Second Thoughts

Why Did the Bellisserian Corsica Embassy Move?

The opening of the new Corsica Embassy of Bellisseria was an important occasion in our little virtual world of Second Life, and I knew I had to show up for it and ask the key question: why did the Corsica Embassy move out of the lovely Campbell Coast, founded by BJoyful and friends, to the hard-scrabble working-class neighbourhood of Timescape?

Amb. Jack Vincent of the Bellisserian Embassy in Corsica. His system name is "idlingwastrel" and he has a small t-shirt shop on the MP and is the host of a number of tiki type clubs.

 

Jokes went round about how the men at this event got a group discount renting tuxes at Mo's. Boo Rojyo is second from the left.

The women, as often is the case, were much better dressed and I was glad to see that they understood that "black tie" in our modern times doesn't mean just the black bow-tie for the gents and little black dresses for the ladies.

When I showed up at the opening in my new L & Co wool suit with the yellow tie and my BREATHE Kenzie Boots and a Deadwool Fedora hat with a "press" tag from my new newspaper, the Metaverse Mercury,  the question I asked after the speeches were over, was "Why did the Corsica Embassy Move?" And then I added:

"Was it because Timescape is a cool name for a sim?"

Abnor Mole making an entrance to the Embassy ball.

I think so! When I first heard of the impending move, I went to see what was "up" in Timescape and found a weird construction site of a partly-finished mall, claim date September 16, 2011, traffic 49, and this message:

The construction that is going on here is already complete, and, in fact, has always been complete. You just can't see it yet because you're stuck in a linear time zone. Take a red pill or meditate or something.

There was also another one of those cheap, badly rezzing malls owned by a man named "Moriz" with bunches of gimmicky sales items (I've hastily rented two stalls!), and across the street, a wry commentary on the creative land chopping of certain land barons with unscrupulous practices using a photo box of a sliced melon.

Earlier, at these strange AFK music Saturdays at CC -- which are actually held not in CC proper on the Mainland, but on Winning Witte's island estates with a clone of the CC build, I asked him, as owner of most of the sim where the old CC Embassy rested, why it had moved. He said, "Ask Boo." (BTW, there's another funny thing that happened with the old Embassy -- I'll tell you about that later.)

"I Didn't Move It"

I didn't get an answer at all at the event itself. Jack, the newly-minted "ambassador" of Bellisseria to Corsica said, "I didn't move it." Later, he IM'd me to say he was busy with a lot of IMs, and would get me a statement later. 

(I imagine that if/when it comes, it will be as bland as those statements I used to request -- and eventually get -- from the State Department about Turkmenistan. "We support the development of energy solutions for all newly-independent states" -- without adding the bit about "especially if our oil companies get a piece of the action". PS, they never did, and had to leave, because China, Inc. came in and bought the pipeline and actually paid Turkmen workers more than their own government did, and fixed their appalling labour conditions -- China is actually a progressive force in a place like Ashgabad. But Belli on the Mainland is not.

Remember, the movie to watch is Trumansville, not Stepford Wives, and also listen to Pete Seeger's cover of a famous song.

Commercial Opportunities

There's more than a little of an analogy with US/Central Asia, as the purpose of these new Bellisserian "embassies," as Boo stated in a BBB newsletter, is as follows:

We now have 1,024 square metre plots of land on each of SL's mainland continents on which to build permanent Bellisserian Embassies. As a Bellisserian institution, we want to reach out to the rest of SL. Bellisseria is gradually expanding to connect the mainland continents in new ways and we believe that all parts of SL have an important role to play. The strictly non-commercial /residential-only covenant in Belli should give rise to commercial opportunities on the lengthening border with mainland for example.

I'm still trying to figure out what "commercial opportunities on the lengthening border" actually means. Starkly put, it means that those residents who managed to secure themselves across-from-Belli Mainland parcels that they hoped would be "connected" some day, will have a windfall in their sales/rentals/airport businesses -- more visibility, more foot traffic, more search boosts, more sales. (That would not be me; let grandpa put in his teeth and tell you the story of Snafu some day.)

That coastline has long ago been "spoken for," and the "waterfront behind" long ago abandoned. Flying around looking at some of the businesses, I can't really see a direct BBB connection, although I do see at least one airport baron in the mix. But I asked in this thread -- how does this really play out? Individuals and companies chafing at the Belli restriction on commerce, using workarounds like landmark givers, events, direct tipping and strange sales of DJ streams --  and most importantly, formation of social groups, open and closed -- will now have a more direct passage to Mainland proper where...they will...do what? Charge for yacht slips and airport berths? I'm not in the airport business because it's rationale isn't clear to me -- we can fly and teleport in this world. 

But WHATEVER the connection to commerce is -- which isn't only about literal vendor sales but about reputational enhancement -- it should be made explicit so we understand who rules our world and how.

Fabulous Outfits

To be sure, I totally get how fabulous it is to dress up in a 1930s pilot outfit and pose around vintage airplanes -- and I have one of those, too, from the Lux Aeterna folks line L & Co, and I always don it when I go to work on my land in Campbell Coast -- it seems like necessary protection. I'm not sure I could fly even an SL airplane -- I have a flying chicken vehicle only, and I once made a Baba Yaga mortar and pestle flying vehicle that is so speedy that it is uncontrollable, and crashes at the first banline. I should take it out to those empty Belli seas.

The stark landscape of Timescape across from the Bellisseria mission.

Checking the Prims

To backtrack a bit, I first got a tip that Abnor Mole (note spelling and pun yuk yuk, which actually I didn't notice for all these years until some forums diva pointed it out to me) had built the Corsica Embassy in Timescape. But a preliminary visit in hopes of writing a curtain-raiser proved this to be a false lead, which is why you need a free press, to try to check these stories out. The main build is a store made by Barnesworth Anubis with the word CUSTOM appearing on it -- I need to ask if he made this custom for the BBB or some other customer. There's also various landscaping put in by Boo and by Dark Sunflower, and a nicely designed gate (Dark is good at designing, and if you have trouble realizing your vision with your BBB stamp, as I did, she will take it and work it for you). 

I would have put in the late keke's "Off with your heads!" Alice in Wonderland gate sign, but that's me.

I didn't detect any prim that had the name "Abnor Mole" on it, unless, like Rodney Linden's bear which has a prim made by Tizzers Foxchase deep within it, it is "hidden".  I really don't think it was plausible that busy Abnor Mole would take time to build a BBB embassy, or even a lesser-ranking mole -- not when this "independent group" has buildings and flowers in storage from their many activities and can plunk them down.

It Was Only Our Imagination That It Was Our World

But Abnor DID come for the ribbon-cutting with a prepared speech to paste into chat which was as follows:

[2021/11/19 12:02] Abnor Mole: It is a great pleasure to have been asked to open this embassy.
[2021/11/19 12:02] Abnor Mole: Ever since the Great Time Out when Corsica was separated from Sansara and Heterocera to keep the Corsicans from fighting with them over over the prim mines of ANWR, it has long been a dream for many years that they would again reconnect. Bellisseria has become that connection... reaching across the voids to once again bring our brothers and sisters on the mainland together in harmony.
[2021/11/19 12:03] Abnor Mole: To further solidify those ties that bind us (no, not those ties... you're thinking of Zindra) we hereby dedicate this embassy in the hope that residents from all across this continent may explore new horizons and experiences. We hope that the new Ambassador from Bellisseria will help the residents of both continents get to know each other better and will foster close friendships between them.
[2021/11/19 12:03] Abnor Mole: "Your world. Your imagination." is an ideal that has always been a founding principles of Second Life and of the Second Life community.
[2021/11/19 12:03] Abnor Mole: Jack Vincent is one of of many volunteers who has committed themselves to the the SL community. Volunteers like Jack transform "Your world. Your imagination." into "Our world. Our imagination.". We wish him all the best in this endeavor.
[2021/11/19 12:04] Abnor Mole: Please join us in wishing Jack every success in his role as Honorary Bellisserian Ambassador.
[2021/11/19 12:04] Abnor Mole: And from this point on, the residents of Corsica may direct all IM's asking "How do I get a house?", "Why can't my Bellisserian friend turn on ban lines?", "Can I buy more prims in Bellisseria?" and "What is a Covenant?" to him. Thank you!

Abnor Mole hands the keys of the new Bellisserian Embassy in Corsica to Ambo Jack.

