Unwanted Mentors

There goes Laetizia Coronet again, you can set your watch by her lol. Spouting fuming nonsense, with chat-logs, to boot! Of course, completely devoid of back-story and context.

One of the banes of infohubs is that you have these Infohub Infestations -- as I've noted. They thrive on flying just below the radar in order to annoy, irritate, divert, obscure, distract from the fact that basically, what they are doing is attention-whoring, annoying, and griefing people.

Mentors are bad enough -- they're a nuisance taken as a class, and in some of their really bad individual examples, like Laetizia -- who is now an *ex* mentor. Good. At least they do some cleaning up of their ranks, but what are the larger issues here?

First, a really deep-seated problem of the Mentors is that they contain not only early-adapter oldbies but various obsessive-freak newbie geeks who perpetuate the very idea that you need a "mentor" -- i.e. some incredibly wise soul to lead your through the labyrinth of the terribly complex game of Second Life.

But...you don't.

Normally, when someone lands somewhere and says, "why am I here?" in this situation, it's because they don't realize that their home has been set to that sim, or that they actually clicked on a landmark taking them to this sim from Orientation Island -- though they did click, they didn't realize the consequences always. So that's often something you have to explain -- you're here because the system randomly sends you here and sets home.

Then, when they say but they don't want that location, but want to go somewhere else, you ask, where, and help them with search -- because that's the easiest way to find things -- people, locations, places they may have heard of, or already been.

The absolute *last* thing you do with 99 percent of the people is to ask them if they know how to use a map. It's off-putting, it's geeky, it's stupid -- and it's offensive. If a map would help them, duh, they'd unfurl it. But it's laggy, complex, and people don't always know how to use it -- and they may simply not remember the complex name of the place they were, which might have a name like Babayagashut (yes, there really is a new sim with that name lol).

So a Mentor using this old geek approach to orientation is in part showing off their superior geeky knowledge of map-reading, and in part trying to get the thrill of being needed and explaining something complex so they can make others dependent on them -- it's all part of that awful attention-whoring I just mentioned, that insecurity/narcissistic complex one finds in certain types in SL, and all part of that whole Reputation-Enhancement Game that so many of these "altruistic" types are playing. That's why I really resist it -- it's a turn-off. It's why the Lindens do not retain customers. When the Lindens are ready to wrest back welcome areas from the loiterers and hecklers and annoying bums, when they are ready to make orientation islands that really work, then they'll retain accounts. But...they aren't ready to change yet.

But...this is a delicate operation. Many people -- remember your own experience? -- HATE coming into SL and finding all these helpful Hannahs around because they are cloying and oppressive. It's like not being left alone on your Club Med vacation because the GMs or whatever they call them can't get away from you with their clipboards and bunny-hop options. Or coming to a store and having the salesperson hover over you excessively. Some people WANT help and assistance, but having it THIS way is annoying. I know that the first time I found those kind of people hovering around me, I fled, and never came back. Instead, I used the events list (duh, not THAT hard to find even in your first hour!) to find an interesting event (it happened to be a townhall with Philip Linden!) and...I teleported it and got a little help from the parcel owner running the event.

My philosophy for this infohub is different than for others. It is not meant to be first-tier learning, like "how do I fly?" because it is intended to go to the next level of what people really ask, which isn't "how do I build or script?" or "how do I attend a texture class" as Lindens used to imagine, but "how do I find a club?" "How do I get a date?" "How can I buy or make money?" or "How do I start a business?" "How to run the group tools?" etc. So I make it self-paced, so that people can take their time -- some times they will IM me with a question, most often they get what they need.

If you have ever spent any time at infohubs or welcome areas -- and I've spent LOTS, often observing on alts, you will find that newbies almost NEVER ask for game help -- they are too busy dressing themselves and checking out the scene and mainly figuring out how to leave it. Oh, I know that the Mentor Myth thrives on the idea that they are all there throwing themselves at the feet of these Wise Ones for their Vast Knowledge, but the reality is, they're spread-eagled in appearance mode or AFK or in IMs or searching stuff. Most of these areas are packed not with newbies, but with midbies and oldbies waiting to be seen as the fabulous creatures they imagine themselves to be, and engaging in harassment of each other and heckling -- light to heavy -- of the newbies. Such Mentors that do behave are officious, cloying -- or more often than not I've observed, lost in private or group IMs in the group dramas they so love to indulge in.

In this scene with Laetizia, it so happens that the object of her help doesn't really need it, isn't so new at all, and in fact is there because she belongs to a lot of those fake police groups in SL --supposedly Laetizia is against Mentors wearing "Security" T-shirts and fake police and accuses me of being the infohub SWAT team, so gosh, she should care about her new little infohub "help recipient" and HER fake police.

All that happened is that this fake police gal joined Laetizia in harassing me, and making it seem like I'm the problem in the infohub -- when of course I'm not.

Every day, I come there to remove fatuous or outright pornographic or non-PG material from the bulletin board where the Infestation leaves it. I land a few times a day to get rid of bots -- either asking their owners to fetch them or asking Lindens to boot them -- they block the area. I update and fix content, and answer a few questions but mainly keep a presence to deter the harassment of newbies by the Infestation, which ebbs and flows depending on their "vacations" for various offenses and their waits in real-life pogey lines -- or whatever it is they go to do.

