Second Thoughts

The Oldbie

Sphynx of St. Petersburg. Photo by Achim Hepp.

The flags snapped in the crisp autumn breeze and the pigeons fluttered.

"They hid the relics in a barrel of pork to get it past the guards," the old lady sitting on the park bench was explaining.

"Pork? What's that, Babushka?" asked the tall young woman, her honey hair lightly falling over her face.

"Oh! I guess you wouldn't remember, Lida. Well, see in the old days..." the old woman began.

Just then a teenager came crashing into the bench and was about to shimmy up the back on his hoverboard when Babushka froze him and he clattered to the pavement.

"Hey! Ima cage you!" he whined, clicking in futility. The cage was already dematerializing.

The kid reached out and right-clicked on the Basilica, then re-rezzed it out on the square, sending tourists scuttling.

"Rude little monster," said Babushka, grabbing the second Basilica.

"Hey!" whined the kid. "Where's my build?"

"It's not yours to copy, and it's not for sale," warned Babushka.

"Fail," said the boy. "Ima copybot it..."

Instantly, a giant robot appeared at his elbow.

"You name is D5vid Lame. You reside at 2010 Sepulveda Blvd. New City, SQ. Your Citizen Number is 4398747. You completed 13 grades but failed Chemistry, Literature and Gym and now you are enrolled at Woodbury Connectivity. You had pizza for breakfast and reached 78 percent of your daily carbohydrates but have reached only 27 percent of today's vitamins. You are 5 ft 4 inches and 128 pounds. General health: average. HIV status:..."

"Stop!" cried the youth.

Babushka had already flicked the bot off the server.

"I don't like those things," she said. "I'm going to do it my way."

"We don't copy here," she explained.

"People make a living -- we have an economy," added Lida. "How much for the raven, Babushka?"

"RMB 40," said Babushka. Lida right-clicked and paid the old woman and quickly rezzed the pet on her shoulder.

"You were going to write a poem with the word 'aura,'" began the bird.

"What rhymes with 'aura'?" Lida asked the creature.

"Think about it," said the bird cryptically.

"See, it's worthless!" cried the youth.

"Erm, 'ignore ya'?" put in Babushka. "I have him set on 'challenge' for Lida."

The teen was already right clicking and putting a copy of the bird on his shoulder.

"Tell me the combination to win the Zynga on..." the boy started.

The bird had already fallen over dead on the pavement.

"Huh?!"

"They only live if the UUID matches her data base and is linked to a payment event," explained Lida.

"Your friend Sarah has logged on in New York at the Chelsea Hotel, 23,107,42," the bird was chirping.

"Unclick the 'friend notifications' box or you will go crazy with him," advised Babushka.

The dead bird was turning pale and transparent.

"I bet I could get him working," the boy continued stubbornly. "Say, how did you get 40 RMB, anyway?!"

"I worked," said Lida.

Suddenly they were looking up at a sphynx. The sky was bright above a gleaming river.

"Leningrad," said Babushka. "Er, I mean St. Petersburg."

"How did we get here? I didn't see a portal," whined the boy.

"Loki's Loci," said Lida. "You don't have to teleport to a sim. It comes to you, if you want, and rezzes above yours."

"We don't have that yet...But it won't be contiguous," sniffed the kid.

"Wanna bet?" Lida had already skated a block away. The boy scrambled after on his hover board, scraping along the wall.

"You don't have it...because you don't have Loki!" cried the old woman after the pair.

"The region you have entered is running a different simulator version," said the message.

"No bumps. Hmmm...." marveled the boy.

"They solved the sim seam problem in 2015," explained Lida.

"Oh. Well they will fix it in OS too then," the boy said defensively.

"Maybe not. It's a tough job," warned Lida.

"Your poetry reading is in 30 minutes at Astor Place, 24, 207,32. Sarah is already there. 47 avatars are already on the sim..." said the raven.

"Income today," typed Lida in chat.

"RMB 400," the raven quoted.

"How did you get that much?" D5vid marvelled.

"I worked," said Lida. "I give readings and I sell my books. And people pay me."

"Meh," said D5vid, already right-clicking on the Sphinx.

"I'd be careful with that one if I were you," said Lida.

The boy's viewer crashed.

Five minutes later he was back. Lida had already skated back to the old woman. D5vid hovered back toward them, stopping respectfully before barging into the park bench.