I found this rather poignant -- LL hasn't used the "Your World/Your Imagination" slogan for years and years, and took it off their website because it gave people the wrong idea that the land was really their property somehow (various failed lawsuits, or lawsuits settled out of court leaving miscreants who tampered with the auction web page code still in the game, proved that "virtual land" is basically a fiction. If you leave SL, you can't take it with you. Which, come to think of it, is a lot like real life when you die...

Moles' Imagination?

Maybe Abnor still Believes, or maybe he didn't get the memo, or maybe his superiors said it was ok to use this slogan now that we are really in a domain which is the Moles' imagination, not ours, although broadly speaking, Bellisseria is the suburban fantasy of many ordinary people in RL -- and that's more than fine.

But Bellisseria is developing an edge that some find creepy (and not only me) precisely because it seems to involve -- yet again -- a formula where "some pigs are more equal than others". Abnor may be reflecting in a joking way the actual pragmatic reason LL bothers with residents' groups -- to offload the tremendous burden of the Customer Service State on to volunteers. (The imposing evidence of this Linden practice is the Volunteer HQ build by Lexie Linden in Tenera, now evidently unused, and her gone from the LL staff, and her group of 6,000 (!) volunteers). I'm glad of that Greco-Roman type build that seems like a Parthenon, because I now have a faux Greek community called Silva Beach right across from it -- which I chose for that "Linden protection."

So what do you mean, favouritism, Prokofy? There you go with your conspiracy theories again. But...more than a few oldbies raised their eyebrow at the appearance of the "society wedding" of Bellissseria, where a lucky couple (Linden alts? Mole contractors? We're told "not") got to have their wedding serve as the opening of the Lindens' new elven-themed community centre in Fantisseria, replete with Patch Linden serving as Best Man. There was a Limited Edition BBB Stamp and a wedding flower as limited swag. When I arrived to pick up same, the festivities were coming to a close, and there wasn't yet sign of another development that arched even more oldbies' eyebrows -- a large statue of an Elf and a Mole labelled "Patch Statue." 

You know, I have never seen anything like a resident wedding with a Linden in attendance, much less serving as a kick-off of their controlled living experience -- but that's the least of our problems, I assure you.

Giant Statue of Patch

And as long as I've been in SL (18 years), the only statue of a Linden that has ever appeared approved by the Lab is the one of Ebbe Linden -- and that was eminently appropriate because he died in RL -- and was the best CEO we had. Philip Linden (Philip Rosedale), the founder, never got a statue. Perhaps we paid Ebbe the best compliment -- taking him for granted. It's a shame that people focus on his ultimately short-lived and too-early Sansar experiment with VR goggles -- because actually, the longer LL stays out of the goggles game, the better positioned it will be in the Metaverse, long-term.

Patch hasn't died, fortunately, and I think he deserves a statue for the singular and seminal accomplishment of creating Bellisseria which, at the end of the day, is what the customers wanted. As a long-time student of the FIC (Feted Inner Core, or privileged residents in with the Lindens), I would say that their publication of the "society wedding" on the forums, even with all the qualifications and the limit of 44 on the sim, meant that it was sort of open to the public. I have always said of the FIC that the problem isn't a privileged class of people -- every society has them. So fanning of the Lindens and Moles, Linden/Mole love in return, statues no doubt devised by the Moles themselves as appreciation of their Fearless Leader -- these are all "normal" in a way and aren't a big deal.

But the problem with these things is always the lack of transparency of their economic advantages and reputational advantage (always convertible to business profits in SL) which are gained from proximity to power. To be sure, if I ever get e-married, I doubt Patch will serve as my best man -- or yours -- but I will try to book him for my SL funeral. He gets busy.

More to the point, I think it's valid to care about another "Blake Sea" enterprise in the making, where the few get windfalls with Linden help and the many can't even get near the properties which are all under ban lines. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.

And then there's the question of services. Abnor was at the ball for about 27 minutes, and then said he had to "get back to work". There were then reports that he was "dancing with zombies" at a Bellisserian event. Again, this is why you need a free press, to check facts. In fact what he was doing wasn't partying at all, but going to remove griefers from a party who were likely taunting the party-goers from the safety of Linden land around the venue -- Abnor has said the Belli sims have 60% of land devoted to "Linden protection" -- or perhaps an event on a public space like the Fairgrounds. Looking at the Belli sims where I am actually located, I would say there is actually more Linden protection, in fact, but on other sims, possibly less. More than some later Mainland continents, that's for sure.

And that set me wondering how people in Bellisseria can get the Moles, especially the Mole-in-Chief, to come running to get rid of their griefer problems, when we on the Mainland spend days -- weeks -- years trying to get them settled.

And the answer is -- especially when you ask to use the Fairgrounds, or other public venues, you will get that service -- because the Lindens are bending over backward to make Bellisseria seem like a nice grief-free place. I'll leave aside the time, when I was walking around the sim near Neural Networks on my alt who happens to be Black and has artificial limbs, and was pushed into the water off a dock by a gang of Italian speakers. I don't think that's the norm in Belli. Still, there is nowhere to ask the question about service priorities -- Tommy Linden, in charge of Governance, who I once blogged about hanging out with the Woodbury griefers on their sim (and not on a mission to remove them), has ruled that Governance meetings have to be ceased. There is no reason to have these meetings, as residents can find out about the way to file ARs from the Knowledge Base. The rest is not our business.

The Purpose of Embassies is to Sell Premiums

What's curious is that there are people found on the forums among the fangirlz who think that the purpose of these Bellisserian embassies aren't to sell premiums and to get Mainlanders who are loitering around weird construction sites and crappy malls on Mainland, or fed up with ugly obelisks and grief prims devaluing their land, to buy premium and move to Belli. 

Of course that's what it's about, and it's fine to say so. The Lindens can only be proud of their Belli product and their means of getting more people to buy it. If it comes at the expense of older customers, well, that's how Silicon Valley works. 

The contortions people get into, trying to justify this blatant but justifiable grab are fascinating, including from Nika Talaj, People's Merited Forums Poster, a computer professional in RL with understanding of vast complex systems she herself has managed and therefore a Linden peer, who denies the purpose is to sell more premiums and says the purpose is: "to export some of Belli's community cohesiveness and services TO the mainland, thereby civilizing it a bit."

Dear Christ on a crutch. I don't think even her Lindens would put it that nakedly.

Of course there are those of us who have been "civilizing" the Mainland since before she or even Abnor or Patch were born, at least on their mains.  And...what community? The 300 people who played the pumpkin game? Belli has tens of thousands, and the BBB and its related groups aren't a fraction of them.

So...The question in my headline really gets to the heart of the matter. Why, indeed? 

What Happened in Campbell Coast

The "filet" approach to land management -- Winning Witte's cut-up of Campbell Coast. Photo by Feorie Frimon

Campbell Coast, where BBB founder Boo Royjo was actively involved and where he remains as a tier-holder and airport manager under the new management and majority tier-holding of land baron Winning Witte, was rocked with scandals and depredations on a number of fronts in the past month. The original founder BJoyful, battling health issues, had to give up the business, and the artists and musicians and solid Mainland citizens she had gathered around her were split about what to do next.

I was not among the founders and only heard of CC when Apple Fall announced he was giving away one of his RL painting replicas for free there. Like other aficionados of middle-brow faux New England furni, I came running, and found the sim took FOREVER to rez. I had to come back several times before finally figuring out that the easier Campbell art walk to have was up in the sky, where I bought a number of reasonably-priced art works that got turned into motel art in my rentals, unbenownst to their high-brow creators. C'est la deuxieme vie, mes amis...

So apparently many/most of these sensitive artists fled CC when Winning, a crass Boston Irish type (and we shanty Irish know our betters among the lace-curtain Brahmin), came into contact with people like Boo, who lives in what my enthusiastic New Jersey acquaintance calls "Paris, France, Europe" after her one trip abroad. To distinguish it from those other places named Paris in the US, like Paris, Arkansas, of which there are many.

"Just look at his profile," one artist griped to me, pointing to the Green Day video link on WW's bio. This is why I told WW he should have put a link to the Shins for that crowd, which gave him a good laugh, and now that I think of it, this other Shins tune might have been better...

