Kremlinden Lab: 1, Free Press: 0

Second Life sometimes seems to yield up these karmic incidents of yin and yang, that ever-changing balancing of the cybersphere that seems so mysterious and elusive to the common meatworld mortal, but which the avatar grasps and accepts with stoic calm.

Last June, on the *very same day* that the Lindens permabanned me from the odious SL forums right after I wrote a post that Aimee Weber's name was "like a prom queen's" and another titled "Is SL Ready for Investment?", Torley nee Torgeson Linden wrote an enigmatic announcement that she was leaving SL. Several conspiracy theorists thought this was proof positive that I was Torley's alt, and her "retiring from SL" was merely my cover story due to the necessity of having to retire accounts now unable to post. An even more elaborate theoricist might wonder whether Urizenus and Hamlet are at least time-twins discoverable on some cyber Ouiji board, if not alts (having met them both in RL, I can attest that they aren't alts...except...hmm...did I ever see them in the same room at the same time? hmm....come to think of it, I don't think I've ever seen them logged on at the same time either...hmmmm....)

Of course, now that Torley has been Lindenized (R), everyone can now see that conspiracy theory about me was particularly hilarious.

Another mysterious karmic twin occurrence was the announcement that Hamlet Linden was "going indy" and a week later Urizenus Sklar announcing that he was retiring from the "always fairly unbalanced" Second Life Herald.

I quickly penned a pointed objection on Clickable Culture in response to the description of what Hamlet was going to be doing as "independent" (he got a golden handshake, has a book contract, and will continue to write a blog about SL that will no doubt be favourable to the company, be given priority of linkage, and even sport advertising from some of SL's top insider businesses -- that's my prediction! Watch for fluttering purple-winged and electrified sheep icons on the headers of Hammie's columns).

And I just as quicky expressed real qualms about what is going to happen to the Herald's independence.

Opening it today, and seeing what Walker Spaight, the SL writer and editor who is now taking over from Uri as editor-in-chief, is doing, I have my worries. Smartly written copy about the Herald's history; a closed thread (paging Jeska!), and a top story about...funding for the arts and live music in SL worthy of a Hamletian www.secondlife.com/nwn blogation.

Ever since I became an outspoken advocate of Uri's free speech, taking his side in the dispute with EA.com, and even suffering the eventual outing of my RL information and vilification on the SL forums over it, I've been a pretty severe critic of Uri. It was on Uri's watch that I was selected "Avatar of the Year," but as Uri once said to me over some news drama, "I neither love you more nor less, Prok." Especially not "more" -- if someone thinks I'm a creature of the Herald in any fashion because I've written for them now and then, just remember that I was not invited to the hotel party last fall to puke on my shoes with the greats.

Perhaps it's because I'm the one who hoaxed Uri back in the day on TSO with a fake teen-age witch in the infamous Selene Wiccan story, to prove my point that much-vaunted online gonzo game journalism was pretty worthless and game journos easily misled because of the anonymity of avatars. I ventured over to the egghead extravaganza at Terra Nova to puncture some of Uri's balloon, the premise of which was that he was a journalist (remember when Jeff Brown said Uri was a journalist like he was a railroad tycoon?). I made a bespectacled spoof of Uri in the Sims, Youragenius Zones, who had a tiny online newspaper carrying indignant letters to the editor about "pet-culling" or the mass murder of Sims pets in search of rares. Was I the first person to ask whether Urizenus rhymed with penis? Probably not. To be sure, we had some friendly adventures, too, like the time I was a secret roomie at the august Knights Templar hangout (now it can be revealed: I was Sir Lagalot) or the time I played St. Frank, friend of nearly-culled pets, and he played Mrs. Chomsky. These short-lived roomie situations would always founder on Uri's failure to pay for the buffet *cough*; in Second Life, he first gave me the mage-thingie letting me on to his special game-within-game sim Bedford, but then kept forgetting to give me the new one. To be sure, Uri will always hold a special place in my heart for being there just in time with the Linden cash to make a very brilliant chess move in the game of Strategic SL which I can't speak about just yet.

I probably fired off more "letters to the editor," i.e. comments on Herald blogs, than any other reader, a prodigious production of copy that only led Uri to call me "bilious and belicose". Thanks! Our last go-around had to do with his publication of what I viewed as an overly-celibratory and trusting interview of grid-crasher TrannyPet Balmy (who says he just made the bomb someone *else* used to crash the grid).

But when all was said and done, I defended the Herald to the death, like Voltaire. It was the worst online game newspaper...except for all the others (like the system of democracy). Under Urizenus' stewardship, all the major and important stories were covered, and I don't mean just the ones related to me, like the "All On the Same Page" IRC channel conspiring of a Linden and the FIC.

For a long time, I felt Uri was over the top with this "Kremlinden" stuff. Gah, I'm all for Russia analogies as everyone knows, but Kremlinden??? For a bunch of essentially happy and innocent Californian social and technical engineers? That's unfair! Gah, let's save the "Kremlin" stuff for REALLY bad things more like the RL Kremlin!

I felt he was way too harsh in portraying Philip as a giddy bride bending over and taking it up the ass from grid-crashers too -- I felt it was disrespectful in a needless way, especially given that LL did ban people and did contact the FBI (or so they say -- there's a significant lobby saying there's no proof of that, but then, there's no proof we landed on the moon, either, I guess, eh?).

