Just when you think Second Life couldn't become *more* of a Vanity Fair, just when you think people couldn't become *more* self-serving and duplicitous, well, they don't disappoint ROFL.
Such is the Thinkers program posted today for Thursday, January 12, at 4 p.m. game-time. Astoundingly, it's called "Trust".
Does "trust" exist in SL? Who do you trust in SL, and why? Are there tools, institutions or processes that we can insist upon to help build trust? Join Gwyneth Llewelyn and Justice Soothsayer for a discussion of "Trust in SL".
As I've outlined copiously here in this blog, with the kind of detailed post that only looks like a "he-said, she-said" or "ad hominem" attack to outsiders (and even to the parties involved), evidently neither Gwyneth or Justice are the kind of people you can work with or trust. I say that with sadness, because regardless of my differences of opinion with them, I used to think that you could still trust them enough not to stab you in the back after a publicly-agreed upon process.
Why? Because they take credit for other's work, "yes" people they mean to say "no" to, don't speak their minds, and do things behind other's backs -- all with an aim to enhance their reputation with what they usually call "the community".
None of this has a bit of anything to do with any "tools" or "institutions" -- as if this is some kind of technical problem like getting a notary from that um...Lindenized notary who says not even a Linden can break the seal.
I think a rather obvious example of my last claim is this very Thinkers meeting itself. Both Gwyn and Justice know full well that they've violated the trust of not only me, but others who were in a process with them -- in that process reluctantly, but only to get the job done.
They could remedy this by offering to discuss this problem of the letter and their badly-timed and badly-run meeting in Nberg Sunday, but instead, astoundingly, they whitewash themselves by pulling *another* public meeting, that ALSO depends on you just happening to catch it among the Tringo, to try to stake out their reputational ground on this. They make it seem they are the rueful, thoughtful persons, contemplating "what to do" about people like Prok who become "paranoid" -- when it is not about Prok or paranoia, it's about their bad behaviour.
Forums-whoring and venue-shopping are the standard tools of the trade here in this really strenuous game of reputation-enhancement. I always marvel at it. I find it a source of great inner calm and sustenance that I have absolutely not one whit of concern about "reputational enhancement" in SL. If people want to go on perma-banning me, negrating, muting me, ignoring me, cutting blog links, etc. etc. I can only calmly watch them because in the end, they are only discrediting *themselves*.
This little routine process of sending a letter to Lindens wasn't any big deal. In and of itself, it's not worth dwelling on. But the process of making a letter out of disparate ideas and opinions, building a consensus, is an important one. I usually err on the side of joining such consensus when I can, I did it constantly during the telehub and Laz meetings and actions. Here, too, I really had no desire to entrust this delicate operation to two people I saw gunning to scoop it up for their own enhancement, but I figured no harm would be done by being cooperative.
Reluctantly, because neither I nor others wish to concede ANY role to Democracy Island and hangers-on like Justice Soothsayer in our second life business, I just let him pick this up. But I reiterate that he and his confreres at the Isle of Demos do not have trust and legitimacy. They will not get it. They have broken what little willingness people had to engage with them. They did that for reasons of a sense of vanity, arrogance, privilege, "I know better" -- and many other nasty features of the human persona, especially online.
(SNOOPY, BTW did it first, by first inviting me to speak, arguing with me for 2 hours, not being willing to change his ill-advised and actually overly dramatic and politicized topic of "Aimee's Matrixes", then not being willing to concede when I wrote the next day that I'd be willing to speak if he broadened it...then changing the topic COMPLETELY and disinviting me and inviting Gwyn. See, that sort of bad faith and poor handling of community relations is what UNDERMINES trust. You have to be consistent. If you invite someone, you have to be willing to discuss topics and not impose them. If you impose them, against common sense and judgement, and get an answer of "I refuse to legitimize you doing that," you should be willing to learn something. You then don't ignore the person's email the next day saying, look, rather than Aimee's matrix, if they are willing to risk the possible legitimization of you they do not seek and are highly distrustful of, and have a broader topic like "groups in SL and how they lobby" or something.)
Justice actually thinks that posting a letter on the forums without the signatures of the people who so arduously, through a process, drafted it, created a consensus, and signed it, is just some technical slip-up, just some "failure to scroll down".
I marvel at that, I truly do. I find it stunning.
It shows a profound tone-deafness to the real issues of the RL and SL worlds we live in to even imagine such a technical thing could happen. Signatures are people -- people you worked with. They are the most important thing on a document.
Imagine, leaving in the names of Lindens at the top of a letter -- scrupulously and excessively, with too many -- and then leaving off all the residents who signed the letter -- and that says it all, hmm? Tropism to power, to the state, and stepping on the grassroots.
They got left off because Justice evidently is arrogant, and wishes to take credit not only as a convenor, but a drafter, and a forcer of consensus. This is rabidly awful stuff. This is exactly how people sneak up on you with governments that you don't want, don't need, and didn't ask for. It's really to be rebuffed in the strongest possible terms. And I do.
It would be inconceivable of me to draft a letter and leave off signatures. Every time we've gathered signatures to Philip or some other Linden on telehubs or Lazarus or some such issue, and I've had to compile them, I always checked them over and over numerous times. I'd post the letter and then even go look in the sent queue. I can't imagine posting something so visible on the forums, seeing it, and not going, OMG, I left off those signatures and fixing it within hours.
Indeed, it was not until I screamed bloody murder here and cried "foul" that those signatures finally went up. And they went up not with a genuine and sincere apology, but a nasty and vicious swipe and me, impugning my sanity, impugning my perception of the situation, chiming in with the Group Think that I'm "paranoid" and laughing gleefully and nastily, "Oh, no conspiracy theory here, just didn't scroll down far enough LOLzers."
Hell, no. If you think I believe in that lame excuse, you believe in the Tooth Fairy.
I've already addressed Gwyn's profound act of bad faith on this matter of this process of trying to get a more articulated and effective public meeting on the zoning issue.
All of this takes place against the usual backdrop of SL white noise -- this time with the first 10 sims being sold to Guni Greenstein (Anshe's RL husbsand), prompting many to despair of ever having a chance to buy a single sim, and prompting many to speculate that Guni and Anshe finally got some kind of REAL telehub compensation deal since the August 1 deal wasn't going to benefit them.
