Most of the artists' galleries are empty now in Campbell Coast in the sky -- and the ground -- but mainly in the sky, where they were concentrated to be "less laggy".
Even before the Lindens devastated the economy with their August 3 announcement that gatcha machines would be illegal in SL as of 9/1/21, there were economic dislocations to see in the world, partly pandemic induced, partly induced by other reasons internal to the world which has actually seen a decline of the gatcha market in some ways in the last two years, even as more and more of them, at higher and higher prices, appeared, just like there are more and more and MORE weekend sales and events.
(Whenever you see A LOT of something, it can be a sign of stress and poverty. The famous example would be poor people with large families. Like we Catholic Irish would have 10 kids, like my grandmother's parents -- and as the 19th-century best-selling female author in America, Kathleen Norris, would explain, this was because some of them went to childhood diseases and died; some were given up to the priesthood or the nunnery, some became alcoholics or bank robbers; what as left? So few were left! You had to keep making more!)
So back in July, BJoyful, the owner of Campbell Coast, whose partner is rasterscan, known as Doc, sold the community to Winning Witte, a land dealer who had left SL for some years, then returned.
Thus ended a hopeful experiment on the Mainland many of us cheered and hoped would work, although hope triumphed over experience on the Mainland, as it always does, and in the end, a land baron got it.
Yes, I'm aware that BJoyful was forced to give this up due to RL illness and there's a back story here but let's focus more on the generics.
So this is the question to ask when you find a thread like this on the forums, to which I have returned after a 5-day ban, let me say with less enthusiasm than I used to have for the forums.
What happened? What will happen? And as answers to these questions don't come from discussing it on the forums, where the Lindens now delete content without even a disciplinary action, or notice to you, and of course with ready bans for me and wrist slaps for their friends. So I go and look, and I write about them and ask them myself.
And not because it's my business, but because the survival of one helps the survival of any, or all, and it matters.
SHORT FORM
o I totally get that Campbell Coast is now not a community art project but is a business project with an art theme, and I don't have a problem with that as such. I'm not a snob or a socialist. I buy hotel art.
o I will keep my land in CC because there are tenants on it and even if they leave, I would put my home on it. It's a nice area and unless they move in GTFO and black box clubs, I would tend to keep it.
o I don't want to do the things there and the group dynamics but nobody has asked me to so it's all good.
o I'm not buying from Owl but that is over a separate, unrelated manner. Even so, if someone wanted a recommendation of where they could rent an art gallery for cheap, I would send them there if my rentals are full or even if not. It's $150/50; I charge $150/200. But then they are selling ambience, reputation, etc. and I am not really.
o Mainland communities have to get their tier paid. They should not have to go and turn tricks. So it means some commercialization. They can try to do that tastefully. Events do not pay tier. Tips do not pay tier. Rent and content sales pay tier. If someone finds it unaesthetic, they can pay the tier for the aesthetic.
o If no artist I like or discover I like is there, I will go elsewhere; I'm not going to buy from Ineffable Mote (evola Courtois), a new Campbell tenant (!) because he is a serial liar and propagandist on the forums for the Moles/RR lobby (is he a Mole himself?), and maintains a weird grief -lot in Grote to harass me and my tenants, and has done there for some 5-6 ears. I used to just have the one notecard refuting all his crazy crap in Sikkima in a blue skeleton flamingo, and an occasional social media post -- now I have a full, long blog documenting the crazy and refuting it with date stamps and photos. Somehow, I feel "why are we not surprised" that evola has turned up in CC, but you know, it's a small pond.
I find it really crazy that some furry asshole would hold a grudge about anything for 6 years when he already moved to Bay City ages ago, but as I said: this is the work of an extremist lobby, a faction, and they will stop at nothing. ANYWAY.
So when someone whom I don't know says they are making a "museum of Campbell Coast" to "remember it like it was," I figured there was some breaking up of the community of some sort. Let me suggest that putting up a Museum of a community that supposedly changed hands and will "continue to thrive" doesn't exactly help sales. But ok.
