By Prokofy Neva
Yes, this is a 11,295 word "text buffet," as one forums wit describes my writing, and you are not required to read it; you can skim and look at headlines, you can say "tl;dr" -- it doesn't matter. It is for posterity. It is for my own thinking, and perhaps finding a few like-minded souls. That is all.
So having been banned from the forums for 2.5 days (an odd number, no? Why not go for the full 3, Lindens?) with "0 points," whatever that means, I have time recouped from not posting to concentrate on what their problems might be, and what my problems are with them. That this ban was the result of some rage fit is obvious -- multiple posts are removed, some of which have absolutely nothing in them that could be construed as "name-calling," and some of which might be edge cases, about which reasonable people might disagree.
I've found before with the notorious incident with Pathfinder, that there is a belief by some of these Lindens, that I am somehow deviously sitting at home and trying to insidiously devise "just under the wire" posts that will "get away" without being banned. That's ridiculous. Honestly, I don't have time or inclination for that. I write long posts because I think out loud as I go along. I edit them sometimes, but I never try to deliberately violate the rules. The problem is, I'm in a hostile climate with a back story.
Example: animats, who I view as a hard-core pernicious actor in SL because of his past harassment of me, and his siccing of Lindens on me, will post something showing his empty cafe, with no traffic, and his bots or animesh figures. To which I make a remark that they're the only friends he has. If he were less of an ambitious and self-involved authoritarian, he would laugh at that, as I would, if anyone said the same about any of my properties that perhaps only have an animesh rabbit or something.
So it might be that animats himself, being a Linden fanboy of sorts, ARs me for this rather mild remark -- against someone who caused me untold days of harassment on my own land based on his misunderstanding of how Linden roads worked, causing me a 3-day world ban completely needlessly and stupidly, is getting a pushback for that bad behaviour. I don't see that animats has any friends, really, or much traction on the forums but Lindens like him because a) he's a Linden alt (some people's theory) or b) he makes various scripted vehicle tests and has big ideas about grid-wide travel -- which they like as a load test.
That this is a load test on sims where we live and work, and that already have enough problems and enough abuse and neglect, never occurs to them, or does, but they don't care.
So some girl who has it out for me then says "Did you say that as a joke or for real?" The literalism of these kids! So I replied "For real." Because of the grief he caused me for days on end. Because he continues to cause it, coming to my sims, despite being banned on my land, because he can travel the Linden roads -- although there are thousands of others he could be traveling on. Because of that. Not because I'm mean. But because I fight back. So then she or he or some other fangirl ARs me, and then Dakota or Tommy or Theresa are telling me that my post is removed for name-calling. That no post calling me names, and far worse names, is ever removed, is the norm -- and not only because I don't AR them.
So this year, I have that strike against me; and I had to burn another one because of that post by the prim-a-donna slamming a cheap rentals company. She got to name them by name, and ruin their reputation, for four long days. No Lindens did anything. It was a "hot" thread that even their casual perusal could have noted and removed -- they didn't. They didn't get an AR because I don't file them, and because none of that OP's little girlfriends will file one either. They won't even warn her that she must remove the name, as some will do for newbies. Because they know she enjoys impunity. Because she can. Because thoroughly trashing the business of some lowly rentals company where in fact she did put out too many prims is a game to her. So I stood up for them, and also researched them, and moved in and tested it myself, to show both their difficulties and weaknesses. The literalist children of the forums couldn't grasp any form of satire, although a few people IM'd me inworld with chuckles. But those people won't stand up for me -- they can't, they don't like to stick their neck out or get involved. So I waste another reprimand on this enterprise.
Then comes round three this week, which isn't about anything real, as far as I can tell, but just about rages, probably by the Most Important Linden now. That I didn't use the proper term for "the viewer" (yes, they get like that). That I was a bit wry about the Moles, even while praising them (that post isn't the one removed). That I revealed their theme? That I stood up to even a comrade who was indulging in that usual "let's hate on Americans they don't understand socialism" shtick? None of these things would even warrant an AR usually from the fan base, or a second glance from a mod, but does now. Because...because why? That's why I'm posting to understand better. I find when you publicize things, you often get information. And that occasionally, confronting the wannabe authoritarians of SL, the Capture Roleplay creeps who want to destroy an entire voting system under the guise of "cleaning it up" (remember "Angel Fluffy"?) is worthwhile.
Public Opinion Polls
Example: I once casually purchased a cheap Zindra lot (imagine! a cheap! Zindra lot!) that just happened to be next to animats. When someone harasses me on the forums, I go to look -- who is this person? I see he has zero traffic, a so-so build, and suddenly, land for sale in this continent where it is usually ridiculously expensive. I buy the land and put up a boxing club, just because that's what I had won in a gatcha at that time, and a resident survey about transportation, pods, sim crossings, whatever. Because these polls which are anonymous and can only be answered by one avatar (although alts could come in of course), usually put the lie to whatever received wisdom someone has. So even if he puts all his alts on this; even if he whistles for all his friends to come and vote his way on this, which he no doubt did, random passers-by are still going to vote normally and freely, and eventually you see -- nope, it's not what you think. Long ago, a certain famous furniture maker and empire builder tipped me off to this method, which he used in another game world. People hate polls that might show opinion is not what they think. I have confidence in them. Years of polling what people use to shop has proved that yes, search/places is indeed one of the main things they use. So those insistent that this "can't" be the case, and therefore they can leave search/places broken now, are wrong. So I left this poll to work for awhile, when everyone could see the point, and since I couldn't really see any use for this land, and don't want to be in the adult club business, I sold it.
Note: A/B tests with new users and different gateway programs -- that's not an open and free public opinion poll, in a dependent setting. An actual free poll in an unstrained setting -- that's democracy, such as it is in this world with no free media or independent judiciary. And free speech, again, such as it is. These are what are worth fighting for in virtual worlds -- until they're not.
I think such independent polls, even with their flaws, tell you some basic truths of SL. That what most people want more than even a home or cheap clothes is a job. Most people want to work. Most people want to earn money in what seems like a world and feel a useful part of society. And there are few ways of doing that.
First Ban in 2005
In the old days, I was banned from the forums for attempting to set the record straight when several big guns falsely accused me of committing a crime in real life (they googled my name, found the same name [which is common] and concluded this must be me, and they could use this fact to harass and silence me). I saw all these references to "crime" and strange gifs with a girl riding a bicycle in a bikini, her boobs jiggling, and I was puzzled. What the hell was all this? Eventually, Cristiano Midnight, who is generally despicable, but "helpful" on this occasion, explained to me that they had found someone with this name, this person, who lives in another state, was a journalist, which is a role I've had at times, and she was found to commit plagiarism in a story about bikinis. It was curious, to use the term "a real life crime," when plagiarism is not handled by courts, it is handled usually by the newspaper firing the journalist. But...This had absolutely nothing to do with me. Yet these people could go for months smearing me. Why? Because I criticized the favouritism they enjoyed from the Lindens; because I criticized some of the corrupt practices of Lindens and these special residents, and because I was particularly vocal in complaining that when the Lindens fed their favourite gaming journalists, their special friends and fanboyz and fangirlz as the people to be interviewed by RL media, that those "Feted Inner Core" were not representative of SL. Because they were not. Most of them are gone from the scene now; Cristiano and his friends at SLUniverse, which used to rule the forums and inworld commerce, rarely log in.
