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 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. "
the wonders of blogging;) so what does that make the "tweet"?lol
a fart?
but yes.. mechanized and monetized, and not by those who do the actual farting.
Posted by: cube inada | 10/27/2010 at 12:21 PM
I don't hate you. I think you are unnecessarily cruel with no good reason at times, and I think you dislike being called on your words.
As much as I bitch and moan with the best of them on Twitter, I don't hate anyone (intensely dislike a couple of people yes), but hate is too drastic a state to be in - it takes too much energy and causes reflux.
Sometimes it seems that your words are wrapped in so much bile it makes it impossible for people to unravel your points past the attacks. A lot of the points you make are valid.
I read your words because they interest me. I post because you make me compelled to post.
As I once said to Floral Bleed - you entertain me - even if it is in that Joe Peschi (sp?) from Goodfellas kinda way.
Stick me in the camper van if you want, but don't tell me I hate you, because I don't.
Posted by: Toxic Menges | 10/27/2010 at 12:43 PM
Um, your seat is secure, Toxic (note your name) because you are in the same bubble as the rest of the van's occupants, believing that legitimate, normal criticism is "bile" or "hate". Criticizing socialist educators, for example, isn't "hate" or "bile" but *normalcy*. It's *healthy*. The hate and the bile and the hysteria is in those that so hate private property, rights, and commerce that they would create a sterile Leninist utopia away from such normalcy in open sim and scream at anyone who criticizes them.
Criticizing your favourite Burning Man isn't "hate" or "bile," it's questioning the very reason for moving affluent urban hippies to the playa to...burn a big pile of wood. That's *normal* and *ok*.
Criticizing Grace McDunnough's hegemonic cultural mandates and her singing isn't "hate" and "bile," it's a normal, healthy, *needed* reaction to something that is stifling.
And so on. The notion of "bile" comes from those who themselves are full of it.
It's hardly "unnecessarily cruel" to question reports of someone dying in RL that were made on the Internet.
It's hardly cruel to push back against that malicious fat-ass, Crap Mariner. He's gone off the rails, and you know it.
And so on. As I said: you all fit into a hate bus. Enjoy the ride.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 10/27/2010 at 12:54 PM
wow, you couldn't be more wrong. Word-counting has been around almost as long as the printing press and the practice of countless publications who paid by the word.
There are any number of games where you give writers a set of parameters and see what they can come up with to meet them.
That's how Dr Seuss got started, although his challenge was to come up with poems using certain words, not word counts.
Posted by: Boyd Doghouse | 10/27/2010 at 12:58 PM
cube, you always exaggerate so dramatically and even hysterically about the Evil Man and the Futility of It All.
I make a valid point about the robotic nature of 100-word story making every day -- completely valid -- and you try to extend that to some uber meta clever philosophical point about *all* blogging as all being exploited by The Man.
Um, no. There's a difference between writing a 2,000 essay about something you passionately believe in and finding fellowship with it, and mechanically producing 100 word stories. If you can't understand the difference, perhaps you, too, have become too mechanized?!
And I'm not being exploited by The Man. Even if the ads didn't pay for my Internet bills, the cost of Internet would be about equal to the cost of the many magazines I used to subscribe to, and sometimes fitfully write letters to the editor to, which would never get published. Just because I'm online doesn't mean the Man has exploited me. Yes, the Man is evil and scraping data and reselling and adifying everything and yeah, isn't that awful. I agree. But I think there's a larger phenomenon at work now that I think you're not conceding. All this frantic and excessive blogging is likely going to get pruned -- and is already being driven out of business by services like Technorati that have culled the small or disliked or nonconforming bloggers out of their search. 1938 Media is right that the big publishers are consolidating and taking over the formerly big independents like TechCrunch. There are quite a few people concerned that Typepad is going to force out people who don't make enough revenue for the platform by raising prices. We might see the hobby of blogging, like the hobby of Second Life, lose its subsidies and stop being free, or $14.95 a month, and become $21.95 a month or something like that. It might eventually evolve that unless you fulfill your Groupon duties or your Walmart value coupon duties and "like" everything fetched to push in front of you to "like," you will fall off the list. Well, media has always had to get itself paid for. Subscriptions never pay for media alone. Ads have always paid for media.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 10/27/2010 at 01:00 PM
Boyd, you are *fucking retarded*.
It's not about word-counting, dumbass.
In RL, I have to work with a word-count constantly.
I'm talking about *deliberately limiting yourself to 100 word stories as a hobby*. THAT is what is retarded.
100 words is not enough to tell a story. Artificially making a short short, as they are called, 100 words, and not...147 words...is just plain stupid.
There are no literary magazines of any merit that have a "100 word story limit" -- don't be FUCKING ridiculous.
Yeah, even you have to concede that the constraints of the greats like Dr. Seuss are about rhymes, or patterns of poetry like sonnets, *not word counts*.