Campbell Coast was an art colony near and dear to many of us. I had the first ever photography exhibition in my life there and did DJ sets. Many others were artists, performers, renters, and community members. I am eternally thankful to the original ownership for giving me that opportunity as it turned out to be the first of an increasing number of photography jobs in my real life.
While Campbell Coast still exists, a change in ownership has made it a different place and resulted in many people choosing to move on. Change is inevitable, of course, and people do move on. That's just life.
But I'd like to see that community spirit memorialized and, ideally, continued before the original community of people evaporates and becomes too difficult to find. So, I've managed to acquire an original piece of the Campbell Coast real estate. I'm preserving as much of it as I can in its original condition and using it to start a Campbell Coast Museum in honor of the original place. I've also arranged to acquire an original Campbell Coast building to house it in. And even the land description info is being preserved as close as possible to the original.
So this person has a 2048 with 700 prims of which half as been eaten up already by her Hisa house, and currently it has only two pictures, but I imagine it will grow and be an important way station on our SL journeys. PS My friend Therese of the Mainland Appreciation Society turned up to say she sold her land in Laserlight to this new Museum curator and has good hopes for it and is glad her former land isn't going to a chopping operation. Yet, anyway.
WINNING A LAND CHOPPER?
When Winning Witte bought Campbell, of course a bunch of us alte kakers in the Mainland sales and rentals business for years clucked and shook our heads and one said, "It'll be all chopped up, you watch." They don't like WW and thinks he has unscrupulous practices. I think all who wander are not lost and perhaps redemption is possible even for land barons but I look at it with a now jaundiced eye, after 17 years on the Mainland.
Well, sure, look at a screenshot of his land chopping enterprise in one area:
Could this be, oh, the sort of arrangement Desmond had where the rental boxes are on land in a different group so no one can return them (Firestorm often seems to enable that when it shouldn't in a group).
I'll say this: in one sim where WW seemed to be going the chop-chop route, if you look now, the parcels are all pulled together, one a rentals, one a sale/rentals ad. All proper. Maybe because I watch and blog about that sim LOL.
For example of what "chopped up" means, go to Chin Rey's old rentals in Coniston and behold.
"Oh, is it chopped up?" she asked me on the forums. She hadn't seen. I told her not to go and look. Like they tell you at the funeral parlour advising against an open casket, "Better to remember him the way he was."
I kept saying to the other alte kakers that I didn't think Witte would chop. I thought while he might chop elsewhere, on sims where I am such as Adscita, and hold back certain land and charge more for it so that people who might pay $9.8 for a nice pond lot may pay much more than that to make sure an ad board wasn't next to it, but that he might want to make a jewel in his crown with CC. (Or maybe Adscita. Or maybe this other sim where he bought land I had for sale, perhaps not noticing the Tiny Empires up in the sky on the next sim. Well, they're on the next sim, why worry!).
(PS WW is a late-comer to the mess in Adscita, dominated by the giant, ugly GTFO build. I came 2 years ago with one of my "pond reclamation" projects which has worked in Hector and Itame and not so well other places (Dicycla) because you could put your backs to the GTFO, which never did, so to speak. I had one long time tenant with tier in the group; she disappeared, as many did in March earlier this year, possibly succumbing to COVID. Or unemployment. Another one had a store there but complained of lag, although his store caused most of it. Now he is lagging the other end of the pond on another sim in another rentals company. Oh, well! Win some, lose some.
Yet another tenant came in, and then complained because her entire skybox was returned. I was mystified, thinking it was a sim glitch. I now understand why. She overprimmed, and when I set one of the parcels to sale, even with plenty of a buffer of prims in a strip of land by her lot, her build got returned as builds do when there is less prims available suddenly. She had talked about buying the land; I gave her compensation, she said would move back in, didn't, and that's all fine. But without ANY tenants, even little ones on 3 docks I created there, it was time to move on, so all the land is for sale now for $5/m.)
"JUST REMEMBER HIM THE WAY HE WAS"
But I think even if he doesn't chop it, and tries to preserve its carcass, the way Soho landlords preserve the carcass of what was once the Soho art scene in NYC 30 years ago, it won't be the same. That is the tourists and new tenants may never notice, and may believe they're living in a fabulous coastal artist community, and if the artists in the galleries are more commercialized, and not those "edgy" and "alternative" ones, who will notice?