WW set about doing things you have to do to make land pay in SL, and it is seldom pretty -- houses too close together, scene-changing skyboxes with ugly domes, stores with second-rate fashions...People want aesthetics, but are seldom willing to pay for it, and it does cost money -- recurring subscriptions with tier levels every month.

Land-Cutting

And land-cutting. See, that's what WW was known for six years ago in SL, for those of us with longer memories than the size of our hands -- cutting, farming, "hold-backs," "donuts," and all those cut-throat land shark tactics. He then got out of the business, and came back in the pandemic and started up again. I could see him cutting and holding back on other sims like Adscita; few CC residents realize their new owner spent some time in the Cornfield for land cutting even as he was preparing to do it again in CC.

Funny, I had given him the benefit of the doubt, and said he would treat CC as the jewel in his crown, and not cut; other land dealers disagreed for me and set their watches to when he would begin cutting.

Which was soon, because in an October 22 newsletter to the group, WW said that land in the "hinterland" of the lovely Campbell Coast as it was dubbed was going to be set to sale for low prices, and abandoned on October 27 if it didn't sell. WW has an abandoning alt named Pansophical who does that dirty work so that his rep isn't tarnished. I actually caught him in action doing that on another sim. So now he'll make a new alt. What can you do?!

I hastened to make a post warning people on the forums -- unfortunately, too late for some, who got caught.

WW did this because he had to. On its own, this lovely community did not pay for itself, and it had to -- or he couldn't justify tiering it. Too few people admit that about SL, and don't take seriously the cost -- they fantasize that land is an "investment"; they see themselves in Lady Bountiful roles helping the commuuunity. But unless you want to pay for this hole in the Internet month after month, stay in your sandbox. Or adjust down your square meters accordingly.

It was unfortunate that BJoyful herself was IMing people like me who bought land in CC in the past, telling us of these new rock-bottom prices - 0.4/m which is very deadly in the Mainland setting as anything can come in and ruin 4 sims' views. I didn't bite, because I had already bitten, and had 4096 m2, which included a 1024 I had traded for a Laserlight parcel under the funicular which was hella laggy. I kept saying they should put that thing on demand, not run it all day like the damn pods, but whatever.

Long before the Winning cut-up debacle, I was cheerfully given the opportunity to trade within CC, possibly because I was a more valued customer than another CC buyer who was denied a trade, and then created a huge grief poster which makes my "Be Back Soon" picture look like a tame micro NFT. I had no idea that CC experienced Refrigerator-of-Ravenglass level of griefing, but it has.

Photo by kitten mills of build by Jolly Nova.

Museum a Death Knell?

Fortunately that grief-bomb which apparently is Greta saying "How Dare You?!" went away quickly. Its deployer is actually still a land-holder in CC. Along the way, as Winning took over CC, a Museum of Campbell Coast was created, which some complained seemed to ban them (possibly only a temporary measure while they dealt with griefing?). I found this screenshot so very SL:

Photo by Uli Jansma

It reminded me of Bulatov, you know the one?

Actually this one, for Belli:

This emotional announcement by the Museum curator, Female Winslet, in a thread that went from bad to worse with the usual self-pitying drama, was calculated to send the message that CC was dead, and now needed memorializing -- even as some of the original founders including Boo and artist Owl Dragonash as well as kitten Mills, the builder and landscaper, were very busy trying to make it work. It certainly was frustrating for them.

I think the Museum got off to a good start by putting up a map of how CC was when it began, which is instructive in many ways. For example, you don't see Sevenfold there, an abandoned sim that got acquired later, and which was a bad buy and a bad move in my view, but whatever, it's all airport, forest,  caves, Cheese Man and Glastonbelli now, tiered by a group founded by Redwoods' Cranston Yordstrom with 5 members, which I hope for their sake doesn't include WW as the tier holder, or Boo is going to wake up some morning with air plane parts in his L&F.

There were also memorabilia from happier days and events with genuine community spirit. It's important to keep up the effort and put in tip jars, but founder Female Winslet of course would, like many calculating forums poster, wept that she is a misunderstood Lady Bountiful who has done so much for the commuuunity and went into a furious diatribe against me, who had actually praised her Museum idea. That's because I said a place like CC needs people to donate time, talent, and treasure -- and most of all tier. And artists don't do that. It has rightly been pointed out that they fled even when charged $150/200 prims, which is a ridiculously low price in that world. Some drifted back, and it seems there is a commission arrangement along with the regular rentos.

Winslet objected that she did all that sort of tier donating and support, but it was actually for an airport on another sim, not CC per se. Yes, she has suffered a car accident and injured her hand, and that has compounded her misery and outrage. But you know what? Everybody has a story. Everybody. If you are feeling sorry for yourself, talk to BJoyful about her struggles, through which she has always remained cheerful.

There it is again, airports...I never paid attention much to airports, although I noticed that they have generally blighted the beautiful Blake Seas in ways which I find hard to understand can possibly be good for business.

Airporting the View

Meddledown on the Blake Sea, with Kuhnke adjacent. Airport by Grappo, the Meddletown owner; sign by WW.

For example, I could tell you about Meddledown, a sim that sold for a fantastic sum on the auctions (I'm told US $8,000 which seems impossible to be true; I think that's the figure for 5 sims or something that became available when a long-time Blake Sea holder fell ill in RL. But Blake sims do go inworld for the equivalent of US $2000 even, so it's not utterly preposterous). This sim owner then didn't seem to rent out any of his very reasonable yacht berths, and then put up an airport, which hasn't rented either but which is part of the whole airport craze these days.

That blocked the view of the good citizens of Kuhnke behind it  in this beautifully designed by overstuffed rental WW put together -- and that's a story for another day, but let me point out that currently, the 3D chess mass is still underway there, with both Winning -- the land baron holding the tier there for weeks -- and now Clyde/Blue 9, another baron, racing to the bottom to see who can cut up the smaller square and sell it for 0.2/m on the Land & Rental list, which they do to stay on top, and draw people to the sim, who will then buy the slightly more expensive 4096, which might be $3/m -- or so the theory goes.

Given that WW likely paid something like $32,000 on the auction for that "water behind" sim in the greener lowlands of that very austere and largely abandoned realm of the pink mountains of Nautilus, and tiered it only for 2-3 months, he likely did not-so-badly from selling a few of the 4096s and the smaller lots, and holding back some to sell for a huge price later when people will want to "buy the view" back from Blue9's customers...To be continued.

Removing the Context of Campbell

So all that and more is why likely Boo wanted to move Corsica out of Campbell, which despite everything, still looks pretty good (especially because loyal citizens like Bijoux Barr undertook to tier 1/2 and 1/4 sims and save it), because it would have associations in people's mind with a bad land baron chiseling expedition. There were quite a few people showing up in the forums to my thread, which I had cautiously worded when I got the news of impending doom on Oct. 22, because I didn't know all the people and could only warn one or two.

They bit hard on the land baron poisoned apple, then had to abandon out of the situation where all the roads and easements suddenly went to sale in bulk lots for also very low prices -- inviting the doom and devaluation of ad farmers. Even ad farmers aren't always stupid enough to buy ad farm land in the middle of a landlocked sim covered with forest, so I waited until they were abandoned, and asked the Lindens to cut out just the pieces around my land. The indefatigable Bijoux bought some big chunks of it, I asked for one more abandoned parcel, and then I tried not to peer out past my Pleasantville, where for the first time in my life, I tiered and built a road -- first and last, because it really is a stupid thing to do. The Lindens should build them. What can you do, however -- the Lindens didn't put any roads in their later continents in many cases setting up this inevitable conflict generator. We were lucky we had them in Sansara and Heterocera.

And come to think of it, it may well have been the Lindens/Moles who put a word in Boo's ear about the inadvisability of framing the Embassy anywhere near the wreckage of WW's land-cutting antics. They know exactly what's up with him, even if other people find it difficult, and actually, the bottom line is that they don't care, as he is still here. If anything, they should put him on the payroll to help encourage migration away from the Mainland, where these cut-ups happen, to Bellisseria, where they can't.

Ugliness of Mainland as A Bellisseria Advertisement

So again, I think the recipe is simple: take the embassy out of Campbell, which is associated with bad land baron stories and uncertainty now, but which -- conversely -- also STILL looks nice, and therefore doesn't serve as an advertisement for "why you should move to Bellisseria" -- au contraire, it's an ad for CC and why you should rent, or even buy, and have more freedom and prims -- thanks to the willingness of your fellow residents to tier roads and make nice forests and things for you.