Word-count contests are for nerds. They are not literature.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 10/27/2010 at 01:03 PM
I thought you might have gone with a jet-powered dragster bus in a "no smoke without fire(flaming)", "that's where all the cool kids are at" and "relentless speed of personal attacks" pun type thing.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/08/05/article-1300538-0AB16387000005DC-108_634x391.jpg
But the hippie bus is kinda nice, reminds me of the hippie pay terminals I still have them in my inventory.
Posted by: Bunjie | 10/27/2010 at 01:03 PM
I don't have a bus full of people who hate me. Actually, there are two vehicles.
One is a fairly upscale limousine.
The other is a clown car.
And oddly enough they tend to honk at each other, more than me...
Posted by: Desmond Shang | 10/27/2010 at 01:17 PM
a lot of hobbies have to do with working within constraints, like building a ship in a bottle.
Word-counting is just another constraint. It may not be your cup of tea (or mine) but that doesn't make it invalid.
With the advent of word processors, I know lots of writers who have a word-count goal for the day, just like they used to have a page-count goal for the day in the typewriter era.
Posted by: Boyd Doghouse | 10/27/2010 at 01:24 PM
That darmed geek Shakespeare, limiting himself to just fourteen lines of iambic pentameter! Was he a technocommunist, too?
Posted by: Melissa Yeuxdoux | 10/27/2010 at 01:31 PM
Like I said, Melissa, poetic forms like *sonnets* are not the same thing as geeky fetishes like a 100-word count.
There's a reason why world literature has never created the 100-word story until now, the Internet dumbed-down generation of half-robotit personas pretending to "create" when they are "regurgitating".
Building a ship in a bottle is the oldest cliche in the book. The world seldom values a ship-in-a-bottle, except as a tourist trinket mass-produced in a tourist shop and made by modern methods. Where are the real ships in a bottle?!
Having a word count goal for the say, induced by word processors, doesn't make you discliplined and certainly doesn't make you talented. And *forcibly* writing 100 word stories a day makes you a robot, not a literary man.
That you have to keep fisking and arguing about this lets me know how robotic you yourselves are. Thanks!
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 10/27/2010 at 01:42 PM
prok. alot of words.. but you miss my point.
and all hysteria and "man" bashing is yours, not mine.
but then again, youre post was all about the "need" to be heard. vs the " value or whats being published"..and mass mediaized ....
but you keep missing the story by "argueing" with the "few kids on a bus".. while what really is the issue is the "reason they are at the school theyre headed too"
in between the rantings about a guys or glas weight, or SLs. "singular failings" you hit it.
yes... the butterfly does have an affect.
"articles" vs blogs" slate and others are changinf the term..why? they realize how the lowered the value of what they could offer, by helping the few tech companies and direct mail spammers.. by blogging..TM a brand name you know..:) hmmm
dont cry in youre kleenex tm to me:) and yes. please continue wrting the articles... and if you want to call it blogging, fine.. JUST realize it not about you paying 14.95... its about millions selling accai berries, and google "relevancy".. and that "relevancy" is the death of a "free culture".. but you know that...
Posted by: cube inada | 10/27/2010 at 01:57 PM
we are what we read..;)
well once we were..now that is we are what we see..on tv....
well once we saw. now its we are what we click...
and yes.. mechanized is a stupid way to be..... and my value has dropped considerably over the years as i unmechanize my work and ideas....
luckily for you, theres a whole new bus of kids who want the implants and metapundit rewards...
the FIC... who still "believe" that "philip, serge, or steve will reward them" for their faith.
Posted by: cube inada | 10/27/2010 at 02:03 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eff5EqKXzho
was sent this video on facebook today...
minimal reading required.:)
but none the less a lesson to behold for the LL/SL faithfull.:)
a good screen cap or video link for your last SL post sometime in the futureeee..:)
Posted by: cube inada | 10/27/2010 at 02:16 PM
How many words was your blog post about your fantasy of a busload of power-mad men obsessing about you? What a great literary feat. I'm sure you'll win a Pulitzer, if you can beat the guy who writes the Gor stuff.
Your blog used to be good.
Posted by: Kim Anubis | 10/27/2010 at 02:26 PM
Most of you folks don’t get what Prokofy is doing here. I have been reading Prokofy for ages, and it obvious that she writes the way she does to get attention. Cathy Fitzpatrick a/k/a Prokofy Neva, is not a mean woman she is a mean writer, and that drives traffic to her web site. Just look at the TV shows with the huge ratings from meanness and drama, Jerry Springer, Judge Judy, some of the hostile reality shows, and all the TV crap like that, they draw big audiences because so much anger and meanness is going on, and society loves the drama. Cathy is a good hearted person, who when she writes tries really hard to draw blood, because she knows that a bloody car accident scene draws a crowd and her brand of drama will draw readers. Now Catherine will tell you she means everything she writes, and she may indigently upbraid me for saying she does not, but I would bet she is sitting at that keyboard right now drinking coffee and laughing out loud at the a-hole who just called her on her bluff. And what are you doing right now? You’re reading Prokofy’s blog just as she planned that her above post would get you to do.
