I never, ever, delete blog posts -- ever. If there is some factual correction to be made in them, I will insert it into the text at the end. Rarely, the platform provider may get bombarded with utterly specious copyright claims and get a post removed, but I can only think of one or two times that has happened in my entire life of blogging spanning some 23+ years. I also don't delete tweets unless I've made a typo or name spelling error in them, and then I repost them. Extremely rarely, I might notice that an effort to get a point across in a normal conversation among a few people isn't effective given the ugly pile-on propensities of Twitter especially now. So then, I might delete and make the point elsewhere inworld or not at all. But generally, my policy is never delete. Ever. And the setrecs (setting the record straight) can be made, but they aren't as numerous as imagined.
So far, given every fact I have, I have absolutely no reason whatsoever to ever, in my life, to delete this post, this post or those updating it that came after.
Why? Because those alts are all belonging to the same person, as any idiot in Second Life can tell. They have similar names, dates, and groups. And the payments they made came immediately right after another, within seconds. These are universally recognized in SL and any other virtual world as alt behaviour.
Let's say, if in the course of publicizing these four original alts -- and a fifth that came on still pretending they were all unrelated -- I accidentally included a name of someone unrelated to the alt nest.
Or let's say, one of the four isn't the alt, and four out of the five are.
That person would most likely do the thing most people do in SL: ignore it. Because it doesn't matter. Because they stand for themselves, and their alts, known or unknown, and what some landlord thinks in some two-bit 50L rental about his customers chiseling him in a policy of "limit one per person" in cheap rentals, and his blog, which is hardly seen by anyone these days, do not matter.
Let's say said person mistakenly included in a list of alts decided that they still had a discomfort level from this low level of "publicity". They might IM me once and say, hey, that's not me, would you mind taking me out of that list? To which I could say, "Oh, sorry" -- if I checked, and you really had a case. Or, "Oh, I'm not convinced, and I need to deter people who repeatedly do this to me and shake down my cheap rentals."
What Would Normal Person Do
If they were rational and normal -- and many people in SL are, although I understand a famous artist in SL once said, "Everyone in SL is broken in some way" -- which is also true -- they would shrug, chalk it up to life on the grid, and move on. Because my blog would sink below the fold and into the sands of Internet oblivion where in fact my blog actually stays, because of Google bombing -- SEO techniques to ensure the Internet either "never forgets" or "forgets forever and never becomes findable" -- both of which are practiced by amateurs and even large, expensive firms.
What a normal, rational, human being whose alt has been outed would do, had they used four of them to shake down 4 x 50L rentals in a one-per-person rental unit (80 cents US), would say, "Oops, what can you do, my bad" or "Those are not my alts, good sir, why the very idea!" in indignation just to defend the honour of alt-uniform. But then they'd be done. They'd be gone. We would never hear from each other again -- and believe me, I have plenty of these experiences in SL so I know the difference.
If a person really was wronged, they could say clearly, "It's a coincidence, those are not my alts." They wouldn't keep repeating like a broken record, "I did nothing to you" -- not actually a claim that they were NOT alts -- in the mistaken conviction that grabbing multiple rentals in a limit-one-person area "does no harm." But it does. It's deception. And it takes cheap rentals from other people. My response to this chronic deception is just to make less and less cheap areas. I have probably a quarter of the number I used to because people are assholes and grab and deceive in this particular arena more than others. I sometimes have larger areas at the exact same price so they don't have to take four little rentals and put one skybox in the sky over them; they can just go on a platform that is larger and be done with it. But not endlessly; so the problem persists. So the hell with it, find somebody else to torment.
Absent Accountability
"I did nothing to you" is first of all, a failure to recognize when personal and community harm is done, and I'm here to keep you getting that lesson forever if I need to. Secondly, if the claim of "I did nothing to you" is "my gender deception is not your business," then sorry, it's the business of all of us in a world that makes this easy, but not free from consequences.
What would a person do, if they were ignorant not only of the Streisand Effect, but 0blivious to common sense, or they were in some private jihad they needed to pursue? They would continue to harass, harry, threaten, bully, rant at me. They'd enlist strangers in this jihad. They'd enlist tenants in this jihad. They would endlessly stand around on a Linden infohub where they also had a beef against a Linden and another resident, and add my company logo and name to their "Picks" retailing their grievances. They would stand in front of my office on the Linden road so they couldn't be expelled and picket me so that all prospective customers would see a demonstrator and I would lose business (didn't work; we all AR'd them; finally they were gone.)
So that's what "lexdisia" and "troppicolor" and "troubletrixie" etc. and her legion of alts do. Any normal person -- or even in broken-people SL -- could tell her: by constantly bringing this grievance to public attention over and over for years, you're ensuring that your alt nest loses its privacy. Otherwise, you might still have it.
Motivations?
If they still do it, then they are mentally unbalanced but usually you can ban and mute such people or LL eventually permabans them because their insanity isn't limited only to you. That this person can keep recurring despite multiple ARs from all kinds of people on various issues, and not just my alt-abuse-in-cheap-rentals issue, lets me know one of three possibilities:
o the Lindens allow this crazy person to harass me as they find it useful;
o the alt of a present or past Linden is behind it -- it's hard to imagine anyone else would have that long a memory; most griefers grow up and either work for Intel or become professors;
o the Lindens can't control their grid effectively because they are unwilling to ban popular anonymizer sites or effectively ban frequent flyer griefers with hash bans or whatever they need to do.
Modus Operandi
I've lost track of the many times this person has harassed me, my tenants, and strangers (and sometimes pretended to be "concerned strangers" to boot). But the latest one takes exactly the same form as all the others:
o the same person with the same or a similar name of someone who should have been banned contacts me, threatening me and giving me "one last chance" to remove a post.
o they put my company log in their profile with insults or threats, telling everyone not to rent from me and my "legion of alts" (LOL) which then is reported to me by various passers-by;
o since they are immediately blocked, they get some passer-by involved in contacting me to deliver their threats; or that's an alt; or they're all related;
o they hang around the same Linden infohub sim (Barbarossa) they always do, related to another grievance they have with a Linden which sounds crazy to me;
o a person repeatedly contacts me with cryptic remarks on yet another name which is likely related;
o the person marks their profile with "deleted" except it isn't lol.