I have no idea what the internal dynamics there are as I never got involved, and only chatted with BJoyful now and then who is a very nice person and had a very grand vision and the grit and determination to pursue it on the Mainland, which as we know, is a fool's errand, and it worked, sort of, but with illness, she couldn't do the 100 things you need to do all day every day to keep these things going and sold out to Winning, who had lived in the community 9 months before that so seemed trustworthy, like not just the latest land baron with a crass chop-up.
Winning Witte isn't my favourite, but then most land barons aren't. I'm not a land baron. I only sell land under duress, when it's time to downsize because of ruthless Linden policies, or because the view has gone south. I don't keep a trading tier; I have a group called Ravenglass Virtualty because grouped land gets a 10% tier bonus and I want to keep that on land I sell and not have the proceeds go to 500 tenants in a rentals group? Just to explain it to those who narrow their eyes in suspicion.
Land barons are a necessity in a free land market and people might not like their overpriced land, but they are more appreciative of them when they at least pay something when you are ready to ditch your land due to looming tier bills.
There aren't bots any more hardly. When I wanted to liquidate my land to "buy the view elsewhere" where it wasn't renting, or had too few clicks, Winning was the person in the middle of the night who came and got snow waterfront for 0.4/m and hilltop Corsica roadside for 0.3/m -- which is all its worth, sadly. I'd rather liquidate than abandon. Land barons play an important role in keeping land liquid, holding it to keep its value, etc. I appreciate all that. It's hard to do that and also be like Mr. Sirbu. What can I tell you. There are few --none -- like him, and now he's gone. In some ways, I can try to be like Mr. Sirbu, but I don't dance with my customers and I don't sell charm. I sell cheap rentals. I don't want to RP Concierge with you.
Apologies for crappy photos, but I can't stay for half an hour while textures rez. I can only say that having an entire sim? Half a sim? with just landscaping is a very big luxury. So it can't last. and rentals have to go there, in the sky at least.
THE EMPTY ART WORLD OF SL
So, a little back story. I didn't go to any of the events in CC, I didn't get them, they aren't my thing, I don't know what Glastonbury is, etc. etc. I'm a solo player. I hate going to scheduled things. It conflicts with RL and my job or family things. I can be in SL with the window tabbed down all day or all night or both, but don't expect me to wake up and come to a scheduled event. A new tenant who needs something? Sure. But they pay me at least some symbolic amount of cash.
In the last few months, for me, still in the pandemic, even with the vaccine (because of an immune disease, which meant its efficacy was unknown), going to CC was like going to RL Soho which I used to do years ago with a partner who is a well-known artist. He would rush through Soho with a weathered, professional eye, merely to see what the other artists were doing. They weren't competitors; they weren't even in his genre; still, he felt he had to follow "the scene". To see what sells, what is talked about, etc. I would be dragged along on these expeditions unable to keep up, not only with my shorter legs not able to walk as fast and cover as much difference, but because my inclination would be to stop and look more -- and this wasn't the program. The program was just to sort of take it in with one swift glance So years later, I would go to Soho on my own and look more -- but then these galleries have been closed completely in RL, and then I couldn't go into them anyway when they did open.
I really liked, therefore, to go to "Virtual Chelsea" or "Virtual Soho" or Campbell to have something of that same feeling of going to RL Soho or Chelsea although the real edgy scene now is somewhere else, out in Brooklyn or the Bronx, I guess.
And I would find I was the only person in CC or most of these other places. NO ONE ELSE would be there. NO ONE. Occasionally an actual artist would come into to replace or put up a painting. That was it. I think there is something of a thriving art scene in SL, but it has had its bad period, more on this later. And I think it's mainly artists going to each others' shows, which of course is exactly what the old Soho was, too, as I just outlined.
There were certain artists I liked, certain I didn't, for totally subjective or practical considerations -- all of this has to become hotel art in my rentals -- but I liked Owl Dragonash, for example. I have no idea what her story is; is she Scottish? I liked her photo of SL scenes with owls or foxes; I liked also Eulennest which I gather she was involved in.
