" to express disdain THAT WAY.

That's all. I know that she will go on having him at her events, and go on doing this with Lindens, which I wouldn't be doing, but it takes all kinds in SL.

What you do need to know is right from wrong. When something is wrong, you say so, publicly, and you put that asshole in their place, you don't keep coddling him.

What people who behave like this toward me in the forums or inworld or on my blog don't realize, is that this works both ways. I push back. I never participate in the forums circus by ARing people -- the Lindens come running at their summons, and don't to mine.

If the answer is, I don't even know this guy, I just booked him as a performer, I had no idea (I don't think that's likely from various indications, but let's posit it as a theory) then I can only say, "Well, then, it shouldn't be so hard for you to admit that his attacks on gatcha creators were wrong, then, should it?

Will this happen? Unlikely. So I treasure the Owl Dragonash works I already bought, I used to have them in my Campbell home, now they will go in a motel or something, I won't put them on a pyre and burn them but that's it, I'm done. 

No, not even a $10/pull artists' gatcha -- the $10 kitten Mills charges for her pictures -- and she should charge 10 times that. Don't appear in a group of artists, even if you think they are "better" and price yourself so low, out of seeming humility, but actually out of lack of self esteem? I'd be happy to pay $100 at least for kitten Mills' works.

PS kitten Mills seems to have remained as a new line of shops appeared to go up with her as owner, and they have clothing -- and I guess that formula works, it's what Soho and Chelsea have, but it's hard to find sellers with the same aesthetic, and I guess Owl/kitten/Witte didn't achieve that here. Yet, anyway.

What is another sign (besides the many emptied out galleries) that this "artists' community" may be taking an asshole turn? A turn towards the types that suck up to Lindens at SLEA, shit on other people they think are "fractals" or whatever aesthetic thing they think, etc. etc. The presence of Ineffable Mote.

 

EVOLA COURTOIS/INEFFABLE MOTE/SPITE LOT IN GROTE

What a silly name, such posturing! if I saw these works without knowing anything about their creator, I might buy them but here's the thing. If Da5id Weatherwax is a dilettante on the forums and thought to make up for his insecurity re-entering them by being a raging asshole, Mote has way, way more practice for years and years, as evola Courtois, his main account for years.

Mote is a kind of reputational laundering expedition, I suppose, in which evola's many years of furry fury are now going to be transmogrified into human aestheticism, I guess. Not sure what the plan is. The last three times I saw evola -- three times too many! -- whom I hadn't seen in years -- at FF, where sadly Clover's beasts didn't eat him; at Mr. Sirbu's funeral; and at the mourning of Ebbe, he was in human norm form, not furry. 

Speak of the devil, and he is sure to appear. We live in a small, interconnected world. JUST NOW, I got an invitation from UASL to come see this fabulous new artist Mote. Well, that's one UASL opening I won't be covering! Thanks but no! LOL

Take a look at his spite-land in Grote next to my rentals with the garbage bag -- yes, with an outhouse, although that tends undercut the "message" he claimed to be "sending" with the obnoxious "Good Neighbour" pillars once made by Abner Mole -- who has the power to remove them entirely from the world as they have turned into a griefing vector, but has never used it.

PS I haven't "violated" these "Good Neighbour" rules in any way -- in fact I have even more rules than they. It's just that Ineffable Mote evidently feels that my rentals, which consist of 1950s style motel court cabins, a motel, a big bright flamingo, another motel, a diner, etc. are "tacky" or not "aesthetic" although many people enjoy them. SL has to be for everybody, but in the ideology of these Bay City barons -- Bay City, expensive, expensive Bay City is where evola lives now -- us poor folk do not have a right to exist. "All these little stores should close," as one Apple Fall customer in AF's group expressed it. Right.

So, to bring you up to date: For years on end, any tree or dog or anything that came near his little spite-grove he would return. That's why I had to put a wall there, so my tenants could see the border always.  I would be mystified how a big tree three lots a way could return, but that's because bounding boxes do not always show up on "highlight transparent". Who would have the spite to return week after week to a spite-grove and ensure that anything encroaching on it is returned? evola Courtois. The furry who used to live up the road on a small parcel in Sikkima, where for years he maintained a skeleton pink flamingo with a pack of lies about me -- which I countered with a blue flamingo setting the record straight, and got on with my life. PS evola has long since left Sikkima, perhaps as his transformation into Ineffable.

From what I gather from Snapzilla, he may have even begun this Grote spite-lot of 64m before I got there, but certainly he waged a crazy campaign in Sikkima against me for years, which was just lie upon tendentious lie, of the type the Trumpkins and Kremlin trolls pile up.

evola Courtois/Ineffable Mote Back Story 

Apparently he owned more land there once. When I came to the sim and bought land, this bothered him. Perhaps it no longer had the trees and rivers he imagined it should as imagined or little used land or rentals he thought were more aesthetic, like the woman from whom  I bought some land there, when she left for her main sim. I find it really hard to grasp why he can pose fabulously next to an ugly industrial build I believe came from WARR, with a sunken and broken telegraph pole in the water, and yet bitch about other Mainlanders who had, oh, Meeros on their land. See, this sort of type I really can't stand in SL. My urban industrial concrete look is the shits and your gatcha prefab with kitties and a picket fence "isn't aesthetic". Fuck you.

So -- Grote -- other people owned it before I did, they sold it. I was on adjacent sims since 2005. I did not get "given" any of it by Lindens. The Linden Right of Way which the Lindens themselves sold -- they do that! -- was not one I even bought on the auctions. A furry land flipper bought it. I bought it from him for $5/m. The land some idiot bought in the middle of the lake and ruined for months on end was finally liquidated -- I didn't buy it from that awful woman "Miss Behavin" or whatever her name was -- but like two land barons later. Land I abandoned even some waterfront there -- because of the ugly railroad that went through there -- a WARR, aptly named, a resident railroad in fact I supported, allowed right of way on my land elsewhere, or sold land to -- was land I bought back myself from the Lindens went finally that resident, overstretched as to tier, bailed.

There is a curious dynamic in evola/Ineffable's tortured tales. Supposedly I am coddled by the Lindens and they gift me land? Really?! LOL. But then I am "hijacking" and "in the way" of a Linden project in the works for years, and me and my little spit of land are the ONLY THING stopping it. 

If I stopped it... Good! Because I like railroads, but not a CONCRETE OVERPASS that would be involved in crossing the road here. I've never seen the Lindens make one. But WARR did, and that's what these furries want, they want their Lindens to tier WARR's land AND put back WARR's RR just like he had it. Since when do Lindens do that? Oh, they do. But not quite as often or as extensively as imagined.

Here's Michael Linden's notecard to me, not long before he was basically retired out of the lab by force, I think because he was old in RL, didn't fit in with the groovy young people, who the hell knows. I thought he was an important figure with great accomplishments in creasing the whole Mole and LDPW thing and making nice builds. I didn't lean toward their prefered look of brown concrete from the 1930s like Bay City; we have that in RL in NYC. But generally, they were a plus. For a time, Michael was put in charge of Governance. So I would show up there with lists of complaints about Woodbury griefing which wasn't getting traction. He would be helpful. Or at least feign to be helpful. Bottom line, Woodbury islands were seized, finally.

Sept. 7, 2016, 3:37 p.m.
Michael Linden
Dear Prokofy,

A few points:

* the land in question wasn't seized; we don't seize land from Residents for construction projects.
* we like, and hope to inspire, content creators.
* we don't want to build an elevated railway on the Atoll regions.
* the former WARR parcels that have track in them (Grote, Electra, and Burns) are now set to "object entry = no", which may affect unmanned vehicles.

Extending the SLRR onto the former WARR right-of-way is a gradual project, as time permits. Gradual in this case may well be years ...

Feel free to contact us if you have any questions. We hope our in-world content will make many of our Residents happy!

Yours,

--
Michael Blum (Michael Linden)
Senior Content Specialist
Linden Lab

There is a bit of confusion here -- we all know the Lindens didn't seize WARR for a construction project -- it was abandoned. And they apparently decided to keep it. What went on behind closed doors re: this series of events is unknown to me.

MY question was: will you seize MY land to make your project. And the answer does seem to be "No, we don't seize land for our projects."

Yet a gaggle of furries led by evola harassed and griefed me for years in the belief that I stopped the railroad Michael Linden wished to push through.

Trust me, if Michael Linden -- gone now -- or any other Linden, of Mole level or higher up, needed to seize my land, they would do so. And would do it likely with an offer of a buyback (as they did with telehub land when it devalued) or a swap (as they did with Zindra). Those are their "eminent domain" precedents, FWIW. I never had a Linden contact me and say, "Prokofy, you are standing in the way of progress*. Even though I had furries fake-renting from me to then browbeat me, griefing parties, people demanding I sell them that land etc. I don't think these were Lindens on alts.

So let's go over ahead why I didn't turn my roadside land over to these furries and hobos for their railroad concept they were trying to throw the Lindens over on:

1) I opposed it on behalf of my tenants because it would render not only my/their land but the land of all the people on Grote Pond valueless.

2) People like to look out a train window and see a nice pond and landscaping of all the people who tier that pond; they don't realize the view of them is ugly and devalues their land if  it has a railroad bridge, pass, or even railroad tracks only, roadside.  I find railroad enchances my value if it is Linden protected; I'm not sure this situation would meet that criteria.

3) I wouldn't have the power to stop something the Lindens wanted to do, but they were apparently indifferent/ambivalent about this and merely responding to the usual gaggle of furries kicking up a ruckus on forums and inworld. Therefore I saw no reason to "get out of the way". 

Because I can only say: I live here, you don't.

Again, I contacted Michael and explained the history in case he was brainwashed by the furries (see this crazy thread), but he didn't have a problem understanding the story there; he was a Linden, duh. I pointed out he could put his RR on his abandoned land several sims away. And still could. Oh, but he's gone. Oh, but those sims abandoned FOR YEARS are now sold on the auction.

Their "Right of Way" has appeared now in Juanita. Perhaps we'll see an ugly overpass now from them? anything is possible. A Linden once put a cement railroad through the prime waterfront from Brownlee to Wakeley, in water, after people bought that waterfront on the auction, thinking the Linden sea would remain protected. We raised an enormous ruckus. That Linden had to pick up that cement monstrosity. We will do so again. Of course, with a much more crippled civil society than we had 18 years ago, but still...

At one point in Grote -- this is hard to believe, but I saw it with my own eyes -- the Lindens simply confiscated some land of a tenant there without notice and linked it with their own hitherto protected "Right of Way" land and put it to sale on the auction,. This led this tenant to write on her underwater land various signs saying 'DON'T TAKE THIS! IT'S PAID FOR".

If I wake up tomorrow and all/some/a tiny strip of my land in Grote and/or Juanita is taken by Lindens to make an ugly railroad, I won't be surprised.

Yet, all told, I do not think we will see an overpass and pylons. Because Michael Linden said in 2011 we wouldn't. And because it is not necessary to put an RR through here. Agitating and harassing me over this was misplaced, but also I think people look for these opportunities.

I don't know what it means when Courtois/Mote publishes a photo that says "My Replications" and in the photo are a) a Mole avatar b) Maryann McCain, child avatar. I mean, maybe "My Replications" doesn't mean "my alts".  Maybe they are just friends.

* * *

I see one piece of land in CC is purple despite a Governor Linden claim date of August 17. My, that was fast! Whew! But the whole Governor Linden claim date thing can be misleading as we all know, and Governor can have "land abandoned by Governor Linden" that she doubles back and claims right at auction, but I think that land had buildings on it not so long ago, so there's a story there.

The only land for sale in the area is set for $1000/m as an advertisement for rentals, by a company that seems unrelated to WW.

The waterfront remains unrented, no slips, no cottages, and nothing for sale directly except an RFL kiosk with $0 donations. This can't stand. And WW likely knows that. That's the part that has to get chopped. Perhaps WW and friends believe THIS is the part you leave rent-free as the draw. While you shake down the artists -- the real draw. I don't think so. I think you put all that to sale/rent immediately to make tier. Tier is $1075 on 6 sims. It's brutal. The rentals here as they are cannot cover that. (UPDATES: Apparently CC is only 3 sims at the time of the transfer, so that's half that tier, which is more manageable. Still...)

So...that's why WW is doing exactly what I do -- rentals in the sky, a mixture of commercial and residential rentals.

Except there's a very big problem here, that WW, as having returned to the biz after a long hiatus, may not have realized.

Bella Pointe. The scourge of the Mainland. Huge, ugly domes -- even at a low draw. Not 500 m and above, but starting at 100 and with hugely ugly bottoms of twisted landscaping and junk.

So your rentals next to them, like mine in Crespo, need a) a petition against her, that never hurts, I have these all over, hundreds of signatures, and I notices she is gone now from one area, maybe because my large sign on the ground with a protest seeking signatures got them (although she could have left the area simply because she had NO RENTALS. There would be one customer in the entire stack of 25. Why blight the landscape for that one customer?? 

Then b) a giant wall like my Inca wall covering their view on the ground and c) your rentals in a dome or mirror box or with a contained skybox on a platform so your customers do not have to look at this in their lovely sky rental with the changing scenes.

So what's the verdict here? WW, kitten, Owl and whomever else they got to stay may make this work, they are just getting started. $150/50 is way less than Avalon or I believe Chelsea or many other places; maybe someone will move in. The original people may have their feelings hurt, hopefully they go somewhere else where they can be edgy -- and with someone subsidizing them. 

For my own reasons (related to Owl and Weatherwax and of course the outrageously lying evola courtois/Ineffable Mote), I won't be supporting them here as I once did. Still, if that area fills up with interesting artists again I would buy them. I believe in an open market. People's bad character, lifestyle choices I don't share, bad-faith ideologies I condemn -- that's no reason not to buy from them. I do have my limits, however. Those limits come when you incite or cause damages against me in SL or RL or when you incite or cause them to people in RL or SL  from whom I buy and whom I respect (gatcha makers).

I can go elsewhere and buy those same artists, just not in Campbell Coast. I won't be missed, "life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone".

 

Is the Railroad Coming Through?

By Prokofy Neva, Virtualtor

 

Ugly pylons circle Hector pond in a screenshot I took in 2012 - because I lived on these sims!

I seem to recall this was WARR's power station or utility yard -- why that was on a nice pond, why a telephone pole with wires had to be sunk into the river is totally beyond me, and even if this is not evola's build, he doesn't criticize it. Odd, that. 

I never looked down that far at that time. You can see my rentals cottage peeking out -- that was in Slosser.  Where I both gave right-of-way to WARR next to my cottages AND sold them a parcel. I guess they had an idea to build the ugly bridge down here at first?

The Lindens have created a "Right of Way" in Juanita this month, amidst land they sold on the auction which has been bought by both land barons and end users.

Will we see these ugly pylons coming back?

This history needs to be reposted and reinforced because of the emergence of evola's new alt Ineffable Mote in the art world.

Not surprisingly, evola Courtois came into this thread in 2016 a year after it was started in 2015 and made false claims again  -- and as these are periodically revived, this thread needs to be rebutted in 2021 once again, a place where the Lindens cannot delete the replies. Because  as noted, a Right of Way has appeared now in 2021 in Juanita.

Therefore to revisit this troubled history -- tortured and convoluted and riveted with falsehoods from evola and his posses -- is worth doing once again to set the record straight once again.

 

Evola seems to think that time started when he noticed the large, ugly build in the middle of the pond which he photographed and put on Snapzilla. But the waterfront tenants had all been there for years by then, and I myself and my rentals had been there FOR YEARS by the time of Miss Behavin, and we protested more than he did, from our land, which we properly owned.

I was in Zephyr and Patagonia starting in 2005 when the Lindens built Heterocera -- those are my castles you can see in this picture. He is apparently unaware of my presence not only on these nearby sims, but in Slosser, starting in 2004-2005 as well. Then I bought land in Grote at that end of the sim -- he may have not noticed that after Lupin Nostram and Zan sold it, I became the owner. I didn't "ruin" anything on these sims. The same pristine creek that runs through here is still there, exactly as it was in 2013, thanks to me holding the tier.

It's all jumbled in his mind; he's protesting an ugly view blocker who put up ban lines; I'm protesting that very same person; he thinks my protests against that person are somehow part of a grand conspiracy I had to chase people off their land, take it over, and single handedly thwart a railway that the Lindens had "all along" wished to put through.

It's rare that you have records to prove things like that, but in this case, I can show clearly land that I bought abandoned from the Lindens -- that still has the date and my name on it, which is how they labeled abandon land for your purchase after you send a support ticket.

evola's spite-plot here is directed at somebody else's build, unrelated to me; I bought this adjacent land when it was abandoned. He did not.

If someone thinks I would put a fake Linden-seeming label on that land after the fact, they can go ask the Lindens, who will have a record of the purchase.

Of course the claim date -- a day after the Linden's labeling of the abandoned land for sale -- September 24, 2015 -- is not something that can be faked. There it is. Proof that I bought the land AFTER he started campaigning against ANOTHER owner, unrelated to me, earlier that year, then decided to keep up this jihad against me for years on end -- six to be precise -- based on his crazy belief that I was somehow deliberately crapping up land here and forcing people off to buy it.

I didn't have to do that; they put their land to sale normally. Ask them. And the only one crapping up land in Grote is evola, with this spite-memorial. His land description says:

The memorial to classiness and civilization as leading definers of basic social norms.

note: encroaching objects will be returned

How someone can imagine that if you put out an outhouse, a garbage bag, a gnome, and ugly "Good Neighbour" pillars, that you are striking a blow against what you view as "not classy" i.e. my motel court cabins (made by POST, and perfectly fine) -- it's insane. Only in SL.

I owned land in Juanita, Slosser (the Lost Gardens), Zephyr, Patagonia, on the opposite side of the sim from the pond in Grote, for years and years -- starting in 2004-2005 for Juanita and Slosser and Zephyr, moving on to Patagonia and Grote. Long, long before any of these characters came on the sims, I was there, just not by the pond, except for the Slosser garden, which has waterfront on the pond. I then gradually got more land in Grote and Sikkima -- normally, legally, and not with any intent to thwart a railroad project, but to build out my rentals, which I had on 4 sims in that area, without any complaint from anybody -- including the WARR, whose owner knows full well he routed through my land in Slosser with my permission; I sold land in Slosser to him; and he also devalued my waterfront in Grote bought years before Michael Linden made any stirrings there with his "Right of Way"  -- which I abandoned. No one bought it. It lay abandoned for years on end til I bought it back -- after WARR was long gone.

I am not the person who bought this land on the auction -- abandoned or sold and then abandoned by Miss Behaving. I bought this water from a Canadian land dealer who priced it low on Canada Day.

Could evola think I'm the one who bought the land in the middle of the Pond and put up a big ugly view-blocking build  (Lindens should have made THAT Linden protected land, but they often don't, setting up conflicts for years)? I don't see how that's possible, given that another person's name on it, without my groups, not one of my known alts. But of course, that may be a notion he got in his fevered brain.

I was with the glowing atomic power station, PROTESTING that build along with everyone else on the pond who now could not sail it -- there were ban lines.

I was the one who bought this pond water from land flippers and PRESERVED IT TO THIS DAY.

I totally get it that evola imagines as he frolicked around on land that he didn't own in Grote in and around the pond, owned by others from whom I bought it, after being YEARS in this area on the adjacent sims, that somehow I am to blame for ending his lovely furry life, free of tier. But I bought land on the open market he could have bought. I didn't buy it all at once. I bought it over time -- several years, including a long rent-to-buy from LIFE -- because I'm not rich, and didn't have the money and tier. I bothered with this area, and I kept it nice. He has kept up with this insane, fevered and crazy vendetta for years with his grief-build, and bad-mouthing me all over town, although usually when I run across someone who has read his "pink flamingo" agitprop, they get it that he is wrong. They can see the facts in front of them. On the pond. Which has no ugly build in it. Any more.

So it's just that this many years of history wasn't noticed until the railroad agitators got busy. Somehow, evola got it into his furry brain that I was a late-comer who "trashed" two sims that I had been on for years with rentals that no one complained about at all, except him AFTER he had given up his land there. It would be nice if this was some kind of honest mistake, some kind of hearsay garbed in his mind, but it's not, it's about ill will toward a class of people -- landlords -- and their tenants -- poor people who don't own land in Bay City, the end. There is nothing I have "trashed" in Grote or Juanita. Come and look. All the old owners are still there, and grateful that I BOUGHT THE VIEW there as you can see from one of them speaking up in that thread. The rentals are filled, people are happy, plenty of visitors come, and it's a mystery why I am being harassed and vilified here.

His forums  agitprop, which I am refuting yet again in red:

Some additional history from someone who once owned much land adjacent to the WARR line on Grote as well as across from the old Sikkima station on Slosser. The WARR line was abandoned when I still lived there, I ended up giving up most of my land there later on after the sims got trashed first by some auction buyers who put up huge walls and banlines in the middle of the lake on Grote blocking everyone but them from using it, and then by the other person here currently blocking the rebuilding of the rail line when she effectively "went to war" with them, putting up numerous huge particle spewing full glowing nuclear reactors, large wall sized signs, etc. just blight overload.

o I was in Slosser before he was, since 2004; I sold land to WARR in fact, and let them go through other land I owned.

o If he gave up his land, that's on him, I didn't trash anything, was unrelated to people who did, and his claim is preposterous from start to finish as anyone who actually lives in these sims knows -- for years on end;

o The auction buyers are unrelated to me; I, too protested them.

o The one atomic nuclear reactor was directed at the same view-blocking ban-line build he is complaining about, and as soon as they sold their land to a land baron, I removed my atomic station as did other owners there with various protests like the giant toilet

o I had a sign up against the view blocker/ban line person he, too, was protesting and removed it when they sold out

o I didn't buy that water until some time later, on Canada day, in July of that year, 2015.

Once the land on the sim had been scorched and burned and most landowners driven off by it, it all got conveniently put to auction, presumably because tickets were filed on them to take ownership of them, at cheap prices.

o All the original Hector Pond waterfront owners there today remained; no other land owner was "driven away" because they put their land on the open market and it was purchased by land barons. I bought it from land barons over time, and requested only my own old parcel and another small parcel or two of abandoned land on the other side of the road in Grote

One of the Linden Right Of Way parcels was also conveniently put up for auction, which this person then took ownership of, ostensibly to "safekeep" it along with all the other land on the sim and prevent whatever usage of it she didn't want on the sim, when they knew full well what it was for along with the history of the rail and LL's taking of it after the WARR abandonment. 

o The Lindens put THEIR OWN land on the auction. It's hard to see this as a "mistake". It was bought by a land baron. I purchased it from them. It was for prims for my rentals on Juanita and had no build on it then or now; it is part of a vacation area of4 sims where I had land there by that time: Juanita, Grote, Slosser, Sikkima. Even earlier, when the continent was born in 2005, I bought land in Zephyr and Patagonia.

o There is no evidence that the Lindens had some long-term plan other than their "Right of Way" in Grote which lay fallow for years on end. The Lindens sold their Juanita Right of Way along the road, and if it was a mistake, they could simply reverse it, plenty of time went by. LL seized WARR's abandoned land like they would any abandoned land, and there is no proof they had some grand RR plan. Michael Linden, now gone, may have had some notion of this, but there is no evidence that it was approved or in place then or now.

One person doesn't have any business blocking the public rail line from being put in as planned, especially when they didn't "just happen" to acquire and own a random piece of land here, it was their intent to block the project all along. This person has made that clear, they thought the WARR build with the raised tressel through there was ugly and was glad to see it gone, and now with "NO RAILROAD!!!" signs even. And this is all just business as usual for them.

o Once again: it is not possible to block a project that a) I had no notion of b) the Lindens did not declare c) the Lindens appeared to have scuppered when they themselves sold it on the auction.

o There is not just "one person" who opposes this preposterous railroad; it's every single long-term owner on that sim, due to the ugly overpass the  WARR had. The "tressel" was indeed ugly, devalued my land, forced my tenant out, forced me to abandon the land, and forced others to leave and/or suffer for years with it in the view.

o I bought land for prims on my hotel which I had owned in Juanita since 2005 when the continent was made. The person from whom I bought the land and the building could testify as to the date as can other items on the land.

o I put up "No Railroad" signs when a gaggle of furries and hobos began screeching on the forums that this railroad "had" to go through -- on MY LAND which I legally purchased from people who themselves legally purchased it from the Lindens. I sure as hell opposed an ugly concrete overpass that had caused me to ABANDON WATERFRONT on Grote Pond years before because it would never rent. Once again: I once supported WARR, gave them land, gave them right of way, and I was repaid with that ugly overpass that forced my tenant to leave and forced me to abandon my land. All of that happened long before the furries began agitating on the forums.

i recall in the old days people playing extortion games with parcels wanted for rail lines on the north side of continent as well, I don't see why a land swap or confiscation at worst case can't/won't be done here so that the line can go through on protected/reclaimed parcels along the route as planned, unless it can be rerouted, over/along the road maybe. It's literally *one* person currently hijacking the project and blocking the use of contigous land *specifically* set aside for this project, contiguous for probably well over a dozen sims across that part of the continent, which was always meant to be set aside by LL and used by the residents of Second Life as a whole.

o I have never been involved in any extortion games whatsoever with land; I purchased this land normally as described; I fail to see why some Bay City asshole who doesn't own land in this area, who calls himself an "artist" now under the name Ineffable Mote, should get away with urging Lindens to confiscate land I purchased lawfully in their system. Nor has any Linden ever asked me to give up my land here. It's utterly preposterous to accuse a person who has had land and rentals in this area since 2005 when Heterocera was first created, who has gradually purchased land in Grote over the years only to protect it from the kind of abuse it saw with the ugly build in the middle of the pond, should be accused of "hijacking".

There is no evidence that land OWNED BY A RESIDENT FOR THEIR OWN RAILROAD was "always planned" to be used by LL for their own considerabl railroad, which already existed, was not needed here, and if needed to be extended, could be done in other ways.

Apologies if any of this is redundant, I haven't time to read the entire thread.

So, this is simply out-and-out a bald-faced lie: One person doesn't have any business blocking the public rail line from being put in as planned, especially when they didn't "just happen" to acquire and own a random piece of land here, it was their intent to block the project all along.

I don't have "intent to block a project" that in fact did not exist. WARR abandoned their land. The end. They were gone. If there was a secret plot with the Lindens for THEM to take it and then displace us all, I never heard of it. I suspect it does not exist except in the minds of some furries on the IRC channel with "their" Lindens. But I really don't think the actual Lindens in charge ever had any plans at all for WARR or any land abandoned by it or near it. And I am not "one person" -- no land owner on Grote wants an ugly overpass.

To recap:

1. I was there for years, starting in 2004-2005 on adjacent sims of Juanita and Slosser on the pond, purchased Grote Pond land in 2014-2015 to build out rentals I had on Patagonia and Zephyr. I did not extort anyone but bought land that was sold by previous owners, or land dealers who flipped it. This is known to everyone who lives there and to the Lindens.
2. The only abandoned land I bought back was my own land, abandoned, under the huge rail crossing, on the Grote waterfront, and another small parcel by evola's spite-memorial which came AFTER he built it against ANOTHER person unrelated to me.
3. The Lindens sold their own right of way, because they were not interested in the RR project and had other fish to fry (Bellisseria). I see no evidence this was a "mistake".
4. A land baron bought it on the auction from them; I purchased it from the land baron for more prims for my long-existing rentals -- my Flamingo Court Hotel in Juanita, across from this rail overpass, has been there since 2005. That's a long time. My rentals in Grote have been there since 2014 That's a long time. But the land in part of Grote and Zephyr goes back to 2004. The pond purchases merely extend areas I owned since 2004-2005, and through which WARR once had right of way in Slosser.
5. The glowing atomic station was put up to protest the very same build in the middle of the pond that evola is protesting, at that exact time, not before or since. It was in concert with other Grote Pond land owners who put up giant toilets, etc. etc. in an effort to get that ugly build AND ITS BAN LINES to mitigate their disaster. That's where his sequencing is way off. Why? Because I had land in Zephyr, Patagonia, Slosser and part of Grote for years before I bought by the pond. My atomic station was put on land in Grote I owned at that time, duh and it was directed against the same idiot evola was incensed about -- but then, by that time, he no longer owned land there but was only on one small parcel in Sikkima.
6. What's astounding is this incredibly crazy conspiracy theory -- which the Lindens and all the old landowners on the pond know to be an utter falsehood -- that I somehow plotted and planned for years to "drive people off their land" so I could buy it. Huh?! Lupin Nostram sold most of the land she owned there. Zan of LIFE bought it, and I did a "rent to buy" plan with him for months before acquiring it outright and putting the campground on it. There were no plots or plans, merely normal buying of land put to sale openly.
7. It isn't just "one" person wishing to block a railroad that a RESIDENT owned and ruined our view with and then ABANDONED it -- there are multiple land owners on that sim and others, all are opposed, and it's normal to wish that a rail overpass not blight the view.
8. Michael Linden -- no longer at the Lab -- and old techie susceptible to alliances with old furries in SL may have felt he could push me off my land, but he never seriously attempted this. He put out his RR props to sort of threaten this, but no Linden ever approached me formally much less seized my land. And how could they? I bought it legally and normally.
9. If the Lindens "all along" had a grand plan of rescuing WARR after they seized it, they waited years and years to sic their furries on the forums to accomplish this by stealth. I never heard from them at all. Was it only a plan that one Linden, Michael Linden had? I have no idea. No other Linden, including Michael, ever informed me of this plan and my need to "stop blocking it" -- which was merely a function of me normally and naturally buying land around my original purchases in Juanita and Slosser in 2004. 2004 for fuck's sake.
10. Should the Lindens push a railroad through sims where people own the land and pay tier, to satisfy a bunch of landless hoboes hollering on the forums, and this "artiste" Ineffable Mote? Of course not. That's insane. Even our very craven and forums-thrown Lindens will not do this. However, I will ask them their plans in a ticket to Support, the normal way, not in the IRC or even an office hour, where I imagine they would only be bewildered.
11. Of course the obvious, glaring problem here is this idea that the Lindens would have a plan through dozens of sims, that now only I am holding up -- when they sold their land there. And if they sold it "by accident," they could have taken it back from the land flippers before me at any time. Or for that matter, taken it from me any time during the YEARS AND YEARS I owned it. That's what is so crazy about all this.  These furries actually waited years to begin hollering to take back land for me which has no build on it, and is used for prims.
12. As I noted on the forums, the notion Qie advances is absurd that the Lindens did not plan their SLRR years ago, when they created this continent, when we all remember exactly how it appeared and how its stations appeared one by one in their builders' contest (itself a cooptation of a building contest I myself ran), and that they somehow had to improvise or deal with ad farmer extortionists. An edge case like that can't undo the obvious fact that something like the SLRR has to be planned before you auction the land off, under the old way sims were created and sold; nothing the Lindens have done since then would lead us to believe that they need to "improvise". The Lindens "improvised" themselves right off the old Mainland, into Bellisseria, is what happened, and I think the furries are mad at that.
13. Thus: A completely fictional RR project is lobbied by a bunch of hobos/furries; Qie in his usual contrarian way backs them because he is owner of RR land and groups and content in the Moth Continent as well and thinks it benefits his projects/content sales/whatever; but he is more sane than any of these people. He knows it is not necessary to establish the terrible precedent of seizing a resident's land to satisfy landless lobbyiests on the forums.
14. Does the Right of Way that has suddenly appeared in land that had long lain fallow in Juanita in the center of the sim mean that the Lindens are going to now take their fallow Right of Way in Grote and link it across the road? If so, I haven't gotten the memo yet that they will seize my land "in the way". And the other owners who have to look at a railroad pass there will have something to say about this.