There is no substitute for morality and decency, and good character. These cannot be manufactured into tools.
For example, someone who becomes intimate with you online, and has the opposite gender from their RL gender, and doesn't tell you the truth about their RL gender, has committed a grave misdeed -- in the eyes of the majority of people discussing this in online communities. Many people in a forums discussion will say "they don't care" or "it doesn't matter" or "it's more about who the person is and their soul," but deep down, they wouldn't like it if such a deception was committed against *them*.
This is the kind of bedrock line of behaviour that many, many people agree upon in virtual communities. And by intimate, they don't mean swinging in a club or dancing at a naked avatar contest or going with a paid escort. They mean true intimacy and falling in love and becoming close. Taking advantage of someone's trust in that fashion, especially knowing in advance that it would shock and hurt them to find out the truth, is pretty much universally condemned. It's condemned, even if you think ultimately it is about the person's soul. Gender is pretty important stuff.
Ditto not telling someone about a RL relationship which means that a SL relationship cannot be taken into RL and cannot go very far in SL. This sort of hiding is also universally condemned. Some people like to write clever things like "what goes on in SL stays in SL," but this kind of behaviour, again, is far, far easily to tolerate in general, in a hypothetical, in another, than it is when applied to oneself.
The realm of personal relationships is one thing. But in business, there are also many matters of character and process that don't require anybody to make a special technical tool, they just depend on people not being assholes and not being arrogant and following through what a committee or group has decided, without pulling the blanket on themselves.
For example, if a group agrees on the elements of a text, you don't start inserting and freelancing later. You don't drag out the process. You don't suddenly think, "what if this or that" and sticking in what you feel like.
These are pretty basic norms. One could create a group template that threw up a Word-like document that showed a core text and everyone's words in red or green with strike marks and carrots -- this is done now in some resolutions in the UN. But even with this "tool," Rl experience shows us that backroom deals, horse-trading, special interests, little deals are still involved in creating a multinational text that represents a consensus. People think this is "first life evil" that they are going to "get rid of" in SL. No so, G.I.
I've had notecarded conversations I've been able to give back to people, and they still blindly insist on some other nonce interpretation of their own.
Having the ability not to impugn chat logs would go a long way to proving to Lindens or other doubters or the community at large that some people are liars, cheaters, stealers, etc. But often, the nuances cannot be imparted in a card, and the card could present an accuracy that still does not tell the truth.
Worst of all, in the technical realm, is the notion of some kind of plus/minus reputation system that would enable those collecting enough points in any game that inevitably results to prevail. The CW now is to say that the old Linden system of negrates was "gamed". I actually felt it very empowering to be able to negrate evil-doers from the forums who engaged in RL disclosure, harassment, personal insults, and other offenses with impunity. It meant that they had at least one negative rate on their record that was true -- since all their posrates were collected from sychophants. In the 3-4 cases where I could triple-neg-rate some particularly bad offenders, I could make an eloquent statement against the barrage of lies and propaganda that emanates from the forums Group-Think. It's no wonder that these who got the triple negrate clamoured the loudest to have them removed-- their vanity could not take it.
How can you build trust? Only by good deeds. If you slander someone, eventually the truth will come out. And those who are slandered or libeled could take the path of ignoring you, or they could take the path of whacking back hard (that's what I do) so you lose your sense of impunity.
The sense of impunity is the greatest vice of the virtual world and is the chief reason for lack of trust.
Another way you create lack of trust is by holding meetings in secret -- sometimes ducking responsibility for this offense against a shared process by putting it up on the calendar amongst the Tringo at the last minute so you can claim it was not secret.
Yet another trust-buster is sitting in a meeting and yes-ing a person you claimed in another meeting, elsewhere, where that person wasn't present, that you were critical of them or their ideas. Sitting in silence, when before when they weren't there you were critical, can only show you up to be a coward or a hypocrite or worse, a manipulative and cunning persona.
Letting a person you said nothing to in a public meeting in which they said really troublesome things like "Individuals are dangerous" or "individuals are tyrants" merely for buying and zoning a sim (!) is bad enough; to let that person then post your meeting up on the forums and ratifying it into the awful forums stone in the public eye (and more importantly the Linden eye) is far worse.
All of these things come down to character and behaviour. They aren't fixable by tools. They are only fixable, when they happen, by relentless exposure and relentless documentation and relentless push-back. To ignore them is to fuel the sense of impunity that the arrogance and hubris of such people relies on.
We've got a real problem on our hands. A few people with the right connections are trying to represent themselves as "the thoughtful ones," the "right thinkers" and "those who can convene the community" and "bridge-builders" and "consensus-makers" and "mediators" but they are tainted. They are tainted because they don't do these things sincerely and honestly. They are tainted because they collude with Lindens or even become Lindens, and sadly, Lindens are tained because of things like the IRC Channel and much more. By and large the Lindens are indeed a credible institution; like democracy, it is the best form of government except for all the others. But the trust is broken on some major accounts and nowhere near enough has been done to repair it.
These trust-busters take these bad-faith actions not by mistake, not in innocence, but through hubris: They do them to enhance their reputation, to gain points, to level up, to become Lindens or at least get Lindens to listen to them, or say what they know Lindens will say five minutes from now and buff up their resumes.
If you call them on this bad faith, they shrug, call you paranoid, call you a ranter, and say you are engaging in ad hominem attacks. That's why this new form of very slippery and electronic totalitarianism that is getting started on the Internet by the Snowcrashed elite is horribly disconcerting and alarming -- it will succeed, unless the most relentless push is made against it now.
The Red Queen was noted for saying something was so because she says it was so. The denizens of Nberg who keep poisoning the well keep claiming they aren't even socialist. That they've removed those who are the hard left. That those who call them socialist and question the collectivist ideology that causes so much real harm in the world as "McCarthyites".
It's that Red Queen faculty for calling something because they say it so, and questioning your own perception of reality and ability to call a spade a space that is a hallmark of their manipulation.
I can only urge everyone reading this who is of good will and sound mind to join me in Nberg tomorrow at 4 pm to ensure that yet another exercise in SL bad faith does not go down without at least a struggle.
The casual reader of your latest blog entry might have some difficulty in separating the wheat from the chuff — that is, confusing your latest round of personal attacks and name-calling with the real issue (ie. trust, a philosophical question in virtual worlds that definitely needs to be discussed), which is, despite everything, quite well presented. Sadly, your style and rhetorics so often confuses both issues, but that's your prerrogative...