Etc.
So...Block/ban/move on.
AND PUBLICIZE. Because you have to do that to eradicate vindictive insanity in a virtual world; ARing, blocking is not enough.
Why?
Because ignoring griefing does not work, and ARs don't work, yet publicity does get rid of it -- it can simply take a long time
So this time, we will have a post on this subject to instruct the general public as to why this sort of thing happens, in such crazy fashion, and so often.
Why is this happening?
Answer: because this person is a disturbed male deploying female alts to harm others. Sometimes these profiles speak of being a "ladyboy" or some kind of variant of m2f. Sometimes they don't and appear only as women -- and ah, that's the problem. I would simply take them as female -- unless over the years, I notice the same person griefing me now has "ladyboy" or some version of m2f now on their profiles.
I'm not here to help you enact your broken gender issues on my time or in my rentals unless you a) pay the rental box b) abide by my simple rules and the TOS; c) don't grief me or your fellow tenants.
Likely, somewhere in this broken person's online history is someone they gender-deceived who is furious/hurt/won't speak to them now that they've discovered this on Prokofy's blog (let's hypothesize) and now said broken ladyboy must raise Cain in order to get Prokofy to delete this connection so they can go on deceiving that other person (let's say). Maybe not. But likely, given the frenzy around the demand to delete the post.
Well, sorry, I don't help you with your gender deception. I don't practice gender deception myself and I expect others to be decent and not practice it either, although it has been practiced on me a number of times. I lost my privacy at the dawn of Second Life because vicious assholes think that the way you win an argument online is by outing somebody's real gender and their real life details -- a practice now known as "doxxing" because of the "documents" posted on Pastepin or elsewhere, often with a gleeful note that these facts were all discoverable online and therefore "fair game." Sorry, but I don't think my elderly mother-in-law's name and address being discoverable on line means she gets to have police or pizzas at her door because some git in an online game has a beef about their e-house.
Jump, Tor Will Catch You
Just like I don't think the former Linden (!) and Tor gal should get the pharmacist in NJ fired from his RL job because Ms. Privacy -- who felt her identity should be hidden behind seven seals on Twitter but who posted herself on top of the Washington monument in RL -- doesn't appreciate the hilarious satire that said pharmacist delivered to her: "Jump, Tor will catch you." That's not misogyny; that's not incitement of violence; it's the perfect putdown to these legion of fucktards who think Privacy for Me and Not for Thee is a viable life credo.
Now, I'm totally aware that the story of this particular sad loser in Second Life may not even rise to the dignity of having had some important online relationship ruined because their gender deception was uncovered.
Transgender Totalitarianism
I'm totally cognizant of the fact that this may work an entirely different way, as it has all too many times: Lexdysia/TroubleTrixie/Colors may simply be a typically nasty m2f who hates, hates, hates women, lesbians, and f2m, especially f2m who don't hide their virtual or real status. I've sometimes wondered if the reality of my just not caring sweet dick-all if you fuck with me online in this way - and fight back -- is something that makes these fragile, insecure gender-challenged youth go ballistic -- because they live in such fear and self-loathing. We all know that Tizzers, once she finally completed her transition (she looks great BTW), and found happiness, began to grief less. Right? As did her RL husband, deployer of the Giant Refrigerator of Ravenglass.
I do have one question. Did Tizzers have her dick cut off? That might help me and other frequent, long-time victims of her griefing know if she is really serious and Grief-Moor has ceased, you know? Hormones can be stopped; surgery is forever. That's the kind of brutally serious point I make to people who griefed me for five years or more in a virtual world, causing actual damages, merely because I publicized their antics and abuse-reported them and because -- and this is the important one, an insight I got from none other than griefer-coddler Peter Ludlow -- they didn't want me or others to use the Internet in any other way than they did, which was a sandbox. That's all that's about. It's not an argument about creativity or "transgressive behaviour." It's a debate about whether you allow totalitarianism in the world or not. This streak of atrocious behaviour lasting for years isn't something where you get together for "old time's sake," and you kick back and have a beer and chat about these hilarious antics with the griefers themselves as the moronic Intlibber writes in comments I don't publish because you can't grief me and have your comments posted here. No. Say, how's your crypto account doin', big guy?
Transgender Rights
I believe firmly in transgender rights; I believe firmly in the inherency of transgender. That's precisely why I fight transgender extremism that tries to take away choice from other people and to coerce people to adopt their beliefs. And it is indeed about trans-totalitarianism, the most extreme end of the transgender movement -- transgenderism, and yes, I'll call it that -- that lives in a violent, rigid, ideologically controlled world and wants to extend that rigid, ideological, and violent ideology to others by coercion.
In other words, transgender extremism which is the last bastion of male chauvinism.
I first encountered transgender extremism in Second Life; now I see it in Real Life.
Men adopt female alts in games and virtual worlds for all kinds of reasons. Some claim, given our non-mouselook view in SL, they just want to look at a female butt as they fly around instead of a male butt, it's more attractive. Some are just involved in RP and stories of various light or heavy types, which is their right, and I stand by it. Some merely like to experiment, because you can, and that is their right, and I stand by it. Some are actually in transition in RL, and that is their right, and I stand by it. Some are only in transition in SL and may remain there and that is their right, too.
But some just have found an effective way to grief people, by a particular kind of culture jamming, and an f2m simply seems like a good target to them, whether they do this out of a motivation of fear, hatred, self-loathing, or lack of empathy. That isn't their right and they can go fuck themselves with that attitude, and I can and will AR them and publicize them when they do that, the end. They might be in any one of those legitimate categories outlined above -- but they don't get to use any of them as cover for harassing and attempting to silence or coerce other people, no they do not.
So I'll say this again and again and enlarge on it in another post.