In the overheated furry mind here, there was this grand Linden project, that appeared...only after a resident spent years painstakingly building his own RR alongside theirs...and the abandoned it. That part seems weird. But then there's this other weird belief. That the Lindens had grand plans to take this resident-built RR and build it out through many sims -- but that only I stand in the way of it. I have to marvel at that premise, when the Lindens themselves sold their own land, having apparently abandoned their own project. So then this notion develops that they sold this "by mistake". But their Linden Right of Way in Grote lay fallow for years on end while I and others moved into that sim and put up homes and rentals. There are multiple owners on those sims, not just me, some who have been there for years before me.

RE: evola's pictures on Snapzilla -- The motel in Juanita is not built by a "three-day-old newbie". It was made in 2004 by Barnesworth Anubis and is perfectly stylish and fine -- just in prims, and from an age that feels dated to some. I personally wish to keep it. After I edited it to fix 10-m prims and such, it takes up less land impact than some of the many mesh buildings I own and could have put here. I see no need to replace it. It has stayed full for years, with ebbs and flows. If at some point all the rooms are empty and no one is renting it, then I would put something else there, but not now, merely to satisfy the agitation of some idiot on the forums.

 

Setting the Record Straight on Chic Aeon's Ignorant and Tendentious SL History

A prim tornado set off by MC Fizgig, the alt of Prof. Edward Clift of Woodbury, from land he owned right next to mine in Furness, purchased deliberately to harass me and my tenants. This photo was one I took obviously, with my old blonde avatar in the foreground, but now it is on MindBlizzard.

By Prokofy Neva, Virtualator

I had plans for better things to do today but I'll have to put in a little time to debunk this outrageous "history" Chic Aeon has come out with. She's been building anticipation for weeks and other blogs have touted it -- they are such an echo chamber but even together, none of them make up the traffic that SL political blogs once had in their heyday, and of course approach nothing like the traffic of fashion blogs, which is pretty much all there is in the blogosphere these days.

I was born in September 2004 in SL, and so I know these events not by hearsay or by the scrubbed version one encounters in various famous books, such as by Shamlet Linden. I lived them; in fact, they directly affected me and I was at their epicenter in some cases. But you don't need me for this history, which ultimately isn't "about me". You can google the events and read about them in the tech press and blogs of the day which still have archives. The deterioration of this record is what is prompting me to write a book now, which will take awhile, even though some think I write a book daily on my blog. I actually have not blogged since 2016 on any regularly basis for many reasons due to RL jobs, family needs, travel, poor health, etc. I think when you work all day blogging the war in Ukraine as I did from 2013-2018, you really don't have much left over for any other kind of blogging. The news writing that is much like blogging these days which I did from 2018-2019, and the continued jobs I have today really don't leave much desire to blog. There also isn't the audience of like-minded or even educated persons around SL as there once was, but more on that another time.

History is written by the victors, but in this case, Chic Aeon, a talented but still mediocre figure on the SL landscape, prone to obsequiousness to Linden Lab like others of her cohort, isn't really so much a victor so much as someone who, for reasons that remain obscure to me, has given up her content creation and store (which had buildings that tended toward the concrete block school of architecture, but were still nice, and various other furnishings), but has decided to stay in the SL ambit by joining what she views as the "winning side".  People have all kinds of valid reasons for exiting out of the SL economy, and it's not my business and they could be valid. But like Da5id Weatherwax, Phil the Furniture Guy and legions of other forums posters with time on their hands, their hatred of those who remain solvent or at least productive and still in business seems to drive their forums posts and blogging. They stream comment like this to help convince themselves their choices were valid more than anything else.

I'll do some short, basic takes now and fill in more later. The bold text is from Chic Aeon.

The Tax on Prims (2003) 

 

I wasn't here then. SL was very new. But when I joined a few years later I remember reading  about the uproar when The Lab decided that they would charge a weekly fee for EACH prim rezzed -- much like a tax.  I remember seeing screenshots of protesters, meetings, outraged citizens -- you get the picture. This didn't last too long.  Now and then The Lab backs down :D.

 

The operative thing to understand about the Prim Tax Revolt is that it is a Lab-approved and even iconic resistance that they cherish in their own corporate history as much as Americans do the Revolution of 1776. This Prime Tax Revolt even had crates of tea that it set afloat in the Linden Sea -- IM me if you somehow missed getting one at every freebie yard in the last 18 years. So it's not really an iconic movement of user resistance -- it's about some Linden alts and friends versus other Linden alts and friends, starting with "Fleatbyte" who was  Linden.

 

Some Lindens and their alts (and that is well-documented and known by earlier residents and Lindens if not those today), took the side that this policy was misguided, when other Lindens applied it -- which is how it can become an approved iconic revolt -- otherwise, the truth about it would disappear into the mists of history. They still disappear here, because Chic doesn't explain the basic problem with this "prim tax" idea -- there are only so many prims per sim. What USED to happen is that one person would hog all the prims on their parcel -- often the free 4096 m2 parcels given to Charter Members or Founding Members as they are sometimes described. So people used to stockpile prims, rezzing and sinking huge numbers to be able to have them in a storehouse when they felt like building. Then they would disappear and play WoW, which started simultaneously with SL, and no one could build; hence the howling. THAT was more the problem then "paying the prim tax" -- which some wealth people with six-figure salaries in Silicon Valley could easily do. So what the Lab did was simply allocate prims per square meter, 3 per 16. Today, more has been added to those amounts, so now you get 512 with 175 prims, whereas in the old days it was 117. Some people objected to this collectivization approach apportion equal amounts to each meter, which was like their collectivization of script time later, but given the Tragedy of the Commons, it was a rational decision.

 

Once again d0 note that I am a registered Democrat in NYS, I voted for Obama and Biden, I loathe Ayn Rand and find her one of the creepiest anti-human authors out there, and I don't hold any "Randian" views or any kind of extreme capitalist notions like Schumpeter "creative destruction". I'm for regulated business in a liberal democracy in a rule of law. I'm not for socialism because most of the time, that involves committees of you and your friends taking over and deciding things without democratic participation, or substituting mass voting without any checks and balances on the system as some kind of plebiscite. I refuse to accept any idea that I don't understand what real socialism is, having observed it first hand for 50 years. I also don't "write about the Soviet Union" any more because it collapsed in 1991, and I'm not a historian. Now and then I will write about some historical moment to explain some present issue but many people mix me up with others with very similar names, so let's point out once again: I'm not a journalist in Minnesota; I have never been accused of plagiarism; I have never worked for the State Department, CIA or any other government agency; Radio Liberty, where I worked as a contractor for some years on weekly newsletters and features, is a Congressionally-funded independent agency which was removed from the CIA in the 1970s when I was in high school and you weren't born yet so you have no clue about the history; I don't work for Greenpeace; I am not an expert on terrorism; I have not written any histories of the Soviet Union anywhere; my sole book on Amazon which is self-published is about Edward Snowden; any other report I've taken part in, during my long career in NGOs and media, has been about contemporary issues in Eurasia with other authors. I do not live on welfare; I have two children whom I did not adopt and did not eat, either.

 

Copybot Scandal (2006)

 

I was here for this one. The lab had reportedly made the viewer code available to the masses and in that move opened the door to copybot theft.  Creators as you might imagine were livid. A prominent protest campaign featured shots of famous folks in the nude (tastefully of course and honestly the bodies then were nothing to be proud of anyway).   I tracked down a couple of the famous posters. (WARNING naked avatar picture here :D)  They were everywhere back then.   The thing that I found the most insulting (and I wasn't a creator back then) was that the Linden Lab's point of view was "well they can't get the scripts so it really doesn't matter".  That is pretty much a direct quote.  The idea that all the time people spent making skins and hair and such "didn't really count" was extremely insulting.   

 

Cory Ondrejka, CTO of SL, made the viewer code (not the server code) available as open source, but the reason he was driven to do this was because a group made up largely of griefers who crashed sims among the many "experiments" they did, called libsl, who believed in "liberating" SL, had ALREADY reversed-engineered the viewer code, which was not that hard to do.  Their reverse-engineering, illegal under the TOS, was ALREADY done for months on end before the Lindens moved to release the viewer code for third-party development. It was blessing a fait accompli, and Cory was blessing i in keeping with his copy-leftist techno-libertarian/communist ideology, although Cory served in the Navy, and also worked for the NSA (imagine that!) but as we know from Snowden, people with those profiles, who wear one earring and have a female avatar in SL although not gay, can have very sectarian views they develop on the Internet or in social circles that the government has little influence over. Cory ultimately had a falling out with Philip over this, and left the Lab; he believed in releasing the server code as well. Philip thought this would destroy their equity, and of course he was right about that.

 

I first experienced Copybot when a known griefer named Babu TP'd me to his known griefer sim and proceeded to copy my avatar head to toe, several times over, and put a chorus line of them on a beach, with their heads slumped the way bots always appear when they are not animated by real human beings. He bragged about the script/code to do this, so I began to investigate further within libsl and in the rumour mill around town. I discovered that Electric Sheep Co. (with its group Counting Sheep), a then-famous developer and one of the "Big 6" taking contracts with giant corporations like IBM within SL and making scads of money with the Lab's help, had one staff person who was in libsl and who had access to this code, whom I knew personally; he and another resident (who tragically later was killed in a car accident in RL) came to my discussion meetings or I met them at meet-ups. Electric Sheep in fact used it themselves on hidden islands in work for a client. Herald reporters went a viewed these "repeats" in action. They were making "shards" as if it were WoW to try to solve the problem of the concert with only 160 on 4 sims able to attend. So they were hoping to duplicate avatars across sims. This same company also instituted a searchable database of ALL the objects within SL which caused enormous alarm over privacy concerns. Their project never got off the ground, and their database was removed from SL -- how, is a mystery, as the Lindens never commented.

 

When I attempted to report on these doings, which were well established, with source interviews documented, I rapidly ran up against the kind of problem you run into working for Russian media, when an oligarch or government official decides you have stepped on his toes. This of course happens in the US as well. Electric Sheep funded the Alphaville Herald at the time when Urizenus Sklar, the original founder and editor had stepped down and handed it to Walker Spaight, who was more of a commercial kind of guy and who is now in the lawn furniture business in Michigan, I believe, or if I don't have that right, something pretty close to it. Walker had an interesting trajectory through SL -- becoming a Linden for a time, where the Lindens tried to use him as an enforcer to rein in the "Metaverse Engineers" and wild graphic artists and such under the guise of "helping" them "get the word out"; he then worked for the Sheep and other companies in this well-funded start up in California which was kept highly secret, but as far as I can tell, involved a kind of bro app where you could IM any person in the room and flirt with them or try to get a date with them. Since this also involved privacy issues it collapsed and was replaced by other apps and the various developers went their separate ways; Electric Sheep went out of business. Today, Counting Sheep is a group that is a good graveyard of developers -- the famous Metaverse Evangelist Roo Reynolds from IBM, known as Algernon Spackler inworld, has not logged on since 2008. The rash of Rip Van Winkle style recent log-ins from some of these old characters makes me wonder if the Lindens are hiring more contractors again, although they have the Moles already. Someone pointed out to me it could be Sansar-related.

 

But back in the Copybot era, Electric Sheep reigned supreme, with access to TV companies and others with deep pockets, numerous staff hired out of  the SL resident base, and they were flush with VC and client cash, with all the scandals that can involve, a certain turnover of staff.

 

So Walker told me to remove my claims that Electric Sheep was involved in Copybot. There was a nuance here -- they may have privately used in for a client on a private sim, but they felt that they shouldn't be indicted for its leakage into the world by a few griefers -- even though their staff member was in the same griefer group, libsl which had indeed deliberately leaked it into the world for ideological reasons. The overlay among griefers/respectable scripters/Lindens is pretty porous and their groupthink and ideology pretty much sings in unison on the open source cult base.

 

I had no choice but to remove the text and sit by while Walker made an "apology" to his overlords, if I wanted to keep my "job" at the Herald -- a virtual job which didn't pay anything but which provided some visibility at the time as it was very popular. Then years later I confirmed again the story about the release of Copybot from a somewhat drug-addled staffer, and I think this isn't disputed -- and in any event, after doing two books on SL and the Metaverse, the Herald editors went on to pursue other interests and the Herald is only an archive now -- except for a creepy appearance to interview the atrocious weev, who once told me that he would like to take a chainsaw to my male avatar. That's how they are, you know.

 

So the Herald, the Lindens, their hangers-on, all took the position of scorn against creator concerns over Copybot, since they viewed anything you could see in your viewer as vulnerable to copying, and therefore due to the "analog hole," available to the unscrupulous to copy and benefit from without the original creator's involvement. It's theft, and theft more recognized as such today, but the copy-leftism of yesteryear that destroyed first the music business, then the media business is never recalled by the victors as destructive as it was, putting many many, journalists, newspapers, musicians, companies out of business. Today, the encryption that was in fact available to start https, a sacred belief system of techies question today, could have been used to secure music and content but techies would always claim you could never have perfect encryption. A longer story, but the ideological shifts on this over time, the failure for any mass cases of imprisonment of children and their parents for copying on Napster, which is now retired under a hail of lawsuits, can't be forgotten.

 

What happened inworld, outside the realm of wealthy tech developers and their griefer friends in libsl? (One of them was later hired away from his SL passtimes by Intel -- prompting the question for me, at least, whether Intel's experiments in virtual worlds at the time, since invisible, were so intensive for them that they were willing to sabotage LL).

 

The climate on the forums and blogs and forums was in many was just like the current gatchapocalypse, but with more resistance and more civil society.

 

The difference was that the "little dressmakers" as they were sneeringly called, much like gatcha makers are called "carnies" today or "losers" who can't make a sale without this avid "gambling" device, rebelled, big time. Along with major creators. They shuttered their stores, which were more important in an era without the Lab's Marketplace; there was only a resident SLexchange at the time which was cumbersome to use, involving the keeping of an SLexchange box on land inworld; it wasn't in the viewer with drag and drop. So they really could ban anyone from store entry. Big signs about Copybot went up all over. Hundreds of storekeepers were involved. I did not make content in those days other than textured prim boxes, but I had tenants who had been Copybotted or feared it, and I helped them put up signs and helped the boycott of sales as well until the Lindens would act. Some of my tenants went out of business and I lost rent, but more importantly, the era of lenience and even celebration of Copybot didn't last long because the Lindens finally acted.

 

Of course, the techies sneered at Copybot concerns, and of course found easy targets in the panic-stricken and ill-informed creators, who used devices and methods people evolved to address the threat, which of course didn't work -- these persist today in forms like the belief that an object not on "mod" is harder to copybot. Having seen how texture exploits work and the original Copybot, I can tell you it has nothing to do with mod or transfer; what is in the viewer and seeable can be copied by any device inworld or out.  Yet people persisted with these "anti-copybot" devices, sold by the unscrupulous, which supposedly worked on the principle of disruption.

 

I remember one day distinctly, as I sat in Blue Linden's office hour, and he himself dismissed concerns about copying, claiming it wasn't widespread. I proceeded to copy his "labstah trap" as I sat there and put the textures on prims for all to see; even dummies like me could learn some of the basic exploits. I can't claim that my little demonstration helped turn the tide at all (although I will claim my famous "pizza guy" blog for changing Linden attitudes on "officer recall" in group tools). But it helped create the climate -- because many, many people pushed back against the few cynical assholes who did not care about little people making little things for a living.

 

All the protests did finally get the attention of the Lindens; we had multiple meetings with Robin Linden, then VP of Program/Community/whatever (anyone can find her and ask her about this, she may talk, her RL name is Robin Harper) who finally worked with techs to come up with TOS language to ban the use of Copybots and make it a punishable offense. Those hoping for copy-leftism to prevail by fiat were disappointed by these "corporate sellouts" at the Lab who yes, liked to get tier paid from customers making content and stay in business. It was an indication of the leverage the user base, particularly content creators have over the Lab, but which they seldom use, given the propensity of the Lab for retaliation against dissent -- unless it's preapproved like the "Prim Tax Revolt".

 

The Anshe Chung Griefer Attack (2006)

 

I don't remember this really but reading bout flying penises I can't say that it was anything very unusual back then.  Griefing was much more prominent in those days. The sandboxes were notorious for all sorts of particle attacks, cages and the like -- certainly scary to new folks.  That could still be going on but I haven't seen much in years. I believe sim owners have more control now than they did back then, but I can't say that for certain.  I pretty much just exited the area when something I didn't like was happening.  HOME is just a click away after all.

 

So much that Chic doesn't remember at all, yet feels she can opine on and become a celebrated "SL Historian" over! Griefing was more widespread, but for it to appear on an island as distinct from the Mainland, and an island controlled by one of the Big Six developers on behalf of a prominent media company -- no, that was special. This incident and similar ones was not AT ALL about sandboxes, and PS particle attacks happened all over, particularly against my rentals and those of other rental agents because griefers do not like people with RL simulation and want to kill it off, not only in the name of "creativity," but to control the world with their own nihilist, collectivist -- and as we have come to see, racist and misogynist -- ideologies.

 

I *do* remember, because I was there, and more to the point, the Woodbury/Patriotic Nigras griefer (yes, there was a group by that disgusting name) created an alt using a last name similar to mine, something like Griefer FitzHugh, and used my openly-named email address to create it. That's certainly easy to do and I doubt there are any fences against that behaviour today.

 

They could appear inworld with that name having established it as supposedly "from me" before I would have a chance to notice it and report it to the Lindens, which of course I did instantly. They know that I didn't create the account and the effort to link me to the attack and somehow ruin my reputation as a "griefer" failed, because the Lindens can see log-ons and IP addresses and they aren't stupid, even when anonymizers are used. So this Fitz-something swooped into a press conference that the whole world was watching. THAT part Ms. Aeon, who can flee home when she sees flying penises like any of us, failed to convey. Daniel Terdiman of CNET, who wrote frequently on SL, and who had put Anshe Chung on the cover of Business Week, and other journalists joined him for a press conference to discuss this world-famous cover about becoming a millionaire in SL. The ideology of griefers, as I have noted, involves a totalitarian movement to destroy anyone who wants to use the Internet or a virtual world in particular for what they cynically describe as "srs bizness". Yes, all these companies from Reuters to IBM in SL wanted to use the platform for serious business, and Anshe, while an inworld business, made amounts that put her in a RL business category.

 

So the griefers wanted to deface this with flying penises, which floated in front of all the TV cameras to speak, causing the organizers terrible dismay and basically sinking the event. Again: this is not just "kids"; this is not just "pranksters"; these are adults with concerted ideologies and methods that echo some of the world's totalitarian movements, which began as partisans.

 

How could this happen? A lot of scrutiny has been made of the island owners  -- the Big Six development company -- who contracted to CNET for this, as well as it should, as I think they were problematic myself.  The Big Six had common griefers in their midst; quality control was lax, and need for scripters and designers desperate.

 

They left autoreturn at 0. Why did they do this? Because they claimed that if an island is set to a group, and group members have to be invited before they can rez anything, that anyone attempting to rez a prim will see that prim bounce if they are not an invited group member. And that's correct, up to a point, until you factor in rogue viewers, which were reverse engineered and tinkered to have exploits of Copybot and the ability to rez anywhere, so that autoreturn should have been put on anyway.  Those of us on Mainland sims who endured constant attacks had long since learned to have group roles AND autoreturn.

 

Plus, a security force should have immediately ejected the griefers; they didn't. They got to do a lot of damage before anyone moved.

 

This story went all around the world, and handily destroyed LL's reputation and saw many copycats for years to come. Ultimately neither Anshe or Daniel Terdiman were so much hurt by this as the Lab. Big business didn't keep streaming in, and died out in 2007. PS I think straight men are more disturbed than women at seeing flying penises; if there's any flying to be done with them, they want to do the flying.

 

Virtual Pedophilia Scandal (2007)

 

This definitely added to the less than stellar reputation that SL was gathering around itself.  Nasty stuff. Even though the participants were supposedly adults it was a very uncomfortable business.  It was around this time I think that age verification came into play -- not the "what year were you born"  box on sign up but lots and lots of paperwork very similar to what you have to do to process credit now. Passports etc -- and a fairly steep charge.  

 

I found this mention via Google which suggests my memory is working well.

 

 

I don't know HOW someone can style themselves as an "SL Historian" without any facts, any links, any actual substance to what they are writing -- and then mixing up different events to boot. All of this is findable. And no, the age-verification came in well AFTER the age-play scandals, and was more about the need to establish an adult continent for adult sex in general than about the specific issue of minors joining the world of SL and being preyed upon -- a smaller problem than that of adults engaging in child pornography.

 

The Lindens tolerated "ageplay" as it was euphemistically known (although it is a word banned on the SL forums), and some even said, enjoyed it, given the strange splash pages showing avatars that looked like they were 12 at the time, wearing jewelry that some conspiracy theorists said signaled to pederasts. I have no confirmation of that, other than to say yes, that splash page did have a child, just like the hentai children allowed for years on end in the search and event functions on the viewer. There is less of that now, so nobody remembers.

 

Many people were upset at child pornography in SL. They were of the type you find in the American Midwest who are religious and conservative. So they tackled this in ways that made them easy targets, as the bien pensant continued to insist on "free speech", and even after the tinkering of various US officials on this law (like John Ashcroft even from his sickbed)  generally, in the US, the cartoon or fictional or graphics novel sort of depiction of children in this manner remained "protected speech".

 

So the Lindens did nothing. I recall one particularly horrible scene where someone summoned me as a witness, as a group of people who were either actual or RP Native Americans in SL held a picket across from a venue with very sick child pornography in it.  I had only the vaguest sense of who all these people were -- I was asked to come because I was a blogger and reporter for the Herald. A Linden hovered in the sky nearby observing, but not kicking anybody. I cammed inside the building, and at first I couldn't make sense of what I was seeing. That's because I had never seen a photograph of a child in RL, or at that time, in SL, in bondage-wear practicing BDSM. I couldn't compute it at first, seeing these tiny bodies in their pajamas patterned with animals or flowers. There were both RL and SL pictures, all horrendous. Before I could gather my wits about me and screenshot this, something I was reluctant to do because then it would be on my hard-drive and make me possibly liable (but which I thought might help the Lindens eliminate it), the owners deleted all the prims. They removed the entire house and disappeared. 

 

One Linden, Adam (Chad) Linden to be precise, angered at the laxness on this topic, wrote up a card with warnings against ageplay, although it was not really firmly established in the TOS. He would hand it out, referencing other countries; German prosecutors had already signaled they were examining SL and in fact a group of German pedophiles who were arrested in RL turned out to have SL accounts and screenshots -- so we were told by media at the time although I do not believe there are any court records anyone can find to prove this -- but do try.

 

That's my recollection but like everything in history, has to be researched -- which Aeon did not do whatsoever. But we all know there were German prosecutors, and that set LL finally into motion. That Linden, the son of a policeman with a rather chequered career in SL, ended up being fired for, among other things, punching out a resident at the SLCC in Chicago, but that's another story.

 

Even as the Lindens began to develop and enforce a policy against ageplay, there was one rather prominent developer and builder in SL named csven Concord, who happened to have a sandbox in Patagonia near my rentals, who kept justifying this awful activity in the most creepy "libertarian" way possible. So a very long fight broke out on a blog of that era called Clickable Culture, edited by Tony Walsh, a crucial blog in the day run by Metaverse thinker outside the LL ambit and not as biased as an SL resident. He played a very important role in SL and while at first I could not find him, turns out he showed up when Dusan Writer (Doug Thomas) noted that he is now the CEO of a game development company called Phantom Compass. He said he could not resurrent the archives now.

 

So this supreme asshole resident stormed and stormed on this topic. He tried to make much of the fact that every US state has a different drinking age. That the draft age is lower than the drinking age. And blah blah blah. All in the quest to justify this activity with minors, even as young as 2 or 7. I would mention what I saw as proof of how this was not about 17 year old twinks, and he would then claim my failure to call the FBI meant I myself was liable. It was extraordinary how he harassed and bullied me for weeks on end on this point, claiming that my "failure to act" over something I saw briefly in a virtual world and didn't document or get law enforcement on -- while a Linden hovered actionless nearby -- somehow implicated me -- a classic "turning the tables" technique used by every sectarian -- and griefer -- in the Universe and Metaverse.

 

Of course, you can't call the FBI when you don't have a screenshot, or even room chat, in a game, essentially, and make a claim. It was removed very fast as I said over and over again. This asshole would then claim that a swingset that some RP family had in my rentals meant that I myself tolerated ageplay, which is ridiculous, I ejected anyone who had child avatars with adult content in their rental, regardless of whether they were caught in the act. If someone has a child avatar and is playing "family," and has out a swingset, that's not proof they are "ageplayers". I'm more suspicious than most in this regard, and bar child avatars from my camping areas because this is a venue I have seen time and again in fact turn into adult behaviour -- and get removed by the Lindens. Why did the "playground" in Pompei get abandoned or seized and turn up on the auction last week?  Let's literally not be children here.

 

I had never taken an interest in this topic as one to crusade on, which is valid but I think issues like torture, trafficking, etc. are more widespread where I could contribute at the time, given the huge number of groups on this topic already. I came to discover that those who engage in ageplay are an organized, proactive, vindictive, networked, determined bunch. I had had no idea. They have destroyed the careers of multiple journalists who have tried to take them on. Their capacity for retaliation is enormous, and they were all over SL and still exist today.

 

For this reason, and others having to do with the need for payment forms on file to start the adult grid of Zindra (more the point about age verification than the child pornography scandal) the Lindens introduced the age verification, which worked badly, which found people like me who submitted our driver's licenses and credit cards and who had histories in SL, unable to get to our own land in Zindra due to glitches. No matter, eventually they were resolved, but Zindra never became as popular as they had hoped to siphon off all adult activity from the main areas of the grid.

 

 

Ban on Gambling (2007)

 

It's hard to imagine how pervasive gambling was in Second Life.  Small establishments and  huge casinos covered the mainland. I am sure there were many on estates then, but there weren't nearly as many private regions as there are now. You would get paid to camp (sit to earn money) at the slot machines and play. There were money trees in many gambling establishments. And unfortunately plenty of people lost plenty of money giving in to their addictions.  I was happy to see the casinos disappear but a LOT of people left when the change occured.  

 

This is a total muddle, and leaves out the far more damaging High Net Investment Programs, which were basically ponzi schemes but not completely; the banks; the stock markets; the credit unions; the land loan operations, etc. etc.

 

There were many slot machines all over, including one originally made by Philip Linden himself with a fairy motif which was once in the Linden Library. His script was banned but not deprecated as it took money from people's accounts without their permission. The main problem of these machines is that they had no checks on your balance -- they could draw it down completely and leave it in the negative. So few people wanted them on their property. I got rid of them within a week from Coney Island -- and I had camping chairs for not much longer there, as they drained your account. Some people had large amounts of cash to pay for them; gambling itself gave them that float, which I personally did not wish to maintain in SL, though it was legal at the time.

 

I made a sort of parody game for awhile in the tower in Ross called "Barons" I think, where we would guess which land baron would win an auction, based on its various features and their histories, and have a kitty for the person who guessed correctly to win. It had some avid players for awhile but it fell fallow even before the Lindens removed the full sim land auctions.

 

Camping is not gambling, however. And that's why this is so stupid and misleading. Camping chairs merely required an avatar to sit for 1-5-10 minutes or longer, with a payout for X amount of time. They could see the payout and got the payout; no random factor whatsoever. It was not like a Lucky Chair that might have your letter, or a Sploder that randomly might reward you the kitty at a club; the chair were very straightforward. You sat, you were paid a small amount, and you thus generated traffic for that venue.