Timescape -- don't you love that name?! -- sends a different message. Here be dragons! I want to get some land in that sim -- in fact land right next to the newly-baked embassy is available -- but I'm too busy "saving the view" on my core sims to take that on.

IF that is the motivation -- and it's as good a reason as any -- it won't be the first time the technique was used. Desmond Shang used to post Victorian drawings of people with funny lines like "Edward, you worm! Take me away from this madness of the Mainland to Caledonia". Kalyrra Heart used to consciously buy microplots by ugly Mainland to deploy her islands business ads -- and help uglify it herself! -- to drive traffic to her island rentals. My pointing this out is why she bans me from her sims to this day.

"Community Connections"

I'm skeptical when people say that these ambassadors are about building friendship and consocial activities (I think that odd term actually shows up in their literature), where we will all walk shoulder-to-shoulder into the sunset, hopping a pod to slum it for awhile on Mainland and check our vehicle businesses there, before heading off into the sunset to Belli, where peace, calm, and immediate Mole service awaits.

Of course that's exactly what Boo is saying right now on the forums:

“The BBB is COMPLETELY independent in it's actions. The BBB is a volunteer group, solely here to help bring community connections, and fun, to the residents of Second Life.”

If you believe in that, you believe in the tooth fairy, and speaking of fairies, you can pick up my Winter Fairy Transport box at the Honorary Consul of Titania's residence in Porridge Pot, the first "embassy" game in fact of Mainland and Bellisseria lol. It's free now, but will soon only be available for $50 first at Mieville's Thanksgiving event and later at the Christmas event as a prize in the game there.

I rightly responded to Boo's hardly credible claims of independence as follows:

Then why do you need to meet with Lindens and Moles? Why do you have a Mole cut the ribbon on your new embassy? Can you tell us that you did not clear your list of ambassadors with Moles or Lindens? Why can only residents with Bellisserian passports join the BBB Users Group? 

Why do members of your group have Patch Linden as the best man at their wedding? Why can't Operation Mainland stamps be placed at Mole sites, and only BBB stamps can be placed there? I mean, the questions are endless, and I personally don't care about the answers to a lot of them, but to claim the BBB is "completely independent" just doesn't hold up, Boo. And if you don't see that now, I assure you that you will in the future. If anything, you should develop a position that explains why you need the Lindens/Moles' cooperations, and why you think you have gained it exclusively. There may be good reasons for this. "There Can Only Be One" isn't one, in my view.

What exactly is your concept of the "commerce" to be encouraged by the Mainland/Bellisseria coastal connections? 

And PS why did you move the embassy of Corsica from Emyniad to Timescape?

Conceptual Art Project

Originally, as I told Boo myself in a conversation last summer, I thought the whole BBB thing was a conceptual art project. Perhaps it still is. But, as the Russians say, "the appetite grows in the eating." Playing player government with the Lindens is likely thrilling, and more and more ideas then are dreamed up to get that thrilling proximity to people who actually make decisions about how the world is built.  The Lindens have gone through all kinds of iteration of that kind of "special relationship" in their history -- I remember at one time, they had "focus groups" of power players that they flew to San Francisco all-expense-paid to discuss development with them.

Can even those of us with a certain amount of stake in SL, or merely to whom it is dear, be able to friend up the right BBB socialites, trade the right recipes, fly at the right airports, and attend the happening DJ parties in Belli to influence them and then possibly Moles? Can we attend those wonky Linden office hours with the geeks or the tedious note-taking sessions of Concierge? (That's all they are, as Concierge has less power than Moles in Bellisseria now to make the earth move literally, much less VP of Product Patch Linden, or the actual code-cave Lindens who can "yay" or "nay" anything they like. I bother with these channels occasionally; I think public discussions are also useful.

Timescape Green Dot Pile-Up

I'm reporting from Timescape, where I saw a pile-up of 32 dots, and thought it might be an Embassy party I wasn't invited to (everyone in the BBB Users Group got an invite to it, and only about 30 perhaps attended, hardly a sim-filling event.

Say, could that regular pile-up be the reason for the re-location to Timescape?!

I picked up $7L at the mall from the Xploder to cover my reporting trip expenses, although I'm down 50L renting two booths for a week to see if my stuff sells, and to see what else goes on in this fascinating microclimate.

I landed in fact at the tacky mall next to the Embassy -- and saw various Spanish speakers chatting and those not AFK grouped around an Xploder -- the only way for some people to get cash in the game. They stand around there and trade time for money, socializing, and then hopefully resisting the temptation to buy clothing in the booths also deployed there. The owner uses this technique to build traffic, attention on the map, and notice in search -- it's a technique used by many such enterprises.

Can THESE people be drawn to Bellisseria -- people filling the Mainland with their green dots now? Likely not, as they are likely too poor. If they can't spend US $4.00 merely to buy 1000L, yes they are likely in the poor countries of the world although they deserve to have SL as fun as any of us. Merchants like the mall owner make it possible for to have a Second Life in fact -- and make it possible for smaller merchants -- like me! -- to sell things to the public who are not good enough or connected enough to get into the major shopping events -- which, BTW can run to fantastic sums for the booths ($2000, $5000, more).

Can any one of these people just pick up a free vehicle at the BBB office, join the Bellisseria Parade group, and join the travel caravans? I don't see why not; you don't need a premium to have fun, and I don't think the Belli matrons would exactly kick you out -- and they don't have the power to remove you from Linden water. Still, you might not be made to feel comfortable.

Like this non-English speaking Timescape area man who wandered into the Embassy, and could only say "Come to on!" when I tried to talk to him. I don't think the BBeebs actually blocked his entry, but I don't think he was encouraged to try the canapes, either.

That's me, underdressed for this occasion, but overdressed from my usual garb, in the background in the fedora.

I'll leave the other ball-goers to figure out who the Agency member under cover is at the Embassy, although I will note I did see a strange plainclothesman deployed on the road possibly as "security". 

So I have just received an IM from Jack Vincent (idlingwastrel) at press time, but it is NOT an explanation for why the Corsica Embassy moved. It's just a thank you card for attending the ball.

Hidden Posts Revealed

The Lindens and their "hidden posts" have gotten to be super annoying. This is an automatic system that apparently is triggered by the use of the word "rape," so that you can never criticize capture-roleplay rape sites in SL. Perhaps "suicide" triggers it. Or maybe "money-laundering" or "terrorismm". Perhaps some other word, you can't know.  Thus it becomes impossible ever to condemn bad activities simulated in SL because you are falsely considered inciting them in RL, even in a thread where you are trying to explain this concern.

They don't tell you WHY they are hidden. They never un-hide these posts. If you ask about them, they don't answer. If you copy them and remove a few possible "trigger" words, sometimes it publishes and they never slap you for going around this idiotic system.

Accordingly, in answer to this post: 

The person who founded Mt. Gox, the bitcoin capital, got her start in Second Life. She committed suicide in real life. Why do you think the Lindens put so much resources into fraud deterrence and control? Because while it seems pretty silly to use SL to launder money for, say, terrorism or even an influence op, it is still in some ways the perfect place for it. Remember how the buddies of the US Embassy staff person who played the E.V.E online game knew more than even the CIA about how the "police" (February 26th brigade) turned against the US Embassy in Benghazi?

Barret Brown, who assisted Anonymous in various crimes of theft of credit cards and such, was an SL griefer who would remind me of this fact when I blogged about his antics critically. There were other 4chan and related griefers who were part of a movement that brought us 8chan, which enabled the terrorism and killing of real people. I'd like to hope none of those script kiddies raining script particles of racist and sexist obscenities on my sims were among those who committed terrorism, but it's anonymous, right? You can't be sure.

Anonymous is still crazily celebrated by feminists for Steubenville (the case of the rape of a girl by the football team) yet few concede that it was Anonymous who outed her name and ruined the life of a coach with false claims, and that one of them went to jail and did hard time, and for good reason.

You're absolutely sure that there isn't a single participant of January 6 in Second Life? I know for a fact that several people who were at least present at the rally are in SL.

The blood/brain barrier of the Internet and real life was long ago crossed all over the world and even the actual blood/brain barrier has been crossed with sometimes disastrous results.

The Most Insincere Form of Flattery: The BBB Steals My Idea of Honorary Consul

By Prokofy Neva, Virtualtor

From my "Honourary Consulate of Titania" installation at the Home & Garden Expo Design Contest in SL in 2019. 