But for the purposes of this post, we have before us just some sorry-ass SL loser who can't get gone and who thinks they can keep agitating with their efforts to gain totalitarian control over what others say and do -- by threats and coercion. "Last chance to delete a post"-- or else. Or else what? A lawyer contacts me? An AR is filed against my blog or inworld? Some effort is found to frame me? Some RL violence occurs? That's why I publicize these things, and don't play the game of "don't feed the trolls."
And I'm here to say: no you can't get your way, you infantile loon, go away.
Again, I also like to record these incidents when they happen so that in the event a sorry-ass loser like this "takes it to real life," and hits me over the head with a hammer, the police know where to look.
The wild distortion of bodies in SL is a form of violence against women, especially pernicious as it hides behind the popular causes of body-positivism and transgenderism. If women commit this violence against themselves, assenting to, or even reveling in grotesquely huge or scratched and bleeding and bruised skins, that doesn't legitimize it.
Note: in SL, as in RL, the taking of photos of people without their permission is not the violation of any RL law or SL TOS. If you don't want to be blogged about as you strut your stuff at a public event, don't strut your stuff. The end. Banning me from a sim or event because you don't like the pictures of yourself or your client -- or what is said about them -- won't leverage your power and ensure the persistence of only docile -- nay, slave-like bloggers-cum-PR agents -- there will be another one like me along in a minute. Give it up. Public discussions with illustrations are needed in a liberal democratic society.
So SHamlet, as I've long called him, has a YouTube show now with Isabelle Cheren, who is a great tweeter and vlogger (you must see her character Auntie Va Gina). As many of you know, I hold nothing but disdain for Hamlet nee Linden Au (read the note at the end if you need the back story*).
Still, it's a "moment" when something historically interesting happened today. For the first time that I can recall (you'll correct me), the essential problem of horrid BODY DISTORTION -- dysmorphia, if you will -- in SL was raised by our public figures -- to be sure, very gingerly, very PC, with plenty of caveats to avoid the haters -- and certainly not deeply in the way I know Isabelle could do this, were she on her own blog solely (but yeah, they all worry about Monetarization...) -- but still....
Casja titles her post "SL Flickr Always Showing You The Same Tired Tropes? Play Cliché Bingo!" -- as if the issue is repetitive photo work (she's an expert on SL photos and an artistic photographer herself) -- which side-steps the real roots of the issue, but still...
It hardly got noticed or got a comment -- except for a few giggly notes that yeah, short arms, LOL. Now Cheren will give it more boost.
Time to Poke the Flickeristas
This intervention may have become more possible when SL Flickr is at an all-time historical low and there's less liklihood of backlash -- thousands of SL residents left Flickr for Twitter or other services when Flickr decided earlier this year that all adult content even broadly understood (nude SL avatars) could only be published by paid accounts. Most SL people, even top designers, do not pay for their Flickrs, and Flickr itself always has a message urging you to "show your thanks" by buying them the premium Flickr.
So the Flickr photogs have scattered, and now their works sometimes show up under low-follow accounts with "content warning" covers on Twitter and now Mastadon, but they have reduced their "reach" considerably. Therefore, time to take a poke.
Flickr is where you see some very good stuff, but also a lot of appalling dreck -- just like all SL fashion and art. SL and all its related social media venues of course is the very embodiment of a concept you don't hear about any more called "the long tail".
Flickr is where you learn that girl haranguing you on the forums is likely a boy in RL, because she has nothing but photo after photo of herself giving blow jobs to various over-endowed males. It's really not artistic, hon. It's not even good porn. Ladies, I think we can agree that focusing ONLY on dicks is something that generally girls don't do in their photos and SL in general. Argue you it as much as you like -- I know.
OH, and before we get any further on this -- and yes, wait for my next blog called "On Transgender" -- we'll note that yes, I'm a dumpy, overweight ugly old lady in RL, too -- gosh, like some of these distorted avatars! But no, I'm not "jealous" or "self-hating". Are you? Did you ever endure shit like this in SL?
(The invasion of Twitter by SL Flickeristas was part of the backdrop for the great Contraption Beat-Down this past summer -- which I blogged extensively but which still awaits that shorter, thoughtful round-up blog you really need to understand that it's not about me or even Walton or even anti-rez scripts or even his foul-mouthed mean-ass posse -- it's about the highly-rigid class and rewards structure of our virtual society and what powers are exerted to maintain it this way. And as you know, I'm not a Marxist about these things. If you missed all this, scroll back on my old blog posts, but this one tweet really sums up a lot of the brutal, inane, schoolyard violence of Second Life, if you ask me.)
So in general, the Flickeristas of SL are feeling vulnerable, having lost their prime venue for their works (and what a shame, too -- I stopped going because I didn't want to pay any more, either, without all of them, and now I have run out of photo space) -- and they still haven't really adjusted to Twitter -- and now about half a year after their exodus, Twitter has turned into a raging dumpster fire in Bayonne, NJ which the cops have been bribed by City Hall to ignore.
So...Cajsa -- and SHamlet -- have cast the BODY DISTORTION ISSUE OF SL as a "boring photos" problem. Like, it's ok to have some photos with "dicks as big as a horse". Or it's ok to have a few photos with "children's eyes and faces put on adult bodies" for...some redeeming reason we haven't quite learned yet, but let's say it exists. It's merely a photographic staging problem -- not anything deeper. It's even ok -- more than ok, let's be proud, ladies -- to have YUGE T&A in SL. Certainly, it is!
But...but...some of it is kind of icky and gross, they imply.
Well, I suppose we should accept any legitimization of this topic in any form, since the standard response is:
o It can't be put on the forums, those threads will be deleted or the person raising questions about these outrageously ugly grossly fat and overendowed women in SL must be misogynist, or anti-trans, or a Rethuglican, or worse, a genocidaire of one kind or another.
o You can't put it on your blog outside SL in any form -- see above, you will be mobbed and hated and cancelled.