Just by targetting specific persons and trying to construct yet another exercise in conspiracy-creation is "distracting" people from the *real* issue.
I also love conspiracy theories, but they tend to be only interesting to people that a) create them; b) love them. It's pretty easy to create them, if you're a good writer, have enough inspiration, and a good way of presenting issues in sequence, so that they are logically flowing from one issue to the other. They re-inforce each other and give a coherent picture to an outsider. This raises doubts, and makes people think twice: even if some things are untrue, they surely can't be *all* untrue, can they?
Let's try an exercise. Here is my description of my activities yesterday (as well as I can recall them), if someone would be stalking me, and what they mean in the Big Conspiracy of Gwyn's Treacherous and Back-Stabbing Plan:
- started by posting a cryptocommunist fake meeting cunningly disguised as a "Civics Class", in, naturally, the core left-wing intellectual centre of SL: Neualtenburg. Dismissing the issue as "it's part of her duties as member of the Philosophical Branch of Neualtenburg" (a convenient excuse), Gwyn proceeded to spew out all sort of lies about semi-pseudo-democratical fake institutions which allegedly have been set up in a closed sim, where, secretly and unaware of the rest of the population, red-hot communist cyberterrorist groups plot the way they're going to subvert the SL world. To confirm this allegation, let's take a look at the audience: yes, a self-proclaiming socialist/communist thinker, and Traxx Hathor himself, who has recently manifested very strange interests in what the N'burg left-wing psychos are doing
- after "civics class" was over, Gwyn then proceeded to talk a bit over "elections", replanning the N'burg sim structure, and future planning — adding new sims, on the mainland with the new zoning tools, or on new private islands. Mentioned in passing that she was going to try to get a 2nd hand private island very cheaply — surely an admittance to SIC powers, manipulating the Lindens to give her undue advantage over the other residents by getting lower rates, while others painfully struggle to earn their L$ fair and square. Communism pays in SL!
- sent a congratulations message to Torley Linden, the newest member of LL's Community Team. As anybody can see from Torley's profile, she didn't even bother to create an alt — UeberFICness now allows people to simply replace their last name with "Linden" and keep all contacts in-world. By establishing herself a "close friend" of a high-profile Linden, Gwyn once more shows her double-sidedness in dealing with these issues, struggling to overthrow the balance of power towards the hands of all who believe that "community is good" (why does the Community Team at Linden Lab call themselves "community team"?? Shouldn't they wear the "Comrade" title as well? Alas, there is no end to what perversions Linden Lab is planning these days)
- to cover her tracks, it was time to show some pseudo-altruistic Mentoring crap, by teleporting to the closed, unaccessible island of newbie gathering, called Help Island. Here, among similarly-aligned fellow FICs and SICs, Gwyn engages in the now familiar activity of grabbing newbies, brainwashing them to the ideals of communism, and signing them up immediately as N'burg's citizens and dispatching them with landmarks and notecards on "how to be a good citizen in SL". Newbies hardly get a chance to evade her manipulating hands — most of them fail to notice that the landmarks don't need to be saved, and thus conveniently click on "teleport" instead. Another few traffic points earned, another convert ready to join the masses of left-wing cyberterrorists!
- pleased with the subversion of another small group of clueless newbies, it's time Gwyn pops in the mainland, visiting a non-descript newbie she has met before. After blatantly spending some time with him, no doubt filling him in with all sorts of lies about how SL works, we suddenly see how someone approaches the newbies' first land, and grabs it literally from under their feet, without even saying "hi". Naturally, this was a set-up for the poor newbie: he lost his first land, earned just a handful of L$, and now Gwyn pats on his back telling him how "unfair" land sales are and how there are much better alternatives — elsewhere, away from the mainland.
- happy with another "convert", Gwyn suspiciously flies first to a zone near Waterhead (for no apparent reason, since nobody is there to meet her) , and then teleports over to the SE corner of the Southern Continent, where overnight appeared the "blank sims" for the multiple-sim auctions. She seems to stare at them for a long while, flying in circles, then, when she returns, meets "unexpectedly" another of the dastardly underminers of SL's freedom, no one other than the infamous Justice Soothsayer, with whom they chat for a bit, claiming (in public chat) that it was "just an incredible coincidence" that they met there. However, this so-very-fake-excuse is hardly convincing to whoever happened to know what these two are always secretely plotting. Some unreliable sources even tell that they might happen to meet in WoW (Gwyn's "convenient" claims that her Mac is not able to run anything else beyond SL are so easily contradicted) to conspire and plot well beyond the reach of SL, where land scanners and chat recorders do not work.
- posts then at MMORPG.org and other non-SL forums, where she presents herself as a "friendly" person and is always nice and helpful. No doubt that the only reason behind that fake altruistic behaviour is to attract "fresh blood" to her paws, inducing others to come to SL, give her the referral fee (always eager for some extra L$, aren't these commies...? And of course splitting the referral money is no good excuse — we all know that old trick of "sharing"), and willingly accept another round of indoctrination at the secret Help Island where she's free to "influence" them in all the perversions that cross her mind.
[...forgot to add some more references to Thinker's, probably linked to the fact that some of the founders are Goreans and that there *were* public demonstrations on BDSM sessions with Q&A (it's all there in the events lists, folks, you can look it up if you wish) but I leave as an exercise to the readers the filling in of the blanks...]
I could go on like this, and with a few dozen similar posts, suddenly a conspiracy is unfolded. Mind you, the above description of what I did in SL is *absolutely correct* (well, my memory sometimes fails me). Only the *way* it's worded makes it sound so differently from what *reality* looks like.
I can't hardly claim good writing skills, but writing in this style is certainly possible to continue for a long while, and keep all the structure consistent and coherent enough. Pointing out "coincidences" and foreseeing "excuses" and "denials" of the targetted party is always a very good way to continue a plot and make it believable enough for everyone to read. Add a few thoughts here and there (out of context), dare your readers to contest them publicly with a blatant denial (sure, everyone makes comments here and there which, taken out of context, can *always* be applied to you), and counter-attack with more interpretations on reality, more phrases out of context, more cross-references from unrelated things. There is *always* more material to be found if you really delve deep; there are always ways to twist words, sentences, comments, meetings, and interactions with other people, so as to reinforce a certain argument.