Why did I do this? Because I wanted Second Life to be a world I could live in, a world with a civil society.
I once had a colleague in RL who was born in another country with an oppressive regime, then his family fled to Canada, then he came to work in the US for an organization devoted to combating torture and pushing for tolerance of Muslims and curbing police surveillance and so on. He put up with incredible hardships and abuses and attacks in the press. Why did he do this? Why didn't he "go back to his own country"? Or go back to Canada, which is in some ways more tolerant? Because he wanted America to be a world he could live in. That's all there is to it. He wanted this place, for which he had such high hopes, and such great dreams, to be the place he could actually live in. And God bless him.
So when this happened, I attempted to appeal this unfair action against me using the Support Portal, which was ostensibly a place where you could protest world bans, but wasn't the place for forum bans - but I didn't understand that. When Robin Linden quizzed me about all this, she was puzzled why I didn't AR these people who maligned me? Instead, what I did was come back on an alt and try to publish the truth -- and nothing infuriates the board divas and the mods than coming back as an alt and posting again. And the answer is: because I'm not a police informant, a donoshchik, a denunciator, I don't play by those rules. Only for really severe transgressions, like the time Ulrika Zugzwang, the Queen of the Socialist Sims, who put images of my business logo with the raven's head exploding in a bloody mess, did I press that AR button. But that's not the climate we're in on the forums, then or now.
"We're All on the Same Page"
I can't help wondering if the current forums ban I have now was preceded by the same kind of Linden-resident interaction in secret or even outside of SL channels on an IRC or Discord somewhere, and that history is repeating itself.
In a nutshell, the issue of the old forums, which I should really start saving as the Lindens -- especially the Lindens today -- could delete them at any time -- was that I persisted in objecting to the impunity some violators enjoyed on the forums if the Lindens valued their scripting or building or expenditures on islands, and the favouritism showed to some of them which I felt was corrupt or at least made an uneven playing field in the world. At one point I objected to a deal the Lindens made with Snapzilla, a photo service run by Cristiano Midnight, involving the posting of pictures on to the Lindens web site to show off the creativity of residents, and the archiving of them by Snapzilla. Needless to say, this was a no-bid kind of largesse gifted to a loyal fanboy and large land buyer, and had little transparency involved.
I complained that there was nothing to stop Cristiano from harvesting IP addresses but his say-so that he didn't, and in the hostile climate where his good friend Nolan Nash was able to research various sources and put together various tattle-tale reports inworld and out my real gender and RL identity on the forums, that we could not be sure that this harvesting would not be used to block people or harm them in various ways, in SL and RL. A legitimate, valid, and necessary concern, expressed appropriately.
I was absolutely right to do that then, and time has only proven how right I was, as companies themselves now pretend not to exploit your personal data, and people fight to protect their personal data from companies.
But at the time, I was viewed as first, an ignoramus who mixed up technical terms and "didn't understand" the Internet. At one point I said "IPS" instead of "IP addresses" or "ISPs" as in "Internet Service Providers", and then was endlessly ridiculed and harangued -- like I am about "viewer" or "browser" today. The point was, Cristiano did indeed obtain an identifiable marker from the use of his service -- that is indisputable and it doesn't matter whether that string of numbers is called "cream cheese" or "an IP address". The howling banshees tried to silence my lawful and needed dissent which was actually on point by shaming me on some mix-up of a technical term. Worse, they felt I was "publishing lies" about Cristiano. They went ballistic about this because they had their turf and their "good name" to protect, and the real issues be damned.
The fact is, we had absolutely no proof that Cristiano's claim that he "discarded" those addresses was true. I "discard" the addresses of people posting on my blog, too. Who'd ever have the time to look them up? But they are kept by the blogging service Typepad because you may want to look up whether multiple people with different names who harass you are in fact all from one source -- and block that IP. Absolutely nothing would stop Cristiano from either blocking or making use of this information so archived, given the propensity of his friends and his group for harassing people like me. Nolan Nash was able to put my RL location, identity, gender, etc. up on the forums and have it sit there for a prolong period with no action by Lindens -- despite being in violation of the TOS -- because these tech overlords and their fanboyz thought it was a great effective way to silence critics -- bully them with exposure and threaten them with real-life repercussions. Again, if Cristiano in fact "discarded" the IP addresses, that's great, but at the time, there were even some techies that conceded I had a point.
Every bit of this behaviour was despicable, and then it is practiced on them, these nerds understand it. But at that time, they wanted to deploy it as a weapon on me. The Lindens had no business contracting with a third party that couldn't guarantee user data protection. Period. Even though the notions and safeguards for this may have been more primitive in 2005 than they are 16 years later, they certainly were indeed understood. The Alphaville Herald routinely blocked people or stalked them using those addresses -- they did this to me. We all know these truths, but at the time, I was supposedly the problem. Note: the Lindens retired this Snapzilla program fairly quickly. First, it quickly became a service that people used to post pornography to the web site or just ads for their land sales. And the Lindens, unlike their fanbase, did grasp that contracting with third parties in this way did have problems -- and they stopped it. They didn't at first apply rigorous criteria to third-party viewers later, which were EVEN MORE abusive, and that involved a long fight on the part of me and others, but ultimately, they did develop rules and criteria and constraints on TPVs which has made them tolerable and not abusive today. People forget this history; they forget what went into it; they try to portray people raising these concerns as ignorant or having an "agenda" (projection, much?) or whatever, but the record shows it.
The IRC channel chat is illustrative of other points that only become magnified with time -- just how intolerant, insulant, cruel and stupid the Lindens' fan base was. Just how HORRID and VICIOUS and INTOLERENT and AUTHORITARIAN the basic hacker culture was -- and is -- of anyone who dissents from their sacred beliefs and practices.
Among them was Adam Zaius, real name Adam Frisby, who today is the founder of Sinespace. Do you think I would ever go into that world led by a person like that to accomplish anything major or serious? If 16 years passed, that's great, maybe this abusive hipster coder urging the banning of another user because they cared about private and data protection, accepted topics today and simply dissented from his insular little hacker's cell was able to mature in that time. But he can never be trusted. The culture of these people is despicable and authoritarian, and only exposure, pushback and fighting for your rights can roll it back.
Again, this gaggle of unethical hackers can scream about me "libeling" one of their own for saying he harvested IP data -- but he did possess it. They can think he didn't do evil with it -- but given how he and his friends presided over a forums lynching of me based on wrong RL information and involving explosure of my RL information -- I had every right to object and I would do it again in a heartbeat. Just look at the characters in that chat -- the odious little totalitarian Enabran Templar, maker of robots. Only one person mildly objects. Most of these people still have accounts in SL, but are no longer active. Presumably they all have real life businesses to run today. But when they were boys in "Lord of the Flies," this is how they were, and I will never forget it. And what's important to understand: the four different people who leaked this, who were lurking in the channel and not talking, knew it was wrong, and knew it had to be publicized. Lindens should not plot with their little fanboyz to ban a resident they don't like from SL.