And now...
o the problem of too-short hands that couldn't reach around and wipe even a modest ass is a far more troublesome problem! Yay! Strawberry Linden -- who established what we might call the Ass Wipe Arm Measurement Standard for SL, fretted recently that a video she posted with herself and others doing a lovely dance highlighted some issue of a too-small head or a too-short arm. Nobody noticed it but her and 3 of her girlfriends. Meanwhile, this "flaw" will be allowed for ever and ever, amen, to wipe out the real problem of slices, cuts, and bruises on women's bodies in SL and the demands for, and uses of, exaggerated demeaningly fat bodies for women. Hello, avatar!
Squishy Thighs
o Example: recently, when I verrrry cautiously raised the issue of the "squishy thighs" (as they are euphemistically called) being suddenly "everywhere" and wondered "how did that happen" -- I wanted to understand the technical and social dynamics -- I got glared at and stomped on and unfollowed recently. These aren't garters, ladies and gents. These are binders that maim and kill.
Even though it ought to be disturbing that suddenly, thousands of virtual women are binding their upper thighs to the point of painful indentation and harm (if done in RL) as a "fashion".
So the way it works with these bodies, from what I can tell, is one of the makers, like Reborne, will make a thing, and then the others copy it. Not literally Copybot it, although that can happen of course, but they are "inspired" to make similar products. Or (if I understand correctly), there are some creators who make a thing like such thighs as body parts that is sold as a feature to body makers (or maybe not, but they spread like kudzu).
Hence the season's tortures (or delights) for bodies just in time for Halloween: thighs squished tight even to the point of bloodlessness and even with barbed wire and blood -- by contrast in time for overstuffing at Thanksgiving -- rounded bellies and "love handles" tacked on to normally super-model-slim mesh bodies (if they aren't the dysmorphic bodies in the first place, in which case they don't need "love handles".
Kardashian on Steroids?
Some fashion analysts trace the grotesquely fat women of SL to the Kupra body, in which a sort of Kardashian on steroids, or a Brazilian bombshell, was to be the ideal -- a pretty face with normal features, long hair sometimes put up in a bun, and then GIGANTIC hips and buttocks. The look is "She has such a pretty face, too bad..." of the type of comment that singer Chrissy Metz heard all her life, providing fodder for endless magazine articles about her attempts to diet.
But Kupra was hardly the first big fat lady body of SL and hardly the only one now. Those of us who go back to the time when there were only system bodies and clothes and sliders know that there were always a few griefers in particular, and possibly a few genuine transgender kink types, who made grotesquely fat women's bodies "for fun" and waddled around even poking people with their giant attributes.
Big doesn't have to be ugly -- and can be beautiful -- when there is attention to line and proportion
Strained, Chaste Discussion
Isabelle and SHamlet go through a very strained, very chaste discussion of these tortured bodies of SL. They genuflect to the four compass points as one does -- they opine that perhaps they're just people expressing themselves -- which, they hasten to assure us -- they surely have the right to do in a virtual world. (And Isabelle, not surprisingly, served up more of that line to me later on Twitter.)
But then there's that troubling tendency -- which has become a tidal wave recently, making this past Halloween the absolute goriest in SL history -- of bleeding, scratched, bruised, damaged skin -- not just a red hand imprint on buttocks, not just a winsome scratch "that embellishes an empty face" (as Gorky said in My Childhood about Russian violence, domestic and public, in general). No, these are tears, rips, gaps, horrors -- mutilation. Like the photos of RL people I have seen or met who have gone through Russian filtration camps, in the Chechen, Syrian, and Ukrainian wars. That's why I think such things should never be played with.
And why you will never see me going to bid for Patch Linden to be sprung from "jail". The RL father of my RL children spent 9 years in the GULAG and his brother and grandfather perished there, along with friends and colleagues. It's not something you play with. But that's just me. For most people in SL, Gorky works find. Slashes and bites and blood are fashion and liven up a dull virtual world -- which always has more reality than humankind can bear.
This isn't in the bedroom -- this is a public figure at a public event, setting the tone. So I say, "Look at yourselves. What the HELL are you doing?!"
This troubles the bien pensant SHamlet -- he'll excuse and applaud BDSM but not THAT much of a public display of disaffection -- but then comes the "uncomfortable" silence -- and mention of "that issue," as these two very vaguely reference what is in turn euphemistically called "age play" in SL but which in fact is child pornography, and banned by the Lindens because in many RL jurisdictions it is a crime.
Still, can you be sure? Wouldn't want to step on anyone's self expression! The tap-dance done here is fascinating -- and again -- on her own, Isabelle would be more frank, but there you are -- the price of getting 2,800 subscriptions -- which is huge for an SL vlogger -- is precisely that. You do watch what you say. She claims not, of course in this discussion which hinges on the liberal premise that you can always impugn to another human being engaged in some awful act some sort of rationale that would be justifiable. Well, no. You don't. Putin had an unhappy childhood but that doesn't justify mass murder.
"I Like to Jiggle Jiggle"
At one point I was making a folder of these grotesque body distorted women of SL but I can't find it now -- and for more biting satire around them than I can deliver, go and see Naria Panther -- in this case, 13:40 for example. She simply goes to the latest merchant event and pans her camera around. These aren't exceptions or freaks. We've all seen them many times. I have had the precise same experiences, as we all have, looking in horrid fascination as an amply-endowed lady-love jiggles to a halt in front of a display she wants to examine -- and then keeps jiggling and jiggling, way past the sell-by date, and way past anything like RL atall.
The racks on these babes would deserve their own zip code -- if their ass cheeks hadn't been gerrymanded ahead of time to get their own damn county. One wonders -- delicately -- how they, er, do it, without creating all kinds of rendering and eclipsing issues for the SL engine. BTW, if you want to see SL porn done properly, with all the technical issues studied and generally solved, at least with slender bodies, you can join the group Black.Sand furniture group (the guy is Russian, and for him it is the каракум) and see the link to Google docs in his latest notice.
But Are They Really Like That?
Big bosom, sure -- but not grotesque. And thighs are adorned, not squished. It can be done, ladies!