So if this time it's my turn to get your attention, I only hope your creativity is up to your usual standards. I'll be glad to help you out, if you wish, by sending you a daily email on my activities in SL and people whom I've been in touch with. I'm pretty certain you'll have more than enough material to create plots of higher quality than the X-files. The quality of those, however, left to be desired — your own style is definitely better, more coherent, more interesting, and much more believable.
In the mean time, you're of course also welcome to discuss *real* issues.
I can only wish you to find someone in SL that is of good will and sound mind (ie. blindly accepting your opinions without arguing). Because, frankly, it certainly looks like you're not going to find *any*. Sooner or later, all 115,000 residents will be plotting somewhere to overthrow the things you believe in, which everybody is blindly ignoring, and truly "not getting" it because of us, the evil-doers and manipulators of public opinion in SL. I find it sad. To make matters worse, and as the ultimate irony, I'm still promoting your "wheat" SL-wide (which, of course, you can only see as someone trying to grab others' attention by promoting your own good ideas), while I can still separate it from the "chaff". Well, now I have two reasons to continue to visit your blog: for the "wheat" (which I hope you will continue to give some thoughts about), and for the entertaining conspiracy theories on Evil Gwyn And Her Host Of Turncoats And Traitors.
Posted by: Gwyneth Llewelyn | 01/12/2006 at 03:21 PM
Well, between the two of you, nobody could find the time to read all this.
But I will say:
(1) There are "tools" for trust-building? Er, no . . . I don't think so. I'm probably not understanding this right. Surely it just means something like notarizing things or making legal contracts or something.
Surely it doesn't mean actual TRUST, so as one builds among friends over time. Such as I have with many, many people.
And as an aside, I will point out that to me, such trust does not mean that person will never do or say a thing that bothers you, because that would be asking the other person to BE you. Mainly, it is trust that the person is never going to purposely do something to hurt you.
And if they inadvertantly do something that harms you, they generally apologize, wishing to keep your friendship and good will.
Trust - like love and friendship - just aren't very amenable to anything that could also be called "tools."
2. And speaking of trust, Gwyn, you still haven't spoken to that which I viewed as a betrayal of trust from you, not to mention a waste of two hours or so of my time!
Why, when we had all agreed upon a plan, did you go off and do something similar without telling me about it? And as far as I can tell from the two encyclopedias above, there was apparently yet another meeting on this same general topic?
In any case, the point is this: We agreed to write this letter asking for a paneled town hall meeting. We ALSO agreed to - before doing so much as writing the letter! - post this plan on the forums.
Instead, this whole other thing gets posted. This whole other thing which is about the same whole thing, except that I knew nothing about it.
Am I getting this across to you at all? The very, very simple thing to do would have been to say, "Oh, Coco [and everyone else at that first meeting], we're going to be discussing this issue again at Thinkers tonight if you'd like to come."
And if I had, you can be sure I would have told everyone about the original idea - the panel and whatnot - and how THAT was going to be posted so that everyone could participate.
Instead, the other thing got done, and the other thing got on the forum, which did nothing but boggle and confuse everything.
Now since then, you actually have finished up the letter, which I signed, and I hope that the whole exercise still turns out to be useful and not a total waste of the two hours I spent with you that night.
But you know - your action of having this whole other thing, and posting it on the forums INSTEAD, and telling me nothing about it - that isn't real trust-building.
So if, as I seem to have gleaned from the epics posted above, you called some meeting about building trust . . . well, I'm baffled.
coco
Posted by: Cocoanut Koala | 01/12/2006 at 04:45 PM
Cocoanut, anything I'll write on the subject will be thwarted.
Under that assumption, any comment I might make at this point will never carry any weight. They'll be just words, nothing else. Words written "after the fact", which is always easy to do.
Prokofy's new conspiracy theories tend to include Thinkers', Neualtenburg, Mentors, and all groups I'm a part of, as being all in the same bag. They couldn't be more different, but for you to believe that, you have to assume that some people in the universe tend to be open-minded, have friends among people with opposing views, and have different hobbies and different ways to spend the time.
I have noticed that many people in SL tend only to associate with similar-minded residents. They gang together because they have similar opinions. They spend all the time together; they get entertainment together; they make business together; they have the same policies and political ideas.
I'm the complete opposite of that, but it's impossible for me to prove it, except by example. Thinker's, for instance, are the most anarchic structure in SL. Anyone may be part of it, and anyone may set up any type of event, on any place in SL. Sometimes there is one event per week; sometimes twelve; and very very seldom we might even agree on 5 or 6 topics on a sequence. There is no structure; no leadership; no organisation; no planning. It was always like that, and always will be. It lasted two years under that model. And its founder, Jinny Fonzarelli, is a teology student in the UK. She's returned back to hosting events. I'm not even sure she knows or has any idea on what "Neualtenburg" is or how it is even spelled. But she loves conspiracy theories, has a great sense of humour, and she would highly likely be *delighted* to listen to this insanity.
Neualtenburg is the absolute opposite. It's got structure, organisation, hierarchy, clearly-defined roles, land, a legal system with appeals, and bureaucracy to the level that you can't even begin to imagine. Prokofy's recently worried with notaries in SL; Neualtenburg had to worry about implementing them a year ago. Planned communities and zoning tools are currently the discussion trend, and suddenly they're "urgent"; Neualtenburg has discussed them, both in the forums as well as in-world, in the autumn of 2004. Well, sure, nobody did care at the time; but most of the posts are still around for you to search. For the Neualtenburgers this is "old news"; old concerns, and old discussions that were done with other people, and even with Lindens that have left LL since then...
Mentors is a rather undefined group of Linden-somewhat-approved volunteers. There were harsher rules as you look back in time; recently, the rules are much mroe flexible. They have special powers — the power to spend their free time helping others out. They, as a group, scorn "Thinker's" (although a few are members of Thinker's); and they, as a group, can't possibly understand what the bureaucracy of things like N'burg are for. They just think people worried by things like that are nuts. They're probably right.