The person who got me banned from the forums, the moderator at the time, was Pathfinder Linden, someone I felt who had dubious credentials and, as I discovered when meeting him in RL, grandiose notions of himself and the platform. He conspired in the IRC channel, as noted; he apologized (likely at the prompting of management); he was then reassigned and persisted for a time as the Linden to deal with educators, as he came from that background (although from what I gather, he never had a higher degree, and basically leveraged his position as the IT guy in a college to start an email newsletter, an exoticism at the time, for brain patients, and obtained glory). That's fine -- if only he understood its limitations. He didn't I could go on at length about the astounding lack of fairness and just plain lack of intelligence this figure had -- trying to squelch a virtual architects' society by displacing it with RL architects -- who didn't care about SL anyway; refusing to accept ARs when Anshe Chung's land was griefed -- I even showed him this in world and he dismissed it as her problem because she left "build" on for people to test their houses. But he's gone now.
The climate of that ban, and that bad behaviour by that particular Linden and others, was one in which there was still a group of outside people watching all this, who themselves were not fans of mine, as they were generally of the leftist/socialist/technocommunist type, and I'm more of a classic liberal, but who had a basic value for free speech and tolerance. One of them who had a famous blog at the time made a "Free Prok" t-shirt. Some were in real universities or were real-world journalists in ways these Lindens were not, and they protested -- publicly and privately. When a cabal of Lindens and FIC tried to get me banned even from the SL Community Conference, none other than Robert Scoble himself wrote an op-ed piece in a real-life newspaper saying this was wrong. So when they felt the pressure of their peers, these Lindens relented. Or rather, better Lindens prevailed, as there were always some sensible ones higher up.
Cosmic Engineers
Today, that particular cohort of people are gone, for all kinds of reasons. Some died in RL. Some were driven away when the educators' discount was lost (which is now restored). Some grew tired of all the limitations of SL and went to open sims or other games or worlds or even just to Twitter. I've spoken in the past of the importance of having a worthy enemy. So someone who is a Transhumanist or Cosmic Engineer or technocommunist or open source cultist like Oz Linden is someone who is intelligent, educated, able to debate. You may disagree vehemently with them and they really fail to understand you or you them. But there's a certain climate you are in, not of tolerance, but at least of some vague understanding of the respectful rules of debate. This is why someone like Oz Linden could send me a friendship card, although I strenuously denounced him and his decisions, which I felt were wrong, draconian, undemocratic and so on. He might uphold my JIRA ban, as that was his domain. But I think if he saw the posts for which I was banned now, he would say "This is bullshit."
The old forums and then the not-so-old forums had various people in the open source cults and the geek world, and some of their hangers-on in the graphic arts creators' world, who, again, were not like-minded, but at least they were more or less intelligent. Some of them were limited in their interests and their experience, but they weren't beyond persuasion.
Forums Today
Today, what you have on the forums is a peculiar awfulness. On the one hand, you see a few of those old forums dwellers who have been lifelong enemies who will always snipe at you, like Garnet Psaltery. You see some of these sour lifers like Alwin Alcott that endlessly lob negative and nasty repartees particularly against newbies and keep them away, and then you see people who just are not very bright; who are not educated, who are incapable of conceptual thought, and who have -- worse -- adopted the literalist 0/1 thinking of their geek predecessors, yet without being geeks in the same brilliant way - the jobs they do now are much more wrote and more like garbage men or repairmen than engineers. No need to name names, just open up the forums and look, and if you have any intelligence at all, you'll grasp it.
It's utterly fascinating to read the list of jobs in RL in the thread about this topic which I resurrected as it is very telling. More than half are computer programmers, coders, computer specialists, network administrators, engineers, etc. etc., the core old demographic of SL; and then some people who are graphic artists or digital artists or something in that realm; and then a lot of service people. Maybe more of them, actually -- I need to count them. Truckers, secretaries, health care workers, medical transcriptionists, caregivers, and so on. It had always been my hope that when more of those people came to SL, it would get better, more normal. And in some ways it has. But on the forums, what you realize is that the people in the non-computer categories have thinking that is either uneducated in the humanities at all, or has adopted the literalist 0/1 thinking of the geeks. That's depressing. When I see the lists of professions, I see almost none that say "professor" or "teacher" -- yes, there are a few. There is none that says "writer" or "non-profit administrator" or "journalist" or "musician" or anything that is in the humanities. The liberal arts. I'm the only one of my kind, when I put "translator, news writer".
Anti-Lootbox Legislation
So you get a situation where someone posts an emphatic and shrill and repetitive thread that we all need to fear the ban hammer coming down about gatchas. This person feigns to be "in the know" and not so much warning us of the losses we are about to face, so much as gloating how supposedly we are all going to die and they, savvy insiders that they are, will live to greater glory. It develops that this person isn't an American, is very young, and doesn't understand a lot of things. So he'll paste literal search strings from articles he's found online, and in vain you struggle to explain to him: this is a bill, not a law; this is not legislation, and came from a Congress in 2019; it went to committee without a vote which means in our terms it is dead. That you can find articles about it from lawyers in 2020 merely means that such people earn their bread and butter from scarifying clients to thinking they need to lawyer up to protect assets or something.
None of this resonates due to his excessive literalism -- and the problem here isn't English as a second language at all. So then I go further, trying to explain that the sponsor of the bill -- Josh Hawley -- yes, THAT Josh Hawley! -- is politically dogmeat now, in a congress dominated by Democrats. He might even be indicted for the Insurrection! His co-sponsor, Ed Markey, is busy, well, with other things. Like the global pandemic! Like jobs and health care. The chances of him returning to this bill, which was narrowly defined about protecting children from being victimized by lootbox gimmicks in games, not stopping gatchas in the over-18 world of Second Life, are pretty slim. Yet even after laying all this information out, from the understanding I have of the American system having personally worked it on other topics, it's never enough. Some forums dweller will be found to say, in typical binary 0/1 faction (Silicon Valley has trained all users to think like machines now, not just the coders), that the bill could be raised again in another congress, why even in this one, simply technically, because it can. That is is not likely isn't enough; this is 99/1 thinking, at its worst.
There's absolutely no sense of reality in people like this. Their game *is* the forums and the argument is for argument's sake -- plus, they're not very intelligent. When you argue for an hour with somebody on gaming legislation and then finally look at their profile, and see their main activity in SL is making pretty pictures for Flickr of themselves giving men blow-jobs, well, you calibrate accordingly. That is, making pretty pictures of yourself giving blowjobs is an honourable and necessary activity. I'm all for people doing that in SL to their heart's content, and they can rent my rentals if they like. THAT is not the problem. People are free to do what they want, within the TOS, and if photography and clothes and sex are their thing, great, everyone needs a hobby and a second life.
But then don't pretend to be an expert on the US legislature, you know? You might actually be a Congress person who is on an SL alt; you may be a lobbyist paid by Google; you could be a brain surgeon, and we wouldn't know. But chances are, you are not. You know? Because you are unable to reason or think conceptually. It always takes longer to refute lies and misconceptions and stupidities than it does to utter them; those of us who attempt these activities are at a disadvantage. I don't even pretend to be any sort of legislative expert, but since I'm two or three times the age of the people on the forums, and simply have life experience and they don't, I have an informed opinion. I'm able to Google and find not just search-strings, but delve further and find the legislative monitoring sites -- which differ in quality -- until there is one that explains: this bill is dead. Dead, I tell you. So stop.