 

TEEN GRID DISILLUSIONMENT

 

I could point out that my young son at the time and his friends on the Teen Grid had their little hearts broken by the camping script, which Philip allowed into the teen grid, a very bad call, with Blue Linden's initiative -- they never met a script they didn't like. I had asked Philip permission to send an email to my son with a rental script, and he approved that and I couldn't see why he shouldn't. The camping script people didn't ask permission but didn't get banned, as I recall. So my son and his pals had a top mall with genuine organic traffic, where they sold armour and weapons and furniture, where they had something they called "Sewer Safari" which was a pipe under ground with quests and gifts. One of the boys scripted a basketball that actually bounced and could be thrown; Philip was amazed. There was nothing like that yet on the adult grid. They put a lot of work into the build, the customer service, and along the way would ask me for advice, but mainly they did it on their own. I was glad they were in Second Life for hours after school, and not someplace worse, and under my supervision from the next room as I worked from home at the time. 

 

But when the other malls introduced camping chairs, which my son and his friends didn't want to use because it was fake, not a real measure of content and attraction, they lost their place in search, they had less customers, and unless they played this game of camping -- for which they didn't have the large amounts of cash, as I and other parents had strictly limited what they spent there. I was proud they could pay for their sim with their own earnings but didn't want to pump anymore real money into it. But other rich parents with the children who got the best sims with Linden insider tips (they were not auctioned in the same way) did better. I was appalled at how the FIC system played out even more grotesquely on the teen grid.

 

I frankly can never forgive the Lindens for this particular chapter and I hold Blue Linden, put in charge of the Teen Grid, responsible for this bad call (and that is not even the reason I completely broke off all relations with him -- that was related to other bad acts on his part related to the Nebraska stores).

 

So I saw these boys of 13 and 14 who were in something like a latter day 4H club, something like an AV club which we used to have in high school, all rolled into one and even more so, who were learning how to run a business, who were having a great time, but who were suddenly walloped with this unfair competition which came essentially as a deception -- the traffic on those venues was not authentic, it was the result of paying people to stand around on your land. All the boys fell away from SL gradually after this, and never returned. It was really sad.

 

Meanwhile, on the adult grid, more havoc was done and also with breaking of young hearts of people who had worked hard to make interesting content and venues. So they went out of business. Eventually, the clamour of merchants once again got the Lindens to ban this. First, they tried tinkering with traffic, and still do, making it so fake methods couldn't affect it; but finally they just banned it completely, although I still camping in some places, and "Fishing" is really the same thing. People sitting in camp chairs had a temptation right in front of them -- slot machines and cheap merchandise, so they doled their camp earnings which were meager given the time spent into those other machines and then were worse off.

Camping did NOT create ready cash for the poor because of the limited amounts and temptations put before sitters -- Money Trees, which were gifts, and various freebie yards were must more helpful to newbies and the poor.

 

Woodbury University (2007 - 2010)  and the Demise of Educational Support

 

I have no memories of Woodbury at all and reading Ryan's description doesn't bring anything back.  I will say that sometime around 2007 Linden Lab stopped supporting teaching.  In earlier years there were many schools that taught the ins and outs of Second Life to new residents. There were classes on building throughout the day at various schools. The Lab paid teachers per class and it was a fairly good wage in linden dollars. Some classes were spectacular and some to be painful sat through while IMing a friend and trying to make something amid the horrific instructions.   

 

The system WAS faulty but the abandonment of learning left a large hole in the community for a long time.  

 

This is the worst entry in this "SL History" -- appallingly bad, given how easily Google could correct this idiocy.

 

Woodbury University was a RL university, a commuter college in California where mainly white children with some minorities studied, children who couldn't get into better schools, and which had a Digital Arts program. The professor of that program, one Edward Cliff, is scrubbed pretty much from view now, but not before some of us tracked his reading of papers at the St. Petersburg Economic Forums, which provides at least one link explaining their fascination with Soviet memes.

 

The Woodbury students who originally rented from SL were the children of wealthy parents, not poor Blacks, nor minorities of any kind, although one prominent one who is now transgender, could be described as a minority, and a persecuted one at that.  In that sense Prof. Clift was wildly tendentious and deceptive claiming that the Lab was harming "minorities" with the decision to put an end to this grief-a-thon.

 

The dean of the school didn't immediately fall into place supporting that sim as I recall, but then was lax in supervision and late in putting an end to the mayhem. I visited it early on and wrote about it for the Alphaville Herald and it was abundantly clear that this was an SL chapter of 4-chan, the griefer group that has spawned by now real-world terrorists. Some think these are some kind of progressive, edgy youth bravely fighting worthy causes, but they are in fact profoundly conservative and racist and -- need I point it out again -- don't want anyone to use the Internet for anything but a griefer's sandbox. It's a curious kind of dull Ludditism that never gets proper study, as the legion of griefer professors who laud them as "transgressive" don't want to acknowledge their fascistic and communist replays.

 

Edward Clift flew around in blackface, something that would get him fired today -- large Afros as in Habbo Hotel, where they first invaded as a movement, black skins, and particles with Bill Cosby selling jello. It was a shtick, a griefing caper, and not serious.

 

They were famous for word-salading, as Urizenus, a linguist by profession, described it -- babbling nonsense and pretending to be serious students or educators or researchers, even hinting at a government clandestine project (nonsense) so that collectively, they made a kind of hyper, electronic Eddie Haskell, if you remember that oligeanous character from "Leave it to Beatver". "Gee, Mrs. Cleaver, what a lovely dress you have on today," he would say, while giving Beaver a wedgie and plotting crime with Theodore, Beaver's older brother, before Ward, the dad, came into to stop it.

 

They always lied about their griefing and many believed their lies; they always styled themselves as victims, to the point that the PC Chronicle of Higher Events could post articles about the Lindens not promoting and helping education -- a falsehood Aeon echoes here. Nothing of the sort. The Lindens gave discounts to educators; they had droves of them; they had staff dedicated to them. But Woodbury was not about education. It was about perhaps "conceptual art" if you put a lib spin on it, but really more about the banality of evil. They crashed sims, including during Philip's town halls and the goodbye party for Robin Harper. They copybotted content, they harassed Christians with Bible studies, they heckled people they didn't like.

 

PSEUDO-TERRORISTS

 

And they griefed me mercilessly for a simple reason: I AR'd them, but I did more than that, contrary to the advice of the timid who say "don't feed the trolls". I reported on their antics. And I'm glad I did and will continue as sunlight is the best disinfectant and silence is surrender. The first time I came to the attention of a Quebecois friend of theirs (ostensibly), an avid 4-chan/PN regular, was when they created an "art show" of the 9/11 towers with big signs "I'm Falling for You" and love hearts, then set them on physics and watched them fall over and over again, as children do.

 

So the Lindens didn't remove this in the name of free expression, a value they have never displayed on their forums, and while I could acknowledge their "art appreciation," I said this was sickening and that we should morally condemn it so that these people were ostracized. The next thing I know, when I held a 4th of July party on Coney Island in Baileya, someone with a day-old alt with a name like "Muhamed," flew an airplane around and dive-bombed me and my tenants and guests.  I didn't think this was high art, either, and AR'd it. Not long after, I saw a group of these same people littering Anshe's land for sale with obscenities. She would leave long autoreturn or no autoreturn so that prospective buyers could test houses. This led to griefing. I reported it. They saw me at the scene, and ever after, I was a target. They looked me up in RL, saw that Russian studies was my field, and harassed and bombarded me with the Soviet theme endlessly, and still do, although less so. Some say they actually dreamed up the Soviet theme just to harass me, but their Soviet grief objects appear to have pre-dated my ARs. 

 

Meanwhile, the Lindens, who didn't care about me and my tenants, really, found other reasons to ban these people about 5 days repeatedly, each time a tender-hearted Linden, one of their own, letting them back, each time them renting an island, each time Edward Clift taking a star turn for the tech and edu press -- it was a marvel to behold. These people were banal, mediocre criminals. They produced no real scholarship. The few papers from one of their crew on Academia can reinforce that point. Their pseudo-scholarly articles in tech or professional press are hilariously bad, like parodies.

 

None of them count anywhere or have any following today. But at the time people thought this was sacred "education" and should stand. It was truly extraordinary. I could report a lot about this, but what was interesting is that their use of exploits and scripts to crash sims is what got them banned, not their harassment of me or people in Bible studies or stores. Over and over again. Each new edition of "island managers" would immediately become known from social media and you'd have to be blind not to notice their presence. Philip at an earlier point had banned about 100 somethingawful.com griefers and I would point out their enablers who didn't violate the TOS but stockpiled their griefer prims for them in groups and in sandboxes, available for the new alt to come back and collect. That's why I could see the same full perm object with different owners over and over.  The techies wailed when Philip deleted all those asssholes, and he didn't do a very thorough job, but it's important to remember that Philip ran a business, even though he was a wild-eyed visionary. He did call in the FBI and the police. He did get his sims back under control. And here we all are.

 

The legitimate educators in SL, for the most part unrelated to Woodbury, had another problem: even with the non-profit discount, sims and their huge, unnecessary but popular builds cost a lot! Too much! Many folded after a year. They could never seem to understand how to do this smaller, although a few did; I commend that engineering department on the Mainland on a 4096.  Then, for reasons unknown, the Lindens removed the educational discount -- long after the Woodbury saga -- when their business enterprise platform Nebraska failed as well. Gradually, they wooed them back, but they are a fraction of what they are now.

 

As for this bit about how "the Lab paid teachers," I'd ask for more on that. Perhaps they did. I think Chic is mixing this up with the dwell payments system, where a builder's class would generate traffic and dwell points, which then lead to real money payouts. But the Lindens had lots of giveaways in the early days, like the free $1000 sims, so this could very well be true. Most educators were paid by their RL institutions, however.

 

SL5B (2008)

 

I think his was the year that the birthday celebration committee removed the work from a very talented creator because the child in the multimedia depiction was a small girl and her nipples were showing. We are talking about a four of five year old with NO SEXUAL THEME at all -- and because it was a girl rather than a boy child?   Some research found lots of mentions of censorship  -- as well as some other instances of that censorship being based on gender.   The exhibit in question was moved to the University of Western Australia which is where I viewed it.  There was plenty of controversy at that time. 

 

In an era where LL was trying to eradicate ageplay, it's more than fine for them to object to portrayals of children in this manner. It sure doesn't seem appropriate to me given the SL context, and I don't care how talented the artist was. The Lindens' censorship was uneven. They would swoop down and remove art works in the public domain from centuries ago if a nipple was showing in a store in my malls. They would leave the ageplay venue I described alone for days on end until residents literally picketed it. I remember I used to have a gay community, as a haven for LGBT who were at that time more persecuted than now although the persecution remains a factor everywhere. I had low cost rentals around the Grace sim area which was in General, but the fact is LGBT doesn't always want a sexualized venue with adult activity; they want friendship, art, socializing, etc. and that's why I hoped to at least support with rentals, although I wasn't going to be program director. So a few people moved in, mainly women, some men and it was largely ignored until one day, this huge furry rabbit, I think it was, swooped down with all these anti-gay slogans, particles and signs. They scattered it all over the lawns of my community. I was stunned and hurt. This was early in my sojourn, and I thought the climate was more friendly. I'm an ally of the LGBT community, not gay in RL, and that adds to the hatred I experience especially from certain gay men and m2f on the forums, who really don't like any manifestation of a male avatar that they don't control and isn't "real". It's a strange kind of patriarchalism which persists even among communities that should be "progressive".

 

Anyway, Daniel Linden, who may or may not have been gay, I don't recall, actually came running to the rescue, one of the very few times any Linden came to any rescue involving me. He swiftly banned the furry, globally removed the signs, and promised the Lab's response would be instant. And it was, usually. That community eventually fell apart simply because ultimately, PG or G becomes a problem, not because of your activity as such, but the presence of enemies ready to AR you if you so much as say "fuck" on a G sim -- which cynical artist griefers like Jauani Wu did to me repeatedly.

 

The birthday problem was deeper than ageplay, however. There was other kinds of art work that LL did not feel could be in a G kind of environment they wanted to control. And it's their game, and they get to do what they want. So they ended the resident involvement, which they had tolerated for a time. Then, they themselves completely got out of the Birthday business and let it be ONLY resident activity, which was weird. They then came back and took control of it again with a very sanitized and screened resident involvement. I have been in it perhaps 4-5 times, and by the time they got to this year's stricter rules, banning any use of your business logo, I was out. This actually made the exhibits very confusing. I could fly to an art gallery or some elaborate view and never see who made it, as the name might not have recognition, but the company would. I would searcg in the lag and slow rez for a notecard giver, which was still allowed, but not see them. Really stupid, all of it.

 

 

Openspace Price Change (2008) 

 

The end result of the price change and downgrade of Openspace sims to Homestead sims gave way to a huge exodus and influx of SLers to Opensim -- namely Inworldz which opened in 2009.  From $75 for a fill sim to $125 for the same sim but with limitations was viewed VERY negatively. Many just packed up and walked away.  

 

I've written a lot about this on the forums and elsewhere, but once again, it has to be explained, that this was about abuse of the product by land barons, not about the Lab being mean and not letting people have homesteads without islands -- their current requirement.

 

Because land barons would buy up 100 homesteads, flip them into 16-piece rentals, usually flat sand pancakes, and rent them out, and using the tools, make the tenant "estate manager". Then they disappeared to play WoW or sell on Silk Road, which was more fun and/or paid more. The Lindens were left with miles of customer service tickets about performance. These sims were not meant to hold all those avatars and content. Also, the Lindens then did not get the value of them, as the barons could overcharge on them and no one else could buy them stand-alone. I don't think we will see this product from them as a standalone.  There is a longer story here, go and Google it.

 

Banning "Banks"  (2008)

 

This was kind of a "really who cares" for me. I mean the idea that someone would put money into a virtual bank in hopes of gaining better interest rates was downright Ludacris. It was definitely not a loss to see them go although there were some pretty impressively built "banks".  The whole scenario did not raise the view of Second Life for the outside world.  

 

I don't care about hair, for example, but I don't say that the evolution of hair is unimportant in SL and I find it "Ludacris" (ludicrous). Can we agree that Aeon is now simply incompetent?

 

The reason why people valued the banks and high-yield investment programs, so to speak, is because they are poor people from poor countries needing cash in a virtual world, where some make a living in RL.

 

This factor simply MUST MUST MUST be taken into account in studying all these issues. So often people perceive the players behind these seeming scams as computer programmers in California earning six figures and therefore worthy of contempt -- like Mr. Lee's Hongkong, who put ads all over on 16m which he charged $10,000 for, blighting the view and extorting it back. I once caught up with him in RL and asked him "Why"? He was a skilled programmer in fintech I believe it was. He could have sold scripted devices. He said he just found it interesting. Sure, to terrorize my rentals, to put spinning crap on prime waterfront, oh, how interesting.

 

The stock market emerged in fact for a very good cause: an effort by a group of land owners and merchants to try to break the hammerhold Anshe Chung had on the land market, which she (really he, a man with an Asian wife who was not the one using the avatar) could maintain over SL due to the investment from some wealth VC brothers in Germany where they were based.  I was at the founding meeting.

 

Since the Lindens either couldn't or wouldn't curb the monopolist phenomenon, and still don't today, having no RICO or any other kind of notion in their TOS as such, Anshe bought up all the prime waterfront, islands and mainland, and no one else could get into the market. She controlled all the telehubs by winning every auction, and having a set of merchants' stores ready to drop on the land as soon as it fell into her control. I once through some miracle managed to win a piece of this telehub land which Anshe rapidly rented from me and put her client on it; that client then later rented from me for less on another sim, infuriating her, which is why she left a grief patch of land amidst all the "buyback" land at the Ross telehub.

 

But it's hard to imagine those days when today, the land market, while controlled by a few people, still has a lot of diversity and entry points. So this group thought that if we pooled our resources, money and staff, we could make our own cartel to challenge Anshe. This involved also a stock market to generate income. It was a failure at every point of its short-lived history mainly due to the problem of anonymous, unaccountable avatars, a feature baked into bitcoin which is why I will never trust that.

 

It had a run for awhile, and parallel to this, there were those HYIP, whereby you opened up a "savings account" by paying into a machine that recorded it and kept your money in a float, but to which you still had access. Most importantly, which Aeon can't absorb, they paid interest! On time, and in full, for years! So that spawned numerous alts opening up those bank accounts -- I had as a tenant the creator of these "ATMs" and I tested them. I had the founder of Ginko, as the company was known, as a tenant for $35/wk for an ATM like anyone else with $35 as I did not discriminate. I myself put only small amounts in these machines as I did not trust them. They were not like gatcha machines, as they had no reputational backup in any form, SL or RL. The person who made them was in Argentina (Nicholas Portocarro), and reclusive. He tried to bring me into his operation; I was uninterested. He had a good run, actually helping many people achieve some equity in SL. They could save $1000 or $10000 and buy land, then sell it, without having a credit card which their poor country didn't provide.

 

But like all things that looked to good to be true, and wasn't, it collapsed, and not because the owner had to attract new people to pay the old, as in a ponzi scheme. That's not how to understand it, and why crusading lawyers taking a star turn around this were so stupid. What it involved was simply philanthropy. People willing to use their many thousands of dollars to provide some cash to the poor through this interest system, as they gained a float out of it and reputational enhancement that helped them gain a purchase in the land business. Land was the best investment in this case to get a quick yield of profit, but even floating a loan to a store would work.

 

It was largely based on gambling, however. The owners of both the banks and stock market would gamble or own gambling establishments and have loads of cash on hand. That made it all workable. Then the Lindens banned gambling to comply with ACTUAL US Law that was ENFORCED, which we DO NOT HAVE with gatcha. I'm all for that; I did not support gambling after a few weeks once I saw how crooked the machines were, especially in terms of draining their owners' accounts, yielding a percentage to creators -- the way the few monopolist rental boxes worked in those days, namely one by Hank Ramos which he opensourced in some fit of pique with the Lab, and which I still use today, in adapted form.

 

Usurious rental machines making someone like Hank take a 25% out of your every sale (if you opted not to buy the $2500 landlord rental boxes, and that was a big outlay in those days) was never questioned by the Lab. They never met a script they didn't like. The Lindens feel code is law, and bad code that is bad law should only be deprecated in very rare instances.

 

On top of the gambling ban came the RL recession at that time in 2008, and also the collapse of the land market, and the snowball effect. Now they couldn't even borrow from Peter to pay Paul, they had to flee, leaving, in one case I know of personally, losses as high as US $8,000 to store owners and creators who used this system to expand.

 

It was heartbreaking to watch, and those people responsible, whom I reported, harassed me savagely for years to come, putting bloody effigies of my RL self on my lawn like RL gangsters. 

 

Again, because my position is so often misrepresented, I feel that real life law enforcers should have been summoned from real countries. The FBI or prosecutors. Not crusading corporate lawyers who formed a Bar Association that went on to bar criticism of China and content about protests there, and feted the Al-Hambra sim, which re-enacted the low status of women and minorities and banned critics. That the SLBA today is a completely different normal association is in part due to my willingness to keep taking on Benjamin Noble/Benjamin Duranske, who now works at PayPal as one of those computer programmer/lawyer combos that I find so deadly in the Metaverse, exposing his lies, exposing his ill intent, and pointing out that this had to be done in such a way as to protect customers, and those in poor countries, and not make them take the rap for what really amounted to a few people, at least one a Trustifarian in the US with plenty of cash, who exploited others. As with Cuomo, trial by media and dropping of judicial procedures does not extend women's rights and the rule of law; it makes the bros and even some women more cynical about those who step forward with allegations.

 

It would have been nice if the Lindens had the resources, cash, staff time, lawyer contingent, and media savvy to try an experiment with banks in a virtual world, where they could have easily kept it inworld and not allowed cashouts by the principle players. This would cause inflation, of course, as their dwell and high stipends did in their day. The Lindens did not want to become a bank with all the regulatory hassle that required, or even a credit union, which might have been more doable. A microcredit scheme as in Bangladesh, perhaps? Even these programs beloved by the UN often end in tears with scoundrels making off with the cash.

 

Meanwhile, all kinds of loan companies and banks and investment programs sprang up in Upland, for example.

 

 

Zindra - New Adult Continent (2009)

 

Making an adult continent seemed like a good idea, but the problem was that The Lab FORCED all adult oriented businesses off the regular mainland. No choice -- you just moved or perhaps they moved you; not sure on that. One big problem however (and only one) was that not everyone exited the mainland. I had a neighbor who was selling adult oriented "gear" and while I did report the shop, it was never moved. So much for "cleaning up the mainland". A dozen years later the "continent" is still  waiting to be finished and is filled with for sale signs.  

 

 

You were not "forced" off the main grid. You were given an opportunity to have your openly adult venue moved to a location you could actually choose inworld, which was unprecedented, since the First Land program which also involved choice, unlike Bellisseria today. If you did not take this offer, you might be punished later, but it was a gray area, and would largely depend, in this sprawling world across many servers, on abuse reports by your fellow residents.

 

I decided to take this hotel once located in Juanita, that I had bought from a woman who had run it as an adult venue, but ceased when some of her scripts went haywire, and experiment with what would happen to it when it got to Zindra. So I dutifully applied for the program and moved the hotel. There were some bumps along the road, it wasn't instant, and speaking of roads, I really hated the roads in Zindra. They were too glaring and cartoonish, and I hate that they put one like that in Palomarian.

 

First, there was a scandal about child avatars, who insisted on their "rights" to come to Zindra. I found this profoundly fucked up, and totally undermining their case, but they thought they should have entry, and go in bars but as long as they didn't "ageplay", fly under the wire. Some now respected child avatars took this position which really undermines their credibility. It was an endless forums and inworld drama never really resolved.

 

There was a lot of competition in Zindra, so I closed my motel, then made a mall. I moved one tenant who sold adult items like vibrators openly on the shelves to Zindra, as I felt this would be bannable. I didn't want adult content constantly leaving me vulnerable to ARs fueled by haters on the forums, not real concern about the wrong content in the wrong place. So I moved a few of those stores into the mall, a mere 4096. They did ok for some years, but then lost interest.

 

I think what the Lindens and most older residents know about all this is that most people are NOT repeat NOT interested in PUBLIC adult activity -- strip shows, various blatant acts, organized orgies, fake Black people enacting scenes with lily white virgins, etc. etc. Most people want to do, not watch. And do in private, not public. There is actually a limited market for clubs featuring "older men with younger women" or "women with men whose wallets they control" or whatever their kink is. They are a decided minority for -- again -- public activities. Therefore clubs do not do well. Stores maybe a bit better, but they are very far from where people live because...once the Linden swap program was over, prices shot up, and today most land is owned by LIFE and sold at high prices, a reprise of the Anshe phenomenon earlier in SL histories, but now, with no determined group of furries who want to break the cartel with a stock program -- which is illegal.

 

I can see that the generally miserable state of affairs all over in the land business may sometime lead to that "marvelous" idea of Phil's (he hated arbitrage) of making all land cost $5/m the end, regardless of rating or location. That is, hard coded into the viewer so that it could only sell for that.

 

Some people put their art or other activities in Adult just to avoid problems, in case somebody somewhere objected to something -- which mainly never appeared in their work or store, but they wanted to avoid trouble.

 

The very design of Zindra, like Horizon, is awful. They wanted to get away from the Mainland dirt, which became toxic chemicals in places on Heterocetera, and went too far in the other direction. Will Zindra be killed off before the old Mainland? Can't say. Zindra can be a showcase to investors or media as the place "where the adult goes" but that's hugely misleading.

 

The overwhelming majority of adult activities are in M, and even G, which is cheaper, and where people engage in simulated sex in private, in the sky. I think that's a good solution, but I realize it's one that may not hold for LL.

 

At some point, the new owners may drop down a policy, as they did with gatcha, that says "all adult activity, private or public, involving scripted adult furniture and props, must move to Zindra." It is for that day that LIFE has quietly held their land unsold for years.  Many of us will fold then, and we won't be missed.

 

No history of Zindra would be complete without the story of "bondage Linden" Blondin, who was assigned to caretake the rowdy Zindra denizens. Like all resident things (this will happen to Bellisseria soon enough, and was the case in Nautilus in the early days), there were competing groups, loudmouths who tried to throw the Lindens, etc. etc. Blondin made a hasty exit from LL finally, prompting much speculation. Years later, Blondin's typist told me that the reasons he left had nothing to do with Zindra, and when the story is told someday, he said, people would be surprised.

 

The Big Layoff (2010)

 

Mid June arrived and 30 percent of the Lindens vanished. What I remember most is the memorial someone made for those departed -- and indoor watery "graveyard" of sorts with the names of individual past employees etched into stones. This was of course the first of the "big layoffs" with another coming in 2020. 

 

I believe this was made around the Sea of Omidyar -- there was the big cull of griefers numbering some 30 some time before this, and a graveyard for those miscreants, then the Lindens. For weeks on end, the Herald refreshed the People list, spotting missing Lindens, until LL figured out to leave the Dead Souls in place so the size of the cull would not be visible. A lot of these people were once residents. I don't know if they made a policy -- a good one, in my view, if they had it, and they don't, really: see Patch -- was to remove Lindens who were prominent residents, with conflicting loyalties. Some of those people were nothing but trouble, as they kept their commerce and social circles intact, creating the FIC system whereby they benefited with the Lindens against others without those insider contacts. Some of them were abusive or even corrupt. It's good they are gone. But some were decent and contributed a lot, and their firing was a mystery. Some tended to be the more extreme open source cult, that LL in fact really didn't fully subscribe to. Some day someone will study all those cases and come to a more educated understanding.

 

The Last Name Debacle (2010)

 

Any of you WITH a legacy last name remembers this time. The Lab once again thought they new best, even though the populous was loudly (oh so loudly) telling them they did not.  The point it seems was to make it easy to integrate SL with Facebook.   That seems odd now since Facebook also cleaned up its "avatar" files in favor of real people.  We were given "FACEBOOK" tabs in the viewer for easy access.  Those of course disappeared over time -- and a decade later last names were returned.  Wait for it -- for a hefty price.  

 

The populace would have told them this, yes. The Lindens were fascinated with Facebook and Twitter, thinking this would grow their platform. It didn't, because people wanted pseudonymity, tied to a real identity but privately and supposedly securely, or even total anonymity, which I think should be eliminated as it is a vector of crime and griefing.  Oldbies really rejected the "Resident" stuff. You have to realize that each last name represented an era in SL; a community in some cases as they clustered together; even an industry, as some people opted for certain names with certain content. It really was a great thing. I chose "Neva," the banks of the Russian river where I lived as a student in St. Petersburg. "Resident" really seemed like 1984 revisited. But people coming in didn't care, and the last name "Resident" itself began to disappear.

 

The Emerald Viewer  (2010)

 

This wouldn't have made "MY" 20 historical controversies list.  Bad person (also young but that isn't an excuse) used the viewer and the folks USING the viewer (Chic waves hands) in a Denial of Service attack.   The viewer was blocked from use and eventually the "good" folks working on the Emerald viewer picked up the ashes and the Phoenix viewer was born. Now we have Firestorm.   I doubt that there was much controversy over the blocking. It was the right thing to do -- in my mind anyway. 

 

Here's another historical landmark where Chic has taken a myopic, self-serving, ignorant and arrogant approach in line with whomever she is trying to suck up to in the "establishment" who holds these views.

 

The Emerald Viewer was a griefer art house. It had Copybot and god-mode stolen from the Lindens. They used it to harass people like me who reported on their antics widely and AR'd them, but also many other people no one has heard of. I became a laughing stock because they came and killed my sionchickens at the time, which they could do merely by stepping on and breaking their eggs, or kicking them off world.

 

Sion, the maker of the chickens, who has since disappeared, put a script in the eggs which reported to you who crushed them. So that is how I could establish a list of all the Emerald/Phoenix/Firestorm operatives, some of whom were very bad eggs permanently banned for crimes far worse than my chickens. My chickens were just the visible tip of the sim-crashing, copybotting, harassment mob.

 

It was not at all only about one notorious incident when Fractured Crystal (sigh, these names) tied the DoS attack to users as they can do through exploiting the web traffic and such. The Lindens put their foot down over that but not ONLY that. It's not true that the "bad people" in Emerald went away; they emerged again in Phoenix, which then became Firestorm. The DNA is all there; the viewer once "phoned home". If it doesn't "phone home" today, that's due to LL intervention.

 

It's hard to say who overthrew whom in these meetings. Obviously Emerald/Firestorm had a lot of clout, with eventually the majority of users. But so did Linden, knowing exactly how many TOS violators remained in their midst, and not fooled by their anonymizer log-ons. There was a lot of leakage of chat, videos, drama at the time and it's easy to discover that the Emerald debacle was NOT repeat NOT only about the one-time DoS attack. At one point, there was a goodbye party for Fractured because they were tipped out he was about to be permabanned. So they put out a huge effigy of my RL head, something that they used to do like some ancient pagan mystical ritual, uber creepy because I...reported on them truthfully, unlike others, including Chic, who think they were just some Tragically Misunderstood Artists. They danced around to the tune of a then-popular EBM type song, and their video gained many views over the years, but now it is removed by YouTube. At the time, I pointed it out to Joe Linden, one of the few grown-ups at the Lab, and older man who has sadly since died in RL. It was easy to see all the alts of the mains and the name tags of people who claim they never grief, as they stomped on my virtual head. Again, it's not about me, or even about that one DoS attack, but things like "phoning home" and the crashing of sims. The one thing the Lindens really don't like, although they will put up with a shitload of other stuff they shouldn't, is the crashing of their sims. It makes work for their engineers. So you lose your island when you do that. And they did, again and again, those intertwined with Firestorm, even to this day.