Shorter-than-your hand summary: the Bellisserian FIC did in fact steal my idea of honorary ambassadors (here's the proof below) but it doesn't matter because it's not copyrighted. I called it "honorary consul" in my inworld story because that's more the proper term in my view;  but let's be thankful at least the residents in this RP aren't all Americans, many of whom actually acquired in our virtual world their first experience of something called a "passport" -- and can't find RL countries on maps. At least some of the BBB aren't Americans and have some grasp of international affairs -- I think -- such as to work up models for government and foreign policy to replicate in virtuality (shudder).

I don't want to be one of those people because I'm my own ambassador of my own projects, and so should you be. I think there are better ways to sell premium accounts -- which ultimately is the purpose of this strange RP of a RL government and foreign office. But likely it will be mainly harmless and eventually sink of its own weight. It's worth following so they don't start trampling in your back yard. But remember, there is only one way to stop an exercise in player government engineered by the game company: make your own, and displace it. 

 

Slamming Operation Mainland

So Jezebel Bailey is "no long with" the BBB, and yet the august personages at the BBB still saw fit to leave her permissions on to the comms. I personally wouldn't do that if someone left my business or project, but ok. So Jezebel got on the horn the other day in the BBB Users Group (population 567) and ragged on the Forever Tourist program of Operation Mainland (population 699). I have my differences with OpMainland but generally I think they're a good thing, like I think the BBB passports and travel are a good thing. I'm all for exploring, especially the Mainland. I personally am a solo player and have my own small group Mainland Appreciation Society (population 44), and larger, long-time project, SL Public Land Preserve (population 850, of which about 650 have logged on in the last year), which has many supporters, but I'm not really here to be in the virtual equivalent of my high school government or college newspaper editorial board; for one thing, I don't have the stamina to sit for 12 hours or more a week in interminable play-meetings where nobody pays me.

Just for the record, because you can't find these things out unless you 1) own property in Bellisseria and therefore are eligible to 2) get a BBB passport and 3) get invited into the BBB Users Group if you apply for to host stamp in the passport game, here's Jezebel's note verbale to Operation Mainland:

Just wanted to put in my 2 cents because you can never totally leave the BBB when you love and believe in it as much as I do! The BBB is expanding as it has to to keep everyone happy and enjoying their passports! Just know this, the BBB is accepted and has the LL backing. You will never, ever get sent to a sex club, a shopping mall, or any place not authorized by both the BBB and LL. The BBB offers unique stamps for your enjoyment and fun in finding them in hunts, or from the weekly list that Sun puts out,
Every placement of a dispenser is carefully selected by the owner of the dispenser. No you do not make your own stamps for anywhere you happen to go to. But if you want or think a stamp dispenser could be placed somewhere, either mainland or Belli, drop a not to Sun.
The reason for this little tirade other than saying HI, is because someone thought they might be considered disloyal for going to another site. I didn't know what they were talking about. I thought they were talking about the expansion of the BBB to mainland. So here is what I think!

1. The BBB works with the moles and lindens on placement, both in Mainland and the BBB.
2. You have the most incredibly talented people working almost 24/7 on making sure everyone who is a part of the BBB, enjoy being part of our BBB group,
3. You cannot be disloyal. Just remember WE do not show places on our web page that have not passed all requirements to hold one of our dispensers.
4. If you want a travel list for us, we do not take the our list off of the places search engine. That everyone can access.
5. I LOVE THE BBB AND WHAT WE HAVE ALL CONTRIBUTED TO ITS GROWTH. Also, the moles and Lindens that have assisted with its growth.

With all this dribble passed on to you, my friends, its a free to you, game within a game that keeps on growing. Thank you all for your continued support! (do I sound like a politician yet?)

Safe travels!
Bel

Now, OpMain may have a blog where this is posted, but I only know that it is issued in the group, which I will join now to fetch and leave, because I don't want to be in groups that are like my own groups, I have enough to do. Oh, except the link in the group is no good. Ok, hmm....After clicking like an idiot for 15 minutes I finally found it -- they really need to put "BLOG" on the splash page so that you don't hunt until you find it under "location list" which isn't intuitive at all.

Again, for the record, here is Fionie's Memorandum:

Because I genuinely want to help residents travel the grid, please understand that there should never be any ‘feelings of disloyalty’ for having any kiosk from any other participating passport program. It honestly doesn’t matter to me HOW a resident finds a cool place to visit - just that they do. For location owners, I want you to do everything you can to promote your SecondLife businesses and locations - if that means having every possible kiosk of every type of game on your land, I encourage you to do so! 

Forever Tourist was never created to upset anyone - it was designed to include businesses in a passport style game AND to create community by allowing ANY resident to be able to instantly participate. If you want to understand the specifics of why I created Forever Tourist, I did an in depth video talking about it’s design, what my goals were, and the steps I took to start the process. You can watch it here. 

I have been and will continue to work with the LDPW team to try and find a way to make it easier to grab a stamp on some of these public places by placing a Forever Tourist kiosk. I only want to do this if that means we don’t have to change the rules that we have in place to let everyone participate. I haven’t been able to create a way for this to happen just yet, but conversations have happened with ‘the powers that be’. Don’t worry - I won’t give up. 

(For those who want to deepen their foreign ministry RP, here's a list of terms from the State Department you need to learn.)

It's been interesting to me to see how people who try to suck up to get along with the Lindens and deal with them in partnerships then get burned, jaded, cynical, etc. It's partly because nobody knows history; they ought to read about Clubside Granville.

The old forums archive are a rich depository of history and more people should mine it before the Lindens some day delete it, like they did the townhall transcripts. Oh, the reason I'm not in that thread is because at that particular period in history I was banned from the forums.

In any event, Operational Mainland took the higher road and made a statement setting the record straight about Jezebel's jab -- which I guess was motivated by the fact that somehow within their circles, some people thought getting involved in OpMainland meant "disloyalty" to the BBB (or visa versa). Interestingly, while this was playing out, OpMainland was featured in Destinations and constantly on the splash screen, so at some level, Lindens "want to be fair" and recognize any resident group "doing something positive". Some people are on their own planet or don't want the kiss of death or live in bitter rejection but I've always found that if you want a sustainable project where you are free and not co-opted, you have to play SL without the Lindens as much as you possibly can, given that you still rely on them for things like roads, clean water, and hospitals. Wait, I mean, just the first thing, the roads. Oh, but not in Corsica, where -- oh, never mind.

The FIC is Not a Conspiracy, It's a Report

Fionie Frimon wants to be a Mole, i.e. one of the select contractors of LL with the last name Mole which involves certain privileges but also involves enormous amounts of hard work, especially as they are now tasked not only to build roads and houses, but to be sort of Gentils Organisateurs like Club Med and organize "fun," moderate the forums, and help build community centers launched with two residents' wedding, at which Patch Linden will be best man. That last bit has raised more than one eyebrow among oldbies and several acknowledging, "Hey, Prok, you were right about the FIC."

The FIC (the Feted Inner Core or privileged caste of SL with connections to the Lindens) is not a conspiracy. It's a report. (Read the original thread about the origin of this term.) My critique about the FIC isn't rooted in jealousy because I'm "not a coder or a maker"; I just think there should be demonstrable quality and there isn't always. I think there should be activities that involve a registrational approach -- a set of criteria for a contest or an event, which anyone can apply to and participate in, rather than a discretionary approach -- where you apply, hope you meet the criteria, which can be arbitrarily applied, and then get rejected for reasons that are unknown. In the US, anyone can form a corporation by sending a small fee to an office in Delaware. It's only later, if you fall afoul of the law or don't file taxes, that bureaucrats then focus on you and restrict your activities. In Russia, the theory is the opposite: first, you take an applicant and drag him through 14 offices and grill him and  put him under the scrutiny of everybody from the secret police to the cleaning lady. Then you issue the registration or permit -- but it's on sufferance, if you stop  doing favours for the bureaucrat. Well, different countries have different cultures...

Also I think any FICness should be publicized. I don't know this lovely couple; I personally couldn't marry a man named "Riot Hax" but that's just me. I've sure he's a lovely fellow. My further comments are here. PS no need to put me in the ban list as a) I don't have a tuxedo and while I have a wonderful petite avatar from Fallen Gods, I don't like getting stepped on in big crowds. I'll wait to see the community center after all this lag inducement is over and hopefully there will be freebies.