When I ask the OP if he has a RL business, he says he does; when I ask how many employees, he can't tell me. Well if his RL business, like some I have had, has one person in it, because I'm self-employed, that is no shame. But it doesn't make me an authority on running a business. Actually running organizations with 15 or 20 employees does. Working in giant corporations and watching their processes does. I've done those things. Not everyone has, and that's fine. But on the forums, anonymity and stupidity and binary thinking combine in the most deadly way -- the banality of evil, if you will, simply because those people then prevail (they have the time to make up silly posts and up their post counts, their reputations, and their "queen for a day" stats).
The Lindens have tried to tame the forums by dividing it into so many sub-interests and sub-categories, that they can drive people into them and not clash with each other in "General". That "General" is fatuous, off-topic, stupid, abusive to newbies need not concern them, because the forums are not the way they introduce people to the product. They're just forums, hidden behind a log-in. If they nuked them tomorrow, only a tiny percentage of people would miss them.
Jeska, when she was a young woman, and was the moderator (now she's married with kids and a job and far from all this) used to say, "Take it in world. Go and have a debate in world". Her assumption was that if people could "see each other face to face" they wouldn't be as abusive. That assumption was ok, as far as it goes. People's ability to read and comprehend room chat inworld goes line by line, and not paragraph by paragraph as it does on the web, and perhaps that's really the difference. Maybe I will revive these sort of discussion groups again, and it will be interesting to see if the Lindens allow them to be griefed again.
"Just Wait Til the World Grows"
My profile has as its reputation: "Excellent". That's because many people give me a love pat for saying something useful or intelligent. There's literally like two making that horrified puzzled face, and one of them is Oz Linden. The people who endlessly neg-rate my posts are people whose RP is not just furry, but being the furry's rubber toy, just to cite one very clear example. That is, the issue isn't being a furry as such, or even a bondage latex obsessive. I personally repudiate BDSM as an ideology for many reasons. Yet there are BDSM practitioners with whom you can have an intelligent conversation, and some have been my long-time conservational partners in SL. Why? Because they do not impose their lifestyle on me. Because they are able to go OOC. Because they are intelligent. And then there are people within that lifestyle/ideology who are as dense as toothaches and as persistent, and behave not as if they are the rubber squeaky toy, but you are -- because all subs are doms, etc. To which I can only say: ugh. Go away.
Cocoanut used to say on the forums, faced with these sectarian creeps living out the Benevolent Dictator FOSS dream, "Just wait til the world grows." I thought this was so well said! "Just wait until more normal people come into this world." This will displace the extremists, the authoritarian leftists and libertarian cranks, tje BDSM queens reining over the forums -- it will normalize it and actually make it more free! Because that's how we understood it. We are older people, from middle America if you will, not on the extremes of either coast, and we found these shrill and intolerant software cultists of the earlier days of SL to be if not ridiculous, destructive. The other day I looked up something on Google and ran across old posts of some insular crazy SL geeks ranting that I am to blame for the Lindens not freeing up TeleportAgent. I find this sort of thing bizarre. Um, what? I had influence over any Lindens? What are you smoking?!
Oh, you mean I didn't think there should be so many devices teleporting people home, like "dying" in a war game, without notification, for one? I felt that "eject" rather than "teleport home" was more reasonable. And I thought if they deprecated bounce scripts that would improve the world -- boating was impossible, not to mention flying due to people's wild security orbs. All of these were reasonable points. These geeks -- who blame me for ruining the world -- claim the Lindens "snuck back" TeleportAgent into Experience, and made people get keys, and sign forms, and also have notification drop-down screens....and that's all my fault. If I'm "too early" in protesting something or suggesting it, and Lindens later adopt it, that's not me "throwing" the Lindens. It's more pragmatic and intelligent Lindens prevailing, citing what is good for business and the world in generally, over more extreme software cultists. And...why not? Why should people be subjected to the whims of BDSM Capture Roleplay freaks as they merely walk along the King's Highway? There should be limits. Again, let us quote the wise Simon Linden: "Anything that does not have a limit is a vector of griefing." Ardy can ask til the cows come home, "What are the limits?" But the limits are in the kind of basic rights and due process that systems have had since time immemorial, and there is no reason not to port these online.
That's what we meant by "Just wait til the world grows" -- but in fact, it may have come too late. The "engineers of human souls" already completed their handiwork on the Internet at large...
Due Process
"Due process" or "procedural codes" mean things like "the right to face your accusers" and "the right to be informed of the charges against you". So let's come to these topics. Such values don't obtain in a forums situation; wouldn't it be a different world if the people who accused you, as in real life, had to give their names, at least their avatar names? Then part of your defense could be mounted instantly -- why, that person is doing that for X Y Z motives, not as an actual victim. The Lindens treat each AR as if we are in a #MeToo scenario where victims of rape must be masked and protected, which is of course a worthy aim understood abstractly. But on the forums, you're talking about people who don't like something you said even though it wasn't a bannable offense, or who perhaps are business competitors, or ideological competitors in some fashion. It's rare they are actual victims of anything but hurt feelings -- and often not even those; usually what they are, are police informers, people trying to strengthen a power system that they enjoy impunity and privilege under by seeking to get others dismissed.
Sometimes I've found that people on the forums are fighting to the death for some tawdry little point because they financially benefited -- like certain impossible warriors on behalf of traffic gimmicks and traffic boosting. Sometimes they just like to demean others, it's a little hobby for them. I don't come to the forums for whole swathes of time, then concentrate on it for a time and write long posts -- why? Because I'm hoping to a) find like-minded people even in that morass and b) probe to find out why things are as bad as they are, inworld. Why is the map broken? Why isn't search fixed? What are the priorities of the new owners? Who's on top?
Certain people on the forums with whom I have interested exchanges are not my friends, are not going to IM me inworld, and are either on other time zones or too busy or whatever. So the forums is that place to interact with those people. Is this forums worth it for just those half dozen or so people? Sure, why not? I literally go to crowded merchant events and strangers tell me they like what I said on the forums. There are more of those people than those who reign on the forums now -- and AR me speciously.
The forums are used by less than 2% of the population, and of those who read it, probably only 5% of that number post. It's a tiny, tiny pool. The overwhelming majority of my tenants don't watch the forums and don't read them, because a lot of it is in English, even with some sparsely populated non-English language forums, and they can't follow it. A few oldbies remember the days when the Lindens tied forums offenses to inworld property, and threatened to strip you of your land and inventory and expel you for speech offenses. It's not clear if they still do that or have that as one of their rules, explicit or hidden. I would think that if you reach the point of such arbitrary rule on the forums that you could lose your land, it's not a world you would want to be in, anyway. So it's not a form of "re-education" that would work on me. I waited some time before the abusive Lindens got gone, and other normal ones came on who simply quietly unbanned me. When one tried to ban me again over nothing, it was quietly undone.
So where are we at now.
What are the Lindens' Priorities?
I've now listened to a number of Linden office hours or interviews or read around here and there, and I have come to the conclusions that aren't exactly the company line, that "Life has become better, life has become happier!"