But I don't limit myself to that. Sure, I attended furry events; I even went to BDSM events; I drew my line at the slave markets, but once I went to one by tp'ing in by mistake — that was a tough one. I sat with the W-Hatters for hours, and even assisted to a discussion meeting there. I go sometimes to the vampire clubs; I never miss parties at Rocker's Requiem. I visit the cyberpunk city a lot; and I was even seen two or three times at the Elven bow shooting competitions. When the horse race track was working, I was a frequent visitor there; I helped some people with their casinos, their clubs, or their jewelry shops. I attended religious and spiritual meetings by Buddhists and even fundamental teleevangelist Christians; and I even hold my own religious meetings (almost) every Sunday.
*All* this people are part of the vibrant community of Second Life. All of them have meetings, formal or informal, with more or less organisation. And just because there is a common thread linking them all — I happened to pass through each and every one of the above mentioned ones — this does NOT mean that they're all connected together!
Only a very large conspiracy could encompass them *all*. I find it very hard to believe that there is a communist-Neualtenburg-Thinker-Mentor-furry-BDSM-Elven-vampire-rocker-religious conspiracy going on.
Now, each and every one of these groups have their own rules. Some are easy to understand: if I wish to host an event at Rocker's Requiem, for instance (I only did twice, I think), I need the owner's permission. We usually meet together, discuss things out, and he sets it up. That's his rule: no person is allowed to host on his club (I was an officer once) without his approval. Some rules simply don't exist: Thinker's can post whenever and wherever they wish, they should just clear the schedule up with any available prefect (officer), to make sure there is no overlap. From 10 events per week we have gone to 2-3 at most, so not even this rule has been kept often.
Other communities have their rules, too. Even Slate and Blumfield, unique as they are, have their own rules. In both cases, I have complied with them whenever they asked me to spend some time there.
Neualtenburg, in turn, also has *other* rules. One of my duties is to gather information that might affect the future of the City and present them for discussion. Sometimes it's more informal (like the Civics Classes or the seldom-used Town Hall meetings); sometimes more formal (like when either of the three branches meet). The Representative Assembly, of which I'm a member, happens to be *very* formal.
The Thursday before Prokofy's Friday meeting, I already sent an email to Robin on *precisely* these issues, especially because I didn't saw it being mentioned *anywhere*. I started preparing a lot of meetings on Thursday and Friday, most of them informal, as well as a blog entry. Specifically, Jeanne (Blumfield) and Bob (Slate) would certainly would like to know more about this, as well as Prokofy. All discussion groups I regularly attend — Digital Cultures, the Ethical group, obviously the Thinkers — have talked about this for literally *years*, it wasn't really a *new* issue — just an old issue that finally got the Lindens moving. And moving fast, it seemed.
Prokofy is usually my source of information on all matters pertaining to social and landowning issues, and again, he was true to his word — he already set up a meeting. In the mean time, I didn't cross my arms and waited. Prokofy's meetings are always very interesting, but sometimes they don't elicit much action. Prokofy well knows how often he has urged others (including myself) to *act* instead of talking. He also knows very well that I had done what I could — set up more meetings, spreading the word, emailing Lindens, etc. All depended quite a lot on what would be going on the upcoming Friday night meeting, and the type of people that would attend.
Well, we all know how well it went — while always not so easy — there was some agreement on at least the letter, and the idea that we would start contacting the many communities in order to raise their sensitivity to this issue. If you remember, I even commented that I don't know so many communities — just Neualtenburg, Slate and Blumfield, as well as Ravenglass Rentals until Prokofy expelled me (and that one was obviously covered), but I would do whatever I could, and agreed to get the text of the letter discussed, but only on Sunday — Saturday I had already too much going on. Notice that Justice, Midtown and myself are all on different timezones; a round of notecard-passing took often over 4-6 hours, just because we were logging in at different hours.
So, on the following day, I would start getting awareness on Neualtenburg first, then Blumfield, and finally Slate. Those were the only communities with which I have some contact; those would be the ones I would talk to first. The rest, ie. the really big and important ones, if you remember, would be covered by Prokofy and yourself.
After a few quick IMs in-world with fellow Neualtenburgers, we decided that I should post something on the Neualtenburg forums, and if there was some interest, to promote a meeting. It would be an "informational" meeting; a *decision-binding* one would have to wait (yes, Neualtenburg is *that* bureaucratic). Also, N'burg meetings are public, free to attend, almost always announced on the events list (even if the number of attendees is sometimes just a handful), and it's a current practice to post the transcripts there.
So, what happened in Neualtenburg was a *local* meeting, whatever anybody else claims. And absolutely not related to Thinkers in any way. In those occasions, I never cross-spam groups (I could — it would be easy to do so — but I wouldn't). Thinker's, anyway, had already discussed planned and zoned communities *ages and ages* ago, time over time, and even some more at Digital Cultures — who, btw, are NOT associated with Thinkers in *any* way, and yes, they *are* doing an event the upcoming Friday.
Now, this is like going to the local sports association, kindly asking permission to use the coffee shop there to do a small meeting about the way Iran has broken the UN seals on their nuclear power plants, post a notice in the newspaper, and suddenly you find President Bush attending the meeting, followed by CNN, NBC, and half the media, with the leaders of the NRA thrown in-between, and all of them eagerly wishing to discuss the latest news that they saw on a tiny scrap of a newspaper...
... and then blaming the person hosting the meeting there, because they shouldn't have been talking about national policy.
So, we *did* agree on two things:
1- get in touch with landowners and planned communities in SL, raise awareness
2- write the letter
As to 1, I did my job — I got in touch with *one* community (one that highly likely won't ever be represented at the Town Hall Panel, anyway). As to 2, Justice actually did the first working drafts, and while they were only ready by late Monday, I had told you that I wouldn't have time on Saturday anyway.