 

That's why I will never, ever use Firestorm, while of course my tenants all do,  and why I banned the promotion of their group on my land, by recruitment, signs etc although I could hardly ban the viewer itself. Even the Lindens likely use it, and I wonder why they don't buy it out, shake lose the remaining dubious characters, and be done with it. Why? Is this because their own viewer "phones home"? I actually don't think so. I don't think the Lindens scrape data.  Or at least, not for abusive purposes. We've never seen them do that or seen evidence that they have exploited it in some way. We've never seen a RL blackmail case based on chat inworld that would only be obtained -- and more importantly verified --  by Lindens, for example.  I never got an answer from Oz to my questions about this, and never will. Like the early reverse-engineering of libsl, which Cory looked at through his fingers, so to speak, and didn't ban under the TOS but allowed to thrive, until Philip authorized its certification.

 

BTW, I put this question about the "perverse engineers" reverse-engineering the client on a forums thread gathering questions for a town hall. Torley saw it, and banned me permanently (i.e. for a time until a smarter Linden came along) merely for that question, which was seen as "provocative".

 

The hilarious thing is that Cory answered it during the Town Hall, although not completely. He admitted that the cart had come before the horse. I was standing next to Philip inworld in the town hall, with some huge goon of a scripter/griefer towering over him (the screenshot is on some old blog), summarizing what I saw as the situation here -- the Lindens got thrown.

 

Then suddenly, I was kicked by Torley from the world. I had no idea why, as I had not opened my mouth; Cory himself picked my question and answered it. Answer, discovered hours later: someone made an avatar with a name very similar to mine to ensure confusion, and began flying around and prim littering up by the speaker's stand. Funny how I got banned, and that character unrelated to me persisted. That is SL. That. That's how it works.  Unfairly. Stupidly. Rewarding criminals again and again, and punishing whistleblowers.

 

 

The Red Zone (2010 - 2011)

 

Again, not something that would have made my list. A script that used an exploit in media delivery to identify people's IP addresses. Eventually banned.  Messy for some but not really up there in terms of who it affected. 

 

The main people who howled about Red Zone were congregated on Sluniverse (now Virtual Verse or some other name like that) who were males in real life with female avatars in SL, many top designers, merchants, scripters, etc. There are a lot of them in SL; some very successful in SL terms, and they were terrified of being outed, as they thought it would hurt their business, destroy their RL privacy and cause them RL misery. Not to mention that it outed alts. And they certainly have a case here, however nasty some of these manginas have been to me personally because: see above re: gay men and m2f who loathe f2m especially if they are publicly critical and don't "know their place".

 

The Red Zone guy, a Russian, was actually quite creative, as such mega griefers sometimes  are, although usually they are mediocre banalities. He made a walking Baba Yaga house which was really cool, and other buildings. I had one, but it seems all his content got removed from the world. I didn't use his script, which I viewed as causing complete havoc, by outing alts and people's RL locations. I know from RL work in journalism doing geolocating that you are limited in your ability to pin-prick a location using only an IP. But using triangulation and various methods comparing other lists and data bases, sometimes you can locate a very building, like, say, the GRU's radio technology department, so that you know that it's not just kids bringing down a bank, but grownups employed by the state.

 

I actually think you'd be hard put to use an IP address to find someone's real gender and RL name, but it might be done, given the prevalence of blogs and media fora online where IP addresses are captured. As they were for Pixeleen Mistral at the Herald, who was outed as a Duke University computer program department head famous for having invented the Gopher system of the early Internet

 

The thing about the RedZone guy is that he went to RL jail, and not over Red Zone and SL, but because he was involved in some sort of hacker activity and had even kept wild animals in his home and abused them.

 

Merging of Teen and Main Grid (2010 - 2011)

 

Again, not a biggie in my mind. Teens were already on the main grid. Easy enough to lie, but it didn't help with the perception of Second Life as a sexual conduit for "kids".   

 

It's easy to forget that SL was not that big a world to start with, and was never the "millions" claimed, and I personally saw very few actual minors in SL. Kids that age played WoW. I saw way more young children in The Sims Online.

 

I'll never forget the time I hired a scripter to make my Tier Garden, a device which helps you know instantly how many prims you will have in a particular size of land, and what tier (I still have it if you want one, and it's updated with new amounts).

 

His name was Meatwad Extraordinaire. He was kind of dilatory about the whole thing, although it only involved adding some parts to Catherine Omega's famous open source prim counter.  He was sometimes late to meetings or unavailable. I asked him one day what's up, and he said "I'm waiting for my mom to pick me up from school."

 

So sure, after he got home and had his milk and cookies and finished his homework, he could work on my job.

 

He was only 15 years old, and not supposed to be there. Yes, he could script, and there are many miracle tales told of wonder children, and I have told them, too, above, but in the end, Meatwad bailed, and Adam Zaius, of all people, answered my call to fix up the script. He was paid, and no, it is not open source. Not that hard a script for anyone to make, but again, I paid another scripter to update it with the latest stuff, so I sell it for a modest price on the MP. As well I should given what I have paid scripters, and not only for that reason.

 

Daniel Voyager was the most famous of the Teen Grid graduates. They used to have a special building and a little ceremony as each one arrived on the adult grid. So Daniel turned 18, and became the supreme fanboy, dutifully reporting in his blog every twist and turn of LL policy and never, ever questioning it. It's a marvel!

 

 

Canceling Educational and Non-profit  Discounts (2011-2014)

 

This was sad to see, but for me -- not as sad as the end of support for SL teaching.  A few years after this new rule went into affect I found out from several reputable sources that the discounts never really went away for "some" folks.  Not sure if that is better to know or not know.

 

No, they never do, that's life in the big city.

 

I'm dim on this "support of SL teaching" stuff. I thought Builder's Brew existed on tips and content sales. I'll sak.

 

The DMCA Process (2011 -)

 

It's not good or fair or even working but in truth it is not totally The Lab's fault. Are we better off WITH it or without?  Hard for me to say.

 

What an outrageously ignorant and short-sighted comment from of the few content creators with some fame who bothers to post on the forums. Most don't. And I fear given the level of ignorance seen hitherto from Aeon, she may not realize that the DMCA process is related to US law, not Linden Lab. Oh, well.

 

The DMCA process works; I have helped builders file them when our cities or buildings were ripped, or even just a picnic table by that griefer with the grisly bloody versions of my in RL with chickens, which were also ripped off from Sion.

 

It works if you put a RL name and business name and account, etc. which many are reluctant to do. That's all it's about. Many want anonymity without accountability yet they want the Lab to go chase copybotters for them. I'm sorry, that's just not on. We all get how hard it is to register a business. In the US, you are lucky to be able to file as an Unincorporated Business and pay the local NYC tax, or easily make a corporation in Delaware for mere dollars, which many do, and of course write off business expenses on your income tax. In Europe, yes, it's hard, but once you do it you can write off VAT -- making the VAT howling something that has to be seen in context. It's about amateur versus professional.

 

Do the Lindens entertain ARs on ripping shy of the DMCA? Indeed they do, I have seen them, but not enough to people's satisfaction.

 

Could they do more? Yes, by licensing creators and licensing the sale via the MP or event inworld.

 

OK, could you shut up now please? Thank you.

 

TOS Changes August 2013

 

This was a biggie.  The new TOS basically said that Linden Lab had right to do anything and everything with ANY work you did. This included articles written on notecards later to be publish in real world magazines, mesh made that could be used on other grids. items made as "work for hire" in Second Life that were supposed to be proprietary -- the list goes on.  

 

We lost so very many creators because of the changes. I only uploaded one 10 linden sign texture in the year following.   From an outsider's perspective it seems like The Lab has repeatedly (or continuously, I don't know) employed overzealous attorneys.  A later TOS actually used the terms "in the known and unknown universe".  Honestly?  Isn't that a bit over the top?    

 

We lived through it but that was pretty much the beginning of the demise.  Later and in retrospect it seemed like many of the changes had to do with plans for Sansar, plans that didn't work out or "pivoted" along the way.   

 

I found this pretty much a tempest in the teapot, that was more whining than actuality. All platforms have to have free use of your content to stream the view of your content; they need that "one copy" to do with as they wish. That's built in. Many don't grasp that. More to the point, they are platforms, private companies, that need to advertise their business. I remember coming up to -- again, Joe Linden -- standing in front of a giant board at a RL conference with my tenant's mermaid avatar on the screen as an example of creativity. I said her name is not even in small type. She's not listed in the program as she would be in an illustrated magazine. What's up with this tech bro conference hijacking of content?! Yes, I get it that you "can" and it's given up as right in the TOS. But you can't put her name on the silk screen? Really, guys? More people should have protested to have gotten at least a soft norm on this one, as I did, without being a content creator at all at the time, but only a landlord and ally.

 

I find it hard that you would punish the Lab over language that still, at the end of the day, did not remove or never acknowledge your rights, like Instagram doesn't. Not upload for a year? You can't be serious. Fortunately most top designers and builders just kept going, making money, with their IP generally intact. We saw a rash of lawsuits around breedables which was quite a spectacle -- Ms. Historian doesn't mention that, or the land lawsuits, which I would mention and will when I have time. To be sure, "known and unknown universe" is a term meant in science fiction more than in legal documents but maybe they got creative.

 

If you want rights, you have to wrest them from the Lab, which does not default to them. You have to fight for them. I would put in my history the Lindens debacle with the telehubs; where ultimately they had to back down with land barons; the VAT tax; the open sims; the sale of grandfathered sims only to outsiders, which I exposed and made it possible for ALL OF US to have $195 sims instead of only the list of Sheep held close by the Lab -- something which they never forgave me for.

 

Like the exposure of Pathfinder Linden in the IRC channel with some of the leading lights of the FIC, including Adam Zaius, plotting to get me banned on the forums by setting me up with provocations, hoping I would then over-react to and get banned. This is all documented, including the apologies to me from Pathfinder, his reassignment from the forums to another job (educators) after a vacation, etc. etc. That's all going in MY history, so watch this space.

 

 

Eliminating Outside Money Exchanges  (2013 -2015)

 

This raised the cost of money exchanges for many to most people. It was also around the time that The Lab bought Tilia AND the beginning of Sansar.  It all comes together or it doesn't. It made good business sense for The Lab, but hurt the people. Not a new scenario, but it IS their platform, their product. 

 

This is all out of sequence and began back as early as 2004, not 2013.

 

First, LL cracked down on Gaming Open Market, the most popular 3rd party exchange that gave a whopping $4.25 value to the Linden 1000L at the time, something never seen in SL itself. Because it was valued. By many, inside and out, as the first green shoots of the Metaverse.

 

The Lab entered into seemingly friendly talks with the GOM with some portrayal of a plan of partnership, or maybe a buyout. It ended with a rejection, hence the term "to be GOM'd" used by many other situations of "partnership" with the Lab that ended in tears then and now, although I think the term is now forgotten.

 

AFTER that killing of the GOM in around 2005 -- before there was a LindEx!!! -- then the Lindens literally over the weekend -- as Lawrence Linden himself testified, like Cory writing LSL over a weekend -- created the LindEx, to drive out the third parties by adding security -- some of them would steal your money. They didn't ban 3rd parties at all, however, allowing VIROX terminals all over the place. Anshe ran a prompt, efficient exchange right to PayPal which had good rates. All of this was banned later, and you cannot blame the Lindens because while the US Treasury Department did not come calling to our knowledge any more than the US gambling authorities did over gatcha AFAIK, they might eventually -- and frankly on this point, rather than gatchas, really.

 

 

My additions to the list:

 

 

SANSAR (2013? -2020)

 

It could have been great, it could have been the right move. Either way the siphoning of funs from SL to Sansar definitely hurt the older grid.  Staff increased then decreased.  The folks left behind in SL (some apparently by choice) worked hard with the smaller teams to keep us going and kudos to them.  But resources divided are just that.  

 

I have little to add here from personal knowledge as I only made a few venues in Sansar, which was frustrating as you couldn't even sit down and there was no grouping of land or anything, and I left. The sound modules spaced around the sim were better than SL, however. I later went to concerts a few times, and just didn't find it very compelling. I think it has a use case.

 

I have to say that I think it's unfortunate certain Lindens weren't fired and were deployed back here on the main grid to get in our hair here, with old grudges, but I can't say new ones would be any better.

 

TILIA  (2020 - )

 

Many content creators left Second Life (and Sansar) when the new rules for Tilia came into effect. Whether actually needed by law or not, this was the end result. Many people couldn't jump through the hoops needed; some simply chose not too.  Our creative pool and general residency both suffered.  

 

Indeed. Once you got rid of banks which provided some income for poor people and investment funds for entrepreneurs; once you got rid of third-party exchanges that could function outside the US and provide equity for non-Americans, especially in countries which make it very hard to get a personal credit card or any kind of credit; once you had VAT; once you had the transition from prims and sculpties to mesh (something that Chic Aeon doesn't even mention as she is simply too much of a snob -- and one of those insecure provincial types  of snobs of which there are no shortage in SL, making it often unbearable) -- why, you lost some of the very best creators of SL. And they never came back. Some went to other worlds; most got out of the virtual world business. Someone in America with debit cards even (I went for many years without credit cards which only put you in debt; I found I couldn't apply for new apartments without a credit card to give me some score in some agency, so I got a few low level ones), who has a driver's license or passport and the American system to back them up finds Tilia only a slight nuisance.  It's a hurdle, and also annoying to have to go over and over on each alt and give them each a form of payment and step through the Tilia forms. But it's not that big a deal. I don't see that the cashout works any faster out of SL into PayPal, however. I think it's actually slower now. Something we must simply accept as the cost of doing business in SL.

 

Did "many" leave? No. Not at all. That's where Aeon gets it wrong, as she does on many other things.

 

BTW, it's fascinating to me that Uplands is allowing loans, banks, based on the buildings as collateral, based on collections, etc. -- although real money is involved there, via bitcoin. I don't know how long it is lasting. It is the chief draw to their game now as far as I can see.  I got a building randomly in Brooklyn which I think holds a bodega and a laundromat with the Upland free simoleons they give you to start. BUT there's a catch. Unless you get an Uplands "visa," i.e. join and pay more fees, you can't keep your building. So there goes the bodega. I also wonder about the real owners of these properties and why they can't have a say in all this but whatever. There's also no virtual world even of the 2D type to walk around in there although I think it's coming. It's just a map now AFAIK.

 

Gacha Ban (2021)

 

Because of world laws and upcoming restrictions Linden Lab decided to take action and ban gacha gaming. This would no doubt have happened eventually even if it was by court order.  We will obviously lose some creator over this change.  We may if the stars are shining on us remember how to make products that push our creative abilities and reclaim a bit of our lost spirit from the early days.  It isn't really ALL about the money -- or at least I hope it isn't :D.   Time will tell as it has with many other events listed here. 

 

Let's point out for the LEGIONS of the ignorant on the forums and in widely read blogs like Chic's. There is no law. Because the law is not APPLIED to gatchas in any lawsuit, in the US, or anywhere in the world. So ALL of this speculation that it "might" apply has no foundation other than hysterical tech news and forums hysteria.

 

Let's also not to pretend that there are all these zombified creators lurching around who "didn't remember" how to push their "creative abilities". There are plenty. Quite a few dropped gacha years ago. Some may want to "reclaim lost spirit" -- others may want to do something new. It ALREADY "isn't about money" for many, many MANY people who do not make a profit or RL living in SL with their creativity. So could we please knock off the bullshit here?!

 

Perhaps Chic Aeon will come back with her buildings if she doesn't have gatchas competing against her.  Is that the point here?

 

That's what all the forums ranting is about, competition, the desire to control others, the glee at other's misfortunes that drives the drama of the world. As it was with telehubs -- whose removal in favour of p2p Ms. Aeon also strangely leaves out, although it also cost many businesses their lives and they are gone now. The world did not grow pure and sweet by deleting telehubs which oldbies thought were the devil's handiwork.  In fact, it grew worse, as people grew more atomized, there was no places for free, non-sexual socializing with a draw like shopping or games to stick; there was no way for ordinary poor people to enter the market, as I did, renting from Anshe to make my start even before I had my own office.

 

Chic Aeon does not understand fuck-all about this world. She never lived in it. I did. There is a lot more to tell from the perspective of those who aren't the "winners" of SL -- she left out not just the turn from sculpty to mesh but the nasty campaign LL launched with Draxtor's help in bullying and ridiculing those who objected HOW it was implemented, the same way with telehubs (the Lindens are such stern ideologues that they never conceive of anything as co-existing).  There was the four-year long campaign against ad farms directed at Jack Linden, who finally, before his departure, created an ad farm policy and enforced it -- for a time. There was the reform of the group tools -- very important, as it made business possible!!! There's the Impeach Bush extortionist and the failure of the Lindens to cope, as they don't today with his descendants; there's the purchase of the resident-owned SLExchange and move to Marketplace, then its taxation (how could you be in business and not mentino that?).

 

Can it all be chronicled before some of us midbies and oldbies die in RL or are banned? I don't think so. I've always thought that while you can't change history's brutal flow in the electronic Metaverse especially, you can keep a record. That's what I've always tried to do, voluminously, because you have to, because rebutting lies and eliminating misconceptions always takes longer than to tell them in the first place. But history is indeed written by the victors.

 

I can't take time now to fix typos and put links. Ample information is out there; I was just reading Tech Crunch on the short-lived Metanomics run by Beyers Sellers, a RL professor at Cornell who has disappeared from SL, like all these "Big Six" developers and IBM "Metaversal Engineers" who literally logged in last in 2008 as I confirmed last night. I'm still here.

 

 

  

 

Frieswiththat and Models for Mainland Communities

By Prokofy Neva, Virtualator

CAPTURE ROLEPLAYER TOUTS LINDEN-FAVOURED SOCIALIST ISLAND IN MAINLAND COMMUNITIES THREAD

So, animats, an anonymous but persistent forums poster who used to have Capture Roleplay (i.e. rape) groups in his profile as we all know, but who has recently removed them, apparently finally realizing they are damaging to one's reputation, is touting Neufriestadt on the forums. I used to call it "Friestwiththat," not only because it rhymes, but because I thought their socialist ideals would not really lead to any better society, but would mean more people would be daubing the FryMax on hot griddles, then shaking out chemical products known as "french fries" on them to turn the substance -- the hydrogenated soybean oil, natural beef flavour (derived from what and milk derivatives, dextrose, pyrophosphate etc a lovely golden brown.

Some of you will remember my own beef with "animats" which has to do with not only his insane idea of using the Capture Roleplay BDSM viewer called "Restrained Life" to "solve the region crossings problem" (!), something that didn't take me but techies to immediately denounce, but  him abuse-reporting me frivolously in his belief that a parking lot ramp that encroached slightly into a Linden road over in Grote (over bumpy land they wouldn't fix and which made it impossible to drive out on to the road) was somehow responsible for his unseating in a motor vehicle. If you look at the road in Juanita and Zephyr, you realize how much prim drift, strange hard prim angles, and odd invisible prims meant to help sim crossings but which failed, are really the issue here. All of that is STILL THERE and causes those idiotic riderless pods to stop and crash there ALL THE TIME until I click on them or try to sit in them to get rid of them, adding to their false statistics of use, as 100% of the ones I see every day on dozens of sims are EMPTY. EMPTY. EMPTY. 

No doubt my pointed remarks about this beloved democratic socialist experiment (you always have to worry when either democracy becomes an adjective, or needs an adjective, in my view) will get the thread closed. That is, it doesn't matter that this vicious interloper "animats" has touted an island community in a sim about Mainland (and technically they may still have that snow sim near the Linden's massive alpine wonder Zematt or whatever it's called, although I think it died not long after Ulrika Zugzwang, a socialist operative and friend of Haney's, left SL); I think they sold it years ago. It doesn't matter that they had a rocky history, with terrorism from their own member against their buildings, not surprising given their terrorism against me on the forums. Ulrika Zugzwang is no longer active in SL but she used to harass me on the Internet outside of SL too. I was a critic of these people who enjoyed Linden favouritism and they retaliated with brutal force. And I wasn't alone in that criticism -- read about Haney at work and how people speak up with irate concern about yet another favouritism outlet, the "Greeters" program.

The Greeters slung notecards with their own friends' stores and commerce circles and socializing venues, and nothing could be done about it except to blog about it, which I did. Eventually the Lindens removed it for other reasons, not my criticism, but it's always threatening to appear again. The Lindens should put full-time, paid, benefited staff on the problem of newbie-greeting and stop this half assery. 

This meandering post is about a figure in SL history who promoted the socialist sim, worked for the e-bay guy, and then became a lefty Dem operative. The point is not to make very much of this, like you can't make very much about the former Linden now with Tor, who told me "mathematics makes the state obsolete" featured in my book on Edward Snowden, or very much can be made of another former Linden who went on to form a leading organization to promote proportional voting which is a socialist gimmick to put themselves in power which we actually have now in NYC, with disastrous results, because not very many people showed up to an election where it was rushed on to the ballot. The former CTO of Linden Lab, Cory Ondrejka, is now Facebook's director of its mobile programmers where FB's virtual world will spread.

SL AS RL PROTOTYPER?

I want to try to explain the thesis of my book. It's not that things are prototyped in SL, or first appear in SL, or that the Lab conducts an experiment in SL, and then it spreads to RL with a causal relationship -- that would be a silly conspiracy with little proof, whatever the optics. No, it's more about the fact that in SL, you could see a concentrated form of the methods of Snowden or EFF or the Russians that would later spread to RL and ruin elections. It's not a lock-step causal relationship. It's not serial processing, but maybe at best parallel processing. The point about SL is merely to see how prototypes play out in hothouses. What happens later with this "enhanced" virus as it spreads to RL culture and politics and economics has its own dynamics which were more about the Internet in general, of which LL is only a little petri dish subset.

SAMEOLDSAMEOLDBERG AND FRIESWITHTHAT

So back to Frieswiththat, so you see the context.

And if you don't want to hear all this from me, here it is in their own words -- see the comments.

One thing that happened is that Haney Linden, as he was called, no need to stalk him in RL now, who administered the free sim giveaway to Linden pals, and showed up in various posts like this one when he left SL but without any statement. So this thread indicates that apparently because either he ran the Governor Linden it disappeared, or his account disappeared, and he became one of the Missing Lindens, whose bodies we used to search for after they were thrown out of helicopters in the Sea of Omidyaar, named for an early investor in SL, yes, the e-bay guy. But where he fetched up at was an organization run by Omidyaar because that's how he even got his Linden job in the first place. 

SAVE DARFUR AND SAVE HANEY'S JOB

Pierre used to have an alt inworld who would come in and grace various favoured projects with his presence, some of which overlapped with some of the groups whose meetings attended or who espoused causes I actually worked on in RL, like the popular but failed "Save Darfur"  -- a now-forgotten cause amidst the hideous slaughter in South Sudan and elsewhere which at one time adorned every bus shelter in NYC as it gave a way for wealthy white socialites and wayward liberals who couldn't backpack around Nepal anymore when Dad's trust fund ran out to oppose Arabic Islamist fundamentalist and terror without seeming to do so. The Darfurians were animists. The Janjaweed horsemen who slaughtered particularly women and children and poisoned wells and used rape as a tool of war, were Arabic warlords operating with the connivance of Al-Bashir, the genocidaire head of Sudan and target of a warrant from the International Criminal Court ,  although that part wasn't really emphasized, as the "Save" approach was thought to be "better". It didn't work.  And not for the reasons the lefty Slate claims, either, because it's not merely about China's veto and protection of Sudan's criminal leadership (for reasons of oil extraction); let's not forget who sold the helicopters to Africa at the UN -- Russia. And as we can see from even the latest BBC expose of Wagner, that's not all they did in Africa.

FACTS ON THE GROUND

Their helicopters were so shoddy -- having engines under the front seats , instruction manuals in a language no one could read, and other issues - that while NGOs in their comfy suites in NYC and DC demanded in exasperation that Russia should supply scarce-helicopters to the UN mission in Sudan to help save lives, UN personnel and relief NGOs on the scene really, really didn't like going up in them because when you crashed, there was no chance of survival.

Meanwhile cynical Pakistani officials at the UN would tell us that the Darfurians got what was coming to them, as they dared to rebel. They should shut up. Etc. The UN is a terrible, terrible place to work in some ways; I covered it as an NGO note-taker in meetings with the Security Council ambassadors, who rotated monthly, for years. So I had a lot of very informed opinions about the Darfur scene, where a highly skilled ER physician and human rights monitor sent by the group I represented, who nearly died in Darfur (because sometimes a lack of water and illness can do that), had a lot of information that contradicted the rosy pictures issues to us in ECOSOC briefings; I used to go to OCHA meetings as they simply had more hard information -- they had to, as they had to actually protect personnel. So if there is a private film shown about how UN mission people are raped and injured and killed and how to avoid that, you begin to get the idea that Chapter 6 1/2, which was all the mandate the UN had there absent Security Council unanimity (they could not have armed soldiers to kill combatants who attacked them but had to be killed themselves), you begin to get the idea where the real problems are in the world. Slate mocks the US asking for three panaceas, but that's all you can do at the UN, and it's good to get at least that, or you have nothing.  The Darfur emergency began under Bush 43, who appointed a wonderfully smart and funny guy named Richard Williamson, who has since died, as his envoy. He was white, and Republican, of course, which some people thought would mean he would "get nowhere." He was most famous and beloved at least by some liberal if not lefty NGOs for standing up to Cuba at the Human Rights Council in Geneva after one of their operatives pushed an Cuban activist in exile down the escalator stairs, injuring him. 

Rich spent many, many hours holding the hands of NGO activists like me at the UN, who had not voted for his boss, George Bush, but whom he listened to politely before he explained very basic things about how you couldn't even get a meeting with these killers. I had to complain a lot to Rich often, based on reports from our team there on the ground, but he was professional and sent me a very nice letter and his book when he finished his term. I remember once button-holing a British ambassador who later headed up British intelligence and asking him why, if he got a meeting with the Sudanese official in charge of "humanitarian affairs," who was himself busy helping to kill those humans, why he couldn't make a citizen's arrest. He was startled. 

Later Obama put in Scott Gration, who was white and former air force, but who actually spoke Swahili for those "constructive dialogue" sessions, but being from Obama, and with languages, didn't help to get them either. And frankly, even if that envoy had been an African American, it would not matter, because that's not what this is about.  The current Biden nominee, John Godfrey, who has been too long in coming, is also white, but what's more important is his counter-terrorism background (people forget how Bin Ladn attacked embassies in Sudan and killed hundreds of people before he orchestrated 9/11). 

I go into detail to set the scene for the reality of "Save Darfur" -- a complicated, wretched, nasty business which was more about an Arabic genocidaire, Al-Bashir, now deposed, and about  Russia and China and other African heads of state, than it was about America, although plenty would believe that it was both responsible -- and could fix it, both of which are erroneous understandings of the world.

VIRTUAL CAMP DARFUR

To cut a very long story short, the virtual "Camp Darfur" build in SL, quietly boosted by Omidyaar, who gave a lot to this cause, including to my own group, was a big failure, actually forecasting the failure of the real-life movement. As often happens in SL, idealistic organizers forgot to put on autoreturn, sometimes because they believed there were no rogue viewers that could exploit this even if a group was set not all of whose members had build rights. So Woodbury types swooped down on it and made fun of it and behaved outrageously.  For me, it was incongruous seeing a build made up of what was then available in SL, which was sort of LL Bean knock-offs and Boy Scout type campfires, so that this camp supposedly helping refugees looked like it was for sporty types in Maine with sturdy green tents, snow-proof sleeping backs, bright nylon jackets and wicking socks, not UN refugee camp tents, which aren't like a fun camping trip, issued to desperate, half-naked and injured people running for their lives from terrorists. You know? The clueless Camp Darfur organizers accepted the help of the Green Lantern kids in their green spandex, which isn't a whole lot different than Woodbury in their methods. It collapsed in the Linden sea without a trace soon enough -- tier is expensive, and can't be justified on a sim no one visits.

Even New World Notes, run by court stenographer SHamlet, who used to be a paid blogger for LL and is still generally soft on them, was forced to turn in this somewhat edgy bit exposing Omidyaar's alt because it was already exposed-- and apologizing for not doing it sooner due to his years as the court blogger. I remember being invited to -- of all things! -- a banquet around Camp Darfur. It was so very, very like those receptions and dinners at the UN where people gather to eat and drink copiously in honour of the starving some place far away. At least the food in SL was fake. And somebody close to the project tipped me off to the Ketto identity, which I also didn't expose simply because I didn't think you should expose people's alts, it's not decent, and it has been done to me.  I used to chat with Omidyaar in public threads on Twitter, and in world a few times but nothing really substantive.

So as I noted, he then created this network of NGOs which I joined, through the NGO I represented, reluctantly, because I felt it was a huge time suck. That is, if you are an NGO activist, with limited amount of time every day, commenting on NGO "lessons learned" and all that crap is really, really stupid. I noticed that Haney ran this club like he ran the community with his pals in SL. 

