Second Thoughts

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.

A Conversation With Michael Linden About the #Scourgemobile

Here's as far as I got querying Michael Linden about the #Scourgemobile as it has now been dubbed on Twitter by Holocluck and others:

 

[2011/06/11 17:30]  Prokofy Neva: Michael, the Linden roads are your domain, can't you do anything about the Scourgemobiles? You know, the AnneMarie Otoole cars and buses and boats on all the roads and even waterways and railways. And then this other character Yavanna Lllanfair who claimed to me her pods, which are just like AnneMarie's nuisances, are "Linden approved". Can't you develop a policy about these? Like ad farms? Even mitigate how *frequent* they are? They are just flying through the air everywhere and piling up and just a huge eyesore and nuisance. Why can't you act on them?!
[2011/06/11 17:30]  Second Life: User not online - message will be stored and delivered later.
[2011/06/13 14:35]  Michael Linden: (Saved Mon Jun 13 16:03:55 2011) The moles and I just build the roads, sorry.
[2011/06/13 14:35]  Michael Linden: (Saved Mon Jun 13 16:04:39 2011) Any change to the Terms of Service and Community Standards would have to come from the Governance and Community teams.
[2011/06/13 14:36]  Prokofy Neva: Can you hazard a guess as to whether sending unmanned scripted vehicles over Linden roads is a violation or not?

 

So, Michael is dodging this and "working to rule" like a good metaversal myrmidon. He doesn't answer my question.

And in fairness, he isn't in charge of G-team, or Governance/Crime Control any more, although he can sometimes intercept a pass, so to speak.

There supposedly isn't a G-team anymore, but really, there is, because if you approach Concierge, asking them to treat grief prims on your sim as a physics problem rather than a governance problem, they will tell you that you have to AR it and "governance" or even "g-team" will take it -- even though they don't exist any more.

The Lindens maintain this posture so that G-team doesn't acquire a visible head, like Harry Linden, or Michael Linden (who once held this position) because griefers then target that Linden all the time and harass him.

So what to do?

I think we have to have a demonstration. Who's in?

 And as I think of it, Michael cleverly *does* answer my question by implying that the nuisance vehicles *are* legal, and that making them illegal would require "a change to the TOS" (as RedZone did, remember). Hmm.

Creepy-Scary

I don't know anything more about this than Tateru Nino has posted, but it goes in the folder marked "Creepy-scary Things About Second Life". The Lindens have hired a former government official -- the White House operations chief to be precise -- to run their government liaison office.

Some people might find something counterintuitive about this. Why would these hippie Californians hire a Republican? Well, that shows how you don't understand hippie Californians. Hippie Californians, for one, can change to a Republican ticket in a heartbeat when they feel their interests warrant it (look at their Republican governor who was obviously elected by a majority).

But more to the point, the Lindens are all about a new version of the California Ideology which has a number of features in common with some forms of what are associated with Republic ideology. These would include Social Darwinism, promotion of state-like big business and strategic corporations and discouragement of small business, heavy ideological control of education (Democrats can be guilty of that, too). The Lindens want to build a platform that will change the world. They don't care what they might have to do to get there, and with whom they might have to ally, temporarily or permanently. They don't like abitrage, for example, which is a socialist or socially conservative aversion, but they have temporarily partnered with greedy land barons, as we are known, to accomplish their goals (I just happen to be reading now about German-funded Lenin in his sealed train returning to Petrograd lol).

If you are Operations chief of the White House, you know every major purchasing agent in town. You know who signs checks, which doors take the deliveries, who gets the vans moving and who is responsible for wheels up and wheels down. You know the people who *get things done* to make the machinery of government work, regardless of who is in power. You have to juggle an amazing amount of tasks, involving traffic, logistics, media, personalities, payroll, administration. Most likely the website and email tasks fell into your job description, too. I have no special knowledge of this, I'm just reasoning logically.

While presidents and vice presidents come and go, foreign and civil service people stay. Oh, sure, droves of political appointees fall out of the government offices into soft landings in corporations, law offices and NGOs, but they merely mark time there and keep in touch with all their buddies until they are back in power again. The Beltway is a belt, circulating the same things and people.