I imagine -- I hope? -- that this initiative didn't come from the Lindens, but came from the betrothed residents (unless, of course, one or both of them are Lindens themselves lol). And I imagine that the Lindens, keen to build up Bellisseria and get some traction for their new community center in Fantisseria (and more sales) -- especially after the rather botched Trick or Treat pumpkin thing -- decided to accept the request and justify it by publicizing it on the forums so "anyone" can come (if they follow all those elaborate instructions and can fit on a sim meant for 44 people) and say that it's really about opening a civic center "anyone" can use (if they are premium and in Belli, of course).

There Can Only Be One

So Fionie has built her own very ambitious program, populated it and rolled it out successfully, while also managing an abandoned land reclamation business and doing her own building and writing and of course managing her RL jobs and family. But from what I gather, the Lindens -- the Moles -- have not granted her the recognition of having Mole locations within her network, unless she joins the BBB -- merges with them, really, only as a Mainland "honorary consulate" in a sense -- which she doesn't want to do. She is still "in talks" -- just like Bill Burns is now in Moscow with the Russians.

I think for her, the problem with joining the already-blessed BBB-Linden alliance is that you weren't there at the formation, and you will play second fiddle and if anything, hurdles will be devised to make sure you don't disrupt the program by actually joining. I suppose OpMainland can always issue stamps "on the fly" by merely going to a Mole location and issuing one but you know? Through their "DIY Kiosk" system. If I get time, I will try to figure this out and do it for Magellan's Crash in Columbia.  There are a lot of places in SL. You don't need the Mole places to have fun -- and you can have fun visiting them without all the stamp stuff.  "Don't burn down Party committees; build your own." (Jacek Kuron, Solidarnosc).

The Lindens are guided by a concept that they can't cater to "all these groups" (even though there aren't many of them; it's actually a small world; and only a few would pass muster given their usually strict and arbitrary and not always  public criteria, as with the newbie gateway helping centers. I'm not sure the BBB is so wild about such a merger either, but I personally have put stamp machines in both; I travel on both and enjoy the sites, and I don't want to get too deeply into it because I sense it will involve long waits at drafty aerodromes at high elevations without visible rentomatics, waiting for Rick to bring the letter of transit, and sadly concluding "We'll always have Ahern."

The template, of course, is the sailors and Blake.  Read history, please people. And, fast-forwarding from that post in 2009 to 2021, I think I don't have to argue any more (as I used to have to do) that such amalgations that "cross the blood/brain barrier" are about commerce, first and foremost. Sailing brought the Lindens more business, and why not? That's a good thing. It brought the "Lindesidents" in their Linden/resident "Sea of FIC" group WINDFALLS in rentals and sales of land around Blake -- that can't be argued. Was that a good thing? No, because it helped create havens for monopolists charging outrageous prices and in fact suppressing participation in SL. Are there ways to play SL without getting caught up in all this? Yes, just like you don't have to get into the best parties in the Hamptons to have fun. Will the Lindens drop their FICing to ultimately get more sign-ups? No. Not only does Silicon Valley not work that way, high school didn't, either.

What is an Honorary Ambassador?

In any event, that skirmish was last week's news, and now there's today's news, which is the BBB has now formally stolen my idea of "Honourary Consuls", which was part of a story I started in 2019, and which is manifested at a BBB stamp location called "Honorary Consul of Titania". (The "us" is European/Canadian spelling I got used to long ago going to university in Canada and Russia and working for European outfits, but if you don't have enough space, like on a limited stamp template, you drop it). I could start a long explanation about how "Honorary Ambassador" is really a different thing in the UN or OSCE or other multilateral institutional context, like with Wonder Woman. Graham Greene wrote a novel about the other kind of figure, the Honorary Consul. Ultimately, it doesn't matter, you can do what you want in SL and mangle world culture in any direction, who cares.

The "Honorary Ambassador," Bellisseria edition frankly sounds like it is modeled after the Soviet Friendship Society's latest incarnation in modern Russia, Rossotrudnichestvo which is basically the arm of the Russian state that goes out and runs influence ops abroad to recruit assets.

How to explain this for the young? Well, no one has yet proved Michael Cohen was in Prague (but keep in mind that unlike the Bear Castle, where your BBB stamp would prove you were there, and you would need another BBB stamp to prove you were at Eulennest -- Michael Cohen could have gotten a stamp in Italy and flown to Prague and it wouldn't show up) I did find that the then-rep of Rossotrudnichestvo who shows up in the Steele memo did not tell the full truth about his own trips to Prague.

ANYWAY of course the SL version of this is basically just about the Lindens having some trusted comrades who can go and rope in other residents' groups and bring them under control association with Linden projects. Nothing sinister in that! If it leads to rentals/land sales down the road, keep in mind you have to work nights and weekends getting even a Blake Sea business launched -- do you all realize that?

And from their perspective, this kind of roping in is necessary. I was the one saying the other day that the Lindens don't have the equivalent of the one-way propaganda stream Radio Tochka (a rather abominable thing in Belarus which you can't turn off) to beam messages to all or at least some select residents, since people don't read the forums, bat away splash screen announcements, and don't read emails with the word "spooktacular" in the header. You know? So that's all good, again, from their perspective. We're not going to wait for Committees of Correspondence to be formed on every sim or even every continent to deal with the Lindens now, are we.

Honorary Consulate of Titania

I've run this story of Titania and its hapless Honorary Consul M. Carter Blanc of Telehub Ross (as in carte blanche, get it?) for some time now in various forms. It lasted through over 3 years of the Home & Garden Expo design contest participation where I won prizes for "best story"; it then had various sequels on my blog and inworld manifestations, and then it became a place in Bellisseria in Porridge Pot, and then finally it got a BBB stamp.

There's a very low-key "Letters of Transit" game associated with it, which few people play because it's very obscure and hidden and almost analog in nature -- and that's not usually what works in SL where attention spans are miniscule.

Even so, it's a thing, I chisel away at it sometimes and sometimes I get messages from it that there are "3 people" who played it or "0 people" in a row some weeks. It's just one of many things I tinker on, I think it's cool, and actually not so hard, but surprisingly few people who get stamps even bother to go inside a house to get its freebies, let alone play some mini-game within it. Oh, well.

So when I applied for the stamp, I explained some of this to Jezebel Bailey, at that time dealing with the applications. So here's the conversation (and remember kids, it is not a crime to publish chat logs outside the SL servers -- they don't have jurisdiction over other companies' servers in their TOS! In fact, it's a duty, to hold both residents and people in power to account -- that's important in any world. And it's all part of the gorgeous mosaic of SL history.

2021/04/07 19:45] Second Life: Inventory item 'Bellisseria Passport Application 2021 - Prokofy Neva' offered
[2021/04/07 19:46] Prokofy Neva: Hi, here's my passport application. Thanks
[2021/04/08 11:35] Second Life: secondlife:///app/agent/81f1414f-62d6-482a-a0e6-366ba7998661/about is offering friendship.

Would you be my friend?