SL HARASSER IN RL

This network exists no more, and likely you can't find the chat in the closed circle anyway, but what happened was that one of the forums assholes, I believe it was Taco Rubio, he of the "Upskirt Museum" (ugh) and other exploits thought I should be outed in this network as a critic in SL, and that much should be made between the contrast between my avatar and my RL self, which is silly. He attempted to bully me on those internal forums, where I made pointed criticism about how NGOs were failing in Darfur, running counter to the Happy Little Trees that some SL forums regulars equivalents, those conniving Pollyannas, turn out about Bellisseria. Taco Rubio always had a strange obsession with stalking and harassing me; he infamously photobombed me at an SL meet-up in RL. He was a really good example of the griefers who don't want SL to be used for RL things ostensibly because of wanting more "freedom," but ends up making the online world oppressive due to his antics. As I personall translate Dostoyevsky's saying, "Without God, anything goes." And our beloved Lindens, who aren't really that different today on this point, gave him only a slight rap on the wrist because he was "creative" and supposedly understood he had "made a mistake" ("Gee, Mrs. Cleaver, that's a lovely dress you're wearing.) 

(As an aside, I have to point out that the Lindens didn't really care about Upskirt Museum's predations but thought it was kind of cool, and while today, after #MeToo, they may be forced to behave a little better, not really, as they'd rather take away poor women's livelihood from gatchas, that question all these creepy Capture Roleplay rape machines all over town, which no doubt they think involves "consenting adults," although gatcha does too, you know? Rape RP may be simulated, and therefore there are legions of techies and Cosmic Engineers and Rationalists who will tell you to leave it alone, it's a cartoon (that was Rubio's line), I think simulated crime should be banned. I think you can't always be sure of the consent involved. And I think you shouldn't promote a society that enslaves and rapes people. I think likely you will not see this in whatever Metaverse Microsoft or Facebook come up with.)

BTW it's likely Taco Rubio who is responsible for these really atrocious and libelous portrayal of me on "Rational Wiki," copy and pasted by many a griefer and forums maven, which I should take the time to refute.

Although this SL oldbie FIC stalker's own affiliation to any NGO wasn't clear (one of the problems with the network), when I tried to turn in some rather pointed criticism of the whole Save Darfur thing based on my RL experience and the reality on the ground, he got to squash me. BTW, Taco may deny this. And I could be wrong that it was he invading that Omidyaar thing. It could have been another of the same type in his group or also enjoying favour.  These people are elaborate tricksters and liars endlessly gaslighting the public, so that when you AR them for cause -- like deliberately buying land on a sim where you own most of the land, harassing you endlessly flying around in blackface, spewing particles and forcing tenants to move out, blowing up things, and the Lindens finally act and seize their land after literally months of this, they will portray a remark of yours that may have been more like "See, persistence in ARing these creeps does pay off, and you can get the job done" -- the rightful job of freeing civil society of its enemies -- as "See what I can get done when I want to," as if I have now joined the dark side and have the Lindens wrapped around my little finger -- as they actually do. 

So, with Omidyar...You have to picture this network, filled not with really mainstream NGOs, but sort of exotic Better World types, and some hippie socialists and dippy liberals with funding that would have been the envy of a group really going to Darfur and trying to help. You have all these forums mavens who insist on everyone being as sunny and positive as BJoyful, but without BJoyful's intelligence and willingness to hear criticism. Not a good mix. I bailed from that network group which wasn't worth engaging with and it died of its own weight anyway. Eventually Pierre fell away from SL and from over-fed and ineffective popular movements like Save Darfur although he still kept funding NGOs doing good work at home and abroad. I haven't talked to him in years. That Linden, who was the Patch persona of that era as community manager, was community manager at the NGO network as well and stood by in silence while I was harassed on that forums by a SL asshole, and did nothing, no doubt so that he wouldn't have to a) stand up to the FIC in RL b) take any action at all, which was not his nature. And then he moved on, and now serves as one of those progressive Democratic Party operatives who I think should just go with Bernie into a Socialist Party, or Democratic Socialist Party, and see how many people show up, instead of constantly invading and harassing the more mainstream Democratic Party.

So why did I go on and on and on about all this. Because SL is a place where RL things are prototyped -- and this is one story about how that happened. And that's why it matters. And that's why you have to resist it when it takes the form of platform favouritism and tilting the playing field especially when the projects fail badly, and when bad ideologies seek not just freedom on a sim, but support from the company and help in spreading.

If you don't want to hear from me about this history, read Dalton Sideways, who explains that Neufreistadt is merely the project Neualtenberg renamed. 

FAMOUS SL SOCIALISTS

Any minute now, Gwen, who seems to have no more time for SL any more, or some former or current CDS operative will be along to "set the record straight" here or on the SL forums. I could pointedly asked what happened to Ashcroft Burnham.  I still have his coat rack. Or the beloved Kendra Bancroft, whose sturdy Bankcroftstocks I still have. She was famous in RL and died in RL.

Interestingly, Sister Nova, who is somehow who heckles me in the forums, then whines that she's been attacked if I say a perfectly normal phrase like "Let me try again," which yes, implies that either she doesn't understand, or deliberately pretends to because she has a different belief system. Sister Nova, who was once my tenant on another name, was in the socialist CDS and then was shown in a transcript of a meeting to say she was less active. Why? It doesn't matter.

I don't think many people realized that there were -- and in some respects still are -- some quite famous RL people in SL hiding behind alts, which is their right, but whose favour the Lindens sought and gave because they thought it would help boost their invention, which they really did believe would get millions of users and change the world. Philip used to claim as fact, not dream, that some day office towers in New York City would be empty because of the virtualization of life through Second Life and its descendants. He didn't realize that the buildings would empty out due to a pandemic, ok, but he was right about all this, you know? I found an interesting blogger who is even more critical of Philip than I was. I at least admired Philip as an engineer, a visionary, a creator, who remained enthusiastic and positive, even though I was publicly quoted in the NYT denouncing him for bringing big business in SL, because I thought it would hollow out the world, steal the best content creators and builders away to making IBM campuses and create and even more stratified economy with even more Linden favouritism. And I wasn't wrong about that. IBM left, and zillions of others, and here we all are now, selling our gatchas for 25L. I don't believe Philip overhyped the world. I think PR companies, which have fancier names now like Solutions Providers, did this, as they held the hands of Old Tech, fearful that it would miss this one like it missed the Internet.  Journalists didn't do their homework. They never even read the Herald. I remember when I finally got CNET to cover my story at the Herald about sim crashing and Philip's announcement that he was calling in the FBI. Good for him! 

Second Life had -- and still does -- a lot of really intensive and resourced enemies who would create the illusion -- the way Russia does about hackers holding up military and business sites with ransomware -- that this was just kids, not related to anything real like big business or big government anywhere. 

I still wonder why. Urizenus Sklar used to explain it rather brilliantly I thought by saying that Woodbury and other 4chan type griefers did not want people to use the virtual world for anything real. They were and are Luddites. But stupider Luddites who didn't weave anything on their own looms.  There is a whole coterie of scholars I call "griefer professors" like the Woodbury dean (who read his socialist papers at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, BTW) who celebrated griefing as edgy, and "transgressive" and reflective of the failure to include marginalized groups -- as if these Woodbury, including their dean, who war blackface in SL (!), giant Afros with particle spam of pictures of Bill Cosby and jello, were actually Black, and in fact not the lily white children of affluent parents, whose fathers either ignored them or had left the family.

MY POISONED SOUL

I once caught up with a famous SL griefer at a tech conference in San Diego, where he was underage for that conference, as he was in RL. I had this long interesting debate with Raph Koster, who is really brilliant and at that time was creating an interesting sandbox world that died, but it doesn't matter as now he is making something else. This large, overweight bespectled boy, sat wistfully on the edges of our table in a restaurant where a group of us, some in SL, some in this Metaverse professors' business, some from places that worked with Unity, etc. were conversing with Raph. Raph began explaining in copious detail every technical feature of his world that was going to meet my concerns about governance, explanations that flew over my head as a liberal arts major, and bit by bit the others crept away. This boy was left, but kept silent. Finally Raph left, and I asked this kid who he was, as he appeared to be in SL, and he confessed he was a certain notorious griefer and hacker. I learned that he literally lived with his single mom, the "where's dad" question an open one, as it often is, and literally was in his basement, although he claimed he helped out with rent, apparently with some SL earnings from weapons sales or something. I asked him just one thing:

"Why?"

"Because the Internet poisoned my soul."

And here we are all, with legions of young fatherless men whose souls were poisoned running worlds and the Internet at large, or even young men who had fathers, like Aspberger's sufferer Mark Zuckerberg or the loathsome Anil Dash who used to threaten -- and make good on his threat -- to make sure certain people he didn't like, who said something on Twitter he felt was wrong, never got any jobs or VC cash in this town. It's amazing to me that this creep is now touted by the New Yorker, which seems heedless of his past doing things like showing up for his appointed position in the Obama White House in a goatse t-shirt. Ugh.

 

MAINLAND COMMUNITIES AND NORMALIZING BDSM

A seemingly innocuous recommendation like this is not what it seems coming from this character.

None of that commentary may make sense, but basically animats, who styles himself as a tech genius, is getting dressed down by people who, while also unpleasant characters, are simply more competent than he.  This thread first makes it appear that RLV -- whose initials stand for Restrained Love Viewer because it is used to chain and enslave other individuals and make their avatars do things that normally you cannot make them do -- they have to do it themselves -- is merely just another third-party viewer with features that are merely just features, with no association to them for their use.

So that's how RT Kingsley can write this techie pablum:

RLV is a system that lets you control some of the things you can usually only do with your viewer from scripts. It lets you control your attachments and clothing layers and it also lets you control other things like what you can see, what you can say and hear, and where you can go.

To be sure, he admits then later:

RLV is often used to let other people control things like your clothes and to capture you (make you sit on an object without the option of standing up). To let this happen you need an RLV relay. This is a scripted device (sometimes a collar, sometimes a HUD, and sometimes something else entirely) that listens to broadcast chat commands and converts them to llOwnerSay commands that go to you viewer.

Although RLV is best known as a BDSM tool, it is enormously useful for automating a lot of the things you do with your viewer. Without an RLV relay it is entirely under your control, though you are vulnerable if you put on an attachment that has someone else's RLV scripts in it. If you find yourself in an RLV situation you're unhappy with, you can always log out, relog using a non-RLV viewer, and then remove any offending RLV attachments.

Sorry, but that's not something you let spread in SL by the excuse that you can merely "log off". I'm not for normalizing the BDSM lifestyle and methods and programmed restraint devices in the public square. Keep it in your bedroom and on your own sim. I don't care what people do in private; they don't get to enlist me in their brutal fantasy in the public space, however, not playing. It's wrong. BDSM apologists always claim they are all about consent. But they aren't really, as you can see from the horrid dom personalities on the forums and inworld who are constantly brutalizing and bullying others -- and say, subs can be worse than doms, as we all know.

Fortunately:

The Lindens haven't decided to add RLV to the default Linden made SL Viewer. They decided to provide a number of RLV types of control via an alternate method we call Experiences.

I think Experiences, which are merely glorified teleporters most of the time, are a different context and culture than BDSM and shouldn't be characterized as "RLV types of control" especially because they are limited actions like a teleport that work by consent, whereas once someone wit RLV in a BDSM relationship opts to use it in a consent I think questionable, every input then is a restraint and I don't think the ability to end it by logging off, like turning off the VCR to turn it on again, is a feature to proliferate.

animats' game here is to further normalize BDSM and Capture Roleplay by pretending that it's just nifty to cross sim seams, i.e. the difficulty of crossing a sim, that sometimes unseats you, is corrected by you using a third-party viewer that grabs and ports you like a BDSM sub. This is not merely about consent. It's about normalizing BDSM, again, by pretending that it's like Tang, a great by-product of the space program we should all drink for breakfast.

This thread is useful to show you that the people who tout RLV and are are some of the forum's worst nasties, like Love Zhaoying and are BDSM practitioners. Their harassment of critics or those who don't agree with them on the forums grows out of this lifestyle. It's curious to me to see Linda Kidd, who I didn't association with BDSM, and who was Carl Metropolitan's very silent and obedient partner for years on end (although I don't associate him with BDSM), is now aggressively harassing me on the forums and touting RLV. I have found in the past close friends who seemed normal for years in SL suddenly turn Gorean for inexplicable reasons or fall into the clutches of a BDSM dom who controls them in RL, too. I find it a really creepy and sad phenomenon and spouting about people's right to lifestyle choices is good as far as it goes, doesn't adequately solve the problem of the pernicious effect on society. Some of the people who are most Puritan about gatchas or any commerce in fact aren't Puritan when it comes to BDSM and practice it because it fits patriarchal culture quite comfortably, and manage to call you a prude if you find the culture wrongful. No, the European Court of Human Rights has not found that inflicting pain and damage on the human body if consent is involved not to be a crime. In general, US courts do not fall for the line about consent; see the case of the NXIM.

I have many tenants who are BDSM; I don't ban it on my sims because I believe in people's privacy and private choices. If someone has been in a BDSM relationship for 20 years, can you safely say they truly consent? Sure. But I have also seem people become very distressed in these relationships, flee one for another, become very broken. I recall a tenant who met a woman in SL who was divorced and living as a single mom with multiple children. Ultimately, they met in RL and he moved in with her and they were married and became a success story of SL. Then she met a dom in SL that seemed decidedly cultish, and fled her children and their new step-father.  A case where a mother abandons her children is always one of profound distress for all and I have seem it in RL including among friends. It's not as common as men abandoning their wives and children including my own relatives. But it does happen and I cannot endorse it as a prescription for society under the women's liberation banner, sorry. You can advocate women's rights and increased empowerment without prescribing the normalization of abortion and the abandonment of children in the name of personal satisfaction.

And again, the practices aided and abetted in RLV under the guise of "lifestyle choice" are crimes, and are practiced in SL in variations hard and soft similar to NXIM. I don't believe virtuality means "anything goes" and I don't believe that the affect on the soul and mind of virtuality is innocuous. In fact, they are seriously damaging for some.

Yet we've had 150 pages of a thread mainly prudishly condemning gatchas, which are like gumball machines for most people, and anyone attempting to criticize BDSM would have forums lords porting in Lindens, some of whom are also BDSM practitioners, to defend their "lifestyle" and brand you as intolerant as a racist or sexist or anti-LGBTQ. That's how it works. That's why I'm not for letting it proliferate.

"Rabid Cheetah", one of the forums' most vicious little hall monitors, who can harass and ridicule people precisely because they never AR her -- at least, I never do, as I don't believe in ARing people merely for expressing their wrongful and mean-spirited opinions. So we're always in a skewed environment, where a creep like Rabid (what a name!) can whistle and get her friends to do a mass AR to their Lindens who then feel they "must act" and simply reflexively ban me or remove content. I can't expect Lindens to sit and read long threads. They're busy. So they have people they respect and listen to, and people they don't, and do not fairly adjudicate the forums. That's how it's pretty much always been, although I think it's interesting that when certain Lindens overstepped the bounds and wrongfully banned me, and engaged in conspiracy with certain FIC residents -- Pathfinder Linden comes to mine -- or who have some kind of longstanding grudge against me, which is one I often find from gay men and m2f men who loathe the idea that anyone can go in the opposite direction, because they are patriarchs and tyrants at heart -- and also suffer from a primordial fear that they may meet such a person who has misrepresented themselves in SL in a relationship and end up with a girl -- ick! Girls! Which is at once a puerile and very adult intolerant reaction, but what can you do, there it is, that is how they are. That explains their animosity, and I've seen this repeat over and over again, so I don't need to prove it anymore.

 

 

 

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animats

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Posted 51 minutes ago

There's the Confederation of Democratic Simulators. It's six regions run by officials elected every six months by the landowners. They've been quietly doing this for 17 years now. Visit Neufreistadt and start at the town square.

 
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BJoyful

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Posted 1 hour ago

  2 hours ago, animats said:

There's the Confederation of Democratic Simulators. It's six regions run by officials elected every six months by the landowners. They've been quietly doing this for 17 years now. Visit Neufreistadt and start at the town square.

I will visit this place for sure!  Wow! 😃

 
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Prokofy Neva

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Posted just now

  3 hours ago, animats said:

There's the Confederation of Democratic Simulators. It's six regions run by officials elected every six months by the landowners. They've been quietly doing this for 17 years now. Visit Neufreistadt and start at the town square.

That history was not at all quiet and it is worth recalling how this group came about before the love fest here continues.

One relevant point, and you can stop reading if you want to keep on your rose-coloured glasses. This is a thread about "residential communities on the Mainland".

Neufreistandt is an island, as are the other sims in the CDS. They are not on the Mainland. Long, long ago, they had a snow sim as part of their holdings. I'm not sure if they still have that, but CDS is primarily an island compound; look on the map.

So as to relevant history:

The Lindens long ago had a system through which they gave away cash based on "dwell," a system whereby traffic to your land built up points which could be turned into Lindens and then real money, as the Lindens awarded Linden dollars each week for any one or any group that had significant traffic numbers on their land. (I used to simply plough this back into my rentals as a dividend for tenants, something I remind them of if they complain about paying 2L per week in group fees today). In a world where tier was costly, and land prices were triple what they are now, even a little US $35 payment was a big help, so people like me, who used to have a club and run architectural contests, could earn this subsidy, which was removed some years afterward.

But as with all things SL, the top-earning dwell groups were ones that had wet t-shirt contests or Beach Blanket Bingo, so to speak, or Tringo, a popular game at the time turned into a RL game. So they would get all this money, and groups that had an art gallery with a traffic of 13 would get nothing, much less some group working to save Darfur. Dwell was supposed to be a system that showcased the best of SL, edgy art concept sims or a breathrough in programming whose purpose for people like Pierre Omidyaar and Mitch Kapor, the early investors, had to reflect a Better World, with justice but not necessarily liberty for all.

So they came up with this free-sim contest to pay for sims, which they felt was a more substantive way to give the Better World a boost -- which ran briefly and only had some winners (another one was a game designer who prototyped various things and then spent the rest of his life complaining about the technical limitations of SL, so that backfired on them).

So first, Neufreistadt got US $1000 for the cost of the set-up fee of an island (back in 2004), although not tier ($195 at the time) in an ostensible "contest" that was kind of a giveaway by the Lindens to their friends because it was a small world and no one could assume that much tier. They had no competition in building "socialism in one sim" other socialists in SL, or non-socialists, didn't want to commit to that tier or didn't have it. Does it matter, 17 years, how some community got its start? Well, yeah, because you have to understand how the world worked and continues to work.

Next, the community was nearly destroyed when one of their builders had a falling out with them and went on a rampage tearing all the buildings she had made and taking them into inventory. Note to groups: always make sure builders turn the building over to a trusted person and don't retain sole ownership.

BTW this person, an aggressive socialist, used to put a picture in her avatar which was my business logo with a raven's head, only exploding in a cloud of blood, and my ARs on this monstrosity went "nowhere" I guess because it was accepted as "parody". Oh, well.

I used to have friendly relationships with some of the CDS regulars as some of them would rent store space from me, like Gorean panthers would also escape their communities sometimes. One of them who enjoyed a very long grace period not paying any rent, until my own socialism had to cut off, used to berate me as a "benevolent dictator" because I ran...a rentals company. And my tenants did not get to vote. How undemocratic! How unsocialist! She wanted to keep the group voting tools which used to enable something called "officer recall," when a majority of ordinary group members could literally vote someone of the island, regardless of whether that person had paid the set-up fee and monthly tier.

I thought this was an incredible hobble to normal business, where it's ok not to have democratic socialism and its works as organizing principles within the company, and was among those who lobbied Philip to remove those vicious tools which were used by griefers against me multiple times, forcing me out of my group for a week (that expelled officer could not return until the vote finished and was counted over a period of time by automatic programs) and costing me real money as tenants without service fled. So yeah, democracy. Great stuff. The CDS did not lobby against these destructive tools, as many actual people in business did, because they thought they were the greatest thing since cream cheese. 

Why are there elections every six months, which is awfully frequent for RL and actually SL, too? Because turnover is high and conflicts frequent as they often are in socialist collectives?  

Even so, the group has persisted because of a few strong personalities that make it work and their ability to pay tier, like all such things in SL. The Better World has not been built; what has been built is ok, and can persist, but there's no need to take them unequivocally as a model

They allowed only a certain kind of commerce in their marketplace, which was so to speak licensed and artisanal. That is, no member of the public could go up and rent a stall and follow a set of rules that applied to everyone. You had to be admitted into the guild, and the unabashedly said they favoured a guild society, something that I personally think leads to the Ren Faire or socialism with another kind of adjective besides "democratic".  It doesn't matter what I think, but it is important to reflect the history accurately, whatever the changes are and the state of play today.

No doubt a CDS member could explain that they no longer have closed markets like this today, and that's great. Visiting the CDS sims they other day, I couldn't tell. But it was a part of their history.

So yeah, quiet, but not exactly, and not exactly a model for the Metaverse either. That is, hopefully there will be a lot of models permitted or which spring up but favouring one and misrepresenting their history is a recipe for making the Metaverse authoritarian and therefore weak.

 

Rabid Cheetah

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Posted 2 hours ago (edited)

How to Hijack Yet Another Thread:  Turning the Second Life Forums Into a Constant Rage-Rant Against Socialism

by

Blab R. Mouth

If there's one thing we can all agree on is that Socialism is yucky pooey bad bad bad and that blah blah this is a clear example of Marxist-Lenninist thought brought into the digital era by a blah blah blah blahgity blah blah.  Furthermore, and more further, such attacks against land barrons destroy capitalism, peace, justice, and the American Way, and, dare I say, and indeed I do dare, to dare to say, that is to say that I dare to dare to say, a blatant terrorist attack on baseball, hot dogs, and apple pie.  Blah blah blah blah blah, blah blah, such groups cause global warming every time they pass gas blah blah blah spam spam bacon and spam, eggs and spam, toast and spam in a light spam sauce, and by the way Burger King is the Anti-Christ, spam spam spam spam, spam spam spam spam, spam!  Wonderful spam!  Blah blah blah nonsense that no one reads or cares about blah blah blah!

Edited 2 hours ago by Rabid Cheetah

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Posted 2 hours ago

  7 hours ago, BJoyful said:

I will visit this place for sure!  Wow! 😃

I think I will too.  Especially given the rave reviews it's gotten here.  😁

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Posted 2 hours ago

  On 7/3/2021 at 2:47 AM, ChinRey said:

It's a nice grid and a decent marketplace. I wish SL's MP was half as good. The one problem with Kitely though is that you can only have single isolated sims there and even the biggest sim, the 16x16 - same size as 256 SL regions, isn't big enough for my project. 

Come back to SL...come back to SL...come back to SL...

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Posted 7 minutes ago

  2 hours ago, Rabid Cheetah said:

Come back to SL...come back to SL...come back to SL...

Expand  

@ChinReyPlease, pretty please with chocolatier sprinkles and espresso beans 🥰

 
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Posted 6 minutes ago

  2 hours ago, Rabid Cheetah said:

I think I will too.  Especially given the rave reviews it's gotten here.  😁

If it's ok to tout socialism, it's ok to criticize it in the "open discussion" forums we have. Oh, except it's not.

 

 
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Posted 2 minutes ago (edited)

  7 minutes ago, BJoyful said:

@ChinReyPlease, pretty please with chocolatier sprinkles and espresso beans 🥰

I'm glad ChinRey has found a happier place, even with its drawbacks, and it is terrible to see what has happened to her previously nicely-maintained land in SL. Maybe the people who knock SL all the time should join her there. I have visited Kitely and there are some good things about the sims there but I don't like sims on demand, I like contiguity. It's expensive and hard to maintain. I don't expect LL will maintain it forever. They will sell the hookup to a grid but not maintain the grid or at least the sims on it. Someone who has 100 giant 256 sims or whatever will make something sort of contiguous like the Mainland. It won't be the same as you will not feel the presence of multiple people excercizing their freedom of speech but generally getting along, you will only feel the presence of one big mind with will, sometimes brutal, or deep pockets.

@ChinRey did you try the Canadian grid where it seems you can string together huge sims as far as the eye can see for a song.

Edited 1 minute ago by Prokofy Neva

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Posted 2 minutes ago

  6 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

If it's ok to tout socialism, it's ok to criticize it in the "open discussion" forums we have. Oh, except it's not.

It’s okay, in its own thread I think, Prokofy.  You are so clever… use your power for spreading the beautiful things you have to share.  It’s too hard to read long sentences for me today 💕

 
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Posted just now

  6 minutes ago, BJoyful said:

It’s okay, in its own thread I think, Prokofy.  You are so clever… use your power for spreading the beautiful things you have to share.  It’s too hard to read long sentences for me today 💕

Sorry, but I'm not aware of any word count limit on the forums. And I think people under the guise of "positivity" who can roll under the wire so often can tout *islands* in a *Mainland* thread, and claim the history is *quiet*  -- when it was not -- and not mention that its ideology is *socialist* should not be allowed to get away with it. That is, they do get away with it again and again, especially by ARing their critics inworld and out. I think that's not how you can run a world, suppressing actual true information and legitimate opinion. No one is required to read my posts, they can skim through them, and those that bother will conclude that this community is misrepresented, and is not a model for the entire Metaverse. It's just one sectarian community. 

I'm never going to adopt the posture of a Pollyanna. It's not required by the TOS or the norm in RL. 

It's like people touting Roblox and never admitting the platform gouges 30%+

 

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Posted 8 minutes ago

  14 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I'm glad ChinRey has found a happier place, even with its drawbacks, and it is terrible to see what has happened to her previously nicely-maintained land in SL. Maybe the people who knock SL all the time should join her there. I have visited Kitely and there are some good things about the sims there but I don't like sims on demand, I like contiguity. It's expensive and hard to maintain. I don't expect LL will maintain it forever. They will sell the hookup to a grid but not maintain the grid or at least the sims on it. Someone who has 100 giant 256 sims or whatever will make something sort of contiguous like the Mainland. It won't be the same as you will not feel the presence of multiple people excercizing their freedom of speech but generally getting along, you will only feel the presence of one big mind with will, sometimes brutal, or deep pockets.

@ChinRey did you try the Canadian grid where it seems you can string together huge sims as far as the eye can see for a song.

Expand  

It will all work out for the best, Prokofy.  SL isn’t going away and isn’t shutting down anything they don’t have to to make SL even better.

 
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Posted 5 minutes ago

  8 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Sorry, but I'm not aware of any word count limit on the forums. And I think people under the guise of "positivity" who can roll under the wire so often can tout *islands* in a *Mainland* thread, and claim the history is *quiet*  -- when it was not -- and not mention that its ideology is *socialist* should not be allowed to get away with it. That is, they do get away with it again and again, especially by ARing their critics inworld and out. I think that's not how you can run a world, suppressing actual true information and legitimate opinion. No one is required to read my posts, they can skim through them, and those that bother will conclude that this community is represented, and is not a model for the entire Metaverse. It's just one sectarian community. 

I'm never going to adopt the posture of a Pollyanna. It's not required by the TOS or the norm in RL. 

Expand  

The word limit only applies to me today, and I will read it when I get down to pc and have my text to speech thing on my pc.  You can be Prokofy forever… my mornings would never have as many smiles if you turned into Polllyanna, but maybe Prokofyanna.  🥰

 
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Posted just now

  15 minutes ago, BJoyful said:

The word limit only applies to me today, and I will read it when I get down to pc and have my text to speech thing on my pc.  You can be Prokofy forever… my mornings would never have as many smiles if you turned into Polllyanna, but maybe Prokofyanna.  🥰

Well, sorry to disappoint, that will not happen any time soon unless I get the treatment of Randle in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," in which case Chief is welcome to come with the pillow.

My favourite character in Pollyanna is the maid, Nancy, an oppressed and exploited figure for sure. She has the first rebellious line in this very long Victorian-era novel which is really the more operative theme of the book. It's far more authentic than the saccharine self-deceptions of Pollyana and more true to real life, even though Pollyana, is of course, served up to us as a virtuous model, although after a century, she began to serve as someone living in deep self-deception, unwilling to recognize the negative relaties of RL.

Nancy says the truth about the mean spinster Aunt Polly Harrington so you have some sort of tabula resa to perceive how she undergoes a change of heart. If you didn't have her commentary throughout the book, and there isn't a lot of it, you couldn't put Pollyanna's opiumated approached to RL into perspective.

“I—just—wish—I could—dig—out the corners—of—her—soul!” she muttered jerkily, punctuating her words with murderous jabs of her pointed cleaning-stick. “There's plenty of 'em needs cleanin' all right, all right! The idea of stickin' that blessed child 'way off up here in this hot little room—with no fire in the winter, too, and all this big house ter pick and choose from! Unnecessary children, indeed! Humph!” snapped Nancy, wringing her rag so hard her fingers ached from the strain; “I guess it ain't CHILDREN what is MOST unnecessary just now, just now!”

Signals from the Environment: the Communists Sell Out, the RPer Has Second Thoughts, the Once Glorious Empire of UUTopia is No More

By Prokofy Neva

It's still hard to make sense of the "signals from the environment". I don't know if I can go on keeping track of them or blogging them.

o a few people moved into larger rentals from smaller ones. Why? I don't ask as it isn't my business really. You can't pry. Maybe I will start a poll or a survey.

o a new tenant who owns his own land gets a mid-sized rental. Why? I can't really say. Bellisseria is not for everyone because you can't put your own house out.

o some tenants in cheaper rentals left them because they have no cash now they said

o a person paid ahead into a 50L room but couldn't figure out how to join the group by clicking on the joiner and pulling it from chat, and then refunded

o two people bought two of my gatchas for 10L each at EPIC. Whee! I now have 8 cents US. That is not enough to buy a postage stamp or offset a texture upload. It does not cover the cost of having pulled for them and can't pay for my rent at EPIC.  I knew that going in but it's important to keep documenting this.

o a bunch of partiers showed up on Belarus, bought some props and the $1600 feed but really only as a gag once they found out what sion chickers are. I gave them 4 free eggs. I explained that their food will run out by the end of the year; I have only a few months of supply, so the ethical thing to do is not raise them. They gabbled on in edgy RP mode for an hour in a group chat to which they invited me while I explained to them various things and about the gatcha policy which they had not heard of. Don't assume everyone in SL reads the web site or reads the forums. Some will find out the hard way when the machines are returned to inventory or even deleted by Linden.

o We are all watching what Winning Witte does with Campbell Coast, the premiere Mainland artist community which the original developer had to put on the block due to RL illness. She had poured enormous amounts of time, treasure, and talent into that project. It's a project that can't pay for itself, being Mainland, or at least, very slowly or only with very mundane rentals which she didn't do. I could explain a lot about this but I'll cut to the case: the new owner says he hopes to make it profitable, meaning it wasn't before, and that was clear from the vacancies and the parcels for sale for $7.5/m which astounded me. I bought a few, and got them rented out after I enjoyed living there myself for some months but I don't justify busman's holidays for long.