Basically, I see the current Lindens making their priorities a) their own internal affairs -- new owners, moving to AWS, hiring staff, coding and fixing and deploying the software; b) Bellisseria and the new premium accounts living in Linden-Assisted Living; c) the islands, which make up the bulk of their product and sales; d) various artists, dancers, merchants, club owners etc. who pass the test to be their web page "destinations" or "features" which are mainly chosen from their help in goal no. b, and to some extent, a; e) educators f) special projects like NFL or "Adult Swim".
So, I'm the owner of several Bellisseria houses; I own one island and one homestead; and I've even been in a merchant's event that was featured on Destinations lately (Mieville). So that's all fine, I fit in some of those boxes.
But that's not my center of gravity.
My center of gravity is the Mainland, or the Legacy Mainland, if you will, the non-Bellisseria Mainland (which we're told is not Mainland anyway, although as Chrome Starlight very aptly put it, if you can fly to a contiguous area from Ahern, the first welcome area, it's Mainland).
I like the Mainland because that's where my rentals are; my various projects like the SL Public Land Preserve; my workshop to tinker and make little things with mesh models and prims, that are amateurish, but keep me happy and sometimes sell or are taken as free gifts; and my quests. Such friends as I have left (many have left SL) tend to be on the Mainland as well, doing various projects, or just living their second lives. But why are my rentals and projects and store and travels there in the first place?
Because it's free.
Relatively freer.
In Mainland, I have a) cheaper land b) serendipity and people traveling and stumbling on locations with whom I sometimes chat; c) like-minded people who are doing the same -- pursing their own projects of land business, or community organizing, or art and science, etc. Mainland is for people who can't or won't spend hundreds of real dollars on islands. It's for people who can spend -- $5 or $25. Mainland is for people who want to build themselves, or buy others' buildings but experiment with the arrangements. Mainland is for makers and DIY in ways that of course LHs aren't but islands too -- most people's experience of islands is as a tenant in a square of sandy flat sim with a no-show landlord who might or might not keep sustaining that flat pancake under you. The wealthy latifundistas of SL have the islands and their tenants; the powerful creators and merchants have islands and their MP stores for the most part; the masses have the Linden Homes. And then there's...everyone else. Or that small percentage of who remain now. Not the rich or poor. Not even the middle class. Just -- the Mainlanders.
So this old and free Mainland does not fit into anything -- except Philip's original vision. There was a time when NONE of these other things listed above existed and ONLY the Mainland existed (17 years ago); even 10 years ago, there was enough of a balance among these "products" that it didn't feel as if you were squeezed. Look at all the old Linden blog posts and town hall transcripts -- they all relate that vision of that time: Mainland.
The Mainland -- in this understanding -- is not in that list of Linden priorities, although at one time, it was the only priority, odd as it is to think now.
The Squeeze
Now it's different. And now we are squeezed.
How?
By griefing, ad farms, blight, sim crossing problems, abandoned land, the vicissitudes of the auctions, overpriced waterfront, nasties on the forums, people with grandiose plans for the Mainland who don't live there, people who spam the Mainland with their vehicles, all kinds of threats and difficulties.
And so on.
If you disagree, great, there's hope.
But the Lindens, preoccupied as they are with those other products, cannot care about this list of woes. Where once Lindens ignored these problems, or let them fester, or took 4 years to fix something like ad farms, now they deny them. Now they say they are trivial problems. Now they say, go to Bellisseria. Buy an island. Go to one of our Assisted Activities. And shut up.
Denial.
And "shut up".
Onboarding Newbies
So...with this framework from the top management Lindens, Oz Linden is compelled to say -- but most people stay on their sims (islands, mainly) so they don't travel and don't need region crossings (which work good enough). Patch Linden is compelled to sound as if he imagines most people will herd into Linden Homes -- because that's the growing, monetarized green tip of SL. It wouldn't surprise me at all to find out that newbies don't go to any infohubs or welcome areas anymore, as they once did, but are streamed into the "gateway communities" only. New people's orientation is all about sending them into Linden Homes -- or perhaps one of the accepted island colonies of oldbies like Caledonia or whatever the interests are now that have cornered the new residents' market. I've been informed of how corrupt this is now, and the secret dealings within it -- but a) I have no time to investigate and verify this b) the sources won't publicize their claims. So it just festers as it is. The lockstep is supposed to be Linden Homes to homestead and private islands, and if there is a diversion over to the Mainland, it's "here's the sailing sims" and "here's a pod to sit on and go on an approved tour".
Anything else doesn't fit the five-year plan.
The reason why so many bewildered people show up in the Land forums asking very basic things about how to buy land, how to group land, how to rent out land -- is because absolutely nothing in the orientation or the advertising queues them up for this. I wonder how underdeveloped this was in the old orientation islands, and how I started my tutorials at Memory Bazaar in Ross to try to remedy this situation -- and I bet there is nothing about "how to buy land" in orientation today. They are led on the web page into a Linden Home -- that's the "norm" -- that's what's optimal. When they outgrow this, they buy an island. Along the way, tipsters tell them to use Firestorm, not the regular viewer. Tipsters tell them where they can at least live in a homestead, if not buying their own island. Tipsters don't say, "Buy a small Mainland plot and experiment, it's fun." The plan is clear, and it's not about freedom.
Oh, sure, there's all kinds of "be what you want" and "be creative" stuff in the advertising, but the actual path for this freedom and creativity do not lie through the place where in fact that is actually possible, consciously. Creative? Come and apply for Linden Endowment of the Arts. Try to get into Destinations. Or shut up.
I don't doubt that somewhere in this food chain there are "mentors" who steer anyone who asks about rentals away from the topic in general, because "the Mainland is ugly and griefed," or specifically from me, because I am "banned from the forums" and therefore "notorious" or I "invade groups with racist, pro-Trump diatribes advertising my business". This last, of course, isn't really me doing that, but imposters. Griefers who have found a very successful form of griefing. The fact that those "bots" with fake names related to my business name are gone from SL and I'm not is not something some group owner will follow up on and remember. That's the plan. I've never worried about this sort of vicious gossip because most people find their way around it.
"Everything for the Residents"
So, in this new dispensation, which is not oriented toward geeks or creatives, as past iterations of SL were, we get what we wish for. "Just wait til the world grows!"
And the new guy is compelled to say the new mantra -- it's "everything for the residents". Like Stalin would say "it's everything for the children". Even as he left many of those children orphans by arresting and jailing or executing their parents. It's like the Tibetan guy that I helped smuggle into the UN once to speak at a session on "development" where the Chinese representative was nattering on. "Who develops?" he asked.
Indeed. Which residents? How? We can see the categories of residents "for whom everything is done". We can see the obvious list of priorities for attention And old Mainland is not on the list.
It need not be.
As long as it is not squeezed. Sometimes tyrants can leave little patches of freedom and creativity alone, it doesn't threaten their overall project. But sometimes they can't bear for anybody to be off by a single note. Because they understand their tyranny is brittle, and that they entire edifice can be undermined by one Tchaikovsky. By one Shostakovich.
I dare say Bellisseria is not griefed. I think for one, there are more security orbs there, and more people present who expel those who seem like they "don't belong". There is also more Linden and Mole presence and care. There isn't Linden land as "safe land" next to residents' properties they struggle to keep griefers away from; the entire thing really is Linden land and more easily managed as a result. You see?
Benign Neglect?