Thus, the fact that this guy worked for Dole, who is fabulously famous and popular especially due to his Viagra ads, and is Repubilcan, doesn't mean anything to the Lindens, because they understand what the word "Operations" and "White House" mean.

If you've ever gotten a government contract, you know that it is a daunting process, with many acronyms, pages, procedures, and people in various offices who must be contacted repeatedly. If you are lucky enough to get one, you need to hire an army of accountants just to monitor and report and handle the thing for all those offices, chewing up the budget considerably. Navigating your way through that welter of paper is tough, and if you want to go that route for funding, you have to staff up. That's what the Lindens have done. They are not going to be expecting Heather and Tiffany to keep buying islands in the 100 pack version forever, because they can't make a better world with Heather and Tiffany, but they can with Scott.

Dear Lindens, No, Don't Listen to the Communist Shill, Please

Bettina Tizzy is trying to get all her friends in the closed country-club Not Possible In Real Life as well as use high-visibility fora like Metanomics to flog an absolutely AWFUL idea: putting Creative Commons licenses in the Second Life viewer.

As I tried to post on her site: I totally oppose this idea as it encourages distribution of content for free, not payment of content creators and not protection of copyright laws in a context where copyright theft is rampant.

Creative Commons is a ruse -- a pretense of caring about copyright that actually merely weans creators from the idea that they should *charge for* their work. It makes the Internet an endless freebies barn, and only encourages the communist idea that everything should be for free, and people should work for free "for the good of the community".

You don't have to have a Creative Commons license to share something in Second Life; you just check off "copy" and "transfer" - a permissions system that was already ostensibly inspired by Lawrence Lessig -- although he is merely creating a vast subterfuge that is trying to undermine copyright and private property, in fact (and he's now left Creative Commons).

Proof of the lack of usefulness of the CC license for real people really trying to make a living (versus subsidized troupes of content makers subsidized by corporations) is that inworld, on Democracy Island, the CC license maker has virtually no users. It's just NOT needed.

Metanomics Fueled by Ad Extortionists and Data Scrapers

Looking over Metanomics latest sponsors (and noticing how Cisco departed when Christian Renaud departed from Cisco evidently), I saw their "primary sponsor" is now Simuality. I tried to recall where I had seen that name, and the name of their CEO, Antony van Zyl, before, and reading down into the fine print, there it was: he has started the SLIPPcat ad system in Second Life. (Dusan has a good write-up here about SLIPPCat).

Ugh, ugh, ugh. And that in turn is what is fueling two of the most notorious ad extortionist and viewjackers of Second Life, Chrischun Fassbinder (Mr. Lee's Hong Kong) and Ancient Shriner, ad-farming Masons and failed Coldwell Banker reps in SL who still continue to blight the land with big, ugly viewjacking commercial towers.

For years, Chrischun was a low-life ad extortionist, notorious for his "Mr. Lee's Hong Kong" ads with fake broken Chinese slogans, based on the character in "Snowcrash" and just as rapacious and cut-throat within SL. After putting out ugly towers, usually only advertising his own freebies or crappy Internet sites selling gimmicks, he would set the price of the little 16 m2 parcel to a $9985, which I guess he had found to be the "optimal" point at which he could get people to "buy back the view". Many did. He could afford to literally wait years for some people to do this -- sometimes innocently, not realizing they were fueling an evil empire.

I've had him all over, and in vain ever gotten him to leave. I have had him in Patagonia by the roadside for close to three years now, since the sim's birth. I continue to be puzzled how he was able to get ahold of that little piece -- for a time some of us were convinced they had some sort of script that was able to seize even snippets of Governor Linden roadside protected land, because it was such a mystery. Somehow, two or three of the extortionists seized these little parcels; one remains to this day with his land set to $8000 for a 64 m2, impervious to abuse reports, and the other is the giant ugly gleaming tower of the current ad network -- which has only gotten bigger and more blighty.

Oh, it isn't for sale anymore since the Lindens' new policy, and that's supposed to make it "better" -- in fact, it is merely a cunning malicious duck under the radar. I used to think a reasonable policy was to have ads go roadside, but lately, I've wondered about whether that is reasonable, given that they hijack the view in nice residential areas -- often cunningly claiming that the areas are "turning" commercial because there is one store there -- which is often there in the first place because the ad blight showed up and the residential owners were forced to move.