OWL DRAGONASH, GLASTONBURY AND DA5ID WEATHERWAX
But without hesitation, I dialed her up during this gatchapocalypse hate-fest on the forums and to tell her on Twitter publicly (and she may not have even seen it or cared): because she hosted Da5id Weatherwax, I would no longer buy art works from her. I saw her as the organizer of that community, and I felt it not likely I would go back there at all, but buy from other artists at their other venues.
She hardly will suffer without the 200L or 250L or 500L (that's 20 cents or one US dollar?) she collected from me for her paintings; the artists she featured in her venues which sold more also won't care. No one will care. I just think people have to understand: you are in a shared world, when one of your own, one of your Scottish brethren in your beloved CC with its Glastonbury (held on the Lindens' Bellisseria and not CC for reasons which remain obscure to me), savagely attacks the gatcha creators by calling them "carnies" and telling them to "fold their tents", I don't want to do business with you.
I mean this is the absolute worst kind of Scottish socialist cuntery -- in the British and American sense, and that's a word I use about once every 25 years. Here's a total fucking loser who by his own admission went out of business when mesh came in, and turned to being a "bard" but of course he's learning Blender and soon will be better than you, you who cannot sell your wares except through a "gambling device". He ought to be horse whipped. I have neither a horse or whip, and I don't do griefing. I'm defending people here who don't even care if I defend them, many of whom don't like me, and it's not a class I'm in, as I don't make gatchas (except one) or even rent to people who them (except a few, for whom it was definitely a minority of their wares). To be sure, I have some tenants reselling gatchas, but even those, if they all refund tomorrow -- and some of them have -- will not make me "fold my tent". It's more of the principle of the thing.
His nasty-ass comment went all around the blogs, got lauded by Ryan Shultz and Chic Aeon and Shamlet and all the rest. It's THIS comment I boycott him and his for. It's still there. The Lindens did not remove it.
Not this one. If this is all that came from him, I couldn't care less. I get this all the time. Ashbourne's owner chimed in with a likey-like and I chastised her for it but I'd buy her plates again tomorrow (they were a nice freebee from SL18B). You have to realize that when you are in business in a shared world, you can't behave like this. We have no recourse to establish norms; this is how it has to work. If someone thinks I've behaved badly, they urge boycotts of my rentals in a heartbeat. I never apologize and I don't care, as I think my behaviour is justified. If they think theirs is, too, then we will live in separate worlds. The end.
SL Newser's Bixyl Shuftan has turned in the best editorial on this subject of the gatcha machine ban, asking all the basic, normal, necessary questions which none of the court stenographers on the Lindens' blog roll could bring themselves to ask.
I had heard that Winning was going to start charging rent from the artists. What a bad idea to open with, I thought. Here's a community apprehensive about what you will do, who were here rent-free, as the previous owners grasped that they were the main draw, the "rich content" to which you want everyone to "stick", and you try to bilk them for $200/wk? That's what I heard was the charge. Yes, it's low rent compared to say, Avalon (but look at Avalon's vacancy rates, huge). Look at all artist communities everywhere -- vacancy, and unpaid rental boxes. But I mean, who's going to return Judy India's paintings if her rent isn't paid? You know?
An artist whose works I have purchased and which I will go on purchasing. What is his status here?
Tip jars do not cover tier. Arrangements with artists to collect a percentage of each sale is hard to do, although I believe there are split vendors out there. But they took tacky when applied to an art work. So you have to have some kind of deal -- but enforcement is hard.
On the other hand, what, Apple Fall, one of the artists in CC on display drawing the tourists and renters at the ground level, what, HE can't pay $200/wk rent? Really, guys? And some of those other top sellers there.