"That's better," said the old woman.

D5vid clicked on the raven. "St. Mark's Square, Venice," he typed. His inventory was still loading and he couldn't find the landmark.

"The new church was burned in a rebellion in 976, rebuilt in 978, and finally to form the basis of the present basilica in 1063," the bird was telling him.

"Teleport," typed D5vid. "I want to go back there. Hey, it's not working."

"The succeeding centuries, especially the fourteenth, all contributed to its adornment, and seldom did a Venetian vessel return from the Orient without bringing a column, capitals, or friezes, taken from some ancient building, to add to the fabric of the basilica," continued the bird.

"You're likely banned for that copybot," said Lida.

"But you can see how it was made even in real life!" objected the boy. "They swiped a bunch of columns and stuff!"

"Even so, there's only one St. Mark's," said Babushka. "Anybody can swipe a bunch of columns. But can you make a Place?"

"I bet I could hack back into that sim," the boy began.

"Don't even try. It's harder than you think."

"Hmmm," the boy faltered. "How could I get some RMBs?"

"You work," said Lida. "Like I told you."

"OK, where can I get a job?" he asked.

"Newb," sighed Lida.

"I can give you a job cleaning up prims on the old grid," said Babushka.

"Prims!" scoffed D5vid. "That's for losers!"

"Or people who want to make a little cash," Babushka replied firmly.

"Do you want a pet like mine or not?" asked Lida. "Plus, if you become friends with Babushka, she will tell you about Original Grid -- not even the pets know about that. And she might give you a present from the Beta."

The kid was opening up another copy of Lida's raven, this time having laid it out on the pavement, and was staring at the contents in edit mode.

The raven turned white and began to fade.

"I can't get at it," fumed D5vid.

A porcelain bowl appeared above the river.

"My ride's here," said Babushka. "We'll have to teleport to this one. Coming?"

Lida hopped in. A pestle was already rezzing.

"I dunno," the youth said, feigning indifference.

"Your job at Mike's Pizza is starting in 27 minutes. You are already late because the M16 requires 29 minutes travel time. Log-off, log-off," chirped the raven.

"Why not have something a little more healthy for dinner, you're only at 27 percent," suggested Lida.

D5vid blushed in real life, and his avatar's face turned red.

"I have to go work the gamerz' pizza channel," sighed D5vid.

"Why can't you go online?" wondered Lida.

"I have to pack boxes in real life," confessed D5vid.

"I can pay you 3 RMB today if you finish my prims," said Babushka. D5vid stood with his arm outstretched.

A copy of the Basilica appeared over the Neva, then was gone. The dead bird was already missing.

Lida smiled enigmatically.

"Well...," said D5vid. The old woman was already stirring her pestle.

The last thing he saw before she whooshed away was her friendship card coming toward him.

D5vid stood for a moment, staring down at the Sphynx. Then he clicked "YES".

 

Why I Am Splitting My Ticket

For the first time in two generations, I'm splitting my ticket. I was always taught that it was virtually a sin to split your ticket, i.e. to divide your vote between the Democrats and Republicans. I come from a family that generally voted Democrat and didn't split their tickets -- but of course, there was the famous time that my parents voted for Nixon (!), probably the only Catholics in their parish, at a time when all the Catholics voted for John F. Kennedy. I don't know what drove them to do that -- they even had a letter from Nixon thanking them for voting for him which is long lost. I remember my brother and I used to fetch that document out of the big oak roll-top desk and even try to rub the ink on the signature to see if it was real -- it was.

Why shouldn't you split your ticket? Well, because you don't want to destroy the unity of the party, see. I guess that's the thinking. So why did I split mine -- the only time in my life (except, of course, for the post 9/11 vote for Governor Pataki).

Easy. Because I don't like Obama, I don't like the professional left, I don't like the "Restoring Sanity" rally, and I don't like Paul Krugman. If I was hesitant about splitting my ticket, Paul Krugman's column put me over the edge.

I don't want unity.

I definitely want there to be a split, and one in which Republicans in the Congress can act to curb the radical president from the Democratic Party and his cronies.