It's so clear what kind of people you are dealing with in Laetizia's script -- and their sectarian and nasty clamouring for the Lindens to "take the infohub away" from me only exposes them as what they are -- bullies.

I IM'd a Linden just to vent a little about this situation but also to see if I could get any sense of whether there really is a definition of infohub heckling that is evolving. Nobody needs these fake police and ex-mentors hanging around pretending they are useful, that's for sure. They sometimes lapse into abusiveness, and you can successfully AR them, but as I said, most of the time, they fly under the radar.

Of course, like any whiney little entitlement-happy nit in real life situations splitting hairs, driving the teachers and principals insane, faking all kinds of "rights" issues that don't apply, these goons wave the flag of "public commons" as much as you can wave it in a bid to try to get them to desist.

The kinds of people who hang around infohubs are mosquitos, biting, irritating, multiplying, and being too small for the net. They don't contribute anything positive; they aren't really helping people despite the claims of their suddenly "helped" fans here in this story. They don't really deter griefing. Somebody who has the time to hang around in an infohub the entire day, or most of the day, probably has a screw loose, if they have no other occupation in RL or SL; if they were independently wealthy, they'd find better things to do. It's a kind of dysfunction, trying to be hall monitor when the halls don't need you, and what's even more dysfunctional is when you keep insisting on your right to do this because the public commons is open.

What can you do? Well, nothing, really. The Lindens are not going to ban them -- although they really should consider banning some of the frequent flyer actual griefers who keep griefing with impunity, spending 2-4-6-10 days or whatever on "furlough," and never actually keeping them out of the hub where their crimes keep occuring. That raises the issue of bans from Linden land, a can of worms the Lindens have always been afraid to open (not sure why -- the only way to end the nasty atmosphere of the hubs is to take this in hand and ban the frequent offenders from the hubs where their offenses keep recurring, and send a message that this just isn't tolerated any more).

That is, the Lindens, as a private corporation, with discretionary powers, can come and decide that "disturbing the peace" means running a fake cop or ex-mentor racket in a hub and expel people who consistently annoy -- even if they are not TOS violators. The Lindens don't have the stomach for this, however. The time for the stomach was 5 or 4 years ago, when Jack Linden, back in the days when he was a lowly infohub-watching Linden, should have stood up and told hecklers like Jauani Wu to beat it, rather than goofing off with them himself.

Everybody knows what the infohub problem is with these people, but no one can put it into an actionable offense and act on it -- so when you are faced with that problem, there's only one thing to do: displacement. That is, to make something better, have people attracted to better things, and eventually, the good drives out the bad.

Have a hub with idiot wall-sitters and dumbass loiterers always a step away from an ARable offense, spouting crap, calling people who question them "jerk-offs" etc.? Well, make activities that are positive, that draw people interested in that activity, and provide a contrast to these non-entities and their fatuousness. They can go on crying "free speech" and "public place," but the contrast will be stark -- a reason these people prevail is that normal people doing other kinds of things besides heckling newbies never show up and use the space.

It's like Bryant Park, behind the library. Shouldn't a grassy lawn and benches behind a library attract bookish types and intellectuals and be a nice hang-out and meeting place? No, not when it's a few blocks from Port Authority and the red light district, so that it rapidly fills up with drug-dealers and their clients, and the few scared office workers who thought they could still brown-bag it there scuttle away. How do you get rid of the drug-dealers, panhandlers, annoying homeless? Well, the city had to invest in putting in book stalls with things for sale, food kiosks, music playing, movies, etc. -- to try to have good content drive out bad. It worked -- it's much harder for aggressive drug sellers and panhandlers to keep moving among people now in line to buy a lunch and sit at a table or listen to music -- the dynamics don't work for them as a quieter, shadier, more scared park did before.

I'm a very big believer in simple, unarmed presence whether in a foreign mission or in a school. There is a stunning contrast between the Catholic and public schools in New York City I witness daily. Outside the Catholic schools, the principle himself stands, greeting each student or teacher personally, and keeping a weather eye not only for potential fist-fights but parking violations. Boys are told to tuck in their shirts and take off caps. Girls are told to stop loitering around gossiping and get to class. The principal usually doesn't have to say anything; he just conveys "The Rules"; he is called by the title "Mr."

Contrast that with the city school, where a gaggle of kids are cutting class out in front, smoking cigarettes or even dope. Two feet away from them inside are three security police officers manning the X-ray machines that will screen these young gangsters to see if they are carrying weapons. These security agents do nothing to disperse the crowd; the vice principle for security is walled upstairs in his office, afraid of confronting these multi-flunking 19-year-old thugs. The time to intervene is late -- that should have started 12 years ago, when the name "Mr." should have demanded instead of a casual "Yo" and first name...

In the same way, Linden circuit-riding of hubs, even if a very, very thin presence that amounts only to a minute in hub responding sometimes to a call from a Mentor to do a ban, or just sending a signal that random inspections *will* be made -- is all to the good.

Comments

[Osprey Therian]

W00t - Baba Yaga's Hut - with the chicken legs! Great name!

[Prokofy Neva]

Hehe Osprey, there aren't that many people who recognize that name, smushed together as it is especially! I looked all over for a hut that might serve as a Baba Yaga's hut but couldn't find any. Do you know? I mean, I don't know if I'd want to inflict on my neighbours the chicken legs part -- but it would be fun to have. I put up a little Irish hut and some cabins and a picture inside of Baba Yaga's hut.