Now I see there are rental boxes owned by Owl Dragonash for $150/50 prims. I myself charge $150/200 in my plazas, where sometimes I have artists with galleries including some good ones, but mainly more "commercial" or "mass taste" ones who sell more and therefore can pay the rent -- and as low as 0.25/m in my booths, but I don't run fabulous artists communities. I run Coney Island or Ravenglass Hall or Free Tibet. Different. Even so I think the pricing is off here. What would be right? $50/75? Everyone can pay $50 wk. When you have a system for poor people, like Medicaid, you still try to collect $10 or $5 a pop from those medicines that cost $180 or $380 for sick people like me. You try to get something, so that people contribute and OFFSET costs. But it's not a solution to expect the content draw to also pay, given that there is a wide range of ability to pay there, depending on how poor the country of origin in and frankly how many sales one can expect. How can you price that? Put all the people selling strange space stuff and grotesque naked women with tanks and bombs pasted in on the painting in one corner? Put the fractals and SL scenes in another?
CC succeeded because it mixed up enough of these levels so that you could walk through the entire area, spend a little or maybe a lot, and it was an enjoyable experience. They also put in hunts now and then which were a draw.
So now it's nearly entirely emptied out. Only a few remain, and they don't have rental boxes, which suggests that either they didn't get the memo yet, or haven't left yet by a deadline, or were given some special arrangement -- I suspect the former, not the latter. If Owl owns the rentos, that means she decided to go along with the new management, for whatever reason. I had heard that she was seeking donations to help the poor artists -- I would have helped. But not now. Not after Da5id Weatherwax.
Two rows entirely empty. Will they fill up with new artists who weren't here before?
And here the cure isn't that he apologizes, as he did somewhat half-assedly to others on the forums, sensing he may have gone "too far" when no doubt he got some private reactions and maybe it even hurt his concert sales, who knows, unlikely. SL is nasty, with totally vicious nonentities in charge of the forums. No, what I consider a cure doesn't come from him, as he won't change, remains an asshole thoroughly, and is to be boycotted on moral grounds.
What I would require is Owl and her colleagues saying, "Yes, we thought that was awful. We don't share that view about our fellow creatives who made gatchas ". Or, "we appreciate gatchas meant a living for some people" -- although likely as not, Owl may indeed share those views of contempt toward the world of gatcha. But she can think whatever socialist/Scottish/Swedish/sectarian/whatever thing drives her and her works, as long as she says, "Yes, that was wrong" to express disdain THAT WAY.
That's all. I know that she will go on having him at her events, and go on doing this with Lindens, which I wouldn't be doing, but it takes all kinds in SL.
What you do need to know is right from wrong. When something is wrong, you say so, publicly, and you put that asshole in their place, you don't keep coddling him.
What people who behave like this toward me in the forums or inworld or on my blog don't realize, is that this works both ways. I push back. I never participate in the forums circus by ARing people -- the Lindens come running at their summons, and don't to mine.
If the answer is, I don't even know this guy, I just booked him as a performer, I had no idea (I don't think that's likely from various indications, but let's posit it as a theory) then I can only say, "Well, then, it shouldn't be so hard for you to admit that his attacks on gatcha creators were wrong, then, should it?
Will this happen? Unlikely. So I treasure the Owl Dragonash works I already bought, I used to have them in my Campbell home, now they will go in a motel or something, I won't put them on a pyre and burn them but that's it, I'm done.
No, not even a $10/pull artists' gatcha -- the $10 kitten Mills charges for her pictures -- and she should charge 10 times that. Don't appear in a group of artists, even if you think they are "better" and price yourself so low, out of seeming humility, but actually out of lack of self esteem? I'd be happy to pay $100 at least for kitten Mills' works.
PS kitten Mills seems to have remained as a new line of shops appeared to go up with her as owner, and they have clothing -- and I guess that formula works, it's what Soho and Chelsea have, but it's hard to find sellers with the same aesthetic, and I guess Owl/kitten/Witte didn't achieve that here. Yet, anyway.
What is another sign (besides the many emptied out galleries) that this "artists' community" may be taking an asshole turn? A turn towards the types that suck up to Lindens at SLEA, shit on other people they think are "fractals" or whatever aesthetic thing they think, etc. etc. The presence of Ineffable Mote.
EVOLA COURTOIS/INEFFABLE MOTE/SPITE LOT IN GROTE
What a silly name, such posturing! if I saw these works without knowing anything about their creator, I might buy them but here's the thing. If Da5id Weatherwax is a dilettante on the forums and thought to make up for his insecurity re-entering them by being a raging asshole, Mote has way, way more practice for years and years, as evola Courtois, his main account for years.