(By default, you will be able to see each other's online status.)
[2021/04/08 11:35] Second Life: Friendship offer accepted.
[2021/04/08 11:35] Bel (jezebel.bailey): ty
[2021/06/18 15:33] Prokofy Neva: Hi, how do you get the HUD for the extra passport pages when you run out?
[2021/06/18 15:33] Prokofy Neva: or does it automatically deliver to you
[2021/06/18 15:34] Bel (jezebel.bailey): do you need a new hud?
[2021/06/18 15:34] Bel (jezebel.bailey): or another hud
[2021/06/18 15:34] Prokofy Neva: I have the upgraded passport already
[2021/06/18 15:34] Bel (jezebel.bailey): you should have gotten 3 of them named visa
[2021/06/18 15:34] Prokofy Neva: ok let me look
[2021/06/18 15:35] Prokofy Neva: why yes, it helps to search under the word "visa" and not "passport"
[2021/06/18 15:35] Bel (jezebel.bailey): haha that should hold you at this point
[2021/06/18 15:36] Prokofy Neva: yes I'm not excessively traveling
[2021/06/18 15:36] Bel (jezebel.bailey): but we can give more when needed
[2021/06/18 15:36] Prokofy Neva: I do have both vaccine shots but
[2021/06/18 15:37] Bel (jezebel.bailey): if the other person doesnt
[2021/06/18 15:37] Bel (jezebel.bailey): yours is no good
[2021/06/18 15:37] Prokofy Neva: yes I realize
[2021/06/18 15:37] Prokofy Neva: I realize you may start giving out shots soon
[2021/06/18 15:37] Prokofy Neva: I have a rare immune disease in RL but I don't think it applies in SL
[2021/06/18 15:38] Bel (jezebel.bailey): YES thats what we need next time
[2021/06/18 15:38] Bel (jezebel.bailey): next upgrade that when you go to locations for stamps it asks if you have any of the following
[2021/06/18 15:40] Prokofy Neva: you have to have your shots yes
[2021/06/18 15:41] Prokofy Neva: you seem like an important bureaucrat
[2021/06/18 15:41] Bel (jezebel.bailey): and if you reply wrong it denies you the passport
[2021/06/18 15:41] Prokofy Neva: yes
[2021/06/18 15:41] Bel (jezebel.bailey): hahah I shall talk to NOrth
[2021/06/18 15:41] Prokofy Neva: it could be random
[2021/06/18 15:41] Prokofy Neva: if you are important I will send you a thingn
[2021/06/18 15:41] Bel (jezebel.bailey): send away not sure how important I am but I have a bit of pull
[2021/06/18 15:42] Second Life: Inventory item 'Confidential Envelope 2' offered
[2021/06/18 15:42] Prokofy Neva: so this is a Letter of Transit from the Honorary Consulate of Titania
[2021/06/18 15:42] Prokofy Neva: these are rarely issued
[2021/06/18 15:42] Prokofy Neva: and they entitle you to certain goods and services
[2021/06/18 15:43] Prokofy Neva: which you cannot be told about
[2021/06/18 15:43] Prokofy Neva: altho one thing is known publicly which is the Diplomatic Pouch in 3 Bellisseria locations
[2021/06/18 15:43] Prokofy Neva: where you get a gift
[2021/06/18 15:45] Bel (jezebel.bailey): the diplomatic Pouch is that a private thing?
[2021/06/18 15:46] Prokofy Neva: no it's public but only works if you wear the Letter of Transit
[2021/06/18 15:46] Prokofy Neva: which you can only get at certain times
[2021/06/18 15:46] Prokofy Neva: if you think the BBB is bureaucratic, Titania is...glacial
[2021/06/18 15:47] Prokofy Neva: but since the prizes are all things I make, let me say that this isn't what you would call a high volume game
[2021/06/18 15:47] Prokofy Neva: : )
[2021/06/18 15:49] Second Life: Inventory item 'Honorary Consulate of Titania' offered
[2021/06/18 15:49] Bel (jezebel.bailey): would you mind if we used some of your ideas tweaked a little?
[2021/06/18 15:50] Prokofy Neva: well they aren't copyright at the US Bureau of Patents
[2021/06/18 15:52] Prokofy Neva: are you a Linden on your day job?
[2021/06/18 15:58] Bel (jezebel.bailey): hahah yeah but we are pretty careful on the things we use and if its ok its ok, Brat!
[2021/06/18 15:58] Prokofy Neva: well I will denounce you on my blog for shamelessly copying my ideas but let's see I think I had 37 readers yesterday
[2021/06/18 15:59] Prokofy Neva: I noticed that when I posted about a slidehow I had at one of my locations from Xenon Linden some Mole HASTENED to put up a slidehow TOO
[2021/06/18 15:59] Prokofy Neva: so trust me, it will not be the first time in my 17 years of living virtually that someone has copied my ideas and not even credited me
[2021/06/18 15:59] Bel (jezebel.bailey): hey word of mouth is the quickest way to get things out there and bad word of mouth is even faster
[2021/06/18 16:00] Prokofy Neva: We do not have a free press in Second Life
[2021/06/18 16:00] Prokofy Neva: in Bellisseria there are only groups
[2021/06/18 16:00] Prokofy Neva: so I'm sure your capacity to put out bad word of mouth is enormous but honestly, I don't care, I do my thing
[2021/06/18 16:01] Bel (jezebel.bailey): oh we will credit you!
[2021/06/18 16:01] Prokofy Neva: so what is your Linden name?
[2021/06/18 16:01] Bel (jezebel.bailey): when people start bitching about having to do the shots records I will give you all the credit
[2021/06/18 16:01] Bel (jezebel.bailey): I am not a linden I just run the BBB
[2021/06/18 16:02] Prokofy Neva: the Lindens have written in their TOS that they can take any creation of any creator and use it in their PR and have a paid-up perpetual license to do so, and really, that's common
[2021/06/18 16:02] Prokofy Neva: yes sure, you'll give me the credit to pile up more hate on me, that's understood : )
[2021/06/18 16:02] Prokofy Neva: I personally am pro-vaccine but you will find a lot of anti-vaxers in SL so good luck
[2021/06/18 16:02] Bel (jezebel.bailey): well I am not a Linden so I dont steal your stuff
[2021/06/18 16:03] Prokofy Neva: well as I said, my things are not copyrighted or patented, that would cost too much to do in RL
[2021/06/18 16:03] Bel (jezebel.bailey): at least I ask before I do
[2021/06/18 16:03] Bel (jezebel.bailey): yeah it would
[2021/06/18 16:03] Bel (jezebel.bailey): to bad you couldnt pay for it with Lindens
[2021/06/18 16:03] Prokofy Neva: I would think an attempt to do a vaccine like thing, even though it fits perfectly with the passport idea, will get all kinds of static
[2021/06/18 16:03] Prokofy Neva: but you could leave it to the venue owner maybe
[2021/06/18 16:04] Prokofy Neva: then they absorb the grief
[2021/06/18 16:04] Bel (jezebel.bailey): We would
[2021/06/18 16:04] Bel (jezebel.bailey): we would put something like Make sure your records are up to date
[2021/06/18 16:04] Prokofy Neva: hmm would I put this on any of mine? Maybe?
[2021/06/18 16:07] Prokofy Neva: I think there are two basic ingredients that define a virtual world
[2021/06/18 16:07] Prokofy Neva: 1) a sense of place 2) drama
[2021/06/18 16:07] Prokofy Neva: so you get this working for sure
[2021/06/18 16:09] Bel (jezebel.bailey): Absolutely

So fast forward to November 2021, and we find I'm not getting the credit because they didn't choose the obnoxious and controversial thing (vaccinations! whew, what a circus that would be!) but chose the "honorary ambassador" idea (I think this convo makes clear that I would only get credit for bad things that would lead to more hate, right? That would be consistent with past experience lol).

Why do I say "insincere" form of flattery? Because the idea is being stolen in fact without the credit -- but then we knew that -- and of course without me being offered an application to be one of those "ambassadors" or to "be in the room where it happens." But again, I don't want to be one, I'm my own ambassador for my own groups and locations (and so should you!). We can all be happy if the Lindens get more premium accounts, right? It's good for Second Life as a whole, yes?

Yes?

I used to be more confident affirming that premise of "the tide that raises all boats" than I am now, still...

I have to have a chuckle about how these people must not study international affairs in even the most casual way. So in real life, you have "ambassador plenipotentiary" -- that's appointed by a government, the "permanent representative" at the UN -- the US has five of them in New York alone and some poor countries only have a budget for one, in Geneva. Or you have honourary consul -- that is a lesser status usually more informally designated to represent their country's business interests in a city where there isn't already an embassy. So there isn't "honorary ambassador" in the way they are using it (which is more like consul). 

So what happened in recent years for all kinds of reasons, one of which is people don't understand what "honorary consul" is (an archaic term from the British Empire) and confuse it with "consulate general" -- yet another function which gives out passports. So now at the UN, they have "honorary ambassador" AKA "goodwill ambassador" to take on cultural functions on a specific issue, like, let's promote women's empowerment. So then you get this - a debacle around Wonder Woman (yeesh). The "honorary ambassador" or "goodwill ambassador" in the UN context is usually promoting a theme or an event, or a campaign, like "the Millenial Development Goals" as I saw in my 15 years covering the UN for various NGOs.