Both Prokofy and yourself feel that I have "violated trust" in not inviting you to the meeting. It's incomprehensible for me how this can be a "violation on trust". I did never invite any of you to any local meeting of Neualtenburg before! Well, I *might* have talked to Prokofy a year ago for him to attend (my memory fails me), but people stated to me very clearly that they didn't want to have anything to do with the cryptocommunists of Neualtenburg. I respect that, always did, but always welcomed anyone that came to the open meetings there. As said, the event was *publicly listed* as a local informational meeting. It was on the public Neualtenburg forums as well. I couldn't foresee three things:
- that suddenly non-Neualtenburgers (even people opposed to government-based sims) are interested in getting invited to local meetings as well
- that you wished to be present at all formal and informal group meetings with the communities I happen to be familiar with (next time, please, state that very clearly — as said, I'll probably be talking to Jeanne and Bob or Willow to host similar, local meetings in their communities as well; if you wish to come along, please let me know — mind you, I'm not asking that, in return, you invite me to your own meetings with the people you've been in touch — because, strangely enough, I *fully* trust you and Prokofy as well to represent the ideas you wish to convey on this subject)
- that nobody else had anything more interesting to do on Saturday at 1 PM and decided to drop by for an interesting bit of discussion. I was counting on the usual number of interested people: 6-7 at most. The Civics Class I hosted yesterday just had an attendance of 3 (and one didn't count). That's the level of "interest" the local meetings in Neualtenburg *usually* have. But don't take my word for it; ask Aliasi Stonebender, who has been holding several local meetings as well (but which were posted on the forums), and she'll tell you what the usual attendance is.
But *don't* confuse local meetings with Thinker's meetings — just because I'm part of both groups, and unlike what Prokofy claims, it doesn't mean they are "one and the same". As I said, I *also* host religious meetings at Neualtenburg. This doesn't mean that all Neualtenburgers are religious ;)
As to a meeting about trust... oh gosh... does this mean that from now on, I'm not allowed to post *anything* in the event list before I get them "approved" by a certain group of people? Cocoanut, in the past 18 months, I have literally hosted *hundreds* of events. I do 3-4 per week, usually. I have posted almost all variations on social/political/economic/philosophical things; and when there was a specific topic I didn't cover (ex. "Who makes the rules in SL?", by Spengler Roo, just two weeks ago — and he had set up that event *on the first week of December*!), I made sure I attended. I can't be blamed for you having just found out that I regularly host events on polemic issues!
Now while I know it's hopeless for Prokofy, I still have hope that you don't fall for the conspiracy theories. As said, they all make sense. You could now look backwards to all events I've hosted, correlate them with posts I made, or comments I said at a certain period in time, and you'd find out that "everything fits the theory". As entertainment value, it's certainly worth something. More than that, seriously, there is no point in arguing. iRL, I'm also part of the local skeptic association, and let me tell you, nothing tires me more than arguing with the UFOlogists and the believers in conspiracies — I have long ago given up on either group. It's too tiring.
Homework for you: in the past eighteen months, how many events did I
a) host in Neualtenburg
b) host events about trust, policy, poltics, zoned/planned communities, power struggles in SL
c) wrote posts/blog entries and comments/forum articles related to the very same subjects
My first ever event held in SL (before I was a member of the Thinkers) was about human relationships and building trust in virtual worlds — that was in early September of 2004! Don't take my word for it: http://secondlife.com/events/event.php?id=13460&date=1094200200
Hint: before Prokofy did ever join SL, I pointed out where the power structure in SL was (what he calls the FIC). My blog entry is dated, and can be correlated to forum entries and events hosted at the same time...
It really takes some imagination and an extraordinary amount of creativity to fit it all together in a "conspiracy theory", but that's not beyond some people.
Anyway, I'm sad if you see it otherwise, but there is a limit to what I can say, tell, or explain. Words are just words, and can be always misrepresented, misinterpreted, or read in a different light. Just pick a random phrase out of context, and you can make Mother Theresa look like a fiend of the nethermost pits of hell. The only *good* things I saw from all this mess were:
- *all* Lindens have replied to the letter, and all of them saying about the same thing: they will not implement zoned communities *now*, but fix the group tools first
- they also said that an upcoming meeting *will* take place
- while Justice has been leading the process a bit more directly (and not me, unlike it sometimes looks like), I personally don't know if they have agreed yet on the "panel" suggestion, but I also think that won't need much "persuasion"
- I agree that both I and Justice have no place on that panel at all; actually, I would never dreamed of being there (yes, I know how easy it is to say these things afterwards) and would be happy to just read the transcript, since I trust that landowners and communities know perfectly well what they're going to suggest
- I'll leave it up to you to meet with any communities you might care to talk to, since I'm not really interested in talking to them any more after what happened, and tired of being accused of spreading the word (which is all that mattered to me, and since it seems that a more "controlled" method of sprading the word is prefered, I'll abide by that decision)
- for the record, I hearby state that it was Prokofy's meeting that *really* got the ball rolling, and any puny attempts I might have done before (ie. over the past year or so) were worthless and missed completely the point
Posted by: Gwyneth Llewelyn | 01/12/2006 at 07:00 PM
ALL LINDENS HAVE REPLIED TO THE LETTER?
How come I'm finding that out only here? Is that what you meant the other night when you told me in IM that you happened to know that they were going to put off zoning until they did group tools first?
And what you ACTUALLY MEANT was ALL THE LINDENS HAVE ACTUALLY REPLIED TO THE LETTER? And that an upcoming meeting WILL TAKE PLACE? Who knew this? You, Justice? Both of you? How come it is that I wasn't told?
This info you have provided above - it is news to me. And there is no way I could have discovered this information unless you or Justice DID part with it. You or he are the ones who sent the letters off. I would not have received ANY reply to my own e-mail.
How come I am just learning of this now, as practically an afterthought on this blog? Listen, I don't sit in a meeting like that and participate and help keep it on track and all that for an hour or two or whatever it was just to be NOT TOLD THE RESULTS.
Yes, you should have told me about the meeting, and yes, you should have told me the results of this letter. You can talk up a storm, but sorry - this is how I see it.
coco
Posted by: Cocoanut Koala | 01/12/2006 at 08:41 PM
Cocoanut, the last email answers I got are dated just a few hours back... not days. I had just briefly checked email before logging in and after commenting here. I'm not sure what replies Justice or Midtown got, though. I haven't asked them yet!
Now advise on what you think is best — post them on the forum thread, or put them on notecards and spread them around, or ask them first for permission to publish them.
Posted by: Gwyneth Llewelyn | 01/12/2006 at 09:30 PM
Well I'll be sure to answer point by point that previous self-serving long post, Gwyn.
But I honestly don't understand your motivations -- if good -- to hijack this stuff and try to hug it to your breast. When we "barons" or Lazarus complainers or whatever have written to the Lindens, it's been a simple matter to just put in everybody on the cc list so everybody always gets the same answers and nobody is opening up their little special channels.