Posted by: Ancient11 | 10/27/2010 at 02:50 PM
http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2010/10/nemo-closing-on-oct-29.html
fyi- why hate is better than transparency;)
ive been banned from posting just a common sense professional comment that the nemo guy should have been PAID for having his work used by LL as the main page "sucker" -er new customer splash ad/image/video.
anyhow-- let the hate bus roll baby roll....
or at least get a love machine fart.
dont you think that the creator of NEMO should have a at least a 300.oo usd a month "value" traded for the usage of his IP/works for the LL empire?
too bad for those BM "content creators". that BM hired the wrong "evanglist"... then again, they are trying to be the "next" LL.
there IS NO THERE....There .com;)
Posted by: cube inada | 10/27/2010 at 02:57 PM
One word for you: "Haiku"
-ls/cm
Posted by: Crap Mariner | 10/27/2010 at 03:00 PM
I dont know about anyone else, but i now have visions of that bus trundling along one of the SL roads with Cliff Richard's "Summer Holiday" song playing in the background...
o.O
Posted by: Victor1st Mornington | 10/27/2010 at 03:08 PM
Ancient11, it is all about driving traffic to and promoting the interests of her virtual land business. I disagree about her being good-hearted. You can't realistically write off the consequences of her writings. If a performance artist socks someone in the mouth and knocks out a tooth, we don't just write it off as artistic license.
Used to be some useful insights about SL mixed in with the rest, but now it is all personal drama, all the time. If she didn't decide to use me as a target from time to time, I wouldn't skim this junk anymore.
Posted by: Kim Anubis | 10/27/2010 at 03:10 PM
kim. 11.
id have to dissagree...
this blog is unlike hamlets..which is to hawk a paid agenda or his book, or "game design writing" services...
there are easier ways for a "land barons" to hawk 1.80 cent parcels.... even for verbose writers from NYC.:)
the traffic this blog generates, its "value" is much more valueble to google/interests than to LLs or any internal LL "value added" server space seller.....
anyhow... the facts i see dont give your conclusions much value imo.... and id rather see more posts at "wired state"..but to get any response there is a much more time consuming game... SL offers ready made fodder for the agenda/idea mill.
besides, almost everyone would be better served not to write online...:)
Posted by: cube inada | 10/27/2010 at 03:21 PM
Here are the most substantive stories of the last month, not pushbacks to Fatty Mariner, or exposes of the sicko Imnotgettingbetter, or various Rental Dementia stories. All stories that contain insights -- and very important ones! -- about SL.
In fact, I really should win a reporter's prize for my investigation, including photo essays, of the fraud of education in SL and the expose of the two loudest mouths on the edu punk gravy train.
I think what Kim Anubis and even people like Mal Burns aren't liking about my blog lately is that I *reallly* have gone after the education fakery. I've completely blown it out of the water. And I have more coming. That really goes against their very, very settled views about SL. And for Kim, it even goes against possibly some of her clients' interests, I don't know (her clients are a big NDA secret).
The fact is, education has been a terrible socialist hustle in SL, and the Lindens are well rid of it. And I've documented that.
I've also gone against the grain of the hate-on-Philip screeds in the Slogosphere. His latest move was abrupt and poorly documented, but his overall vision and dream stand tall and will always stand tall.
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2010/10/philip-rosedale-the-long-view.html
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2010/10/ignatius-onomatopoeias-agitprop-and-the-failure-of-education-in-sl.html
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2010/10/a-chronicle-of-lower-education.html
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2010/10/aj-brooks-phony-stampede-and-fake-content-porting-problem-educators-are-such-frauds.html
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2010/10/ozimal-bunnies-get-some-linden-lovin.html
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2010/10/second-life-is-winding-down.html
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2010/10/ive-been-meaning-to-write-this-post-since-slcc-there-were-many-positive-things-i-had-to-say-about-this-years-very-well-manag.html
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2010/10/worlds-for-windows-or-how-the-tech-press-and-the-slogosphere-got-played.html
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 10/27/2010 at 03:28 PM
I have lots of posts waiting to go up at Wired State. It's just easier to dash off something on SL now and then and I've been busy with my RL jobs.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 10/27/2010 at 03:29 PM
"His latest move was abrupt and poorly documented, but his overall vision and dream stand tall and will always stand tall."
and you call me an idealist..lol
look forward to more wired state writings. try and suggest "phillips vision" as standing tall" to that audience...who dont know SL.... would be interesting to read any responses...
i thjink youll get much of what was posted by some others (possibly not SL fanz) at the PBS mediashift site in response to Phillips problematic "visions in actual real play out"
anyhow..
Posted by: cube inada | 10/27/2010 at 03:43 PM
I like Second Life. I like the people I've met inside it and the admiring the things everyone creates inside it.
However I will not close my eyes to the possibility that the world was created with aims that were not to our benefit.
When SL's creator hangs around with fundamentalists who believe that only they are worthy to live on inside a machine after death. THAT deserves critique. Very harsh critique. On all levels. And that the very concept of Second Life is tied up in this delusion, deserves to be further explored and the skeletons pulled from it's closets.
Posted by: melponeme_k | 10/27/2010 at 06:06 PM