I surely wouldn't vote for Palladino in New York State. God, he looks like death warmed over, for one, from some creepy horror movie. His hate-speech against gays has been atrocious. If you are a liberal of any sort, centrist or leftist, you couldn't possibly vote for a man who has so outrageously slammed LGBT, not only in opposing gay marriage, which can be a common position, but actively opposing the gay parade and saying things like "children shouldn't be brainwashed into thinking being is acceptable" and gay people “would be much better off and much more successful getting married and raising a family,” than being gay. This comment was widely condemned, from conservative groups like the Irish Republicans, even. There doesn't seem to be anything redeeming about him, so you "have" to vote for Andrew Cuomo. I don't feel overly enthusiastic about Cuomo, but it is what it is, and you only get to chose between two -- obviously, although my rent is "2 damn high," I'm not going to be voting for the idiot from "the Rent's 2 Damn High" party who is merely sopping away votes from the Democrats like Ralph Nader.

In the past, when it came to the congressional part of the ticket, I would even vote for David McReynolds of the War Resister's League (and old friend) or somebody from the Green Party, because I really loathed the "machine" and the DELUGE of junk mail, most of it negative advertising, and robo-calls.

The other day I lay down for a nap after coming home from a job and before preparing for a night of work, and who should wake me up but...Gloria Steinham. Good Lord. I didn't even wait to hear who she was stumping for, because it was just too damn wierd! I except Koch and Hillary to be calling next.

But this year, because of Paul Krugman, because of so many other things, I voted for the Republicans for House and Senate. On purpose. To ensure pluralism. As a defensive measure. To restore *balance*. Because it has become insane --the New York Times has become unreadable.

I honestly don't know much about Joe DiGuardio or his daughter who is apparently an American Idol judge (I don't have a TV so don't watch it). But he's Republican, running for Senate from NY State, so he gets a circle marked on the ticket (my absentee ballot is already sent in because I have to go out of town). I was especially happy to see that a main staple of his campaign against Kristen Gillibrand was to question her support of the sub-prime mortgages which she advocated as a way for the state to help the poor. Of course it is terribly politically uncorrect not to blame Evil Bush, Capitalism, Amerika, Wall Street and assorted other Evil Forces for the mortgage crisis that led to the recession (and Cuomo was supporting the moves to bail out Fanny Mae and such), but surely there was a role played by those who hustled poor people with NINJA status (no income, no job, assets) for politically-correct reasons as well as greed, into mortgages they couldn't afford. Lefties will say this is scape-goating. I don't care -- they don't want to look at *all* the root causes and this is definitely one of them.

What I especially don't like about Gillibrand is that I am "supposed" to like her, as she is "a conservative Democrat," a woman in politics, and the NRA backs her pro-gun stance. Well, no thank you. I'm not pro-gun. And I don't care if you are a conservative Democrat because "I"m mad as hell".

What I especially loathed about this Paul Krugman piece was the "unite for unity" stuff, like that old parody of a socialist song by Abe Brumberg (hilarious!). We don't fail if we are "divided"; um...we have a *democracy* when different people with *different perspectives* can deliberate in the Congress. In fact, it would be great if we had more than two parties so that the more radical democrats could calve off and frankly form a socialist party that would then have to earn its keep instead of using the stealth tactics of the "pragmatic socialists" to sneak into power.

I'm reading Stanley Kurtz's Radical-in-Chief about the socialist background of Obama. Yes, *socialist*, and that's ok, because he was definitely within the socialist movement. It's terribly interesting to me to find out that he went to the same Socialist Scholars' Conferences that I did in the 1980s (he was at Columbia University at the time). Stanley has a best-selling book and is a respected researcher at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, not some loon that people can easily dismiss. He methodically researches the documentation and the events and personalities of that era and situates Obama within exactly the tendencies I always suspected he was in, with the people I knew myself (since I used to attend the various events sponsored by the Democratic Socialists of America and related groups in those years).