Mote is a kind of reputational laundering expedition, I suppose, in which evola's many years of furry fury are now going to be transmogrified into human aestheticism, I guess. Not sure what the plan is. The last three times I saw evola -- three times too many! -- whom I hadn't seen in years -- at FF, where sadly Clover's beasts didn't eat him; at Mr. Sirbu's funeral; and at the mourning of Ebbe, he was in human norm form, not furry.
Speak of the devil, and he is sure to appear. We live in a small, interconnected world. JUST NOW, I got an invitation from UASL to come see this fabulous new artist Mote. Well, that's one UASL opening I won't be covering! Thanks but no! LOL
Take a look at his spite-land in Grote next to my rentals with the garbage bag -- yes, with an outhouse, although that tends undercut the "message" he claimed to be "sending" with the obnoxious "Good Neighbour" pillars once made by Abner Mole -- who has the power to remove them entirely from the world as they have turned into a griefing vector, but has never used it.
PS I haven't "violated" these "Good Neighbour" rules in any way -- in fact I have even more rules than they. It's just that Ineffable Mote evidently feels that my rentals, which consist of 1950s style motel court cabins, a motel, a big bright flamingo, another motel, a diner, etc. are "tacky" or not "aesthetic" although many people enjoy them. SL has to be for everybody, but in the ideology of these Bay City barons -- Bay City, expensive, expensive Bay City is where evola lives now -- us poor folk do not have a right to exist. "All these little stores should close," as one Apple Fall customer in AF's group expressed it. Right.
So, to bring you up to date: For years on end, any tree or dog or anything that came near his little spite-grove he would return. That's why I had to put a wall there, so my tenants could see the border always. I would be mystified how a big tree three lots a way could return, but that's because bounding boxes do not always show up on "highlight transparent". Who would have the spite to return week after week to a spite-grove and ensure that anything encroaching on it is returned? evola Courtois. The furry who used to live up the road on a small parcel in Sikkima, where for years he maintained a skeleton pink flamingo with a pack of lies about me -- which I countered with a blue flamingo setting the record straight, and got on with my life. PS evola has long since left Sikkima, perhaps as his transformation into Ineffable.
From what I gather from Snapzilla, he may have even begun this Grote spite-lot of 64m before I got there, but certainly he waged a crazy campaign in Sikkima against me for years, which was just lie upon tendentious lie, of the type the Trumpkins and Kremlin trolls pile up.
evola Courtois/Ineffable Mote Back Story
Apparently he owned more land there once. When I came to the sim and bought land, this bothered him. Perhaps it no longer had the trees and rivers he imagined it should as imagined or little used land or rentals he thought were more aesthetic, like the woman from whom I bought some land there, when she left for her main sim. I find it really hard to grasp why he can pose fabulously next to an ugly industrial build I believe came from WARR, with a sunken and broken telegraph pole in the water, and yet bitch about other Mainlanders who had, oh, Meeros on their land. See, this sort of type I really can't stand in SL. My urban industrial concrete look is the shits and your gatcha prefab with kitties and a picket fence "isn't aesthetic". Fuck you.
So -- Grote -- other people owned it before I did, they sold it. I was on adjacent sims since 2005. I did not get "given" any of it by Lindens. The Linden Right of Way which the Lindens themselves sold -- they do that! -- was not one I even bought on the auctions. A furry land flipper bought it. I bought it from him for $5/m. The land some idiot bought in the middle of the lake and ruined for months on end was finally liquidated -- I didn't buy it from that awful woman "Miss Behavin" or whatever her name was -- but like two land barons later. Land I abandoned even some waterfront there -- because of the ugly railroad that went through there -- a WARR, aptly named, a resident railroad in fact I supported, allowed right of way on my land elsewhere, or sold land to -- was land I bought back myself from the Lindens went finally that resident, overstretched as to tier, bailed.