Yeah, I totally get it that the virtual world of Second Life, filled with mainly whites and mainly Americans (although there are more foreigners and BIPOC than you imagine!) is hardly like "Soviet Russia" because it's voluntary. You are not required to be here. You can log off and find another pass time. Why I use these analogies is simply because Second Life and worlds like it are the prototypes for the virtual worlds and the Metaverse we will all be living in soon enough, and it's important to battle their worst features now, before they get set in stone. It's worth bothering.
If the attitude toward the Mainland was merely benign neglect, if Lindens even sort of guiltily said, oh, yeah, we'll get to that over things like fixing the map, or search/places (which I have come to see they will likely not fix now), you could say, oh, well, but I don't really need them. And it's true. I have gone entire years merely asking a Linden for abandoned land, merely asking a Linden to remove some impossible grief object from the sim, and never seeing them in world, never going to their office hours or events and never talking to them inworld, must less getting any reprimand from them on the forums.
You can devise this or that wish list, like "put the ad system back into the newbie streaming to benefit both newbies and business" or "you should do this with abandoned land: X, Y, Z" or "why don't you stop those damn pods and make them on-demand only" (every day I literally see dozens of unmanned pods, they never, ever have riders yet they keep streaming across sims where I own land -- because they can. They are like spam which no one can admit is spam). But if the Lindens do NOTHING on these issues I and a few others care about, well, you walk around the robots, you can still live your life.
Can this still be done? I think so. But I'm less sure than I was.
Patch Linden
So to come specifically to Patch Linden. This is an interesting talk at the educators' event because in some ways, he says more than he does for Saffia at Prim Perfect -- and I can see why. When the Lindens deal with an educator -- someone with an online university, they show more respect. They are dealing more with a peer. They aren't as condescending as they are to residents who are mainly about shopping and socializing and living in their dollhouses. This comes across in little ways -- when talking to inworld residents, notice how many jokes are told, how many tantalizing tidbits of some new feature or product are waved before the eyes of presumably eager fanboyz -- versus how much more matter-of-fact the explanations are when tasked by someone "more real" tied to "education". So we get the notion that "some day" there might be "mega sims" or "some product between homestead and island" -- because that's the demand from educators. Educators would love it if Linden sold them software that they then utterly controlled on their own computers without any "world" attached. "Grumpy will strangle me for saying that," says Patch, when opining on potential products "in 24 months". Yet it is said, and in a different tone than with the inworld residents who exist only in the virtual world, even if they have a lot of events to raise money for cancer -- which really kills them and they die.
I noticed that quite often, with Patch, unlike other Lindens I've heard speak (and my practice, while long, is limited -- others have more robust exposure and can differ if they like) often says "I", quite emphatically. "There's no 'I' in 'Team,'" I think to myself -- but this is the subject of another post. The Lindens are a collective, as we know, and preach collectivism, and while some Lindens are the bosses and others are the help, still, there's always been a feeling of "collective" about them. Yet this Linden often says "I am going to do this or that," often when speaking about some whimsical or arbitrary or authoritarian action that he will be taking. That is, he leaves it unmistakably clear that he has the power to thoroughly change your Second Life -- and you don't have that power. So you get things like, "I have kept the Linden Realms and haven't killed them" -- he'll say magnanimously. But he's cut their pay-out in half due to abuse. It's not "We discussed this and we regrettably came to a conclusion..." Listen to the video and you'll see what I mean. Make a list of every sentence that begins with "I" and ask yourself: have you ever heard a Linden talk like this? Did Philip even talk like this?
So that's worrisome.
Again, it's ok if a Linden begins talking like this to get the job done -- read Astral Codex Ten this week on Erdogan if you want to understand this phenomenon better -- but then the question is: does this regime mean I'm stepped on? Or just ignored. It's important to understand the difference.
Farewell, Oz
And I come again to Oz's farewell party. This was truly an extraordinary event. This is Lindens not just eating their dogfood; this is Lindens living their lives as a company and as private human beings with beloved co-workers in this very virtual world where we, too, live and move and have our being. At first I thought to myself, oh, but the real party will be in their office on Battery St. Then I'd think, oh, but it's the pandemic. Then I'd think again, but Oz has always been in Boston, and this other one has always been in X or Y, they are all over. This really is a virtual office and the real people are saying goodbye in that place, because there isn't another one! To be sure, there was a private party inworld earlier for the cognoscenti, but even there, Strawberry dutifully tweeted a public invitation to this. To be sure, you would have had to be glued to SL Twitter to do so, and few are. I personally wouldn't have come to such a gathering as I wouldn't be welcome. The point is, the real farewell party for the real Oz was held in the virtual world, and that's extraordinary, and I treasure it.
So I noticed that Patch did not speak at this party. He had no farewell words; no good wishes; no fond memories. No brushing back tears and saying "Oz's voice will be in my head" like Alexa or Strawberry. No even the sort of gruff goodbye from geeky back office kids not good at speaking publicly. Nothing. Just circling around and around the floor -- and silence. One old SL denizen I mentioned this to said, oh, nonsense, he was probably just too choked up to speak. I don't think so. In this video with the educators, Patch says Oz has left a chasm (notice he answers this guy's question but wouldn't answer the same question when I asked it at PrimPerfect). Somehow, it strikes me as not terribly sincere, but I'm not there, I don't know the dynamics, and guess what, it doesn't matter.
The ONLY reason you want there to be another powerful figure like Oz in a "triumvirate" is to act as a curb on any one leg of that triumvirate seeking and obtaining too much power and crushing any freedoms that do not need to be crushed, even within an admittedly authoritarian project of cultural conformity.
So far, I don't see the figure doing that as Gruhmpity. I'm not sure that having a troika is the way to run a company. I mean, in Soviet Russia, troikas were kangaroo courts that executed people, not efficient management machines for good. And it might be that Patch has to take charge and seize at least power over "inworld" to get things done. That I can understand. I may not think it is so liberal or democratic, but then few companies are liberal or democratic.
If Patch seizes the lead reins in order to do the list I mentioned above -- grow premiums, build more little houses on the hillside, increase educators, stop island attrition, make some new, more affordable and attractive island product, I could only endorse it. He would be the kind of politician like, say, Andrew Cuomo whom I wouldn't necessarily like, or whose policies on say, abortion, I oppose, but I would vote for him as he would represent the public good. If he's like an earlier Erdogan, not jailing all the journalists and lawyers who object, then you'd support him.
But if pursing that power and those aims involves destroying the old Mainland concept of freedom -- freedom first and foremost from Lindens, and secondly, from each other -- and it need not do so, in my view -- I could only strenuously oppose it.
What I also realize is that our situation on Mainland is something like gays in Russia. Putin will never like gays, being a street thug and under-educated bantam-weight brawler who thinks he proves his manhood by persecuting people who are "different". He will pass draconian laws meant to curb their organizations, and claim that any kind of vocalization or publication from this community will seem like "educating youth" which is PROHIBITED. But he will tacitly tolerate some of the top gays of Russia, people who are in entertainment or the arts or business, or ordinary people who quietly go about their lives even with long-time partners, and they will escape prosecution. He will ignore much of what goes on -- gay dating services, gay clubs, gay life in various forms -- except he will allow his nationalist right-wing supporters to beat the crap out of gays, sometimes by luring them through online ads. So there will be this "free space" -- except sometimes, not so much. It's not the rule of law.