So they are not going out and recruiting various constituencies of people to "advocate for them in their home country" (in this case Bellisseria, as the newsletter explains). So the "honorary consul" in say, Nizhny Novgorod from America, is trying to drum up business for American companies there (well, at least until one professor of business who had taught there for 20 years was arrested for supposedly not having his visa in order). So ideally, if he is not in jail, he is helping Americans with contacts; he's not trying to find Russians to take back to America to help them develop businesses (and why do that when you have Donald Trump to do that for you -- or in theory, the Russian honorary consul in, say, Miami). Diplomacy is a system of reciprocities based on elaborate international law like the Vienna Conventions and practices; the informal "consul" or "goodwill ambassador" fits into the official structure. It's not one way, as it is in the SL edition -- the Lindens pick some people they like who they think will service as evangelists -- to use the Silicon Valley term borrowed from the Bible -- of their premium account -- those people round up the usual suspects under colour of "representing their interests with the Lindens" -- and then they buy premium.

Of course people argue about this sort of thing in RL --  different countries have different traditions -- and guess what, again, it doesn't matter, because we're in a virtual world and who cares.

With the BBB, we already have confusion generated by their term "Travel Advice" which sounds too much like "Travel Advisory" in real life. The BBB's "Travel Advice" is a list of recommended sites for tourists or businessmen, to promote more travel. The State Department's "Travel Advisory" is the opposite! It's to warn travellers of dangerous conditions. For example the State Department has a grade 4 Travel Advisory about the country Colombia due to COVID, civil wars, and -- as my son and his wife who just went despite these official US government warnings and warnings from their parents -- it has terrible drivers that make New Jersey look like a day at the beach. The first time I saw a "Travel Advice" from the BBB I did a double take -- were these aerodrome operators actually going to blacklist Mainland venues they didn't like? But no, it's ADVICE not ADVISORY -- you're supposed to slum it for an afternoon at the Mainland and get stamps!

How to Get People to Buy More Premium Accounts

So these grand personages in our virtual world will fan out and spread Belli love among non Bellis lol "They will represent and advocate for Bellisseria on the relevant continent. They'll be expected to get close to local residents and also to become their advocate within Bellisseria," as the BBB newsletter says.

Nota bene -- I don't wish to apply for this job and I suspect trying to manage all these "goodwill ambos" will become a burden, like keeping up the persona of the grumpy BBB official, and it will be retired. Maybe those people who always want the Lindens to build a railroad through my land in Grote will get recruited by this thing (land which the Lindens themselves auctioned, which was purchased by a furry, from whom I bought it). But these sorts of volunteer jobs are work, and doing them in a virtual context often leads to burn-out.

If I need to "advocate within Bellisseria" -- where I am a property owner -- I can handle that on my own I think? Or file a ticket with Support? I'm not planning a Trash Can Cuisine picnic with three-legged sack races any time soon in Belli so I don't need any Linden connex.

Ultimately, the Lindens can only justify the "honorary ambassadors" if it leads to more competition with Prokofy's rentals  more premium accounts of people who get homes in Bellisseria. I mean, how could you validate the staff time otherwise? As for the residents who sign up for this, one imagines it will fall closer on the spectrum to the American notion of such a job, involving sending people like Shirley Temple as ambassador to Czech Republic for a political favour because she donated to the presidential campaign, not sending highly trained British cadres with languages and years in foreign posts, or sending Russian officials abroad who are extremely loyal and now need to be rewarded for their service to the Motherland. 

I'm hazy on the part where these ambos "advocate" for say, Mainland customers of Linden Lab who are in, say, railroad groups that grew up around the old SLRR, "in Bellisseria". How does that work? They get these old furries to drop their grumbling about different guages and ride the rails in Belli? PS they need more than two rez areas to build up usage of that RR, and they need to overcome the tech fussing and put it in obviously places like Camp Sandwich and Ramstein Forest or whatever those places are called. BTW, if you are in Randelshtam, or whatsis, which has the great zip ride, the Honorary Consul of Titania is right behind it so come get a stamp.

I imagine that isn't going to work with that constituency. Or say, they go to one of these elaborate old elven communities or centaur havens like Rose Haven and get them to buy into Fantisseria, which is mainly norms who just put out some witch stuff now and then, not fullblown RP (and that's a good thing). Nuh-uh.

Really, the puzzle for the Lindens is this, and I feel for them: how to get real people and not yet another alt of GhostofaGhost Ghostly -- or Prokofy's alts, for that matter -- to pony up $11.99/mo or $99/annualized. 

The fact that the Lindens now send the Moles to moderate the forums (!!!) instead of using their actual talents building and scripting lets us know that the Lindens are meddling experimenting in the Metaverse again.

Showing Up

I guess they will have to iron out these details but I think as Woody Allen said, 99 percent of life is just showing up (but you don't want him to show up). I think some people wouldn't want Lindens at their wedding nor would they want to be strung into helping the business of some Belli House Beautiful matron who makes house add-ons. As the earliest Lindens used to say: "Lindens don't scale." Hence, the birth of the Moles, who scale better because you can pay Ukrainians $10/hour and it will seem like a lot of money. But the job is big and Moles don't scale ultimately, either, plus, after you recruited and trained all these people and you are done (for now) rolling out Belli homes, what can you do with them? (Oh, I know! have them moderate the forums!).

So who can you have scale? The FIC, the trustees, the worthies, the people who aren't even like Ukrainians and don't even need $10/hour, although the prospect of having their DJ business pump up could be attractive.

I think it's important to remember that many, many people bought premiums and joined Bellisseria, and not just the old FIC and their 10 alts each. It's a good thing for new people. And the lion's share of these people are not in the 120 or so Bellisseria groups, and not only because they said bad words and got evicted. The overwhelming majority of the "citizens of Bellisseria" did NOT put out the Moles pumpkin Trick or Treat buckets. And that's actually the hope of this Trumansville -- that it will live and thrive on its own terms, without the "help" of insider residents and their Linden/Moles.

 

Update: I tried my idea of using the Operation Mainland DIY Kiosk, which you put on your head, to record a Linden site (in this case Magellan's Crash). I took the picture, clicked on the box -- but oops, it doesn't work because scripts are turned off for "everyone" at these Linden sites. So I stood on my land adjacent to it, to get it to work. Not very satisfactory as there won't always be resident land you can stand on with scripts turned on for "everyone" near Linden sites, either. The Lindens make it hard to bookmark many of their "newer" sites in Nautilus, Corsica etc because they merely call it "Protected Land" and its name doesn't save on a landmark. You have to make the landmark and right on the spot, rename it to the Linden name of the place, or your own name, or a sim name, to find it again. They do make it hard! 

PS Notice I didn't get into a discussion about how the BBB, which is basically the same thing as the core founders of Campbell Community (it took me awhile to figure that out), may not be the best "ambassadors" to be sending out to community groups to recruit them to Bellisseria/premium accounts given how they and their land baron of choice just treated the "hinterland" residents who supported their community and even some of their core -- by putting all the easements and roads to sale in large batches for low prices when their land baron Maecenas found his business wasn't doing so well and had to shorten sail. Unsuspecting residents were lured into Campbell to buy nicely landscaped parcels in a planned community on the open market in Mainland for 0.4/m -- a rare occurrence on Mainland. Then a few days later, the easements and roads all went to sale -- got bought by various people -- got abandoned -- leaving these sections in a plight something like Pleasantville in the Twilight Zone with Anthony Fremont. And here we all are. But this is for another post and another day. 

PPS It occurred to me -- I should have realized this earlier! -- that this particular FICing with the Hax-Anatine nuptials is to keep up with the Jones in the Metaverse. Recently, Roblox made new people-like skins for their blocky kids that look like Legos. AND they announced that you cannot have partners, weddings -- you know, sex -- in their angular world. Makes sense, because it's mainly for children.  No politics, either -- but that would have been harder for Patch Linden to fete -- no politics are allowed in Belli or the forums, although tacitly conceded inworld on the Mainland and on private islands -- there are still Trump lawn signs all over the Mainland and various socialist and anarchist and even communist projects, one of which harasses me routinely in Marietta at my anti-communist memorial.

The Lindens want to show with a high-profile society wedding also launching the community center that you CAN get married in SL (although not everyone is going to get a company representative as a best man, but most people won't care about that part).

I don't know the estimated share of the economy that weddings possess but it's a very big business. Not everyone wants to get e-married but some of the content produced for weddings (like Atelier's new items at Anthem) could be purchased for any occasion, especially bouquets. Many people feature their wedding in their picks as the highlight of their virtual lives, just as in real life.