I noticed that he redesigned some lots, took content off, made them slightly less heavy, some sold and I see now one going for resale for $34m which is insane for Mainland. Oops, make that $48/m even as I write. There is one 3000+ plus lot left there for 3.9/m likely to be gone very soon. The rest are actually rentals put to sale to advertise them. That could only reflect the possibility that the owner will no longer sell parcels from it on the open market which of course was an insane thing to do and crazily worked only because BJoyful is the kind of force of nature and cheerful personality that can pull this out. I personally don't sell charm. I sell rentals. But charm doesn't pay tier always.

I found from the BBB news, which is one of the few sources of any hard news inside SL or out, that first, BJoyful sold this, and I immediately found out to whom myself, and second, that WW is charging artists now $200/wk for rent, and they are busy helping each other and trying to find patrons. I wouldn't have opened with that frankly; the artists are the chief prime content on those sims and the draw -- the rent should be charged from the regular people who move in there or the artists' friends or whatever. I would have subsidized them for longer. But whatever, he is more successful than I am as a result, and that's fine, and look, they paid, as that is not the rent most gallery owners charge, PS, important point. Charge people reasonable rent, they pay, who knew! Most galleries charge 10 times that and have high vacancy rates as a result.

This Campbell development sale began before the gatcha collapse but actually only a month before, as other signs in the economy were trending downward since the new Linden Lab owners came in, did not say hi, did not issue a roadmap, mouthed platitudes at the SL18B interview, sent Patch out to deliver this awful new policy -- and that's it. Oh, and VP of Engineering is not hired since Oz left in February. All of these are red flags of concern for anyone in business. New owners should address all these issues and oh, fix search, too, if they want consumer confidence but they may not feel they need it.

o In between stints publishing anti-vax conspiracy dreck, Daniel Voyager has been publishing notices about the magic Bellisseria houses coming soon. The Lindens will have a shiny to distract people from gatcha with. All of a sudden, all of the air has gone out of the tires of Magic Belli for me. I already have a cabin I haven't decorated which I will ditch as I need the tier. 

o But...Just in time for Magic Bellisseria is an event called Wizarding which I think has no relationship to anything in Bellisseria but who knows it is well timed. Harry Potter and Harry Otter are ubiquitous but this content is better quality, subtle and hence is a very high quality and every interesting event, I think a new one. Because:

• the last of the gatchas are 75 a pull there, that's high, not 25 as in stores; Half Deer, you dogs, you! Why no 25L gatchapon? My supply of two-headed cats is about to become critically low and fortunately few people on that quest at Shaman's Hut ever find the clue there so I have only awarded then one or two times.
• merchants clearly took their original gatcha sets planned months ago and quickly converted them into fatpacks or theme packs -- that's obvious to see there. How will that work?
• they are priced sometimes low at $500 or high for $1200 or whatever
• so like you can get this fluffy hamster pet thing for $500 and 37 prims (!) who does a lot of tricks. That's a lot for a pet. Before, he might have been a rare in a gatcha. Generally, except for Clover, people didn't sell pets like this, they sold them in gatchas or as long-term propositions like KittyCats. Here there's a gatcha with the fluffies for just 25L but they don't do all the stuff and aren't animesh. My 25L Forest Fluff is the only thing I got at this event. That's it. That's the shopping basket. Will I ever buy the $500 guy? I doubt it.
• Speaking of Clover, her Spirit Rabbit is only $299, lower than her past pets from what I recall, and ordinarily I would get this without a second thought but now I don't buy a thing unless it has an actual immediate real use or I think it won't be on sale after the event. A dirty little secret of SL is that most of the things on reduced price at events in fact are still available at those prices long after as they didn't sell so well. Maybe just before the event ends I will buy it? Or when it is $399 at her store? I don't know.
• DRD has a gorgeous set chunked up into packs as they all do with no visible discounted fatpack. So $425 for a magic stone circle strikes me as lower than such things used to be and a decent price. How many people will buy packs and not gatchas? DRD stopped doing gatchas long ago as all the big hot male designers did and they sell packs and usually overpriced for what they are but their look, which is like somewhere between an Amsterdam weed cafe and the Apocalypse, is popular in SL
• my heart contracted seeing designers who used to make gatchas and walk away with some real cash from an event like this now selling single items not on transfer or packs not on transfer for $400 which won't sell in the sea of Harry Potter stuff because it can't be re-sold.

It's over. It cannot be resold. That means in a sea of Harry Potter they have to stand out and that is supremely hard, when even 20 of the top artists here are frantically trying to stand out from each other so that at least one of them might make a sale. I often bought at events to decorate rentals or sometimes I could resell a gatcha rare. Now I simply am not buying anything unless I can immediately apply it to a rentals area that I know will rent. I already have 12 tarot sets and dozens of potions and crystals. How many can you really honestly put out? How many other people are like me?

o The Linden continues to be devalued with the inability to instantly get 240 and now 241 or 242 is the norm and you lose on cashout to pay tier.

o  At Okinawa the other day, I had bought some kind of Japanese hut for $390, some tart for $300 and a who what  game for $400 I think it was, that is all in Japanese but involves some sort of flamingos, hammers, and winning a soda which I put at the Flamingo Court and the Dessert Outlook which I am renovating and hoping for more rentals there. That all is likely to be my last "major" purchase for some time.

Usually the Flamingo, at 50L a week, stays full. I don't know why some very long term tenants left there in recent months. In this last year, when tenants who have been with me for years disappear, I suspect COVID if they never log in again, but maybe it's just unemployment. Some could be happily moving on to Bellisseria or some other cheap rental but I don't see any other groups in their picks, they seem inactive. But in all my years of business, I have never known any 25L or 50L rentals area to stay empty so they will fill up again. Every other one is full now. A hotel is not the best proposition for SL. Who wants to be next to other people? It works because "other people" are on other times zones and aren't visible. Here you can tint your windows and most people use it as a crash pad to dress up or sort inventory and their actual lives are elsewhere. It's for some alts I suppose. Some people who lived here for years just didn't want to spend more on SL and were very happy. Some 10 years ago, when they built Zindra and insisted that adult activity move there, I took the other hotel here and moved it to Zindra, then finally dumped that because I really do not care for adult activity and don't want to be on a continent with it. Let others do that. I kept literally one 4096 which now has like 10 cabins on it that pretty much stay full. I then turned that land to small skybox parcels as in "M," there is tolerance  for non-public adult activity by individuals -- how much more, I guess we will soon see as the new owners may make other changes. I doubt they will get into this as they don't wish to utterly destroy the world. Believe it or not, there are actually a lot of singletons that rent skyboxes with no adult activity or partners because they just like peace and quiet to build or dress or whatever before they go elsewhere. 

I have three types of rentals here: $50/75 motels rooms, $100 skyboxes, and $100 or $150 houses with skyboxes in the "Hot Springs" part (did you know that a hot springs was discovered here 10 years ago and thawed out all the permafrost). Strangely, the Hot Springs are full and the cheaper things are not, who knows why, maybe I failed to advertise them enough. You can't do enough in SL of this type of thing and I put these on self-service and if eventually I find they don't rent for long periods I delete them and try something else. I decided to give one last shot at renovating this area which has gotten somewhat inactive to see how it does as I like it and so do existing tenants. I would tend to keep most of it and dump only some portion if it failed to pay.

o Speaking of "inactive," I visited Quixotic Gallery again, the Gallery that Time Forgot in Keuka, which is an amazing place, and showed a friend this find. I have visited it for years. It used to be updated. Now sometime in the last few years? I don't know? Its owner disappeared, and most of the artists. They are gone from People and their links lead to abandoned land. You can still buy art works there although those Lindens must not reach them now. I bought one work; they are kind of high priced there at $500 or $750. Only three of the artists I have contacted of the dozen or so there answered. One had only one line and no further comment and no interest in his works there. "Good people leave SL." Another showed me his RL art site and said he could sell me copies of the RL items within SL. Still another said she didn't make art anymore in prims because no one wanted it since mesh came. It's an amazing slice of history. The Lindens will come for it and put it under the bulldozer soon no doubt. Visit it before they do.

o I directly asked a Linden whether they are speeding up their uptake of Abandoned and auctioning. My impression is that the Lindens are moving like Sherman through Georgia all over Mainland around me. To be sure, as a friend said, we suspect they sometimes they put on the auction the fallow land near us hoping that a) we will buy it b) other people will buy it to be next to our nice land. Some people literally think I am "protected land" now I am so old. They are unlikely ever to answer me. I could try submitting a formal ticket but I find that is not the place to get pronouncements on larger issues of policy and philosophy. Perhaps MonCierge is but I can't get to things like that during the work day often. Someone should ask them? What I see here doesn't relate to me, I don't think, but an overall trend which comes from a mandate: get rid of all abandoned land, or we will delete the sims into the Linden sea. That's my hunch.

Is that possible to do? Delete the interior of Corsica and stitch it back together? I think it's possible, though time-consuming, in a contiguous virtual world where the land is already on different servers, and now at Amazon. The auction list looks a lot longer to me, but I don't follow it closely. Anybody?

o a point of data from the other day, but right after the big gatcha announcement, which I truly marveled at. The Communists near my Memorial to the Victims of Communism -- which sprang up there precisely because of their own loud propaganda venue -- have sold out to a large RP guy.

Were the Communists secretly paying for their land with gatcha re-sales? Hard to believe.

My first sign of this came with the return of a willow tree and an Anti-Communism sign which mean there was new ownership on the abandoned land.

I never heard of the big RP group, which sounds like a cross between and old Christian born-again camp meeting Upstate (which we used to go to 50 years ago now and listen to Sister Cornwall and Brother Cornwall preach, boy they could sure preach the Word of the Lord good and the fried chicken was tasty too) -- and that horrendous GTFO operation in some kind of residential living form, i.e. but with miles of concrete and moving machinery and -- well, I don't care. It's some kind of big RP thing that people like. These towns spring up and are somewhat strange to me because I never see the people who live in them. I don't know if they are an entire fictitious town in the imagination of only one guy, like the ones Dougie Flossberg makes which are very cool (and he is back BTW). In this one, the group land owner, the sheriff, the public safety officer, and the husband of Adorable Amelia are all one person. I personally think mixing land ownership with governance is not a good idea but I don't make giant weird RP villages that look like Sherwoodville if not Trumansville... 

So long story short, this chap IMs me and asks me to sell my land and he will give me an attractive price, he says, triple its worth, $3/m LOL And he's right, as interior Mainland cannot sell even for $1/m often, and more like 0.3/m to a land dealer who MIGHT buy it but often not. I said no, it's my Memorial to the Victims of Communism. Once, I had an ordinary uninteresting few rentals there. The Communist nearby began to swoop in and harass me and call me an evil capitalist. Some GIANT rentals thing opened on the next sim. So I abandoned everything but one lot which became my Memorial, which has been griefed and trashed and bullied for years.  I have staying power in SL and this was nothing compared to many other things I've suffered. 

"No," I said, explaining this history.

"The Communists have sold out," he informed me matter-of-factly.

Everyone has a price. I knew others had tried to get them to sell because they were so obnoxious in that area. A few sims away, there are nice art galleries and the Lindens built a nice new road through these sims, all of which have the names of Russian provinces which is why those idiots showed up next door. No, they are not Woodbury, that's a separate opera, the appear to be PCP or Italian communists or whatever. Serb maybe.

I said I could only sell if they were truly gone.

He told me only one lot was left, "which appeared to be anti-fascist and anti-communist so maybe you can leave now." He was hazy on the difference obviously as many people are.

I explained to him that anti-fa is not anti-communist, ever, as the Comintern, a Soviet front organization of decades ago that even the Soviets scrapped as too liberal, invented anti-fa during the time of the Spanish Civil War -- but dropped it when they began themselves killing foreign communists that questioned them. Read Orwell or Hemingway on this subject, please. No doubt Russian trolls still harvest anti-fa to goad Americans in the US, and in Europe, they are decidedly pro-Kremlin and pro-DNR and an obvious bad actor. In the US, they are more confused and milder.

He wasn't familiar with this history -- few Americans or even Europeans are -- and I confirmed that anti-fa held that lot, and while they had removed the most obnoxious signs, they were still very much what they are.

So I told him I was not leaving. I took down my most lurid signs with skulls and "Communist Kills" put in the air to counter the former CP big propaganda screams.  I rearranged the shrubs and the trees. I gazed out at the huge, flat, taiga that makes up those sims and saw a lone furniture sim that hadn't sold to Mr. RP -- yet.  He seemed very courteous and I figure he will make my land into a cemetery in his somewhat creepy village if he has to or put a wall to disguise it, it's not a problem. 

Communists have no scruples, but don't sell out in cheap interior mainland, until somebody actually makes them an offer they can't refuse.

I figured, as long ago as...last Thursday, August 5...that this guy and his pals were moving in for the duration.

Not so, his land is set to $1.3/m now -- an entire sim, nearly for a mere $60,000  -- and the prairie grasses are now growing again as the concrete parking lots are gone. Except...they aren't, and his build is still there and the land is still labelled "Phase 1" and I think more than likely, he knows that at $1.3/m his land will not sell and he can keep using it as a sandbox anyway.

The life of a sim can be fascinating and the rule is, you can never see all of it. This could have come and gone and I would never have seen it as I rarely go out there unless someone tells me it is being griefed.

Something with a name like Billionaire Car Truck, Inc just bought a huge tract of land on August 5 but it seems to be different people, maybe Mr. RP sold some of his holdings? 

There's a nicely-built mall here that is 3/4 empty here, with traffic of...13, with a claim date of 2018 -- some people can play store for a very long time without having tier paid by their sales I guess. I totally understand this. The ability of people to pay for SL sustains the world -- until it doesn't. If that three-year-old empty mall is here next month I'll be surprised, however.

There is a near-total sim that was abandoned in this area on July 27, a long term community called UUTopia that I don't quite follow. A lone Syldavian flag is on the sim -- Syldavia is some other RP thing which I have seen here and there and they seemed anti-communist or pro-Serb and maybe are Serbs or who the hell knows but not a very nice bunch.

A tiny parcel at the corner says, "A very peaceful corner of what is left of the former UUTopia" which is related to the Unitarian Universalist Church. How those lefties relate to these right-wing nutters in Syldavia is a mystery. I thought maybe these Unitarians didn't understand what a Syldavian flag is and just through it was cool, but the owner is Isador Velinov of UUTopia news. 

Syldavia is some kind of right-wing furry outfit.

The list of things they are against is so long it includes you and me likely, although it's a gag, and the list of things they are for is also silly, so it's some kind of LARP lark only virtual. 

I have reached my spare time to study this further, truly, and they can bark about how they have been misportrayed or whatever, but let's zoom out further and say: why was this very old group in SL, since 2007 or early, who had land and projects for years and years and even like 4 sims in this Russian area, forced to abandon their land, just last month, before the gatcha policy?  The pandemic?

Empires rise and fall in these worlds, sometimes with no one noticing a furry falling in the forest.

 

 

 

So Communists selling...gatchas going...Guy Linden in my backyard...the world is changing, people. Quite a bit.

 

 

"Don't Spit Into the Well, You May Need to Drink From It Later"

Ugly towers on one side ruin the view.

By Prokofy Neva

So you can read my "wall o' text" or not, or if you are living it and don't need to, or you can't read things longer than your hand, that's ok, I'm just making drafts for my book, "Innkeeping in the Metaverse".

I marvel at the opposition and human rights activists in Belarus and Russia who keep taking abuse, finding ever new and clever ways to get around the regimes' obstacles and keep up a positive spirit. The creators of SL are so similar in their ability to suffer oppression, although it cannot be compared in magnitude or scale and it is merely a literary analogy, not a real one.

THE PROSPERITY GOSPEL

So by day 3 or so of this  gatcha crisis, sure, you find lots of people to "put a good face on it," spouting that "God closes a door when He opens a window" (or is it the other way around? I don't have as intimate a knowledge as some of God's daily intervention in my life in ways that He doesn't manifest for, oh, children in war in Syria -- so while I am a believer and church-goer, I'm not as quick to deliver homilies as others).

Yes, my children, let us turn now to Romans 8:28, "God works all things to the good, to the called according to His purpose."

But...I actually don't think that everything in life is for the good; an insane mother murdering her children because her anguished husband and his cousin couldn't get police or social workers to act in time doesn't strike me at all as "the good", and the people in that equation at any level may not in any event be "called according to His purpose," which is the modifier to this spiritual proposition, you know?

You have to be in the game already, so to speak, to invoke things to be going your way.

Many forums regs are essentially invoking the "prosperity gospel" when they claim that if only these wicked sinners who sell gambling items would turn away from their wicked ways and sell fatpacks, will their virtue be rewarded with more sales to the virtuous.

Bunkum, I say.

In any event, I don't think merchants, even if they get the "conveyor" gatcha  replacement or the "pop-up" or the "loyal customer rewards" or "the same set in a fatpack" organized, will do as well as them as they did with gatchas. The end.  And it is more than fine to say so, amen.

SOCIAL DARWINISM

I have published a lengthy rebuttal to Da5id Weatherwax and all the other forums Socialist Calvinist Buddhists. Yes, all life is an illusion so we don't need anything, even gatchas that pay for our RL food. If you have ever paid for a dental bill or a child's tuition with SL revenue, you will have an intimate understanding of how this toy economy works, and if you haven't, you can keep fueling your disdain, I don't care. I've never quit that day job and SL has only been a very hard way of making any income that was easier made in RL with my actual skills, and often only a loss. The end. But it isn't for others, and I respect that! You should stop pissing on them too!

ENVIRONMENTAL SIGNALS

So here's what I see today as "signals from the environment":

YARDSALES

o Only one person came to the yardsale I put out for customers to sell their gatchas. That often  happens when I send out newsletter to 14 groups with 2000 or more people, and they trickle in over time and it doesn't matter. It's still worth doing, and then that month's newsletter because an info sheet at the office for visitors. 

Because they don't need me. Because they are on the MP. Because, as I found out with one customer who rents some storefronts from me, she has 10 other gatcha stores from other landlords. You can always keep learning about how the economy works in this closed society, often only by induced emergencies like this one. Yet I keep it out because I like the Wild West build which I want to use in a quest and story, because I want my own gatcha yard I don't have to pay rent for, and because for now I have the prims although that may change

o So I went to EPIC as I heard the owners at first were dismayed and had the jitters, which I found odd in that they should be living best in a new world where everyone would need them more, but I guess they worried about the flow of new content. Then I read their notecards and saw they had good ideas on how to cope. They aren't worried about trying to make new legal scripts -- merchants can do that. All gacha machines get the axe 9/1 and after that, people can sell their gatchas just as individual items, which is the bulk of EPIC AND they will now have separate stores -- which makes sense -- to sell their own creations.

So this is, in a way, the return of big malls, and that's a good thing. Malls disappeared when land became more expensive (private island costs went up and good Mainland became more expensive in past years) and of course the Marketplace became a cheap and more easily searchable mechanism. Malls and even the Marketplace fell into the background due to merchants' events that have eclipsed everything. They will not go away, even with less gatchas. Still, I hope these changes now will lead to more malls which I think are better than the MP or events: less lag, more time to think and shop without pressure, the ability to easily come back and see things again; the ability to shop around in one category at lots of different places.

In fact if you look close at the weekend sales, many of these 60L venues are clustered on sims in the sky around a kind of look or theme. You'll find 4 or 6 or 12 stores in a row seemingly all from different people and I know for a fact some of them are actual distinct different people. How do they come together to cooperate? Somehow, they do.

EPIC has reduced some sims since I was last there and that is good for their bottom line. They run a very tight and neat ship and aren't as draconian in implementing rules electronically but have more of a personalized approach -- which means wear and tear on them as people. They also generate free random gatcha gifts every hour. They also do a very good thing and list every gatcha for sale on web pages, which they can do using the new "places" pages that allow search and  uploading of links. So you can search Google for their gatcha yard's items. Doesn't get better than that!

I was happy enough renting from them for some time, but then the realization that most gatcha resellers sometimes stave off came early for me: I couldn't make back my rent in sales. No, I was not "getting out the word," that Creative Commons shill all over the Internet inducing people to give away for free, or charge less for, content in exchange for exposure. There was no word to hear about my particular content or used items or  especially rentals in a sea of noise about gatchas, where people weren't listening for "words" that were "getting out" but were there to buy cheap gatchas, the end. Even a notecard giver with my LM to my other shop or rental office didn't get uptake. This is deep illusion. It is not why you are there. You are there to play store. Playing store involves forming relationships with yardsale managers, other renters, and buyers in a 3-D space that is warmer and more human than the MP or a crowded event. I think it's a more successful commerce mix than those other methods, but I'm old-fashioned.

THE CATHEDRAL AND THE BAZAAR

Marketplaces are age-old human institutions. The MP is not a marketplace -- there are no humans there, only electrons. Events are not marketplaces in the old fashioned sense where I sit in my stall and discuss the world with my good friend who has traveled for a day with his camels and is now chewing on my rock sugar, sipping tea, and we are discussing whether he will purchase my cashmere scarves. There are still people who function in this cultural mode in SL. Recently an European artist invited me to visit his gallery and talk about my request to buy his work, which he wouldn't simply set to sale for a fixed price. I simply said Americans need price tags, tell me the price, I will buy or not, it too expensive, I'll save up, I like your work, the end. So he named a price, I sent the fee, I got the work, we are both happy.

Many want former gatcha sinners to become saints and provide their wares now only on icons in the Cathedral on no transfer. Commerce for me and not for thee. Many believe this is the path to salvation for the wayward gatcha manufacturers. Come-to-Jesus, altar calls, water baptism, and soon, speaking in tongues and selling in non-transferable fatpacks.

Still, bazaars are useful to collect news and views in. I see what my neighbour is selling. I see what that shopper is buying. I can't see that on the MP; I can't see it on a laggy sim or a cam shopping sim. A customer IM's me about something or sees me there. I don't mean to overstate it. But it's a different and useful mix. It's NOT one I actually have time for but make time now, in this crisis.

BUT DO THEY MAKE MONEY AT YARDSALES?

Now how can some people sell more than their rent? Because the obviously do or these places wouldn't be in business. Because they decorate their stores very nicely. Because they specialize in themes or levels of quality or commons versus rares. Because they watch the market and price just below the MP at least. Why some adamantly put even double MP prices in a yard like this? That was always a mystery to me. I guess they are counting on the "rubes" to come along and pay 75L for a kitty cat shiny letter box instead of taking the time to look on the MP and buy it for 30, which I just did lol. I wanted a letter box to put in a certain venue and couldn't find the right one.

A lot of people still sell at yards even not making back their rent just to have a cash floor and a sense of possibility -- maybe that rare payday will come. It usually doesn't, but they like to play store. Who doesn't? You know those cross country skis in the garage? You don't sell them or throw them out because they remain to prop up your vision of yourself athletically glissoning across the snows. You never do. You don't sell your rares, either, but while your table is out, you are a cross-country skiing wonder.

As I have said before, the only people who reliably, every day, every week, every month, make money from the gatcha economy are yard sale owners; creators can't be in an event every day and sell every day; consumers are facing huge competition in the re-sale market. So why the jitters? This is what I came to study and also to see if the items really can sell any better now. 

I asked why there were empty but rented tables at EPIC, and wondered if a massive "buy and hold" was going on like slumlords in NYC who raised the rent on my diner just after they renovated it, forcing them out...whereupon that space didn't rent for years "cuz the rent too damn high" until a pita chain with really terrible pita rented it in the pandemic. Go know. 

But no, those are people who bought the tables to add prims! The owner says she is changing the way she does that now to get rid of the strange empty tables without wares with puzzles shoppers. BUT I would get rid of extra prims period. People doing that are not selling their wares but getting desperate. Let them pay for a table and put wares on it to sell rather than their store. Some people won't take time to go in stores, that would be me.

MP SALES

I see more gatchas selling on my MP page, and some are very predictable set-buyers who resell sets for a fortune especially if retired. Others make no sense, especially for old things. Either people buy every merchant's gatcha it if is their favourite; or they make up a set personally now with the days dwindling; or who the hell knows. For two days I re-priced rares lower and none of those sold. For two days I made sure to put my very newest up and only a few sold. There isn't a rhyme or reason that I can tell, except mass confusion produces sales of some things, like a monkey at a typewriter.

LINDEN DEVALUATION

o The Linden continues to be devalued by contrast with most days in the past year or more because instant cashouts are at 241 and more than $70 million at the 240 line.

GLUT ON THE MARKET

o There are now 905,867 gatchas on the MP, up by about 5,000 since the announcement, and it will only grow. At the million mark or when, will this huge amount pressure people to go inworld to get visibility, when search doesn't matter any more? WILL we reach a point where there are so many listings that search doesn't help find a cheap one unless you have the patience to page through many many pages? MP sales were always better than inworld because people want a precise gatcha. They don't go on the MP generally just to browse in general. In the old days before we had the category "Gatcha," and painstakingly put the gatchas under various content categories like "furniture/seating" or whatever -- a vector for endless Linden meddling to complain about category mistakes or rating of PG vs. Adult -- maybe we caught some people who just typed in "lawn chair" and accepted transferable or non-transferable as options in their results. Today all that's gone. The reason nobody bothers to describe their gatchas any more, or put in unique pictures, or any pictures at all, is because people search on the precise name, and if it is cheapest, they buy it. If absence of photos is a marker for griefer or copybotter, as it is for somebody old-fashioned like me, it isn't for the young generation.

RETURNING TENANTS

o I had a few tenants return to some of the cheapest rentals who had left completely in recent months as times got harder, or they moved in with a partner, or whatever it is that makes them drift in and out of my rentals. I'm betting some people dropped their premiums and Patch lost a few rounds to me today but then I've lost to him yesterday and tonight I may again, who knows, who is keeping score? It didn't matter before, now it does. I wouldn't have personalized this phenomenon before; now I do, for the obvious reasons that it was personalized by the persons involved before I did.

TOTALLY LEGAL AND COMPLIANT PATCHA MACHINES

o a few fake conceptual art project Patcha machines sold, and like even my $0 Oz Linden mirrors, they will never sell more than a handful as I have no market share and I'm not particularly adept and putting 2 prims together. Remarkably, even with a model and a map, I can still screw it up quite profoundly. This is what art teachers who would literally take my hand and draw or chisel with it or provide copious instructions would find, to their puzzlement. My reasons for flunking high school art in my junior year were complex, including the breaking of my thumb literally while hitch-hiking, another accident my parents marveled at, but that SL logo "eye see-hand do" isn't something that comes together for everyone. I remember Mom made my little brother and me take art lessons at the Rochester Museum of Art on Saturday mornings, taking a long drive into the city and missing the cartoons, to try to bring about the culture that the shanty Irish missed in past generations. My brother who went on to get a degree in photographic engineering and build websites did better than me; I daubed happily but it was a mess. The art teacher would come over in exasperation when the paper didn't show the same vase and flowers as the front of the room showed in RL, and literally start drawing on to my paper. It was one of these "original works of art" my mother framed and hung in the dining room, where it remained for years, shushing me if I told guests that it was my art teacher's work, not mine, really.

Sound like Second Life? It is.

MALLS!

o Someone came and rented a store in one of my remaining malls, a person who last year rented a little cabin, but it doesn't look like she's putting gatchas here -- can't tell what it is.

PRAYER WORKS

o Did you know that every day, various people come and pray at the mosque in Ross, the only working mosque in SL. Some come daily and tip me small amounts; other infrequently. Are more praying now, at this time? Seems so; the Tibetan Monastery; the Catholic Church; the Shinto Shrine -- all these in my land preserve list -- all get regular visitors, possibly more than usual, I don't keep track of visitors or traffic. Someone told me the other day they come often to the sushi bar in Grote and I should know for my records that it has use, but I have no way really of using all this granular information. It's time consuming, intrusive -- and work -- to keep track of visitors. I only have the contours of these places with an eyeball at their traffic now and then to see: should I delete them? Are they a waste of tier? Does anybody care? Every day I try to get a little more done on the annual report of the preserve, now very late, what with everything, but I do it to see how things are moving. My sense is that it has more visitors and less donations.

FAN MAIL

o Walked around Okinawa Summer and didn't buy anything; had to leave for RL then came back again and just bought who what non-gatcha item, a flamingo fight over a soda game, it was bigger than I expected, I will put it out. $500. While I perused these booths with things in them I couldn't understand, the sort of things I sometimes buy because they look cool and then find they are octopus salads or something, someone IM'd me and said "You don't know me, but I really appreciate what you are saying on the forums and no one else is saying". Thank you! The haters there don't realize I get fan mail like this now and then, nothing huge, but I've had a few since this broke out, and that all it takes to keep going.