I decided to just take a quick tour around the main events this evening -- although most of them opened yesterday or a few days ago and have now utterly emptied out, their cam sims utterly useless. THAT is the state of the SL economy and the product of an excessive proliferation of events. Still, there's a few points that can be observed:
o Fashion, you know? An angular dress can be very bizarre or extreme in Paris, but by the time it gets to Schenectady's dress-makers, it will be rather dumbed down and softened. And just because creators MAKE these hideous get-ups, with photos of the stupidest-looking models they can find, doesn't mean people buy them or wear them -- or if they do, wear them all the time. If they're on mod, they might revise them. So it's hard to know how prevelant this FASHION is in actual USE without real sociological study;
o If you take the top "Big Girls" event (didn't it used to be called THICC? that's the word used for this style anyway) -- you realize that as in the cover picture of the event, large does not mean ugly or distorted. These are beautiful bodies, in proportion, or even if not in proportion exactly, still done esthetically. Esthetics do matter, and there are universal notions of what constitutes aesthetical lines, even if they can differ from culture to culture. Harmony. Balance. Restraint. You can do "big" or "busty" without being an atrocity. In fact, I noticed (I'd never gone to this event), most of the wares on sale were not even as "large" as in the cover photo. They were merely what you might call "curvy".
So to be clear here, Big Girls and the kind of bodies and outfits at this event is NOT what I mean -- or most people would mean -- by "body distortion" in SL.
This is more what we mean by "body distortion" in every way:
Is this what we mean by "distorted"? Well, for some, here, yes. Notice the men aren't distorted; the women are! Still, that's not what most people gawk at, except for good reasons.
o So, in short, where you see the big bums in particular, they aren't THAT big as the extremes that Panther found -- or that I've seen over the years and that seem to stand out. That is, if you just look at the events, what they offer, and the people who go to them, you see there is a LOT LESS body distortion in SL than you might have thought. To be sure, there is still SOME -- and I see it around at other types of events or among my tenants (although not at art gallery openings and not at the top-spending level of tenant). Yes, I correlate outrageous body distortions with the poor, for all kinds of reasons, in my observation. Again, argue if you like on principal -- but you haven't seen thousands upon thousands of tenants, and I have.
YET IT IS STILL PREVELANT ENOUGH TO SPREAD AND DEMAND JUSTIFICATION -- WHICH IT SHOULD NOT.
o Occasionally, you could even find that the "bruised and battered" look isn't meant to mean "BDSM" or "domestic violence victim" but "girl who clambered up a mountain and maybe scraped her knees". Like this person:
Not, like the grotesque character at 10:18 on Panthar's video -- grotesque mainly because of her dreadful jiggling.
Does that mean that Panthar is lying? Cherry-picking? Distorting herself? No, she's reporting the truth of the situation -- there is more and more grotesqueness out there. But there are distinctions and the top designers and their customers make them -- fortunately for the aesthetics of SL.
Another example of a person who emphasized her butt and put on garters -- but not to the point of pain and distraction.
That doesn't excuse the enormous amount of fashion AND use of damage that I see all over SL -- it's a culture indeed of sadism and masochism in every way. Virtuality amplifies and rewards this. That's why I worry deeply.
(No, I don't agree with you that BDSM is just a "lifestyle" -- I think it's an aggressive dysfunction that does not keep to its own supposed rules of consent whatsoever and has bled out extensively into the public square. At the level of my rentals, I accept that BDSM is a choice for the bedroom, and I'm colour-blind, and don't "go there" because I believe strenuously in privacy and tolerance and pluralism (as distinct from an endless parade of belligerent diversities). But as a choice for society to tolerate, I reject BDSM. I don't like it when people go into events with their clanking chains (often in the form of pixels, but still), with degraded slaves crawling behind them. It's simply wrong. The extraordinary number of "safe houses" for subs lets you know that.)
o It's also important to note that body dysmorphia and BDSM are intertwined but not coterminous. And that's helpful to understand when thinking about this problem -- which, BTW, there is little you can do about in a world for adults, but it is an issue you can discuss and guide your children on.
So on moral grounds, even by their ultra-liberal lights, the Lindens should ban "Capture Roleplay" sites. On technical grounds they can't, having once accepted that BDSM as a category can be tolerated as "adult". If they got into adjudicating what is "Capture Roleplay" and what is "BDSM," even if making a public/private distinction, they would be endlessly parsing badly-filled out ARs or their own grainy screenshots. They won't be doing that.
All children go through stages of hatred and dislike of their bodies, and other children sadly help them to suffer in these stages. Like Kimmie Dawson, quoting her late friend Genevive:
She said 'I like giants Especially girl giants 'Cause all girls feel too big sometimes Regardless of their size'
I don't believe the cure for these childhood woes that persist into adulthood is grotesquerie in the public square of SL as a normalizing phenomenon. Sometimes it's good to leave things as an aesthetic and moral issue, realizing you can't legislate around it. In fact, when you can't legislate, or shouldn't legislation because of "too blunt an axe," that's all the more reason to take a moral stance and condemn it. And so I do.
The wild distortion of bodies in SL is a form of violence against women, especially pernicious as it hides behind the popular causes of body-positivism and transgenderism. If women commit this violence against themselves, assenting or reveling in grotesquely huge or scratched and bleeding and bruised skins, that doesn't legitimize it.
My conclusion from years of observation of this issue is there are three reasons for the grotesque distortion of women's bodies in SL -- ranging in degree of prevalence:
Women wear exaggerated bodies and outfits of this nature because men like it, or they think men like it. They do it sometimes happily, and over-do it -- they do it under pressure. But the source of their doing this is not in their own hearts, except in the sense of neediness. Here's a so-very-SL scene -- the girl is stark naked in a large public event, standing close in front of her boyfriend who is gazing at her, oblivious of other males -- or females -- ogling here -- with the tell-tale tag of a "demo". She's trying on a body or body part or skin or whatever for his approval.
Yes, it's simply a Thanksgiving weekend shopping outing for this loving couple. But could you think about it, please.
"How about squishy, but not TOO squishy, hon, ok?"
Yes, there are men who like such grossly distorted bodies, especially huge asses -- everybody remembers the song "Baby Got Back". And no, this isn't just a Black cultural issue, because dysmorphic bodies in SL range in races and don't seem over-represented to any one.