Of course, you can't compare the real situation of real people getting really beaten with a bunch of avatars in a virtual world which is largely entertainment. The point is not to be literal here but to reason by analogy, to think conceptually, which I realize you on the forums don't do. Pick another analogy if you like that is better suited. Describe yourself as rare birds in an environment that can have rare birds, but only so many.
Who Stands for the Mainland?
No Linden -- this isn't about Patch, really -- can emphatically say he stands for the Mainland, as Philip once stood for the idea of openness, people traveling on contiguous roads, serendipity, surprise, freedom, experimentation, cooperation -- because that's not the product. The Lindens are not selling civil society. They are selling sims -- er regions, er Linden Homes and islands. If their original beta product didn't work out, let it die, like all things in Silicon Valley die? And actually, the Lindens go on selling land on the auctions -- Mainland -- and abandoned land -- Mainland -- and even doing a little fixing here and there -- and promise to fix the map -- which is mainly for Mainland. So, no sky falling, Prokofy!
But part of the way you enforce authoritarianism is by forcing language, forcing terminology. The demand that people "must" say "viewer" and not "browser"; that they "must" say "region" and not "sim" -- this is Newspeak. This is done for a reason. Real adaption is achieved by people articulating the norm and people gradually accept it if it seems tolerable and good for them. If it has to be achieved by force and shaming and making little pictures with 13 arrows -- you admit that you are weak in the face of freedom that people will always exhibit, sometimes unknowingly.
So -- maybe not cause for alarm. But...Even so, it's a good time just to write down impressions and keep a record.
SL History
Patch was someone who joined SL in 2004 and had a successful men's clothing store. We're not told who he was, he doesn't give out his avatar name at the time. I find that shows lack of accountability, as I think every person who becomes a Linden should tell you their resident name so that you understand what their reputation is, and what their friendship/commerce circles are that might have some special favouritism. With Strawberry, we know she was Strawberry Singh, a blogger, an appreciator of fine arts, a story teller. Everyone knew who Torley Linden was -- Torley something, I forget now, but it was known. Apparently Oz had an avatar with the name Oz who kept SL history that at least some of the geeks knew. And so on. Not all of them are transparent like that, and those that aren't may invoke some notion of "privacy" or "protection" from marauding interest groups. But I think it should be mandatory so that we can see what factions might have influence on them, or visa versa.
I've ruled out that he was Chip Midnight, for the simple reason that Chip, who was part of the old FIC often sniping at me on the forums, puts his RL name and location on his profile now, so that rules him out. I frankly can't remember any other mens' wear creators from 2004. In 2004, it was mainly female fashion and hair and dance animations that ruled. I had some of those designers as my rental customers. I myself rarely bought clothes and decorating my avatar has never been an interest or goal of mine. So I just don't know, don't remember, and trying to find it is too time-consuming and ultimately doesn't matter -- I think. Maybe someone knows. But most people don't understand why this is even important to know.
That Patch bore some animosity toward me from his days as a resident likely in the FIC circles was clear from the outset. You pick these things out. I never followed him at all, as he was behind the scenes at first. His biography shows you he came up through the ranks of resident, and liaison, and customer service helper and then gradually got into those more vaunted roles related to customer service management and "product". We are the product -- but not in ways like we are Facebook's product. The product is "a second life," but that is so entwined with our first-life sense of self, ownership, socializing, etc. that we inevitably come bound together with this product. Most people wanted Assisted Living. So they got it. Way more people wanted private islands, but cheaper ones, with more prims. So they got them. Etc. And everything is supposed to be for "the residents" but it's clear it means "some residents, who are our priorities". That's actually fine, as it is in any group or office or organization or religious institution or any human enterprise. That need not be any kind of problem. Unless they change from indifference and under-service to hostility.
In 2017-2018, there were a series of severe problems I had in SL -- a HUGE loss of inventory, really cunning and persistent griefing, etc. I would file abuse reports. They went nowhere. In the old days, in total desperation, if I couldn't get any answers on griefing, I would write a simple notecard to Michael Linden, who was in governance, or I would come to his office hour. There was a limit to what he could do, and his answers were curt, but it was something. Sometimes it stopped the griefing. Now he's gone, and if governance has office hours, I haven't heard of them, or they are merged with "Moncierge" which is mainly a talk shop.
So somewhere I heard, after asking around, that Patch was really in charge of "customer service," if you will, in the kind of role that Jack Linden or Robin Linden or Blue Linden or whatever had in the past, and so I should get to him. So I wrote to him directly with notecards. Here's the grand total of their record:
[2017/02/13 12:00] Second Life: Inventory item offered
[2017/02/13 12:00] Second Life: User not online - inventory has been saved.
[2017/02/13 12:00] Prokofy Neva: Terrible that LL got rid of Michael Linden.
[2017/02/13 12:00] Second Life: User not online - message will be stored and delivered later.
[2017/02/19 22:14] Second Life: Inventory item offered
[2017/02/19 22:14] Second Life: User not online - inventory has been saved.
[2017/04/24 14:50] Prokofy Neva: Dear Patch, please try to get attention to the right Lindens about this inventory loss bug, it's really a problem and affecting a number of people. I've lost 15,000 items. https://community.secondlife.com/forums/topic/405425-warning-dont-let-this-happen-to-you/
[2017/04/24 14:50] Second Life: User not online - message will be stored and delivered later.
[2017/06/19 15:05] Prokofy Neva: Bear please?
[2018/02/22 16:30] Prokofy Neva: Patch, are you sure you Lindens don't have the technical means to stop these Woodbury griefer alts constantly impersonating me and harassing literally thousands of people in my name causing me and my tenants endless annoyance? This has been AR'd a zillion times, the Lindens delete the alts very slowly, weeks go by -- why is this so hard? You can't wake up and see the latest Woodbury island? We're told its Winterfell. You can't follow these alts to their lairs and their mains? If a bot, you can't stop this misuse of bots? You can't hash ban or MAC ban or stop the proxy log ons even for a week to ferret this out? I'm just not believing that. The casualness with which LL allows this is almost conscious. http://3dblogger.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2018/02/no-im-not-a-russian-bot-and-i-dont-use-bots-or-spout-racist-antisemitic-nonsense-and-guess-what-its-.html
[2018/02/22 16:30] Second Life: User not online - message will be stored and delivered later.
[2018/02/26 19:21] Prokofy Neva: Dear Patch, does Governance fix roads now?! Jagix has closed a threat about Robin Loop claiming this, and also claiming the road was repaired - https://community.secondlife.com/forums/topic/418728-encroachment-on-robin-loop/ -- actually, it isn't. I filed a ticked to support about how it needs repair, not done yet that I can see.
[2018/02/26 19:21] Second Life: User not online - message will be stored and delivered later.
[2018/02/26 19:22] Prokofy Neva: http://3dblogger.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2018/02/a-linden-injustice-robin-loop-road.html
[2018/02/26 19:22] Second Life: User not online - message will be stored and delivered later.
[2018/07/03 17:23] Second Life: Inventory item 'SL PUBLIC LAND PRESERVE ANNUAL REPORT' offered
[2018/07/03 17:23] Patch Linden: User not online - inventory has been saved.