When I read Obama's college essay about nuclear disarmament, and saw his policy on arms control with the Russians, I was shocked that he was parroting what we saw as blatant Soviet propaganda in those days  -- "no first use". Actually, not shocked, since he articulated exactly the position of the left running the peace movement in the 1980s, with perfect pitch. He doesn't appear to have leaned toward the more anti-Soviet European Nuclear Disarmament perspective -- and I'd love to find out more about that from him. I don't remember Obama at these meetings, but then, they had 300-400 or more people at them at Cooper Union and then later at the BMCC. The socialists running these meetings in those days didn't tend to have many blacks among them -- they were white professors, many of them New York Jews, or Irish Catholics, with only Julian Bond, for example, to stand out as a black. I was at the conference with the famous Piven -- but I only remember something different about these meetings than what Kurtz has captured -- I remember that it was about *single-issue organizing*. That these hardcore Marxists, these Trotskyists boring from within, these socialist democrats and democratic socialists realized with the waning of the 1960s mayhem that they would have to regroup and reorganize and accomplish their revolution differently. So they seized on single issues like health care or education (sound familiar?!) to organize in, burrowing into schools, non-profits, hospitals, etc. to push the socialist agenda just in these one areas, so it wasn't in full-blown recognizable, complex -- and sectarian! -- form, but just seemed like it was "for the community".

I remember in an interview with Steve Gillmor, when I frankly mentioned Obama's socialist ideas that were detectable in the campaign, like the "guns and religion" concept, or the idea that racism is at root not a moral problem but a capitalist economic problem, or the superficial focus on the single issue of health care as a tactic, he immediately shut off the mike. He automatically moved to censor me and shut me up from revealing the stealth-tactic instincitvely, as a red-diaper baby (his father was a communist, and he is horribly sensitive to the idea of anybody engaging in "McArthyism".)

Traffic Pins

Traffic Pins These two bowling pins are actually cleverly disguised avatars. Visit Gwangeo (96, 216, 92)

Posted via email from Prokofy's posterous

Frogg & Jaycatt at Muse Fuse

Frogg & Jaycatt at Muse Fuse Check this out! Visit Gwangeo (87, 224, 94)

Posted via email from Prokofy's posterous

Prokofy's Picnic

Prokofy's Picnic Check this out! Visit Hartwick (182, 10, 141)

Posted via email from Prokofy's posterous

Waterfront Cub 4096 m just $1250 wk

Waterfront Cub 4096 m just $1250 wk Check this out! Visit Cub (233, 202, 102)

Posted via email from Prokofy's posterous

The Lindens Are in the Land Biz

I don't know what's more painful.

Watching these terribly sanitized Linden reports shorn of important data that used to be transparent and are now dark, or watching the noble gyrations of people like Desmond.

The number of people who spent more than one dollar inworld used to be the only real number in SL. It still is the only real number (496,000 or 480,000), but it's called differently now and it's not clear the same thing is being counted. "Economic participation" could include alts to whom dollars are transferred rather than all accounts who spent out money.

This number steadily grew for years and years, no matter what. Then, all of a sudden in February of this year, with the secret 2.0 development and such and the mangling of search, it began to dip. It went back up again. Now it's declining.

Not good.

Basically, every land baron's story in SL is a microcosm for the problem of Linden Lab. Every land baron succeeds when there is growth, but as soon as there is a dip in occupancy and a slowdown in sign-ups, he suddenly faces fixed cost that eat away his gains and then begin to turn the upside down.

What I've always called "mainland mystery math" is when people think that they are doing something "good" by "ploughing the proceeds back into the business" when in fact expanding when there will not be continued growth means getting stuck with a whole bunch of unrented land.

Basically, this is what has happened to the Lindens, writ large.

They have no choice but to use the same methods that land barons have had to use to try to pull out of their death spiral:

o lower prices

o raise volume of sales

o offer more freebies and loss-leaders

o redesign and repurpose

o spend more on advertising

o tighten up customer care to retain customers

o diversify offerings for different tastes

o increasing content sales

o supplementing with consulting

o abandoning land

The Lindens have done all that. And -- I'm not sure it will work.