Some trans women adopt the exaggerated, heavily sexually endowed and provocative look as part of their transition in RL or their choice in SL. I don't perceive transgenderism as RP. The RP of transgenderism isn't necessarily the same thing as the drag queen but these are separate issues. Some feminists that are labelled as TERFS call this a "kink" -- like the RL shop teacher who insisted on coming to class with giant boobs and gained the right to do this in her school (I just hope her boobs don't get caught in a lathe). When observing types who do this, sometimes among tenants, I'm kind of amazed that they don't seem concerned at all about how they are perceived by others -- and are oblivious, if not defiant. My own conviction is that this form of virtual transgenderism, whether by RL transgender people or SL aspiring transgender people or just jokesters is not rooted in actual kindness to biological women. There is a certain hatred that comes out that is a dynamic involving shocking and inciting others, so that they then disdain or even hate this distorted female body. I don't think there's necessarily anything "healthy" here -- I think the desire to distort the female body outrageously is a dysfunction and it's fine to question it.
Of course, we're not supposed to question it -- which is why SHamlet weighing in on this topic -- during the week of the aftermath of the Club Q massacre -- is interesting. The Lindens and their hangers-on are always hoping to "clean up" SL and "manage" the "adult content". To what end? A sale? Of course, Casja's Bingo Card was published on November 17, days before the Club Q massacre. That's not the point; the point all these issues are coming together everywhere, and they had a felt need to air them.
3. Finally, some women with huge bodies in SL have them in RL and want to "be themselves" and "be body-positive" and "overcome stereotypes". And more power to them. I notice that most of the women who do this do not hideously distort; they just have large or even obese bodies, but their ass doesn't stick out from here to Nebraska, you know? Their boobs don't poke your eye out in revenge. That's the thing. You really can feel the difference.
Bodies that tile the female form unnaturally so it can be more accessible to males are troubling, but it's all too common in RL and SL.
So...stop here for a minute. The greatest form of distortion in SL is precisely the gigantism of the buttocks, and secondarily, the breasts -- often the breasts are made childishly small by comparison to the enormous ass for contrast. Of course, this position is associated with men simply banging a broad, like an animal, not seeing their faces or interacting with any other part of them, as distinct from laying on top of them, gazing into their face, and asking them what they would like. And on the Bingo card, this holds only one delicately phrased box: "implausibly big hips and thighs".
No, Casja. They aren't just "implausible" -- they are hideously huge. And they aren't just the hips and thighs -- they are the buttocks. Putting a square "ASS CHEEKS" in all caps doesn't convey that these are GROSSLY DISTORTED -- it conveys merely that they are shown -- like the "camel toes" and the men's "packages". (A term SHamlet uses several times in the show).
I don't think there's anything to celebrate with no. 2 as there is with no. 3, but sexual preference isn't something you can dictate or change -- whatever cultural factors go into shaping it, there's inherency in gender and preferences for gender, in my view. Prosecuting some elements of it, regarding children and enslavement and brutality in particular, but it's hard to change. In our virtual world, the fact that SHamlet and Isabelle have now set the bien pensant tone for this as being "disturbing" when it involves "printing children's faces on adult bodies" and "painful" when involving "squishy thighs" -- and merely deserving of derision in horse penises -- and particularly troubling when it comes to gashes and bruises. They hypothesize for a minute that some women appearing in SL all battered and blue maybe "working out issues" or something but I'm not buying that.
As one of my blog commentators famously said about my discussion of the child avatars "working out issues of abuse" by making their child avatars subject to simulated virtual abuse: "What's in it for Daddy?" Why is he being ever-so-helpful in putting this "child" partner through their humiliation? Indeed.
Shamlet and Charen staking a little bit of a claim on this subject is welcome. Yes, it's partial and needs to go further -- but ultimately it isn't going to change anything for the masses. Still, you can be sure that certain mavens on the talk show and art gallery and Linden office hour circuit are going to slightly adjust their wardrobes and maybe heal up some of those many bruises and scratches. The gauntlet has been thrown down.
PS: You can also be sure that a certain number of gals will come in and now and "set me straight" with defiant millennial or Gen X or Gen Y "gurl power" that their mutilation is a form of glory. I just don't get it, they'll say!
To which I can say: how come the men aren't scratched and beaten and bruised? Huh? How's that for a question. And PPS -- sometimes, not often, you will see men, too -- especially Black men -- with these "adornments" which also bears pondering.
Will the Lindens change their TOS to forbid mutilated skins? Of course not. They'll invoke zombies and aliens and war sim RPs. They'll invoke whatever they need to invoke to keep this particularly high-paying constituency. I have AR'd some of the most hideous Halloween gore bodies and skins and outfits -- to no avail. And how could there be any reaction when the Lindens own haunted house contains a pick-up truck with mutilated dead bodies in it? For me, it's a pick-up truck nearly identical to a photo I wrote about from the RL Battle of Ilovaisk, which is why I never go to the Linden's haunted house every year. They never take that monstrosity down.
I realize that I haven't been able to illustrate this post with the really most grotesque images we already all know about. That maybe I fail to make my case, and not only for that reason. The default assumption about virtual worlds is that everybody would want to be tan, fit, and 21, with maybe larger boobs or dicks than RL, but not at the grotesque and obese level we see them. Yet that is NOT what happened in the reality of our virtuality, and we need to study the three reasons I have outlined -- and others -- for an explanation.
It's good to cry "Hold, enough!" in virtual worlds. And so I do.
*I view SHamlet, who was the official Linden court blogger for too many years before he went "independent," as something of a talentless hack. Enthusiastically and uncritically blogging about the Lindens' every fabulous move in those early years was really noxious. The Alphaville Herald with its tabloid approach and biting satire was truly preferable. I've had an ongoing critique of him for years for all his distortions and outright lies serving the Lab and the cool kids, and it's been a mystery how he makes a living (and he even has another book coming out about the Metaverse). I guess it's the speaker's fees, like with all the tech journos. I can't imagine the ads on his blog bring in much but he is popular in the way state media is with a certain SL crowd. SHamlet only benefits by bringing on Charen, who *does* have talent and a following, but of course he'd bring on a white girl who isn't going to be too critical of the Lab, and not one of the numerous kick-ass Black bloggers on YouTube who don't even get a mention even when the Lab itself features them.