Patagonia is a beautiful, nicely landscaped atoll sim, and remains beautiful despite being blighted by two main factors -- Chrischun's ad tower, and the evil csven Concord's persistently nasty big black box, which sometimes hides scripted scraper objects it, surrounded by ban lines against me, where he never comes, never works, never sells anything, never does anything but spite me and everyone else on that sim. It takes a special kind of nastyness to do that sort of thing -- and remains as a testimonial.

But there's something else I realized about these ad towers of the two Masons -- I hadn't thought of before: not only do they hijack the view, they hijack eyeballs that other people deliver on land they tier.

i-World, Not Your World, Not My World

So I went to the i-World fandango yesterday -- and I didn't even have to break my vow to be Done With the Lindens because there wasn't a Linden in sight for hours on this 24-hour rock concert -- they put some select residents up to minding it.

The acts all seemed to be great -- there were old friends like KaClick and Frogg and Jaycatt, and also some new people I hadn't heard who were great -- a Scottish singer named POL, shown here bravely getting his boots wet in Linden water...oops, that's just my lousy SL on Windlight.

There were the usual girls demonstrating with FIX SL signs, it was a lag-o-than. Lots of bitching on the forums, to the effect of, why don't you fix our game instead of putting in these lame events?! And the fanboyz who say, but Lindens shouldn't have to work on weekends lol.

I find it increasingly hard to go to the live music acts these days because of this:

Watching the Detectives

Green dots half hour into the show.

The stars came out tonight in Second Life, it was exciting to watch the green dots blink on, first on one CSINY island, then on a second, a third, a 100th, a 420th. The figure was finally released -- there were said to be 416 sims, although 420 claimed by Sheep insiders.

But the numbers of people on those sims, for the three hours I watched them before, during, and after the CSINY show, couldn't have beat 5,000 concomittant, and no more than 20,000 max total arrivals. In fact, it's probably far lower. Of the 420 islands, there were no more than 2-10 people on any given island in those 3 hours. There were 35-70 people piled up constantly on 3 of the big Orientation Islands, but they weren't getting off.

I was also getting newbies at the regular infohubs, including in Ross, where several furries, dancers, Philip-clones said they were CSI newbies and then began struggling to walk or fly. I redirected them out to the clue sims but they weren't terribly keen to go there -- these were the people that typically like to get OFF an OI they've been forced ON.

So if a million viewers was supposed to make 30,000 log on, it didn't work. I don't know what number they'd use to declare success. There weren't more than 4,000 people on these sims, sorry. I was only rooting for them to succeed, while heavily critical of the Sheep's crippling of the worldview through the browser with SEARCH ALL. Still, like many of us, I'm asking the same thing the detective asked when his partner in CSI on the TV show said that people make businesses in SL. "Why?!"

/Fail

"Now shall we see/if power change purpose/what our seemers, be." The Duke, in "Measure for Measure".

It's something like the phenomenon whereby debtor nations force concessions out of their creditors because they have them over a barrel. Renowned virtual world economist Ted Castronova is allowed to fail big, when he blows through a $240,000 grant from the MacArthur Foundation, and doesn't get his much-ballyhooed "Arden," a Shakespearean world, up and running for the public (or even for designated users), and declares it stalled/failed. He ends up only with sympathy and congraultations -- and a self-justifying, pugnatious rebuttal to even mild criticisms. All he can say is that he should have made this grad students on the project more into slaves and run the project like a despot.

Huh? So little critical review of this fiasco, which few outside the charmed game circle of the Ludiumites got to see, and so much fanboyzing. Benjamin Sycophanske was lined up among the first to kiss ass -- here's a post that is unlikely to get past his ban-hammer of me on his blog:

1. Sycophanske says the Annointed One never really had very much cash with a quarter million anyway -- why, that's not enough to pay the code monkeys. But...this wasn't a VC angel, but a grant-giving foundation. Big difference. That hurts, in a program line in a budget at a philanthropic institution that won't be able to gin that up again. And that makes it very hard to go to the well again not only for Castronova but any academic like him trying to do research in this field.