Yet, when Lindens would get up at the SOP and the SLCC and whine about how they don't mind the Herald being a free press, but they just want it to make them *better* (i.e. have stories that contain "constructive criticism"), I would instantly stand up and say that when the state assigns a social role to the media like that, the job of "making it better," freedom of the press is lost. (But then, I take the Interational Press Institute's position on the Danish cartoon issue, mixed in with the New Republic's. I think back of the Danish cartoon issue is a disrespect and scorn of all religions that you wouldn't find in the U.S. in the mainstream press anyway, given that it is a nation of believers. So it's questionable editorial judgement to run the cartoons. Yet, I'm for not only allowing that newspaper to run the cartoons; I'm for covering the story as well free of fear or favour. Nobody ever seems to question the right of raging mobs to indulge in what in other settings is clearly marked as insecure, macho behaviour by adolescent males worried about being dissed. You don't get to kill people and torch embassies just because your religion has been knocked. Funny how there are droves of well-meaning soggy and sappy liberals calling on the press everywhere to take on the social role of ensuring that some people don't get dissed, when they'd never want them to take on that role regarding Judaism or Christianity and the leaders and countries associated with these religions.)

Still, as for "Kremlinden," when it came to the Orwellian-sounding "resmod" system (ugh, ugh), the mass weddings, and the Lindenization(R) of Torley, however, I began to feel the "Kremlinden" stuff could well be a rightful nick-name.

Walker's a great guy. He's one of those gonzo game journalists that has made a name for himself, like Hunter Thompson of a bygone era, but more cyberian, more clean-cut as fitting the generation that mainly seems to enjoy only online game addiction and the drinking of incredibly complicated and expensive forms of caffeine. Not only does he have a book out, he has an impressive clippings book by now and will go far. In a way, hanging around the SLH is really a labour of love at this juncture because I can't imagine anything more for his career that Walker could gain out of the Herald. Unless he's going to enjoy the stunt of both taking over Hammie's job, which was mainly about getting subscriptions to our favourite game, and incurring the love of the Lindens (which one never really wants to lose completely) AND keeping the public's trust inside and around the game -- no mean feat, given that on any given day, at least one faction of SL's contentious civilizations are pissed off mightily at this or that LL action or SL development.

Walker is also a RL journalist, pubishing even in the Grey Lady and buzzy glitzy online magazines like The Escapist. RL journalists for mainstream media have to write copy that sells for that media, however, and that's why they may not always make the best game journalists in these worlds that are heavily controlled by corporate spin already.  For the New York Times, Walker turned in a pretty standard boilerplate story about telehub mall barons like Blue Burke and Anshe Chung, showing a picture of a baron who bought a BMW allegedly on his proceeds, but never asked what his tier bill and other costs were against his alleged income. Next, he filed what amounted to a travelogue piece -- yes, the Times put Second Life in the travel section! It was a happy story about a couple who met on line (they happened to be my tenants!) and their Hawaii-like destinations for fun in SL. He's also the one who did that infamous story, "Touching Aimee's Panties" for the Escapist -- a story that I believe Cocoanut was right to call "chauvinist" and also correct to point out that I have been blamed for ever after -- I wasn't the one who overexposed her, or focused on her pixelated concoctions, I merely satirized the phenom, and yet most literalists on the forums hysterically believe that I was the one "obsessing about Aimee's panties" when in fact it was Walker. Strange, that.

These pieces are well-written, engaging...and...absolutely uncritical of SL or LL, at the end of the day. It's not that they are "objective" and avoid bias or drama -- that's always to the good in journalism. It's that they never ask the harder questions. They never challenge any of the force-feeding from the LL media spin, and never penetrate beneath that horrid patina of virtual world shine that you can get if you become giddy or celebratory about various brightly-hued and colourful-costumed avatars cavorting in your view.

Walker's idea of a critical story this week has been to write about the Electric Sheep Company with a header accusing the forums of crying FIC. Yet the forums are *right* to cry FIC about the Electric Sheep grazing in SL, and the real story is why one part of the forums-FIC was lambasting another part of the forums-FIC.

That's my main contention about not only Walker but Uri BTW -- they don't hardly spend any time inworld. It's boring for them, and following all the mundane details and epicenters of little whirlpools in the tiny world of tiny dramas are beneath them. They either moved on to more intellectually or testosterone-driven pursuits (for them) of other games like Eve Online or WoW or that ultimate game of RL.

So...I feel a real chill about all these developments. Someone like Tony Walsh at Clickable Culture would judiciously adopt a wait-and-see attitude about the Herald's "line" and "direction", and about what Hamlet Linden might really do if he ceases to be sickl'd o'er with the pale cast of doubt and lose the name of action.

I'm going to call it right now as I see it: Kremlinden Lab: 1, Free Press: 0.

Comments

[Red Mars]

This was actually one of your better articles. Entertaining, engaging and thought provoking.

Though you still can't help tooting your own horn. Of coarse this IS your blog, so I guess it can't be gotten around.

Still, good piece.

[Lasivian]

I admire your ability to judge everyones slightest move and push on.

I couldn't deal with the overwhelming hatred it caused.

:(