Does this sound mean? Then you don't know the history of SL or his completely self-serving and disingenuous interview of me, calling me a "Noam Chomsky" (!) merely because I criticized LL and its favourites and tech in general -- which wasn't popular 18 years ago as it is now! This summaries up the whole thing for me: at the end of SLCC I in 2004, Philip asked everyone in the conference (perhaps 200 people?) to pose in a picture together, because he said SL was like "the dawning of the Internet," that the "whole new world" of the Metaverse was something we would all look back on as being founded then. This is where I BOLTED from the room. It was a crazy instinctive thing. By that point it wasn't just that I myself had suffered in SL and been targeted for all kinds of hate campaigns, including by Lindens (yes, by Lindens), it was that I was watching the damaging effect on other people -- that was back when I thought I saw the future of the Internet was inside SL (not much different than Philip) and that it "had to be stopped" -- before I realized SL was merely a concentrated form like a magnifying glass starting a fire on a leaf -- in fact the phenomena that led to 8chan and mass school shootings wasn't just in SL, it was all over the Internet. More on that another time.
So as I RAN from this room -- I valued SL, and I appreciated Philip, but I didn't want to be in the "Founding Fathers" photo and take responsibility historically. So...who should I meet rushing in the other direction, so as not to miss the photo op? SHamlet! Of course! He couldn't BEAR to miss out -- FOMO -- and had to be present at that Founding Fathers (and to some extent Mothers) moment for "the Metaverse". Hard to remember now that we talked about "the METAAA-verse" even more and as wild-eyed and crazily then as people do now -- and we laugh at them, we jaded consumers of corporate virtuality. Too bad humdog isn't alive to see this. Or maybe not.
I'll admit freely that I haven't followed SHamlet too closely in the last few years because it seems to me he put his blog kind of on autopilot with re-pasted forums posts or mass media news and plenty of posts by valiant worker bees like Cajsa Lilliehook who diligently post original content for him. That's always the formula, girls! He was ATROCIOUS on the gatcha issue as I noted, unnecessary amplifying a lawyer who was entirely doing the Lab's bidding instead of challenging them.
And here's all you need to know about SHamlet: because I have had a long-standing criticism of him (such as this post about his economic favouritism or this critique of his reporting on skins for minorities or this left-handed praise ), which began with his mocking interview of me, he devised a policy for his comments section that would ONLY apply to me. If I ever commented on any of his posts on New World Notes, I would have to put my RL name in full. I couldn't use my avatar name. No one else had to suffer that sort of exposure to harassment that comes with giving your RL name around virtual world types -- only me. That is, he wouldn't bar my posts on grounds of obscenity, or trolling, even as tendentiously understood in those circles, because it wouldn't be there. That's the thing. He would instead force exposure of RL on me -- to the legions of griefers showing up in his comments (more then than now) to harass and bully me further in RL and SL -- just to make a criticism of him. That's despicable and can't be justified in any way, and the more discriminating leading lights of SL get that.
This is a useful thread from VirtualVerse One to review and more systematically rebut when I have some time some day. I've copied it because they, like the Lindens, disappear content there often.
For one, it helps in making my case that the trans women community in SL, many of whose leaders are on Virtual Verse One now (the old Sluniverse) are utterly intolerant of anyone who changes their gender in any way that they haven't approved of. They are horrid exemplars of totalitarianism. If you think your condo board or your office performance committee is authoritarian, wait until you see these people.
They also curiously imagine that if someone hasn't transitioned in the way they imagine, and hasn't had surgery, let alone cross-dressed in SL, that they must have some psychiatric issue, some "dysphoria," or something wrong with them.
It's amazingly hard to change your avatar's gender in SL for this reason, in any direction. The wall of intolerance, the wall of hatred and harassment from people who themselves say they have been harassed all their lives is just astounding!
In RL, I've given birth to three children, one of whom died, and I have had a number of surgeries over the years for various conditions, some related to my rare immune disease, and I can't imagine anything worse -- for me -- than going for any kind of surgery at all. I've never gone to a surgery, and emerged better off than when I went in. It's always worse. That's just my own personal preferences. We get to have those, right? Or we don't? Even if I had no personal history of other medical surgery, I would never wish to perform that surgery, and that's fine, correct? Or are you medical totalitarians like Mengele and Sudoplatov?
If someone wants to have any and all surgeries to transition from one gender to another to a gender they believe is inherent (and which I am happy to accept as inherent for them), that's their call. Why would this same set of people get to harass and heckle and bully other people who either didn't make this choice for themselves, or due to their traditional beliefs, can't accept it? Eventually people with old-fashioned beliefs die out. I don't know anybody reliant on a horse and carriage now. But if you need to hasten their demise and bully them into non-existence, yes, you are totalitarian.
I'm not interested in changing my gender in RL just to have an SL avatar of the opposite gender. Listen to yourselves! Do you really think that is required? Do you really think we are not free?! Why did I choose a male avatar in SL? As I explained for Designing Worlds: because I can. That really is all the reason anyone needs or should require. We get to change our genders in SL. Have you?
But...If you criticize tech bros; if you criticize the open source cult; if you criticize big or small tech (something I had no company doing 20 years ago, but have plenty now), it means you have just lost all your rights, if you ever had them. Criticism of tech -- which has many, many features that are eminently open to criticism -- doesn't mean you are stripped of your right to change your gender or not change your gender, or PS to have privacy in RL, something that all these people feel has always been fine to deprive me of for "higher reasons," namely, my criticism of tech.
If you criticize the high priests of our little world, or the tech world at large, these harpies believe that OF COURSE you have to be hounded, harried, doxxed, and exposed as punishment. OF COURSE. You lose your rights.