AUSTERITY MODE

I didn't really want to spend any money -- you'll see why in a minute -- ; there are all these notices about gatcha fire sales and even knowing that many will never been seen again, I can't get out to them. For one, they don't seem like a draw and I figure they will still be on the MP later, no? And because I'm in lock-down austerity mode already.  What is austerity mode?

o all elective purchases cease

o all photo uploads for rentals cease and the logo or an old photo or even the wrong photo is used

o all classifieds cease

o the search/places list is whittled down to 100 ideally or no more than 125 by Tuesday when it debits;

o land that can be put to sale is put;

o land already at sale is lowered to $5/m

o all cats are put back in inventory;

o I try to find time to put more items in my stores and on the MP to sell, but don't think that is time well spent because

o Most effort has to go into prepping places to rent, getting ads on the forums, or in various wall boards around in clubs and furniture stores, such a chore but pays off when search is broken

MY RETIREMENT HOME

So imagine this. Among all this flying around and making austerity decisions, which you have to do during any SL convulsion and it's almost automatic behaviour by now, there are so many of them, like going to the SW corner of the basement during a tornado (or is it the NW corner? I think it's different if you are below the equator?)...

...There comes a completely unnecessary, unplanned, and unwanted expenditure. While wrangling this deserted Wild Western town in the sky to serve as the gatcha yardsale, I looked at the map.

And I purchased my retirement home.

Now how can that be? I have no plans to retire in SL as such and I don't even like homes very much, don't spend a lot of time in them, and don't want to be buying land or pulling it out of rentals at all now, insanity?

Because my "retirement home," which I had jokingly referred to several times over the last year to various friends and family, is this abandoned pink mountain next to the other abandoned pink mountain that I researched for months then finally bought and developed, with mixed results. Now I suddenly was espied it on the map as purple!

And only 6 hours remained in the auction! It was only 1/4 of the sim but that made it feasible and bearable.

So I consulted people and got the tier together and cash which I absolutely hate to do. I never buy Lindens. Who buys Lindens who has a store? What a crazy way to get cash that is so expensive? I hate hate hate playing the auction where people snipe you at the last minute and you can't refresh the page fast enough. I tried to convince myself this was unnecessary, along with someone else who actually said, no go for it and went for it. But when I saw some of the characters buzzing around it who were obviously bidders on the auction, my heart sank.  How awful, to add to the ugly towers, which are now three, with several on physics (?!) that blight the view below, to have junk now on this formerly pristine place?

You have to get very cold-hearted about things like this. And actually, normally I am. I press "abandon" without looking back, and price down to 0.3/ without looking back now, unlike in my SL youth.

But I literally for the last year just looked out at that pink, bare mountain with nothing on the sim but one neatly landscaped little house and I think a store in the sky. I figured that it would remain abandoned as it has been for the last year and likely 10 years. Seriously. While the view one way was awful with those terrible towers, the view the other was nice with the Blake Sea panorama.

I notice SUCH a change in the abandoned landscape everywhere now, I can't tell you! And now this! Breathing right on my neck!

The US $32 we had to buy for this really chafed my butt, and was only partially mitigated by the fact that we would have spent that at lunch at an outdoor booth today which got cancelled when somebody forget their credit card, somebody else COVID COVID something (there is so much of that now again around me I fear reading my Facebook). So maybe the $32 could this time go to LL investor Raj Date and confreres and not the struggling Italian family business near me that managed to stay in business...Not a nice thought, eh?

$32 ouch! Yes, ouch, because who spends that in SL? Not me. I need to make that in SL. 

And now, I have to replace it with something, but what? More land sales, more gatcha sales, in a weary world.

I am indeed weary thinking of how I simply cannot go and even develop that patch into some sky platforms when I have others to attend to; other chores; other austerity measures to implement everywhere as many do. Yet I will have to. Nobody can leave up fun projects undone without payment anymore.

It's maybe faintly consoling to think I will put this big Spanish villa there for my story quest, then I'll stick some skybox rentals up. I don't want a home and certainly not a retirement one yet, but there it is, the Fickle Finger of Fate in the form of Guy Linden flipping patch after patch now.

Go out back and see what is happening in your sim. They may be coming for you and yours.

And I also realize that now, the 40,000 odd rest of the sim, minus 2 1024s at the foot I won't bother with, they are green, will go on the auction next. And I'll have a store or a club there "just because". I would have paid 0.5/m for it but for snipers that came in during these last hours and drove it up to $1.1/m, a little more than Linden abandoned. Why do I say $32 when that's $64? Because I already had cash on hand I put to it.

ABANDONED LAND DISAPPEARING?

I was surprised to see Juanita, which has been fallow for 15 years -- yes, 15 years, I'm not kidding, and I can show you an abandoned skybox up there that never got removed for some reason to prove it with 2006 content) suddenly went on the block, barons chopped it, now there is not just little end user houses but a new Linden Right of Way. That was not there before. So they may be reviving the Juanita and Grote railroad which is infuriating to thing possible, more on that later.

I saw this field in Polia, which I thought had been empty for so long (the 5 years I've been there) that I should try to plant sion chicken feed in it because that food is going to run out from that merchant who left SL years ago. I have among the last of the dwindling supplies in SL. Would it grow on land that even Governor Linden abandoned? I'm still jolted when I read the land menu and see "Governor Linden Abandoned" when he/she is supposed to be the HOLDER of such parcels, and if even they dump them, where do they go?

Now that field is on the auction, and I'm afraid to look...

"DON'T SPIT INTO THE WELL"

I returned to the forums and answered the despicable Da5id Weatherwax snarling that gatcha makers were like "carnies" and should fold their tent. 

 

 

The Feigned Disdain of Gatchas and the Real Shocking Effect on the Economy

My fake "Patcha Machines," named for the announcer of a deeply devastating policy, which only sell Linden Library flamingos for a $1 and nothing else, and cannot be filled, or which give away only flamingos and cannot be filled. On sale at Flamingo Court Garage and my shop Shaman's Hut in Tofalar.

By Prokofy Neva, Virtualator

If you need a short form of this long blog, go to my Twitter thread.

I believe, based on my experience since gatchas were introduced in 2012, that we will see the worst economic downturn we have ever seen in our virtual lives, and the further stratification and atomization of the SL society as it sorts into deeply divided classes of haves and have-nots. Past economic crises such as GOM, the ban of third-party currency sellers, VAT, island price hikes, Copybot, etc. will pale in comparison. Gatcha evolved to address inequities in SL and RL that involve the need for unskilled people to have a way to enter the economy and prosper enough to pay their virtual-life costs. Without that need, so hard felt in a world that rapidly becomes all about the very top designers and coders who can make the best content, or the very top land dealers who can hold tier in the tens of thousands of dollars, there isn't a world. There really isn't. 

I never say that SL will end or be destroyed by this or that event or corporate decision, but I do say that it might be irreparably harmed, and what the real harm is done to its role as a norm-setter for the Metaverse, a role most of the big dogs thinking they are going to build one don't even realize, and which will disappear like rare orchids in an axed forest, taking a long time to reappear.

This poll of SHamlet's isn't asking the right questions, and sorry, but Tyche, who knows a great deal about sim attrition is not making a valid comparison. Gambling was not located at every store, in every home; gambling didn't have huge special events for merchants and Linden-blessed shopping malls. Unlike ubiquitous gatcha machines, gambling machines were only on a few sims, or had a few machines here and there by comparison.  Not everyone gambled; it was a distinct minority. But practically everyone has either pulled a gatcha from a machine or been gifted one or purchased one in the secondary market. There is simply no comparison at all.

And gatchas are not merely expressed in "sims retired" as an economic marker. It's not something you measure only by seeing how many merchants have to close their stores and dump islands or homesteads. You have to see it as far, far more dislocating as people who re-sold gatchas, even if only on the MP, have to tier down as well and more important, lose their purchasing power in the economy and any way to enter the economy at all, especially in poor countries and especially in countries so poor they don't have credit cards that are accepted by LL.

(Note: I don't ever post on Shamlet's blog and call him by that nickname ever since his hate campaign against me for criticizing his then-employer (he was a paid LL blogger for years) and his requirement that I must put my RL name to post, a demand he doesn't place on other actual vitriolic writers, but only on me, in the belief this will "get me to behave". In fact, unlike so many I link my SL and RL names easily found in Google. But I don't cross the street to create griefing vectors for myself signing my name at Hate Central in his comments. Hamlet is not really in SL. He writes about a variety of worlds, whoever pays him, and does advertorials essentially. Go and argue with him if you like, but he is not a source of real knowledge and wisdom on this subject.)

I think you can learn most about this from straight news reporters like SLNewser which will at least report the news from the ground up, and not from the company down, like so many SL blogs, although they are not intended as a source of critical opinion. There is no more Second Life Herald or even Clickable Culture as there were in the old days of past economic disasters, and I realized the other day that whereas once, when I was banned for speech which is legitimate, for corporate reasons, there was a littler coterie of people inworld and in RL who could place some pressure on the Lab for this authoritarian behaviour -- professors, journalists, virtual world developers and some creative people and land barons inworld -- now most are gone. I don't like the feeling that I could wake up and fine my account locked "for any reason or no reason" now but it's the reality we all live with.

I had a long talk with Bixyl Shuftan, editor of SLNewser, this evening who is the only person I have heard in three days to come straight to the point, without any bullshit, without any misleading crap:

[19:33] Prokofy Neva: what's your take on the gatcha thing
[19:33] Bixyl Shuftan: Well, I do wonder, why 30 days.
[19:34] Bixyl Shuftan: I haven't heard of any complaints to the Lab by any government.

ROLE OF RAJ DATE?

Bingo. There aren't any. Their perception of the regulatory environment is just that, their perception, largely a political view, in my view, shaped by one of the new owners, Raj Date, formerly of the US Treasury Department

That is, unlike past owners, who were programmers and engineers and start-up kings as well as big game or media company leaders, this fellow is a combination of programmer and liberal lawyer which I always find deadly -- "code-as-law" and law-faring and not really the rule of law. He is a protegee of socialist-leaning Elizabeth Warren and was the first official appointed to her brainchild:

Raj was the first-ever Deputy Director of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). As the Bureau’s second-ranking official, he helped steward the CFPB’s strategy, its operations, and its policy agenda. He also served on the senior staff committee of the Financial Stability Oversight Council, and as a statutory deputy to the FDIC Board.

This is pure speculation on my part as he has not said word one, but just my feel of this situation I have been watching with our new owners and our old Lindens.

Am I the only one who wonders whether, if Ebbe were alive today, we would be having this policy as harsh as we are having it -- or at all?

Note that what's most likely operative here is that Raj feels he is protecting consumers not by protecting the livelihoods of legions of poor people in SL who make and re-sell gatchas, and thereby setting the tone and the legal basis for the Metaverse (I doubt he is barely aware of that), but he is protecting imaginary consumers that he thinks are harmed by what he sees as predatory gambling. No doubt he thinks this is a "Better World". Even if Raj did not initiate this move, he enabled or heeded lawyers or some other unknown leadership or staff who did initiate it, and did not use his power to stop it.

NO, GATCHAS ARE NOT 'LIKE' LOOTBOXES, NOT AT ALL

NO, THERE IS NO LAW ON GATCHAS IN THE US, NO FEDERAL LAW THAT APPLIES,

AND THE CALIFORNIA LAW HAS NOT BEEN SUCCESSFULLY PROSECUTED

There is a HUGE difference between a giant, predatory game company like EA.com bilking little children using their parents' credit cards to buy "lootboxes" to achieve progress in a game, and what we have in SL. Here's where the differences are:

o there are no children in SL

o the company does not run the gatchas or gain from them, except in a fee for currency purchase and cash-out to US dollars and a tax on sales of 10% on the Marketplace. 

o the gatchas are created by designers, most of whom are not RL famous or RL wealthy; many of whom are in Eastern Europe or Latin America or South Asia, and make a living of anywhere from US $250 to $1000 per month -- hardly the stuff of predation.

o MOST IMPORTANTLY, gatchas are resold, unlike some gaming company lootboxes as a way for ordinary, unskilled people to participate in the economy of a virtual world and pay their own expenses there or in RL as well

o there is no game and therefore no gameplay.

Therefore the attitude LL should have taken  was an adversarial one, referencing Apple's and Google's successful rebuttal of lawsuits bought against them motivated by children being victims of game companies and be unable to advance in those games, but are about adult users who create content that is resold by other adults who then pay for RL expenses or virtual expenses; the random element is merely the glue to make it stick, and not the most important element. Most pulls are 20 cents to 40 cents; the "$9" incorrectly cited now from the tech media could be a reference to the fatpacks of the entire sets on no-transfer, which often sell for US $10.

Again, there is no federal law as such on lootboxes; the California gambling law has just been successfully challenged by both Apple and Google in response to lawsuits by angry parents of children who bought lootboxes. People in the magisterial legal systems of Europe and Asia just don't grasp that laws on the books don't self-execute or merely get literally applied and can't be expected to affect people merely by their existence or putative appearance. In the US, a common-law system, the judge interprets law in light of precedent and the Constitution and makes a ruling, and the body of such rulings constitutes the law. There is more adversarial defense than there is in the magisterial systems. Raj Date surely knows this, but did not likely contemplate it in this context. This difference in how law is perceived and how it works is the hardest thing for the uneducated myrmidons on the forums to grasp or admit but it's worth flagging. No judge yet ruled that lootboxes=SL gatchas. That matters. There isn't even a guidance or a prosecutorial warning that we know of. Therefore, the posture should be, as a State Department official I knew once said about his work in Belarus:

"Better to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission."

[19:36] Prokofy Neva: EA.com may have had to pay a fine, but those big dogs shook off the case because the judge ruled there was no damage and no standing
[19:36] Prokofy Neva: so why in that actual climate is LL jumping the gun?

All of this is worth mentioning and arguing about and trying to educate people about although we are dealing with a force majeure and a fait accompli and are -- to put it in the SL Herald French related to the GOM years ago -- phuqued.  Yes, none of this matters, as the Lab has spoken and here we all are, from their lips to the Merciless God Autoreturn's ears. But to the extent that it might be MITIGATED and even REVERSED likely in some OTHER WORLD or even THIS ONE, it has to be spelled out.

It's highly unlikely it will ever be reversed, however, given the heavy cultural war going on now over the act of paying US 20 cents and getting an armchair commons, if not the fireplace rare, valued at 50 cents -- acts which helped sustain the livelihoods of designers and scripters and the livelihoods and virtual expenses of ordinary, unskilled people.  "Lost Wages" of gambling does not work with the same dynamic.

Yes, those are the figures actually involved.

ANTI-GATCHA CULTURE WAR

The society of Second Life, such as it is, is a strange mixture of American Calvinists and Puritans (even BDSM queens come from this anti-commerce culture with a belief that gains not from hard work are illicit) along with American pioneer destructiveness; then European socialism and even communism; Asian socialism and even communism; Latin American authoritarianism and latifundista criminality. In concentrated form, sometimes the worst features of every culture are manifested when many different cultures come together and have no grounds for cooperation, as the platform itself sets up antagonisms in 100 ways.

I'm seeing an AWFUL LOT of people announcing snarkily that they "never" liked gatchas; that they are "predatory" and even "evil"; that they didn't understand them or never played them; that they played them but really didn't like them. And here's where I come in like Claude Raines and say, "Your winnings, sir."  Because most people indeed play gatchas; played them a lot; spent a lot of money on them; liked them; resented them; but their claim now that they "seldom" played them or "never really liked them" are not credible. Pan around the houses in Bellisseria, and there's a gatcha in every one, maybe an old AF dress form (now retired and rare!) or the latest Bee Cauldron rug or knick-knack as well -- they are definitely there. You would be able to immediately land at the K-9 or Epiphany or Equal events on the first and second days without trouble if "nobody" bought them because gatcha machines were often the highlight of these events. Gatchas permeate every square inch of SL. There would not be nearly a million of them for sale on the MP if there were really all these people who "really didn't like them". 

And to some extent, I'm no different in noting that in the last 4-5 months since Fantasy Faire ended, I've been "off" gatchas and switched to original art works. Read my Twitter feed to see my dismay at Epiphany consisting of top designers with...teacups stacked on a toilet (sigh) and a racoon by a garbage can. And that was the well-made stuff.  To be fair, after this announcement, I went back to an empty Epiphany and played Black Sand's highly unique national table clutter gatcha from different countries which is very fine, and random matter, also very well made, although merely yet another cabinet of curiosities of which I have a hundred.

More on that another time. But I'm at least honest enough to say that only a few weeks ago, there was a who what gatcha at Japonica, I believe. I was fortunate to win the rare train on it and some lights right away. I have long been wanting to put an actual train at the train station I have with my Mt. Fear build in Atis, a tribute to a RL Japanese sacred place. This shiny and well lit and well made train -- typical classy item from who what -- was perfect, I tried it in my office first to see if it was too big, put it back in inventory and forget about it for a bit; the rest of the gatcha was not inspiring. That is the lanterns were very nice, but like a lot of gatchas, there were too many of them merely re-textured. The seats and benches looked like they might only go with the train or station; I already had a station and didn't want to replace it with this one which didn't have the look I wanted. So I was glad I won the rare I wanted early on, a few of the commons, and let's call it a day. And remember that while everybody complains about getting too many commons, some ignorant types even harass gatcha creators over their failure to get a rare, but in most cases, what this sales mechanism is about is a) livelihood for the creator b) cheap products for me to use in my business or home.

Then, a few days later, trying to finish this project so it wouldn't join the growing list of the unfinished, I couldn't find it in inventory, and I went crazy, looking all over it, and thinking I must have deleted it or suffered the usual loss of inventory you often do in SL. So now comes the gatcha crazy part of the story, which I had congratulated myself on avoiding just a few days before. So I went to Japonica and played this gatcha...and played...and won three rare stations I didn't need...and a bunch of lanterns that were of little resale value...and didn't get the train. It wasn't for sale on the MP, either -- of course I always check first before ever dropping a dime in a gatcha machine. Boy was I vexed. I now had one of those stories of spending like US $20 on a gatcha and not even having a lousy t-shirt, but dozens of glowy lanterns no one would buy even for 10L, I know how this works. I then recalled that the train came in a bundle, it had a physics part. I looked for bundles -- couldn't find it. I tried searching under "physics" and "train" -- nothing. Finally days later I stumbled on it under "collision" and mercifully put it out, with some of the many lanterns; I sold a few lanterns for a song on the MP; I put the rest in gift givers. Typical gatcha story, and this from me, who says I left gatchas month ago. So let's not be children here.

FORUMS BITCHES ARE NO DOGS IN THIS HUNT

Most of the commentary on the forums comes from people who DO NOT have significant businesses in SL, and in many cases are resentful that their old businesses that USED TO make money were wiped out by the change to mesh or other upheavals and therefore won't miss an opportunity to harass people rightfully complaining and gloat even viciously. While some might think it's a time to acknowledge that an offensive persona like Drayke was right when he began vociferously banging on everybody about the impending lootbox like doom in SL, but he didn't do it for good reasons. He's one of the failures, forced to retreat from his one-great furry RP sim; he's one of those Boys' Own types who likes war games and Roblox chases and easy building and thinks SL should be like Roblox and for him, like other sour personalities on the forums, his actual game is harassing people there who actually try to do something inworld and work around the many difficulties in SL. You sometimes wonder if characters like this are invented and deployed by the company itself, but he is so predictably stupid and obnoxious that I actually think he's authentic. I want to put more of this on the record when I get back to the forums, but for now, I want to study the effect on the economy.

MY LITTLE WORLD OF 60 SIMS

I can only judge from my own little world of sims in my little rentals, and yes, they are little, numbering 14 but spread out over more than 55, some of which is the land preserve with many mainly cheap Mainland rentals of as low as 25L for a little skybox or 50L for a cabin or 100L for a skybox or camping, with only one private island and one homestead. There are Mainland rentals and sales with dozens or hundreds of sims and of course private island dealership with thousands, and we seldom hear what they know and are thinking. SL is a closed society in that regard, like Russia or China or an American company town in the 1900s (or for that matter, in the 2000s, with an Amazon warehouse and trailer park for Nomads).  There is no independent media that can withstand the threat of bans on the forums or inworld for investigation; no reporter can mention any ill-doer by name on the forums; chat cannot be copied and published on the forums or inworld; people fear reprisals and won't talk, etc. There's also no independent judiciary to settle resident-to-resident disputes or disputes with LL, which would yield reams of useful information for the economy, not even those few that used to be doled out before 2007 as to how many avatars spent Lindens in categories ranging from $1 to $5000. So I have only my own stories, anecdotes, and trying to read signals from the environment.

READING SIGNALS FROM THE ENVIRONMENT

o First and foremost, the fear and despair, often behind brave words about trying to adapt, that I am hearing from gatcha makers lets me know that this crisis is way more severe than the GOM and later the virtual currency exchange closures; the closing of the banks and stock exchanges; the change to mesh; Viewer 2.0; VAT; Copybot -- you name it, there have been numerous upheavals over the years with striking losses (sculpty and prim builders of the highest excellent driven out of the world completely not merely for losing business, but because of a campaign of shaming and goading led by Linden Lab at the time that made them the enemy).  This hurts more, because there is a greater loss -- gatchas make for real-life livings for MORE PEOPLE than used to be the case in the days of Aimee Weber and her underwear which were about, as one very perceptive woman once said to me, "making geeky Linden women feel pretty" (and I could add, making MTF transgenders feel pretty as well) and Blue and his expensive jewelry or FlipperPA and his lovely life JennyFUR who sold...whatever it was that they sold. And eyeglasses, from one of the most vicious characters in SL, likely an alt, Ms. Samiam.

ABILITY OF NON-SKILLED TO PARTICIPATE IN ECONOMY, ESPECIALLY WOMEN

REAL ECONOMIC ACTIVITY BY REAL PEOPLE

o Even more relevantly, this policy hits on the livelihoods and cost-reductions of ordinary people without skills, who had a way to enter the economy with the ability to collect gatchas, flip them for those who were making sets, or collecting sets and sell them on the MP for a lot of money, especially in the days before the fatpacks by creators themselves. I can't emphasize enough how important it is to have ways for people to enter the economy by buying and selling. They need to be able to exit the economy as well by selling their furniture and having liquidity, as they also need land liquidity. Gatchas gave this to them. Gatchas spread the gospel of mesh that LL and Draxtor wanted to spread, with rather harsh force at the time, and I never heard them complaining all this time about "predatory machines," when gatchas enabled mesh items in every home and club indeed converted a reluctant population with prim and sculpty inventory. 

There are more wives in America than you'd like to admit whose husbands do not like them using the joint credit card on a virtual world; who don't have their own discretionary credit card or source of income. There are more people than you can concede who have families or churches who criticize their involvement with what seems like a den of iniquity with its unwed sex, dancing, gambling, and shopping. 

So gatchas enabled women especially to acquire assets and sell them. People might think I'm dramatic in my statement that was among the content deleted and serving as the basis for a 3-day ban, when I say gatchas kept women from sex work, but I am not kidding. I see tenants living in both very cheap and more expensive rentals who dole out their dancing Lindens into rentals by the hour, or day, not week. Some are in sex work and some are proud of this as it has given them economic and cultural freedom in countries that lack this around the world; some would rather do more creative things than place their avatar in an "AFK cafe", which might seem rather easy work, but is quite degrading.  Many many more are in relationships with sugar daddies or doms who provide them income but for a price -- sex, and submission. The BDSM lifestyle in its hardcore (Gorean) and soft (fantasy) forms is very widespread in SL. If you are forced to get money for your "look," your home, your shopping, your socializing by staying with someone, male or female, who pays for it in exchange for your having sex or other forms of submission, how are you not really a sex worker? 

And I see that when gatcha sales, land sales, even a little low-end creativity enable people to move out and have their own lives, lives of creativity and socializing.

How do I know this? Because I literally watch these cycles play out over and over! A tenant, especially women, especially those in poor countries and minorities, but not always, establish themselves solo in a rental, and have partners come on their terms; they work at jobs in SL or sell breedables or gatchas for their rent and clothing (which is way more expensive); then times are hard in RL and they move back in with the boyfriend, who has an enormous dungeon or fantasy RP sim or simply an island condo on those flat, ugly homesteads with beat-up sand cut up into 16 pieces.  They disappear from my groups...then they wander back. A couple lives sometimes happily for years. Then often it is the male whose eyes wander and who cheats, sometimes by getting another one of my rentals without his original partner's knowledge. Breakups follow inevitably, creating two rentals. You would think that makes me if anything eager for such adverse events but it doesn't at all. For one, there aren't THAT many. For two, people who are happy with partners and friends simply last longer in rentals than those who aren't, so we should care about how people can stay happy. Sometimes I see my tenants' other rentals, in either cheaper or way more expensive operations of competitors, and it's normal for people often to keep multiple properties, multiple alts, multiple lives. Then they collide sometimes. Some people drift off to the latest Belli home...then drift back, they're out of prims. 

People move up and down to bigger and smaller rentals, depending on RL and SL upheavals, but the common substrate to all this is: 1) their ability to buy and sell gatchas to decorate homes cheaply, dress avatars cheaply, and sell the leftovers, along with their breedables, to pay for more shopping or rent; 2) weekend sales 3) social networks of both partners and friends who can house the homeless and give gifts.

Forums mavens are snarkily telling people in a sense to "learn to code" -- "learn Blender" or "stop relying on gatchas" one particularly odious fellow named Da5id Weatherwax, himself an admitted business failure with the turn to mesh, claims that the "house" -- the creator -- set the odds on gatchas to make more than what their actual creation was worth (not true!) and that they've now been rightly exposed and should slink away.

Gatcha creators make anywhere from 300 euros to US $1000 on the average as I've been discovering by asking them (have you?), not the tens of thousands a month that non-gatcha creators like Apple Fall make or gadget makers like Casper who is a monopolist in the vendor and TP space. Nobody has disdain for them. Why disdain for a Polish designer who maybe pulls in $500 actually, after his tier, and given that events come every other month, can't expect to live only on this gig.

Those in a position to investigate this like Shamlet don't bother asking people what they make and seeking a wide field of replies. They deserve every penny and are rightly paid and can't expect to earn more outside of gatchas.

The Linden vision seldom looks at these "soft" parts of the economy and tends to look more at hard forms of electronic taxation at the LindEx or Marketplace, and has always seen the top creators, the most skilled who are both their peers and even their contractors and sometimes even their own employees -- the people I dubbed the "Feted Inner Core" or "FIC" -- as the drivers of the economy. Lelutka with $5000 mesh bodies and Contraption with $5000 packs or Hisa or Cain Maven with $3000 or even $12,999 homes will carry the economy in this view as the top tier, most extensive creators whose wares people, even poor people, are willing to buy, paying for it by running up credit cards or working as dancers or bouncers in the virtual economy.

The next tier of somewhat less expensive houses and avatar accessories may or may not rely on gatcha, but most have the extensive businesses that will enable them to do so. It's more the mid-level and low-tier of merchants to made gatchas out of full-perm models on the MP, or even their own mesh, but who counted on legions of people buying a lot of little cats or ottomans or candles in cages for 50L in the hopes that the rare skybox or adult bed would also be acquired. And that's fine. That's the economy. The economy exists this way with a funny thing called "gatchas" like a gumball machine on steroids because of OTHER dislocations and difficulties too numerous to mention, but should be highlighted:

o purchase of SLexchange from a resident, and introduction of 10% tax;

o the end of the GOM, then later the closure of all third-party currencies;

o introduction of point-to-point teleportation and the killing of telehubs, which meant lucrative malls around them;

o increase in cash-out fees;

o increase in prims, and some lowering of tier, but not more over time, and the promise of cheaper sims that yes indeed was implied by Lindens in office hours was in fact a more expensive world with the move to the cloud, making the company feel squeezed and needing to cut other costs

o breakdown of search/places without repair for 9 months, and constant malfunctions on the Marketplace.

AN ASIDE ON TELEHUBS

I was a big supporter of telehubs because the provided a democratization of an artisans' economy fiercely held by oldbies in remote sims far from the growing green tip of the world when SL was expanded weekly with new full-sim auctions. While the rent was steep, anyone willing to pay it could enter business, like me, a newcomer with a tiny rentals and sales operation. I didn't have to try to curry favour with the old landowner and artisan class to get a corner on their RP sim or colour-sim store to break into the market. 

If we still had telehubs today, we'd all be better off as having a place where people could sell breedables and yes, gatchas, still legal to re-sell, in places to rent, not own, and also to socialize. You can have point-to-point and still put telehubs at the 128/128/0 of the sim, or another location, and set the landing there. I urged Philip at the time to keep the settings and even re-set them out of water and trees to Linden infohubs. It's a trivial matter of setting the same discs you would yourself on a private island for the landing point. You could have both, in many, many cases. Look at the map.  But instead of havens for commerce that could help the current situation, we have a Moles milkbar in Brownlee with cobwebs all over it.

The resident-run infohubs (14 or so) cannot allow sales on the areas, but in my case, I kept the mall next to it that I had purchased from Anshe for $7.5/m instead of the $20 or more on the auctions (telehub adjacent land was the old Blake Sea of SL)  when she got early warning of p2p and began to sell off her land. Today, it is still filled with merchants, some of whom have been there more than 10 or more years. There's a few spots to rent, so come sell your gatchas. I have another mall across the river which also was historically valuable as adjacent telehub land, and that mall is buy with tenants and has just one spot -- other malls I dumped, as there aren't need for them in a world where many moved to the MP. But you know, people still like to shop inworld at actual malls with an ambience and hangouts.  Merchant events also replaced malls, but you can't get into them in the first days, they are laggy and crowded, and you are pressured to leave. Not so on an old fashioned mall, although I can't exaggerate their importance. They have steadily waned over the years; they will contine to do so.