There is a curious dynamic in evola/Ineffable's tortured tales. Supposedly I am coddled by the Lindens and they gift me land? Really?! LOL. But then I am "hijacking" and "in the way" of a Linden project in the works for years, and me and my little spit of land are the ONLY THING stopping it.
If I stopped it... Good! Because I like railroads, but not a CONCRETE OVERPASS that would be involved in crossing the road here. I've never seen the Lindens make one. But WARR did, and that's what these furries want, they want their Lindens to tier WARR's land AND put back WARR's RR just like he had it. Since when do Lindens do that? Oh, they do. But not quite as often or as extensively as imagined.
Here's Michael Linden's notecard to me, not long before he was basically retired out of the lab by force, I think because he was old in RL, didn't fit in with the groovy young people, who the hell knows. I thought he was an important figure with great accomplishments in creasing the whole Mole and LDPW thing and making nice builds. I didn't lean toward their prefered look of brown concrete from the 1930s like Bay City; we have that in RL in NYC. But generally, they were a plus. For a time, Michael was put in charge of Governance. So I would show up there with lists of complaints about Woodbury griefing which wasn't getting traction. He would be helpful. Or at least feign to be helpful. Bottom line, Woodbury islands were seized, finally.
Sept. 7, 2016, 3:37 p.m.
Michael Linden
Dear Prokofy,
A few points:
* the land in question wasn't seized; we don't seize land from Residents for construction projects.
* we like, and hope to inspire, content creators.
* we don't want to build an elevated railway on the Atoll regions.
* the former WARR parcels that have track in them (Grote, Electra, and Burns) are now set to "object entry = no", which may affect unmanned vehicles.
Extending the SLRR onto the former WARR right-of-way is a gradual project, as time permits. Gradual in this case may well be years ...
Feel free to contact us if you have any questions. We hope our in-world content will make many of our Residents happy!
Yours,
--
Michael Blum (Michael Linden)
Senior Content Specialist
Linden Lab
There is a bit of confusion here -- we all know the Lindens didn't seize WARR for a construction project -- it was abandoned. And they apparently decided to keep it. What went on behind closed doors re: this series of events is unknown to me.
MY question was: will you seize MY land to make your project. And the answer does seem to be "No, we don't seize land for our projects."
Yet a gaggle of furries led by evola harassed and griefed me for years in the belief that I stopped the railroad Michael Linden wished to push through.
Trust me, if Michael Linden -- gone now -- or any other Linden, of Mole level or higher up, needed to seize my land, they would do so. And would do it likely with an offer of a buyback (as they did with telehub land when it devalued) or a swap (as they did with Zindra). Those are their "eminent domain" precedents, FWIW. I never had a Linden contact me and say, "Prokofy, you are standing in the way of progress*. Even though I had furries fake-renting from me to then browbeat me, griefing parties, people demanding I sell them that land etc. I don't think these were Lindens on alts.
So let's go over ahead why I didn't turn my roadside land over to these furries and hobos for their railroad concept they were trying to throw the Lindens over on:
1) I opposed it on behalf of my tenants because it would render not only my/their land but the land of all the people on Grote Pond valueless.
2) People like to look out a train window and see a nice pond and landscaping of all the people who tier that pond; they don't realize the view of them is ugly and devalues their land if it has a railroad bridge, pass, or even railroad tracks only, roadside. I find railroad enchances my value if it is Linden protected; I'm not sure this situation would meet that criteria.
3) I wouldn't have the power to stop something the Lindens wanted to do, but they were apparently indifferent/ambivalent about this and merely responding to the usual gaggle of furries kicking up a ruckus on forums and inworld. Therefore I saw no reason to "get out of the way".
Because I can only say: I live here, you don't.
Again, I contacted Michael and explained the history in case he was brainwashed by the furries (see this crazy thread), but he didn't have a problem understanding the story there; he was a Linden, duh. I pointed out he could put his RR on his abandoned land several sims away. And still could. Oh, but he's gone. Oh, but those sims abandoned FOR YEARS are now sold on the auction.