2. I haven't seen academics burn through grants that size -- and keep getting them -- and get tenure. Sorry, that's no excuse. It's a big grant, it could have been "crowdsourced" more and wasn't, and the students related to this project based at a university presumably wouldn't cost as much as a "code-savvy project-manager type". Ted's response: "In future work I will subscribe to the Lee Sheldon Fascistic Theory of Managing Creative Projects, which, if I my improvise, is to tell your volunteers and employees to be slaves or be gone." Um, that's not necessary -- this sounds like a personality problem, not even a management problem.

3. If the project had been about, "make a game to help people learn Shakespeare," that would be one thing. But it was "make a world to study virtual economies". So...why wasn't an existing platform like Second Life used? Especially given that Castronova went to Neverwinter Nights in the end..

If game-gods think it's all good because an academic whom they're willing to forgive learned humility about world-building, that doesn't justify the cost for such an expensive experiment.

Even Tony Walsh, while being more candid than any other blogger that the Emperor Has No Clothes, made a post that sounded like a clap on the shoulder at the old boys' club. "I really don't mean to kick the dude in the nuts, but holy crap, Ted, given everything you know about synthetic worlds, what made you think building one from scratch wouldn't be so hard?"

Um, Tony then hawks himself as a consultant in the future for projects like that.

/Fail

Creator Fascism

After a hiatus from the Second Life Herald where I really do not wish to post anymore as a "Junior Author," I thought it would be interesting to shake things up and post a piece from SLCC about Philip's transformation into a concerned customer-service rep. This post came after a long talk with Urizenus inworld, where he kept urging me to post, and said the Herald wasn't as interesting "because he and I weren't posting". Right. I guess bukakke is as interesting as it gets, and poor Uri was reduced to recycling the chapter from his Pirates book AGAIN (I am so embarassed). So, wracked with pity, I went to post at the Herald, knowing full well that the predictable gaggle of junkyard dogs would foregather to chew on the bones, that Artemis Fate could reliably be counted upon to be an arrant bitch and that all those "Anonymouses" and "Realities" and "GetALifes" would show up and bark and bite. Which they did.

Pixeleen published that piece promptly -- but this new Junior Author crap doesn't enable you to post a photo and its credit alongside it. I had sent her an email (and also Uri) with the photos and the credit lines, and somehow she ignored them. I sent another one, saying it had posted without the credit, please put it up. She ignored it. I reached her inworld, sent her an IM, urging her to put the credit -- I know how anal people get about their credits. She didn't reply. She's tied up always in RL and SL, gets up early, goes to work, is too busy, and it sits there for 12 hours. I finally post the credit in the comments, and praise Tarah Oh of Ugotrade for the interesting interview.

SheepBS

The wires are all a-twitter with the announcement in the wee hours today of a new "strategic alliance" formed between CBS, that staggering old-media dinosaur, and the Electric Sheep Company, still wobbling on its lamb limbs. What's in it for the little people?

I'm guessing they *aren't* going to call the project "SheepBS," but it's indicative of the world in which we live that I didn't feel as if I could put a title like that on a blog at the Herald without fearing Walker, whose own blog is sponsored by the ESC, would pull the plug on me.

The news of the $7 million infusion from CBS for our favourite FIC sherpa company isn't really all that surprising. After all, they had contracts with the L-word and Star-Trek, and the CBS guy seemed to be gushingly in love with them. And small wonder, because the Sheep deliver the dream to people who otherwise would still be stuck in appearance mode and getting their asses caged in the Welcome Area.

I know the Sheep have been hiring like crazy, and few people realize how many regulars at SL have been sucked up by the Sheep Borg -- Torrid Midnight has essentially now left the nasty, back-biting world of SL fashion and now works as an events manager for the Sheep; SnoopyB Zamboni who used to be a futurist for a think-tank called Accelerating Foundation is now the futurist-in-residence at the Sheep; look on the web pages and you'll see lots more, some hired from real, some from Second. They're going to be moving into a big loft in Brooklyn and it will probably be a cool, happening sort of place.