When we have written to the Lindens about telehubs, etc., one person may send the final group-edited document, but they add in everybody's cc to their email -- and that way no one person is somehow arrogating themselves this "go-to" or "interlocutor" role.
I've never had this kind of problem crop up before because people behave toward one another with good will, in good faith, instead of trying to hijack.
I can only reiterate that neither Gwyn nor Justice really manage and tier groups to any extent (Nberg is one sim with a very closely linked and like-minded set of people compelled to spend lots of time sorting themselves out endlessly. It's not scalable.)
And while anyone is entitled to get involved with policy and discussions in SL, I simply won't stand for such a patronizing and condescending attitude. We don't need any go-betweens with the Lindens -- the effort was made a group one for the sake of coherence and convenience, not to give you all a pedestal to run your elections and grant-seeking off of.
I personally don't think every single thing in SL has to be opened up to the forums where a million savage fucktards start screaming about land barons being tyrants on their own purchased sims (*cough*). That doesn't mean it is *secret*. It just means that it's one process that is publicly accessible to those with interests at stake but doesn't subject itself to endless saveragey and griefing.
The Lindens are grown ups -- at least getting more grown-up than they were -- and can handle a self-selected group of interests seeking a meeting with them -- after all, it's public.
The Lindens will never seem to endorse a residents' panel. But this was a bid to force them to a greater recognition of those who really have a stake.
As we know from our first rounds with them over GOM and the ethics issues, and then the telehubs stuff, they refuse to consider the concept of stake except in the most narrow legal sense (i.e. on the misrepresentation issue).
Yeah, there's always another guy to buy the island.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 01/12/2006 at 10:32 PM
Post them on the forum thread.
coco
Posted by: Cocoanut Koala | 01/12/2006 at 11:05 PM
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | January 12, 2006 at 10:32 PM
"Well I'll be sure to answer point by point that previous self-serving long post, Gwyn."
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Gwyneth Llewelyn:
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Posted by: prak Curie | 01/12/2006 at 11:27 PM
I'm not at all surprised at such a long-winded and self-serving letter from you, Gwyn, that does everything it possibly can to blow smoke in our eyes and simply duck the issue of moral integrity: when you enter into a process, you should just be inclusive and keep people in the loop. That's how you do it.
Nor am I surprised that your center of gravity with all this argumentation is to try to excuse yourself, and make it seem like I'm a conspiracy theoriest merely because I called you on your duplicitous bad behaviour and bad faith in following up on a process.
Worst of all, you completely -- astoundly so! --remain silent about Traxx. And you know absolutely this is the crux of the matter. The nexus of Neualtenberg/Thinkers/Gwyn-as-Ms. SL Walkabout Ward-Heeler stumping through all the SL communities is one thing -- but this particular meeting on Sunday all centers on providing a platform for Traxx to spout about "tyrants taking over SL" (geez, talk about conspiracy nutters!)
Your continued silence and failure to repudiate that hysterical stance and the "individual as dangerous" crap is the heart of the matter. (A mild query to him on the forums doesn't count.)
Of course, you can have any group you want to meet whatsoever. Obviously, like a spider casting its web, you cunningly spend hours doping out just which concentric circle you need to include or exclude to achieve this or that effect. It's actually quite a work of artifice and terribly cunning.
This "if it's Tuesdays it must be furries" stuff just looks like somebody running for election though...oops, you *are* running for election, and like anybody else seeking power in SL, finds it useful to "bond with others" over an issue like "we all hate that tinfoil hatter Prok".
Yecth. Not pretty to look at one bit.
In meetings, people spout stuff. You're not responsible for what they spout, and nobody expects you to be the ideology commissar and run around suppressing bad ideas. People talk. Let them. But there's something at stake here, which is people positioning themselves to completely colour the discourse.
That's what you and Traxx were doing. That is, maybe you were AFK and cleaning your inventory and couldn't put out all the fires, but you had absolutely nothing to say about Traxx's crackpot nutty theories about retired strangers taking over huge swathes of the Internet. You didn't, because you *like* that theory, and spout it yourself even regard to me, even regard to a group where you paid tier. Uncanny!
Hell, yes, I expell someone who does that kind of profoundly hideous act of bad faith -- claiming I'm a dangerous dictator even while seeking influence and some kind of involvement through tier donation. No thanks!
If you think I'm a "Dictator" (which you obviously do, as you wrote this on the forums some time ago) and if you can sit silent in a meeting while Traxx connivingly and manipulatedly describes me and other land dealers as "Dictators" then why are you continuing to remain in a group of mine and contribute tier? Just to continue to enable to tell everyone you have a foot in everywhere and are "all things to all men"? No, thanks, I'm not here to provide you with that experience. If you can't see that rentals groups with a manager and tenants are just ordinary businesses serving the public, then you have no business paying tier in them.
This is what the revolutionary communications thinker Marshall McLuhan called "the dyer's hand". Upstream, the dyer starts to pour dye in the water to dye a shirt...and the water colours purple upstream and there is not a thing you can do to un-purple it as it flows downstream, and only enough flow and enough water will finally counteract the purple.
That is what Traxx did by just "happening to pop in" to what is supposed to be NOT a Thinker's meeting and "just a local Nberg" meeting and this is what YOU BOTH did by having him post "Gwyn's meeting" on the forums himself and then pontificate about it. Your sycophantic inclusion of Justice in all this is also indicative.
These are profound acts of bad faith to someone with whom you just joined in a working committee to do a white paper, and draft a joint letter to Lindens.
To suddenly get all tekkie literalist (I see now you suffer from the same character flaws as the FIC) about your years of holding meetings -- utterly diluting the point -- or your "history" of not only "discovering" zoning but "discovering" the FIC (*rolls eyes*) is again, mere smoke in the eyes.
It covers up the social weight and the social action of not being inclusive and inviting people interested in this topic.
If I were suddenly to host some small meeting just for newbies on this topic in one of my communities, I wouldn't dream of not telling others at the Friday night meeting, just in case they wanted to help.
In fact, if you want to talk technology, I solve the problem and save a lot of time for myself by not cunningly filtering and parsing and mixing all my concentric groups and influence and commerce circles like Gwyn does, I just right-click on the WHOLE folder of calling cards, select the "message online" and get a message to every single person.