<body><p>I don't know what's more painful.</p><p>Watching these terribly sanitized Linden reports shorn of important data that used to be transparent and is now dark, or watching the noble gyrations of people like Desmond.</p><p>The number of people who spent more than one dollar inworld used to be the only real number in SL. It still is the only real number (496,000 or 480,000), but it's called differently now and it's not clear the same thing is being counted. "Economic participation" could include alts to whom dollars are transferred rather than all accounts who spent out money.</p><p>This number steadily grew for years and years, no matter what. Then, all of a sudden in February of this year, with the secret 2.0 development and such and the mangling of search, it began to dip. It went back up again. Now it's declining.</p><p>Not good.</p><p>Basically, every land baron's story in SL is a microcosm for the problem of Linden Lab. Every land baron succeeds when there is growth, but as soon as there is a dip in occupancy and a slowdown in sign-ups, he suddenly faces fixed cost that eat away his gains and then begin to turn the upside down.</p><p>What I've always called "mainland mystery math" is when people think that they are doing something "good" by "ploughing the proceeds back into the business" when in fact expanding when there will not be continued growth means getting stuck with a whole bunch of unrented land.</p><p>Basically, this is what has happened to the Lindens, writ large.</p><p>They have no choice but to use the same methods that land barons have had to use to try to pull out of their death spiral:</p><p>o lower prices</p><p>o raise volume of sales</p><p>o offer more freebies and loss-leaders</p><p>o redesign and repurpose</p><p>o spend more on advertising</p><p>o tighten up customer care to retain customers</p><p>o diversify offerings for different tastes</p><p>o increasing content sales</p><p>o supplementing with consulting</p><p>o abandoning land</p><p>The Lindens have done all that. And -- I'm not sure it will work.</p></body>

Ravenglass Picnic

Ravenglass Picnic Check this out! Visit Ravenglass (210, 188, 23)

Posted via email from Prokofy's posterous

The Hate Bus

Photo By Pikaluk

As I've said before, the people who hate me in SL could fit on a hippie bus -- that is, a vehicle that might seat 9, or might seat 33 if its a made-over schoolbus, but no more than that.

In fact, the haters might find that the VW would be a smarter choice for their cross-country hate trip.

It's not "everybody". It's not that *I* hate "everyone who disagrees with me". It's a short list of people who keep viciously attacking me for my views, or because I've rightfully singled them out for criticism, or because I've pushed back against their endless hegemonic tirades. These people are those who obsess, sometimes in increasingly deranged and unhinged ways (like Crap Mariner). Most of the people on the hate-bus are males, geeky males, and quite a few are manginas, i.e. males with female avatars who have some private -- or even public -- ambivalence about their avatar sex change. Why this is might seem a mystery at first, but it isn't: it's about power, and the geeky male belief -- obsession -- with having power over other people, often directly in proportion to their own sense of inadequacy and inferiority. Insecurity drives many a hate campaign in SL.

One of the ways that this group tries to give itself the feeling of being "everybody" or "a crowd" is to stampede Plurk and Twitter memes, get everybody riled up, but usually, it doesn't work. Crap doesn't find followers for his fake account "ProkofyLinden" and then something/somebody makes him take it down (not me). He doesn't find commenters for his various schemes against me except his little eyebrow-challenged fugly fangirl Skylar Smythe. Sean Williams beats his chest and bleats, and nobody listens. Dale Innis Dale Chess persists in stalking and disguise his stalking clumsily, even using sock puppets on a blog he's banned from finally for barraging me with attacks not only on my own blog, but everywhere else, and on the JIRA.

Like I said, Crap drives the VW at the moment, swearing that he isn't walking and working off the cheeseburger. Dale sits and whines that he needs to go to the bathroom. Chestnut Rau jealously stares as her girlfriend talks animatedly to someone else and waits for him to notice her again, then suddenly realizes to her horror that while she was checking her makeup, her GF got off at the Savarin and isn't on the bus anymore. Maggie Darwin sits in the back near the toilet wondering why she is even still on the bus because it's not fun anymore (pretending to be a Linden is more fun). Toxic Menges is playing the license plate game and making up 100-verse Prokofy songs making people wince. Tizzers is slumped in the corner, as everyone is mad at him because he didn't bring the booze after talking up a storm about how he was bringing the party. He was broke. Intlibber ran to make the bus departure, waving a credit card and saying he was going to buy all the rounds and take everybody to Outback, but he was too fat to make it in time. Even hippy buses depart after awhile...

Soft Linden has his i-phone out with Google maps and is arguing intensely with Crap telling him he's going the wrong way, there's a more effective way to hate on Prokofy, which is to accuse him falsely of plagiariasm. Hey, that will get him going.

And so on. You get the idea.

100 word stories. My God, what a dreadful, horrible, stupid idea. It's so typical of the Geek Religion, the belief that any human activity can be mechanized and quantified and robotized and made "better". Ugh. Not a single one of Crap's 100-word stories ever work. The very "genre" is thunderously awful, and that needs to be said. Writing a story *every single fucking day* isn't writing, it's going to the bathroom. It's a robotic obsession that isn't even impressive for its sheer geeky perversity, the way that geeky dude who writes a song *every day* impresses people with his obdurance -- and the occasional "winners" that get cited on TechCrunch if he writes some awful no-talent ditty about one of their writers.