GATCHA RE-SELLERS PAY FOR SL AND RL EXPENSES AND THERE ARE WAY MORE OF THEM THAT DESIGNERS DUMPING SIMS NOW

o One tenant on a fairly expensive large rental, who had left when she got COVID and her husband lost some income (a story I saw repeated over and over throughout the last year of the pandemic), and who struggled with COVID for months (before the vaccine) was able to come back and re-start her virtual life, happily hired a landscaper again and such but then suddenly refunded, because of the gatcha announcement. She doesn't make gatchas or any content and didn't have a shop inworld. But her MP shop was paying all her expenses in SL and she couldn't keep up a large rental. She took her tier, which gives a discount in my rentals, to the Linden Homes, so score one for Patch Linden. The US $32 I lose and the $11.99 he gains with a premium account were not frequent occurrences before now for the reasons I have often said, that people come and go from Linden homes, where they are not allowed search, sales, or more prims, unlike my rentals.

But now I don't know.

I can totally see that for some people, a Linden home and an MP store will carry them through this, make them feel secure and loved, especially with all the frenzy of resident and Mole activity in Bellisseria, both as to new content and socializing and that's fine -- we have to advocate for anything that adds stability to SL and to the Lindens' economy, if not to ours, or if not to some of us, in some sectors.

I am TOTALLY aware that group rentals and group land living on the Mainland is in the distinct minority in SL; out of some 5000 sims, 2500 of which are Linden Land (roads, parks, and abandoned!), let's say there are perhaps 33% or 825 of which have some form of active life on them, if nothing else, in the form of couples and friends living private lives, or people driving or breeding animals. Compare and contrast with 2000 or more Bellisseria homes, and perhaps 500 old Linden homes, where there is a great deal of life and socializing, which then means shopping for furniture and accessories. Old Mainlanders make do with prims and sculpties for years. The merchants' community of Mieville, which I am in, has many amateur sellers like me, using sculpties or mesh models, or homely mesh builders who are completely happy because they are independent of the larger crazy world of high expense, high land impact -- and gatchas. Most Mieville merchants at the seasonal fairs don't sell their own made gatchas; they sell used ones. I'm one of the big re-sellers there, but the sales there merely offset things like texture uploads, they can't pay for tier; I have to price them low or they won't sell.  There are people in Mieville still in the suits in which Philip Rosedale gave birth to them; others have very complex steampunk wares and builds but outside the mainstream of the Contraption and Hideki type creators. This is why I love them. I actually think they are well positioned not to be harmed too badly by the gatchapolypse or the "Gatcha Eclipse" as one merchant calls it, but still, there are losses, like me not handing Perryn 200 gatchas free to re-sell for charity, as I will need to sell them now for tier myself if rentals decline.

Philip admitted to me long ago that the telehub sims had the most revenue on them and I would say that benefited many in a mid-and-lower merchant class. The sims with the most revenue today are owned or temporarily rented merchant events sims which benefit a few in the high merchant class. All classes are need in SL and there needs to be a balance.

MOVE TO BREEDABLES

o I see some tenants even who have breedable yards tiering down to the 25L rooms or skyboxes, and this may be unrelated to gatcha but tied to another issue of RL, which is that unemployment, which they keep staving off in the US, is waning and coming to an end; so are rent forgiveness programs. Fasten your seatbelts.

o Yet I see other tenants expanding and ordering more rentals. I have no idea why, as I don't pry into their lives. My anecdotes here are anonymous and based only on what people volunteer to me -- I can't go and poll them effectively, although I do have some polls at the Moth Temple and Ross Infohub, and I can't do focus groups, although I once did them years ago as I contemplated whether to branch out with more newbie communities and malls. I did. Then years later they all were closed, one by one.

GATCHAS ENABLED -- AND STILL WILL -- LOW BUSINESS COSTS AND LOW CONSUMER COSTS

o Yesterday I had every landlord's dream, ,in part due to the gatchapolypse, as I sort my inventory and try to unload my rares on a Marketplace that jumped thousands over night and is heading toward the BILLION mark.  Note: the category "gachas" on the Second Life Marketplace has climbed in the last few days in number from 901,903 to 902,560 to 903,806 this evening. Gacha machines will be illegal after 8/31, yet resales will not. 

I was motivated to start filling every fallow lot that I used to leave as either my own personal sandbox or a community hangout or just stock for requests for more prim, as they can be used anywhere from anywhere in a group. I put up two more skyboxes in Grote, both with e.marie gatcha rares that I won on 50L or 75L pulls. So that's a mere 20 cents or so expenditure for me in this business, on land of 512 or 1024 which I will ask 100L or 150L which, combined with other larger lots and higher prices on that sim, might cover the tier of that sim or might not, given vacancy rates.

Imagine my surprise when within minutes of putting this lot into even broken search/places (less broken on Firestorm), one lot rented out to someone who loved the gatcha skybox (thanks, e.marie!). e.marie, whom I don't know, and who doesn't make very many gatchas or homes from what I gather, and specializes more in clothing and makeup, just made my day and the day of a resident who got a cheap home, possibly out of a need to move from a more expensive one.

BREEDABLES AND MORE BREEDABLES ARE THE NEW "PLASTICS"

o As I flew around the neighbourhood, I met a new neighbour, she was putting up a breedables store briskly and shrewdly, commenting that this was the area to go into now that gatchas were dead. Funny, as gatcha resales are allowed; breedables are teetering on acceptance now, that may change, given the Lindens' announcements.

o A neighbour who had a cat store bought land that I had sold to someone last week when long-time tenants of a large rental couldn't keep paying and moved to a nearby cheaper rental. I decided anything empty that isn't interrupting a whole community, that is on the edges, has to be put to sale in these times. It's funny how the person who bought from me, convincing me to come down in price on the strength of her advertising of herself as a good neighbour, with 100 cats, but not at that location (lol), who did persuade me as good neighbours are worth their weight in gold!, then decided, because an unscrupulous homestead agent dumped her out of her rental with no notice because he couldn't pay his bills and lost his sim, that she should buy mainland, abandoned, or cheap. Good move! So she did, but then she needed every bit of tier, and put her land back on the market, where the cat lady didn't immediately buy it to expand, as she had not bought it from me for weeks, but a land baron came in the interrim, bought and held, until the cat lady did buy it, right after the gatcha policy announcement, probably paid more than I charged, not sure as the map didn't update again.

But thank God for land barons, those "just-in-time" people who both hold tier and keep land available until you can buy it AND liquidate your land even at rock bottom prices so you get something so that you don't have to abandon it for nothing.

IS ABANDONED LAND DISAPPEARING?

o Speaking of abandoned land. I've been noticing another phenomenon that is increasing and continuing -- abandoned land disappearing, as people buy it up. Where for 10 or more years in many areas I had huge empty fields all around me, especially mountains, now I have neighbours breathing down my neck, putting in orbs that send me back home, and returning encroaching trees that were unmolested for a decade because Lindens don't bother with abandoned land. So a combination of Linden auctions -- which have been very steady and perhaps even aggressive in lessening their own abandoned land tier load -- are creeping up on multiple sims -- I count 5 already and haven't looked everywhere, there may be more. It means I will have to abandon and move to more remote areas to get some peace I suppose.

Abandoned land is another way that the unskilled person unable to create content or follow the vicissitudes of the gatcha market which is time-consuming can participate in the economy -- buying land through tickets to LL where it costs $1/m per claim, or on the auction, where it can be as low as 0.5/m, and flipping it. LL's auction is now all abandoned land or land seized by the company if a customer was in arrears.

So there is MUCH LESS abandoned land than there was in the past (see Tyche's surveys or my own anecdotal experience), and this comes as thousands of people realize they can't keep paying tier on their islands, and might buy Mainland -- but now there is less of it. 

COMPANY MESSAGE DELIVERED VIA PATCH LINDEN

o I have been putting land to sale that isn't rented where it can be for months because I just feel SL isn't stable. The new VP of Engineering is not hired. The new owners haven't really made any significant statements; before they could manage a "big idea" chat much less a roadmap, they have spoken in the form of a gatcha machine ban (!), which they had Patch Linden, VP of Programs deliver, although the CEO could have delivered it or even someone lower down, in charge of, say, the Marketplace. I feel in my bones that Patch himself did not initiate or push for this change, but was sent out to tell the masses and take the heat, like Tigger in the old Sims Online, crushed between game overlords far less friendly than the Lindens, and a user base larger and often more vicious, if that is possible, than the SL user base. Because he's the public face of this devastating decision announcement, signing the blog announcement and making updates, my parody gatcha machines available at my store are called "Patcha" machines and have ears. Polar bear ears actually, signifying the coming economic chill.  This was not my idea, interestingly, but the idea of someone standing to lose a lot from the policy, who doesn't want credit.

That sort of community relations figure we are all familiar with in games or worlds over the decades, ground between user anger and platform owner indifference, we're also familiar with them in milder forms at Catholic Confraternity camp outings and retreats and Club Med G.O.s and various other office picnic organizers and tenant organization movie evenings. Somebody has to officiously "organize the fun," and somebody has to  absorb the flak who is trusted by the user base. Somebody in my RL housing complex has to come out and say even children have to wear masks on the crowded plaza and be called names by 4,000 people although it was not their decision.

Why do I think Patch did not initiate or endorse this, but of course will do the owners' bidding? Maybe because to think otherwise would make all of this worse to bear, but because he is not stupid. He knows that every single Bellisseria home has a gatcha if not 50. I cammed around my areas of Belli and saw everything from the latest Why Not and Bee Designs house and garden gatchas to ancient Apple Fall dress forms. Apple Fall, with its low-cost but high-brow furniture, can make poor people feel like they live on Martha Vineyard's Island. Reka (Nutmeg) can less, but still a great deal of that, especially for the "creative intelligentsia" who like to imagine lives of faux poverty in dachas with cracking leather couches and old ballet slippers hung on the wall, possibly because Nutmeg is dialing in from Russia and has to struggle more to make a living. Neither relies much on gatchas (Nutmeg more so) but can likely carry the weight after 8/31. 

If I were a Linden, I would quit over this astoundingly cruel impoverishment of the user base absent any actual law or legal notice from any authority, West or East. But then, I'm not a Linden...

BELLISSERIA IS NOT KEPT AFLOAT BY GATCHAS AND WILL SURVIVE

It's not just about decorating Bellisseria with gatchas. Patch surely knows, as someone who was a content creator and store owner himself before 2007, what goes into these little businesses, how hard the work is, how long the hours, and close the margins. I do think he has justified this to himself with two factors of the virtual life he seems in front of him -- different than the virtual life I see in front of me:

o breedables are excepted, and given the number of breedables overloading Bellisseria despite the two-pet only rule like China on children now, the businesses that sell them can carry SL

o avatars and mesh bodies and accessories are only in part sold via gatchas and those creators will do fine; and most of the middle class of Bellisseria who can afford a premium account (and that would not be somebody in Turkey where it is impossible even to buy the account) will be fine buying $2500 or $5000 fatpacks that replace gatchas. The "consumer basket" for Bellisseria might be US $11.99 plus another US $50 in Linden dollars for content, or $62 per month, tolerable for more Americans, although I see this as about 3 days of groceries and don't take it casually myself. For someone in Russia, that's 10% of their monthly income, not 3% as for Americans of the lower class still hooked up to the Internet and still with disposable time.

I imagine Patch was the one who was able to intervene to give 60 days for real enforcement, i.e. with first-time offenders after 8/31 essentially given another month to clean up their act, and he is likely now intervening for breedables, which I personally view as no different than the game of chance of gatchas. The technicality of buying just the mutt and his food, or just the rod and its bait, and then claiming that the rare that comes down the pike later isn't gambling is one I accept without scorn because I want any form of this to be tolerated, and would have preferred an adversarial approach to California gambling laws, or threatened Belgian lock-out of SL (or whatever that real story is, which we don't know) because I see there is no actual news of any actual move against LL, let alone ruling on lootboxes. Again, Apple and Google won their cases, and LL is more like them than EA.com, which suffered a fine.

And it's in that sense that I wish he were more a voice pushing against the owners' decision and bringing that experience to bear. I have no idea whether the "troika," which consists of Patch, Grumpity and I think the Tilia VP of Engineering now in the absence of Oz, or possibly another marketing Linden, gets to really sit in the counsels of the board and the owners. They used to in the old days; not sure now.

MAINLAND IS KEPT AFLOAT BY GATCHAS AND WILL SUFFER

o Yet I see a different world, not populated by avatars in Lelutka heads with $1500 furniture sets from Fameshed. I see people still putting out Linden Library furniture, if you can believe it. People putting out furniture from makers I've never heard of selling to Brazilians, Portuguese and Hispanic on the one hand or Southeast Asia or Eurasia on the other, very flat and low prim. I see acres of 30L or 35L or 60L weekends sales items from Simply Shelby or Velvet Whip or Kraftwork, the same items I buy because that's what people like and some of it is very good. Not everybody can have Circa and Loft & Aria. In this world, there are few premium accounts, partly due to the difficulty of getting credit cards in some countries or using them for SL or because of fear of recurring costs. In this world, a rental that costs on 50 cents or one US dollar  a month may be cut when there is a pandemic and job loss, because everything is cut and this is something one can cut. Yet by the same token, there might be more or those 50 centers or even increase to US $5 a month because people do pay for entertainment more in times of trouble.

In a world where refunding from a 150L a week rental can be a sign of distress as much as paying for one, how to read the signals? You can't.

WHY ARE PROFESSIONAL AND EXPERIENCED GATCHA RE-SELLERS AND YARD SALE AGENTS SO WORRIED WHEN THEY SHOULD BE HAPPY?

o Now let's come to the last topic, which puzzles me but I can only report on it. I would have thought, even with the glut of gatchas, even with me, a great student of gatchas with my Tofalar build and my own purchases and sales, able to sell them now and then, there would be MORE inworld yard sales. I'm certainly adding a free one for my tenants in addition to the rent-free Refugio Free Market. But I do know their value is trending towards nil, as I literally cannot give them away, and have not been able to for years. I have group gift givers, givers at the land preserve, and a VIP group where you can get 4 free gatchas a month, and I cannot give them all away as planned. It's not just about the new and the fresh. It's that everybody has too many and cannot put them all out. If there are a billion gatchas on the MP, and probably three times as much on the sims (I estimate my inventory of now 185,000 items is 45% gatchas), and only 25,000 sims, well, do the math. There aren't people to take the gatchas and put them on sims -- there aren't enough prims.

o One tenant is worried about her store rented from me but is holding for now, but she indicated she thought Epic, the largest gatcha yardsale agent, was in a panic. This may be sheer conjecture. I have no idea as I'm not at Epic any more. But the reason I'm not at Epic any more is very basic: I couldn't sell enough gatchas to pay their steep rent. With all my groups, advertising, venues, and visibility, I couldn't do better? No, and not even in my own stores.  There are people who can afford to keep their non-productive Epic stalls so that they can feel they are "playing store" credibly and because they live in hope if they can't afford it. But there is turnover and now there really may be a move out the door.

If yard sale agents are worried due to the glut on the market, we all have to be worried

The appearance of people making new breedable stores and extending old stores and asking if I can stand 50 horses on a rental (I can't, but maybe I will have to reconsider) means that's where the stampede is going of people who need to stay in the economy and sell little things

What about my own breedables, too many cats? I've put a fair number of them in inventory, which I never used to do, or sent them to the Menagerie. Who can afford $1600L to feed their cats for a month? Not me. I hardly ever bother to sell them, however, I think their worth in K dollars from having been sent to the Menagerie is probably greater than the occasional 400L sale on the MP?

o "What Residents Are Buying" on the MP is useful to watch although I think it's tilted. Individual gatcha sales don't reflect there; only full packs. You watch an endless parade of Lelutka heads and Cyber Boots and Tuff boat rezzers going by, but when you yourself buy a $199 full perm model, you can't see it on the line-up. Or any of them, ever, despite clearly a lot of sales of such items.

o I have seen a few of my rares sell on the MP, but it is too early to tell whether more of them will, or that was a fluke. Generally, I sell a few items a week for only 20L to 40L, hardly any income at all. I spent a little time putting up more items, and re-stocking stores, but honestly, I do not feel this is time well spent now. I think selling land and sprucing up rentals is more the way to go, but this may convert even by next week into making decisions about what gets abandoned.

THE VALUE OF THE LINDEN TUMBLES

o the LindEx, even while heavily controlled by Lindens, reveals the story now, too. You cannot sell Lindens for 240 as you could last week and months before them, keeping the value at US $4 per 1000L. You'll have to sell at 241 or actually even 242 unless you have days to wait.  Currently there is 73 million Lindens waiting to get out the door on the exchange.  Those are people that sold land, or sold content which they may not sell again with this new policy, or obtained Lindens from something, and now want to cash out while the going is good, as next week, it will be at 242 or 243. Watch that space. Forums ignoramuses argue that the Linden has "always" been this rate or "stays stable" but look at the 3 month chart. It doesn't. Far from it. And part of that stability comes from someone like me willing to lose one dollar as they pay tier, at least today. That adds up.

I was surprised how many complaints I heard from homestead renters and island renters who spend more on rentals how much the new fees and lesser cashout affected their tier, in their perception.

SOFT LAND SALES

o Another signal I see is that land isn't selling. Waterfront was able to sell for $5/m or $3/m; now 1 isn't enough. A big RP guy who bought most of the sim where I am and wants to edge me out, and already bought out a neighbour, thought he was offering me the princely sim of $3/m as "three times the going price" for flat meadow interior mainland. It used to be $5 if the view wasn't spoiled. When my land has sold, it's been for $5 on very good waterfront; or $3 for very good Mainland, but $0.3 for everything else. The time was, if you put out land for 0.3/meter a land bot or a real person would instantly buy it. Now, you wait days.

NON-GATCHA SALES

o another signal is that my little amateur creations have sold more than usual, but that's merely because I issued more of them, and just happened to get noticed on social media; inworld advertising and being noticed on the MP is awful, as search is broken and the MP has problems, too. I look at my store selling my own creators or gatchas as merely off-setting the cost of texture uploads, content, and tier. And not by much! "Learn to code," the tech bros tell you if your life as a waitress or even school teacher does not give you income to live on. The equivalent of that is the forums bro who shows up to tell us that we should make mesh and sell content or if we are learning after our businesses based in sculpties failed, we should perform live music or make RL art in the interrim. I personally don't think creating MORE is the way out of this crisis and I am worried how this will play out for those brave fillers of 30L Saturday sales who will now scramble even more crazily to mark down and step up in their skills or numbers of releases.

I have absolutely no illusions that I will sell more gatchas now and more non-transferable creations I make with models why? Because far more skilled people who have sold non-transferable original mesh content mainly in gatchas as that's where the money and the people were are worried, and do not think that selling sets will cut it.

Dozens of merchants I've talked to say they do not sell as many sets at all as they do gatchas, which make up their living. So we are about to see a very hollowed-out world, where top creators who do sell sets or individual items on no-transfer will go on succeeding and even have more success with no cheap gatcha competition now. Their customers will not be able to afford their wares, they will come down on their prices at weekend sales, but these are already so overstuffed, along with every other day of the week, that this is not a valid outlet waiting to save people now at all. 

Droves of middle tier and small tier creators will leave SL or significantly decrease economic activity that will be a real shock to the economy and a long one. Those speaking airily of our ability to bounce back each time the Lindens throw a debilitating crisis at us like this, or "our ability to be masochists" as Mitch Kapor, former board chair, aptly put it are in deep illusion. The world will continue to contract, as it has from its peak in 2007.

EXIT TO OTHER WORLDS?

o An aspect of all this always threatened at each type of crisis is that people will go to other worlds. As there aren't very many viable ones, and Open Sim and Inworldz were visible failures, along with LL's own experiment, Sansara, this seemed pretty fake. Now it isn't so fake. I go by what I see very smart entrepreneurial people doing. One friend used to sell expensive compete gatcha sets on the MP for prices like $50,000 and did very well; he ran a RP community that despite a very good run and Fantasy Faire attention and such, he decided to close while the memories were still good; he began learning Blender to go produce content for Sinespace, the world of Adam Bisby, a former fortunate son of Philip Rosedale's and land baron, which I have seen and can say does have promise and looks good, although does not have many people. Then he swerved off to become avidly involved in Upland as a first mover and pioneer. I don't understand Upland, which seems like glorified domain squatting to me; it has no world you can go to yet, and it relates to bitcoin which I don't believe in. Still, listening to the videos associated with it I can see where it will be as compelling as EVE Online for some people and have transactions in the six figures. Decentraland, I have no idea about and don't wish to find out, but someone will.

o While bemoaning her now ruined income and fearful of the future, one creator said to me interestingly that she was thinking in fact of moving to making 3D content for Turboquid where game developers buy content. Why stay in SL which is aging and outdated and waste my talents? Why suffer these upheavals? I could add that many content creators could be going to Shutterstock or Pond5, where my son and his wife makes a living with photography and videos far more interesting to him than SL once was -- as they take out the least percent of any such platform provider. Well, yeah. SL might seem quaint with fairy-hugs and unicorn-kisses and little mushrooms you make for the next Arcade until they don't cut it any more. The social aspect of groups and customers and sales might be exhilarating, the grind of more packaging and CS sure won't be. One grate thing about gatcha machines is the ease of packing and vending that no Caspar vendor really brings to you with the same uptake.

o Casper Vendor, the monopolist, who put my name as a "sample griefer" in every TP of his sold, so that to this day, I still find stores where the 2nd floors are banned to me, won't suffer as he did not sponsor merchant events as such, or gatcha machines as such and will now be in more demand as those gatcha makers have to stuff more of his vendors with things to sell otherwise.

o Read the decisions -- or lack of them, in fact -- on what merchants in the Last Gatcha Sales advertised on SeraphimSL will do after 8/31. Some say "repurposed/repackaged," i.e. sold in packs on no-transfer, or in singles, not clear; some says "undecided"; a few say "retired". I think none of them can afford to decide this month when they can still get sales! So they won't tell you. I now have 50 Nomad gatchas for 20L. What will I do with them? Some of the rares I will use to decorate; perhaps something can be sold, but I actually doubt it even tho Nomad has very high quality items and is one of my favourites.  I don't want to burn $100 to see if ionic, who is almost entirely made up of gatchas, and expensive ones with hard-to-get rares, has said anything indicative.Anyone?

I didn't see anything on Arcade's web site or social media and naturally wondered what their policy was on all this, which was going to ruin them. I still boycott the Arcade in protest against 100L gatchas and the failure to add player rewards to compensate all those empty pulls free of rares. Leave it to Daniel Voyager, a court reporter and anti-fax conspirator as I just found out, more's the pity, to find out the news, however because he thought to look on their Facebook page. Odd they couldn't post this on their web page;

On Tuesday 3rd August the Arcade team announced on their official Facebook page that the upcoming September 2021 in Second Life will be cancelled due to the recent Linden Lab news about banning gache at the end of August 2021. The Arcade team have said they will pause operations now to re-imagine the whole event and the event will return back even stronger in the near future. Yay!

Yay, nothing. They are toast. They are just another merchant's event with sets and fatpacks in the new dispensation -- and their former customers will not have the cash to pay them expensive booth fees. Re-imagine -- nothing. Their customers, who made the event -- the merchants -- are imagining themselves out of SL in some cases, or in a quandary about boxing up merchandise or retiring it or repurposing it. What I think Emilio doesn't want to admit is that he is a middleman between those creators and us, and part of the reason their gatcha pulls up was to pay him for booths. These sponsors pay more to be at the landing and in the view:

• Chez Moi

• Concept
• Ersch
• Kraftwork
• Moon Rabbit
• Scandalize

They're going to pay him now again when they need every penny and actually need to draw customers into their stores more now? Where their main stock is now on no-transfer. Arcade was invitation-only, so the booth fee and terms are not made public. Interestingly, as I just found out from reading their FAQs, they have a certain formula for the chance for rares that apparently all vendors using their machines must accept, which I suppose makes it more predictable. As you can tell, there is no love lost between me and Arcade, as I have been a long-time critic and am now banned from their event. They really began gatchas in 2012 at Christmas when the 25L gatchas were a nice Christmas decoration and stocking gift and intended to remain such, but then grew to a mammoth event with multiple cam sims and 100L gatchas as I've blogged repeatedly. I'm very sorry to see creators' gatchas go but not sorry to see the middlemen go, especially this one. This is a very underreported part of SL and very secret and it is very hard to find out what people pay. I know from having been in just a few events at the lower end of the spectrum that $1000 or $2000 was the norm for those lesser-knowns, and that $5000 or more must be what they pay at the top. But you tell me. We are about to find out just how much longer they can live, especially when, as with independent artists who make their own records, merchants may band together to make their own events as ionic once did with Chapter Four. Sure, some event organizers ARE the merchant companies. But not all. BellaTech with her sky-defacing ugly giant domes damaging the view is not creating content, only blight containers for others to put their content in rentals.

I'm almost at 10,000 words now, with only 3 days of signals to monitor and report and 27 more to get through (yes, notice that LL didn't really give people even a full 30 days).

So finally:

GRIEFING AND CRIME

o What happens when poor people, which is a lot of people in SL because if they were RL designers of real merit, they'd work for Disney or Facebook, not on a laggy Linden sim, or they'd shop at least at Wal-mart! (if they had such a thing in their countries). They do with less. They become more innovative. They think of garage sales or appliance repairs or Tupperware parties or things like the okaziya system in Russia or sex work. But then they sometimes turn to crime:

o Copybotting -- that has been put at bay, although has hardly disappeared and is still a real problem for some people. The permissions system help, they are a deterrent, but LL can't police all the IP theft especially if not inworld as such using an exploit of world mechanics.

o Extortion -- cartels, mafias, threats, violence appear to make people sell things they don't want to sell or pay "protection money" to be free of at least all the other mafias except that one -- and not for long;

o Extortion disguised as high event or booth fees;

o Various unscrupulous practices related to merchants -- putting them in disadvantageous positions, low on sales lists, etc.;

o Catfishing -- luring of lonely people into giving their account information and steal of content and identity;

o Possibly RL crime like drug sales although I don't think this has had significant presence in SL. I've seen only a few actual outright drug sales put on the MP and not for long.

o Griefing - I'm not a believer in the hydraulic concept that some have regarding young men's energy, that if they are put to "creativity" they will destroy less. Doesn't work, and not will have every reason not to work more.

o Bellisseria house trading -- socializing and presence will mean even more to establish commerce circles if the era of big events is forced to end or diminish, and I believe it will. I don't need to go to a laggy sim to buy a $750 furniture set; I can buy it at that creator's store. The event was often about the gatcha machines, which were ONLY present there, and creator's deep discounts, which they can't justify any more. So my theory is that people will use the hawala as the Arabic countries call it or okaziya as Russians dub it to transfer property and money. I get a high value Belli house on waterfront with a clear view or a rare in the newest releases; I set it to a group. You pay me money in person on another sim, and you move into that house and live in it, setting to the group. A rental, without a rental box. This already goes on, although I actually think, it's not very widespread.

o Will there be secret gatcha pulls in the sky at midnight? No, because Lindens can easily see scripts being used and could simply deprecate all gatcha scripts at root on the asset server if they really want to be thorough about this, as they have deprecated various types of griefing scripts or animations. I just think there will be less public activity, more insider deals, more corruption as a result of this, not as if it didn't exist before!

If anything, the main feature of Bellisseria I see these days unadvertised or admitted by the Moles and Lindens are EMPTY HOUSES. With people's names on them. Empty of furniture. Not seized by Linden Lab for weeks. And I am guilty of empty Belli too, keeping now two empty houses in the anticipation of dumping them for tier I'll need or a move to "magic" Belli which I'm less inspired to make now after my ban.

Why? Why this slumlord activity now mercifully outlawed in NYC? Keeping valuable property empty. Well, because people's eyes are bigger than their stomachs. They want, but don't have time to decorate. Sure, I enjoy sitting in my empty Belli house, it's very peaceful. But I don't think that's the reason! These are mainly houses in the interior with nothing special around them, so I suspect that people just got them merely to keep getting "the new and shiny" but don't want to spend now even on gatchas to furnish. I suspect there are more reasons I don't know about. There will be some shrinkage especially of these empty extra houses in Belli but most will instinctively do what my tenant did who took  her tier out of my group and gave it to Patch for security. I'm only one more rentals agent likely to be so impacted by this downturn I could dump land.  I don't flip land and don't sell my rental land as they are mainly in contiguous communities. I will be forced if it is really bad to take some entire group and community and sell it as a group, as Campbell Coast's owner Bjoyful did even before this devastating announcement, due to serious health conditions. The new owner, a land baron back in SL after a hiatus is mainly known for land chopping and holding back land that can fill with signs and offering it for sale to new buyers of the larger parcels, but no matter. I actually think he won't chop Campbell. I also don't think the owner got what it was worth, which is precious: artists who joined together in a community to sell works, and tenants who like the ambience. 

There's no question that when economies suffer, so do communities, the "loose ties" that bind SL graciously, the comraderie of trading in groups fed by the influx of fresh content. It's more than likely some gatcha sets once in demand will sink into the abyss of inventories as nobody remembers them or sees them in the glut on the market. I stared at a gatcha couch in my rentals last night made by someone who while in the people list, turned up two abandoned lands in her picks for home and store, and had no MP presence. We'll see more of that, and I want to mark them passing.