Indeed, to sort through a hundred cards and finally select only the zoning ones would take too much time, so the others get a line of spam, so what, they do it to me.
Um, der, I do know you organize all kinds of events, Gwyn. Big fucking deal. It's not about that and you know it full well and you are citing distracting extraneous data just to run for cover.
I don't care if Neualtenberg discovered the fucking cure for cancer. They aren't a viable zoning project for the rest of us. The rest of us -- most people in SL I can VERY safely say -- do not want a little socialist theme park. Businessmen like Desmond Shang have pointed out on the forums delicately that this stuff ah...seems to require a lot of time.
All this bureaucratic muscle-flexing is of course the flexing of wannabee Metaverse Managers and Queens of the Quantum Waves. Well, um, no thanks. No sale.
You've been caught being all things to all men. You're doing that to position yourself into some kind of influential role because you really believe your opinion or knowledge are just well, rightfully positioned to just *take over*. Well, no. I disagree. They aren't. You just have a knack for packing up really horrible problems in SL and making them seem like little thoughtful puzzles and then magically making them disappear because some Linden or SIC has done some little thing.
The worst thing to watch is the flattery. Far from *actually* being flattered, I always find it annoying (as others do, in fact) to see all the little coquettish gestures and the little artful phrases like "And LOL, Prokofy" --like it's an artful little chore to laugh at Prokofy's jokes on cue -- well, they are just artifice, and artifice people wince at and see through.
The analogy of the coffee shop is completely silly, with its "and suddenly you find President Bush attending the meeting, followed by CNN, NBC, and half the media, with the leaders of the NRA thrown in-between, and all of them eagerly wishing to discuss the latest news that they saw on a tiny scrap of a newspaper..."
You make it seem like I'm some right-wing nutter, President Bush, who's going to weigh in on this little coffee shop like a ton of bricks.
But what happened is that you DID get President Bush weighing in like a ton of bricks, and it came in the form of Traxx. But since you *like* what he says, even if privately critical of him, you are completely colour-blind to THAT elephant in the room.
This is what I will keep calling you on, again and again: your celebration and providing of a platform to this malicious figure, who mounted a completely unseemly attack on ordinary people simply doing land projects in SL, accusing them of being dangerous tyrants in a populist manner to *himself* gain influence and power -- well, it all discredits itself. I don't have to go on and on about it.
Now all three of you chums can sit in meetings -- Traxx, Ferren, and Gwyn -- and do what Ferren did to me the other day at Democracy Island, when I asked pointed questions about the independence of Zarf's notary, now that he is a Linden. Ferren just waved it away and shouted out "we need to move on from all this paranoia," which is what tekkies do when some non-tekkie pointedly questions their utterly untenable belief in their own superiority and right to rule.
I'm really getting a dramatic sense of just how big your ego is here, Gwyn, because all you had to do was apologize for not thinking to include us, and for allowing Traxx to exploit this meeting -- if that was unintended. But you didn't, and it's no accident.
Instead, we get miles of self-justifying apologia for doing the wrong thing.
Your characterization of the Thinkers and their interaction with Neualtenberg seems biased and self-serving.
Somebody -- God knows who -- made Traxx a Prefect of Thinkers. I do know how he covets power titles like that hehe. He doesn't appear to be quite on the same song sheet as the Bavarian commies, but he evidently finds it useful to hang out at Nberg and seem to be part of the gang there.
(BTW, I was once a member of Thinkers, too, and still have an alt who is a member. Traxx once bullied me, and used emotional blackmail on me, to tell me that if I stayed in Thinkers and came to the meetings, he would leave. Knowing how much Thinkers meant to him, how much coveted titles and groups and things to influence meant to him, and at that time, not seeing why I couldn't step aside so that he could enjoy something more important to him than me, I stopped coming to the meetings. Remember? But after some months, when I found out he was using these meetings to have thinly-disguised topics to discredit me, i.e. in the dispute about how to make a BBB or Mediators, I came back to defend myself.)
What all those very disperate groups do have in common is a desire to affect decisons and be in power.
The colouration of Thinkers is decidedly pink -- the lion's share of meetings have been in Nberg, and the kinds of people showing up are decidedly on the left. If Jinny has some other wacky meeting somewhere, and if W-HAT even organizes a Thinker's meeting, so what -- we all know where the center of gravity is and has been: the bar at Nberg.
There's "Nberg" the public "for the masses" face trying to shape and influence public opinion across sims with outlets like Thinker's meetings and strategic forums post, and then there's the donkey-work of the private Nberg which is most people's idea of hell: the concept of spending what is technically my leisure hours after work sipping simulated beer with Kendra over spreadsheets with micropayments of $27LL with things like the "city bond" issue makes one begin to slowly back away then run in knock-kneed terror.
You all seem young enough, and possibly naive enough, to fail to see (or not admit) that you are replicating the behaviour of socialists everywhere -- the creation of think-tanks, the infiltration to groups, the outward face and the inward face, the two-facedness -- these are old, old stories about socialism for a hundred years.
Once again, let me point out this is a pretty simple issue: I don't want anyone who buys a sim to be separated from his purchase by hippie commune group tools and granola covenants.
You can't bite the bullet on that because you still have some idea that there's going to be groups doing socially-responsible low-impact, environmentally-sensitive politically-correct business, and you want to make damn sure that those "delegation to the group" type of tools *serve you* and keep you reputation-enhanced and in power til the cows come home.
Already there are all sorts of "empowered voices" unleashed by this hijacking of the issue calling for "land barons not to be served" or "not letting land barons grab this" or "the group had better be able to tell the owner what to do!" etc. etc.
You aren't addressing this, even though I can imagine that you or Sudane would be DAMN SURE to make it that you yourselves didn't get separated from your sim.
You just want to be sure to influence the situation so that others you may not approve get at least some social heat on them, if not the option to lose the sims they paid for : )
I could write another 2,000 word essay myself about all the groups I'm in, and the sort of self-serving crap like "why, some of my best friends are furries and Goreans" crap that you are engaging in, flaunting all my events and all my cross-pollination with others and extolling myself as the Understander of the People and Hence the Vox Populi.
But I'm not running for election in "the Metaverse's First Representative Government! (R)" You are.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 01/13/2006 at 12:05 AM