[2018/07/03 17:23] Prokofy Neva: Dear Patch, here's the annual report of the SL Public Land Preserve which you might find interesting.
[2018/07/03 17:23] Second Life: User not online - message will be stored and delivered later.
I did not get a single answer. None. Nada. Zip. Needless to say, I didn't get the bear LOL.
Notecards can get ignored by busy people. Sometimes Lindens can't or won't answer really big problems that they can't do anything about. But most Lindens I have found will say, "Sorry you had this experience, be sure to file a ticket and I will see if I can escalate it". Or at the very least, "Well, if you choose to have open groups, that's on you" -- a premise I heartily disagree with as I don't think software solutions can replace good governance and enforcement of governance, but let's leave that aside. But to ignore someone for two years, for every single one of their brief IMs to you? Really?
I rarely write to a Linden about any activity I'm doing. Once in awhile, I'll send them something -- like once in 3 years, oh, here's a quest that you might like as I hear you were interested in X. Sometimes I will send them a gift -- again, it's rare. Once a year? To a few Lindens? On Christmas? Or I'll say, "here's a thing, can I have your bear". Like one-line conversations. And I will get back "Oh, that's interesting, I'll check it out." Or, "Oh, that's lovely, I'm touched". One line, polite, they're never going to be my friends, but at least -- the minimum milk of human kindness.
With Patch, not a single thing got an answer. Complaints can be ignored by Lindens -- sure. A link to my blog -- even more so. But questions? Simply an annual report about some positive activity?
So then I understood, "Ah-hah, this is some FIC member with a grudge, or if not that, someone who really doesn't like me and is happy to have my SL be miserable."
Notice these cards are dated 2017-2018. So when a thing like that happens, I put it aside and move on. It's been three-four years now, and I have done lots of different things, made new communities, retired old ones, made quests, started a store, etc. I've always said to every Head Elf and Island Crank and Vehicle Maker and Traffic Gimmicker that goes on and on about the Lindens blah blah blah -- that you don't need them. Do without. Find something else.
Sad Tinkerers
I had this one friend who used to have a big fair next to my infohub in Iris. He donated a lot of tier. We shared various stores and events. He had a Mainland improvement group. We did all kinds of things to help new users learn and stay -- but outside the formal system for them, usually asynchronous. He kept devising various builds and scripts and plans and wanting the Lindens to listen to him, approve them, and give him a lift. Feature him or promote him, I guess, as they did their small circle of little friends. I would say, don't look for that, as you won't get sales that way anyway. But he craved their approval. He got very dejected and even angry. I've come to see him as a Type. He's like the guy on the forums who keeps trying to get people to join him in some "business incubation" scheme. There is a certain type of would-be geek or wannabe tinkerer who isn't let into the magic realm of the Linden engineers -- for whatever reason, often socio-cultural. So he felt someone should listen to, and implement his scheme for newbie retention. And they never did. So he quit, and never came back, withdrawing his tier and selling his land. And the lesson here isn't that the Lindens should listen to him -- they shouldn't. They have their very subjective way of choosing their partners and what fits and whatever secret sauce floats their boat or whatever mixed metaphor you choose. They're a private company, and they get to do that. And if you don't fit, then move on.
But what they make is a public world. And there, we have a right to suggest, criticize, propose, oppose, because it's our world, too.
If you have some bright idea to retain newbies and masses of them come to you, the Lindens will find their way to your door. If you don't, they won't. Meanwhile, you can try it on a small scale, and what works, works.
Again, it's fine if they ignore you. You just don't want them to become hostile to you, especially using their alts to grief you -- something I have experienced repeatedly from them, although one senior Linden who left the Lab after some years of frenetic work and lack of appreciation from not only residents but other Lindens, said to me: "You are wise. Keep blogging. You say important things." That former Linden could be all wrong. Things change, wise people are forgotten or turn out to be irrelevant.
I fervently believe you don't need to have Lindens be your friend to make your game work, to make your SL work, to have fun, to do a business, etc. Yes, it can get very, very hard. I've literally had times when I couldn't log on at all, or log on, and can't do anything but the minimum, add someone to a group role, or remove prims from their lot. So I wait for the gray fog to clear, and come back -- in a week, in a few months. I have the same computer; or I have a new computer; or I have an even better graphics card, so, no, I don't think it's "packet loss," which is what Oz said when I came to his office hour like...once. LOL. No, I don't have packet loss, guys.
No Linden Cares about the Mainland -- and Freedom
So I'm happy to go along as I have been, yet I feel a certain desire to pull in or pull up or see if in fact our days are numbered. Because where once the very founding Linden, Philip Linden himself, had a value of the Mainland and its openness and freedom, today, I don't see that there is a single Linden who cares about it. And by caring, I don't mean when a pack of Moles take a pod trip through the Mainland when they are "slumming it" -- because they are witless enough to push those idiot pods even though no one ever uses them, and not even buy an animal or vehicle and really try to ride the roads as real people do. That gratuitous and fatuous plumping of the pods wasn't lost on me. Some Lindens used to have even their own parcels, where they put up houses, sometimes tinkered around, sometimes had office hours. If there is a Linden like that anymore, I don't see them -- the office hours are held on Linden sims now.
If there is also absent now a kind of "industry watch" on all this -- various "thought leaders" in Silicon Valley, educators, programmers, virtual world designers etc who would sample SL, or have a presence in it, or opine on it from now and then -- which we had up until about 2010 and then lost -- then again, you feel vulnerable, as there is no wider constituency.
To some extent, Blake Sea -- a Linden-feted project of yore with still impossibly high land values -- is "Mainland" and horse creators and vehicle makers and drivers and various car clubs and horse clubs such is a Mainland that the Lindens to some extent have to serve. And do serve. So the category of the "vulnerable" really is "the inland Mainlanders not on Blake Sea". If there is life on Mainland, from what I see flying around the 60 sims or some where I own land, it's in private homes and gardens, breedables, vehicles, various rental communities, often based around boating or some theme like "medieval" or "steampunk," although these tend to go on islands. If somebody like me has bought an abandoned pink mountain sim and put a Peruvian themed rentals on it, that's far and few between. I see a few sims from me someone bought that sort of pink abandoned sim and put an artist colony on it. Somebody else has some stores. I don't view it as a wasteland. I think it's salvageable. I think, "Leave us alone, at least, if you won't help."
But I don't doubt for a minute that if Patch could have his way, and had no restraints from any other Lindens or powerful residents' groups, he would push a button and make the Mainland go away. Especially the Inland Mainland that is not "Blake Sea" and "sailing to Bellisseria". Especially "Ravenglass Rentals" which is not-Bellisseria, not-private islands (it's cheap), not gateways (no staff), not educators. You would think, in a world with LGBTQIA, there would be tolerance for just one more letter. But there may not be?
Being ignored or neglected is tolerable. Feeling you are in somebody's sites to be eliminated is not. If the Lindens destroy all their own Linden Home sims, which still have some green dots on them, without any voice from those old folks, what is to stop them from destroying any other Mainland sim? They never had this fetish that old Linden Homes "weren't" Mainland before -- until the Bellisimo Belliseria. "First they came for the old Linden Home dwellers, and I said nothing, as I am not an old Linden Home dweller..."