Stories that are mechanized in that way aren't literature; they are Internet detritus. That anyone would believe this is a good way to become inspired tells you more about the awfulness of Internet culture than any "innovation".

In the old days, disciplined writers with talent would write every day. They'd have a set time and place. But they didn't do word counts and the "100 word story" concept was rarely used because it was pointless and stupid. Henry James or somebody like that might only write a really good paragraph on a good day. Or maybe they'd write 50 pages. But they didn't *count*. They might have goals, like "I should finish these chapters this month" if they have a publisher's deadline. But they didn't make up these idiotic geeky contests for themselves like "I will write a 100-word story everyday". This has to be said. It's a fucking *sad* thing to be writing 100-word stories every day. It's not genius. It's not even somehow admirable persistence. It's what no-talent mediocrities do as a substitute for what is real -- to disguise from themselves the awful truth of their hollow being.

The Masses

I couldn't get this to post for some reason on botqirl's blog, so I post here.

Botqirl has up one of those blogs that the little Plurk-Jerkers and malign and mendacious like Crap Mariner think is "nailing" it. It's a very overworked theme that one finds on the forums periodically, the realization that "OMG the masses don't read our blogs". It's usually said by people who secretly imagine that in fact *they* have the insight into the masses because they are so brilliant lol. The realization of the elites that they don't know what the rest of SL thinks scares and thrills them at the same time. Scares them, because it means they are irrelevant. Thrills them, because they might find the killer app to tap into these pet-loving Zyngo-playing masses.

My post, in response to his question about what the masses are thinking, and how they "don't know Prokofy from Gwyn from Dusan from Crap".

Spoken like a typical socialist elitist, out of touch with the masses, even the liberal masses, and of course, completely estranged from the conservative masses -- which are in SL, too.

I don't suffer from that problem because I have *customers*. Do you? I have constant interactions with hundreds of people all month, constantly changing and constantly refreshing my view. These people constantly IM me and say they like my blog; they tip me; they send me hugs.

Not all of my customers in fact read my blog or even know I have a blog, but a surprising number do, and your theory that "nobody knows Prokofy" is more wishful thinking on your part than reality.

When I look at the IP addresses of the referrers coming to my blog from thousands of visitors every day, I see most of them come from fashion blogs. Imagine that. Fashion blogs! And I don't even discuss fashion hardly at all.

Quite a few are plurk and twitter accounts -- but guess what, not the plurk accounts of the main Plurk Jerkers like you.

Most people could care less that the educators were "shafted" -- they feel *they* are the ones shafted when they pay a lot, or work hard in their little businesses, but get no breaks, and the educators, who only come on and spread socialism, copyleftism, and collectivist anti-commerce ideas, get a whopping 50 percent off -- or did. Now it's over. Good!

Every day, hundreds of people click on my inworld newsletter. People who aren't even my customers, never post on the forums, and don't post on blogs. Sometimes they IM me with a comment or help. I have way more visitors to my blog than ever comment.

"Blog culture" in SL thinks I'm crazy or "hateful" merely because I push back against the sectarians that themselves are malicious. You imagine that the elitist leftists and Sluniverse Sharia Court judges are "what's right" and "politically correct".

But the vast majority of people don't think that way.

The silent majority fills up the rentals, enjoys SL to the max, until they get bored and leave, even leaving to play a Facebook game, or starts a small business and works it, until it becomes too much work, or goes back to real life after a bad romance. But many stay and tend their gardens, shop, socialize, go to live music. They don't care about mesh. They don't whine because some tab is out of place on some menu and some JIRA didn't get voted for. They just have a good time.

For an amazing number of people, Second Life is about finding an absolutely perfect or at least very enjoyable mate, an experience many haven't had in real life. A mate who isn't lying about their gender.

Burning Life, open source scrums, Lindens pulling funding of the arts -- absolutely none of this matters to them. Changes to the Marketplace matter more than anything else because they shop their on their lunch hours especially.

It's precisely because I'm very much in touch with these "masses" that you fear and loathe that I write as critically and sharply as I do of elites like you. Move over, botgirl. Here Comes Everybody.