Their "Right of Way" has appeared now in Juanita. Perhaps we'll see an ugly overpass now from them? anything is possible. A Linden once put a cement railroad through the prime waterfront from Brownlee to Wakeley, in water, after people bought that waterfront on the auction, thinking the Linden sea would remain protected. We raised an enormous ruckus. That Linden had to pick up that cement monstrosity. We will do so again. Of course, with a much more crippled civil society than we had 18 years ago, but still...
At one point in Grote -- this is hard to believe, but I saw it with my own eyes -- the Lindens simply confiscated some land of a tenant there without notice and linked it with their own hitherto protected "Right of Way" land and put it to sale on the auction,. This led this tenant to write on her underwater land various signs saying 'DON'T TAKE THIS! IT'S PAID FOR".
If I wake up tomorrow and all/some/a tiny strip of my land in Grote and/or Juanita is taken by Lindens to make an ugly railroad, I won't be surprised.
Yet, all told, I do not think we will see an overpass and pylons. Because Michael Linden said in 2011 we wouldn't. And because it is not necessary to put an RR through here. Agitating and harassing me over this was misplaced, but also I think people look for these opportunities.
I don't know what it means when Courtois/Mote publishes a photo that says "My Replications" and in the photo are a) a Mole avatar b) Maryann McCain, child avatar. I mean, maybe "My Replications" doesn't mean "my alts". Maybe they are just friends.
* * *
I see one piece of land in CC is purple despite a Governor Linden claim date of August 17. My, that was fast! Whew! But the whole Governor Linden claim date thing can be misleading as we all know, and Governor can have "land abandoned by Governor Linden" that she doubles back and claims right at auction, but I think that land had buildings on it not so long ago, so there's a story there.
The only land for sale in the area is set for $1000/m as an advertisement for rentals, by a company that seems unrelated to WW.
The waterfront remains unrented, no slips, no cottages, and nothing for sale directly except an RFL kiosk with $0 donations. This can't stand. And WW likely knows that. That's the part that has to get chopped. Perhaps WW and friends believe THIS is the part you leave rent-free as the draw. While you shake down the artists -- the real draw. I don't think so. I think you put all that to sale/rent immediately to make tier. Tier is $1075 on 6 sims. It's brutal. The rentals here as they are cannot cover that. (UPDATES: Apparently CC is only 3 sims at the time of the transfer, so that's half that tier, which is more manageable. Still...)
So...that's why WW is doing exactly what I do -- rentals in the sky, a mixture of commercial and residential rentals.
Except there's a very big problem here, that WW, as having returned to the biz after a long hiatus, may not have realized.
Bella Pointe. The scourge of the Mainland. Huge, ugly domes -- even at a low draw. Not 500 m and above, but starting at 100 and with hugely ugly bottoms of twisted landscaping and junk.
So your rentals next to them, like mine in Crespo, need a) a petition against her, that never hurts, I have these all over, hundreds of signatures, and I notices she is gone now from one area, maybe because my large sign on the ground with a protest seeking signatures got them (although she could have left the area simply because she had NO RENTALS. There would be one customer in the entire stack of 25. Why blight the landscape for that one customer??
Then b) a giant wall like my Inca wall covering their view on the ground and c) your rentals in a dome or mirror box or with a contained skybox on a platform so your customers do not have to look at this in their lovely sky rental with the changing scenes.
So what's the verdict here? WW, kitten, Owl and whomever else they got to stay may make this work, they are just getting started. $150/50 is way less than Avalon or I believe Chelsea or many other places; maybe someone will move in. The original people may have their feelings hurt, hopefully they go somewhere else where they can be edgy -- and with someone subsidizing them.
For my own reasons (related to Owl and Weatherwax and of course the outrageously lying evola courtois/Ineffable Mote), I won't be supporting them here as I once did. Still, if that area fills up with interesting artists again I would buy them. I believe in an open market. People's bad character, lifestyle choices I don't share, bad-faith ideologies I condemn -- that's no reason not to buy from them. I do have my limits, however. Those limits come when you incite or cause damages against me in SL or RL or when you incite or cause them to people in RL or SL from whom I buy and whom I respect (gatcha makers).
I can go elsewhere and buy those same artists, just not in Campbell Coast. I won't be missed, "life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone".
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