Today, those immersed in the transgender movement have a term for this: "transmedicalists". See, there's a term for everything. I personally don't make any of this my cause, when there's been the war in Ukraine for the last 8 years, my more immediate and I think deserving focus. I mean, paragraphs like this have about three too many buzz terms I'd need to look up for me to play:
Maybe I’ve just become more aware of it recently, but there seems to have been a rise in the amount and vehemence of people identifying as transmedicalists/truscum online, which is an ideology stating that people have to experience dysphoria to be transgender, though the severity of the ideology varies, to the extent some people think you have to be binary and want every kind of medical intervention possible in order to “pass” to be really trans. And many of the people who believe this make it their life’s work to harass trans people who don’t fit their idea of what a “real trans person” is — for instance, Kalvin Garrah (a truscum youtuber)’s multiple lengthy videos on gothfruits (a non-binary transmasculine gender non-conforming makeup artist/youtuber) calling him a transtrender.
Of course these authors I'm quoting would never use the term "trans totalitarianism" as I do, but that's how I see it. I could gather enormous numbers of examples of how this has worked in SL, where I first recognized, and on social media, where we can all see it now. Some of them are in this thread.
Under this rigid totalitarian cult, if you once had a female avatar (I don't recall any avatar named "Elizabeth" at all and I don't think one ever existed), why, you are not allowed to have a male one, and you must then "shut up" if someone exposes this. Even if someone produces some screenshot with me in an avatar with the name "Elizabeth," so what? Everybody has alts. I have my name. His pronouns are he/him. You do believe in pronouns, right? Or not? Or you believe some people who don't believe as you do get their pronoun rights stripped away? Then, you are totalitarians.
TORLEY IN WATERHEAD IN 2004
In 2004, I remember going to the Waterhead telehub. I had on a pilot's outfit I believe I got from Cubey's venue. That avatar had a female appearance -- I had a variety of avatar shapes and outfits I had experimented with when I first came to SL -- one African female got enormous attention from the Herald at the time -- but then I picked the male avatars because I wished to do so. You get to do that in SL.
So at Waterhead, I ran into an old friend from TSO and she remarked that I had a female avatar, which I rarely had had in TSO, where my main and alts were male, and I said, oh, yes, that's the one today, but I don't think I'll keep it, etc. Nearby was sitting Torley Linden, at that time Torley the resident, playing Mahjong with another resident whose name I don't recall.
Torley on her alts, or Cienna Samiam (Cienna with other last names) as an alt of Torley, or whoever that resident sitting with her at that time, would then endlessly invoke this incident as if it were some kind of "gotcha". They would never admit they were a Linden, then or now. They would never admit that they were a friend of a Linden, then or now. They would replay this incident over and over on the forums as if this was some kind of grand expose.
Imagine doing that. Imagine Lindens being like that (they were and are). Torley is a male who had a female avatar and another RL male who had a female avatar as a partner. THAT was the root of the animosity -- the greatest chorus of haters and totalitarians I've experienced frantic to misgender me are totalitarian trans women in SL.
When she became a Linden, Robin Linden insisted that Torley remove her partnership. (If it were me, I wouldn't have become a Linden then, but people need to work and live.) Soon enough that took a toll on that relationship when she agreed to do so to become a Linden. That person, who, unlike Torley was always nice to me, later married a woman in RL. That vicious Cienna, who made eyeglasses that were about the only ones available in SL and who was immensely popular, endlessly heckled and harassed me on the forums and inworld on the mistaken belief that she had some kind of "gotcha" merely because I didn't choose to reveal my RL gender when I began SL and didn't choose to note that I remembered exactly what incident she was invoking. Later, my identity was forcibly dragged from me by both the Herald (whose editor was mad that I criticized his take on TSO in the New York Times) and by the forums, with Lindens approvingly presiding. I'm going to describe this in more detail soon, it's important.
You can change your gender in SL -- but only if you hang with the posse and obey their rigid, totalitarian rules. I choose not to.
CRITICIZE THE ELITE AND LOSE YOUR RIGHTS
It's helpful to remember why the vicious mob on the old forums, some of whom remain today, decided I "needed" to have my RL identity and gender "outed," something which I always took in stride, "making lemonade out of lemons." I'm not anonymous. You are.
It's because I criticized the privileged insider relationship that some of the scripters, designers, and other kinds of "creatives" and devs had with Linden Lab, a system I called "the Feted Inner Core" or "FIC". I criticized them for obtaining inside knowledge of discounted sims, always obtaining media interviews when the media contacted LL to the exclusion of others, obtaining endorsements for their businesses, winning contests and saying later that it was because no one else applied -- and so on.
To their credit, later, LL cleaned up some of this obvious favouritism and graft from the early days, when 1/3 of the staff came from the user base so it was a revolving door of insider privilege and commerce circles elevated to staff powers. But back then, these people wanted to get revenge. A Linden falsely told a resident, based on reading my RL name on my account and Googling me (a gross breach of resident privacy for which that Linden should have been fired), that I was on alimony and wealthy and sitting with the box wine all day dabbling on SL. I've never been on alimony and had only modest child support from my partner with whom I have raised our children over the years and I've never bought a box wine in my life.
Other Google witch hunters, or that one, decided I was a journalist who had been fired from a newspaper for plagiarism and announced solemnly to the forums that I was "indicted for RL crime". Of course, plagiarism in academic and journalism isn't exactly a "crime," but it is actionable. But...I have never been accused of, or have been found guilty, of plagiarism. The problem is that I have a very common name. The people with my exact same name, even including the middle initial, even with the same age and location, have done all kinds of things -- worked for the State Department, worked for other government agencies, worked for Greenpeace or worked in journalism or worked or had very public messy divorces. None of them are me.
EXCEPTIONS FOR THE RULERS
Most of all, I criticized and exposed these people for never getting disciplined on the forums. Ulrika Zugzwang, among the founders of "socialism on one sim" in SL, copied my forum avatar and turned it into a bloody exploded head, and made that into her own forums avatar. Nothing could be done about it. It was "creativity" or "parody". But when I said Aimee Weber's name was "like" a cheerleader's name, one of those people who put little hearts as the dots above their "is," I was permabanned. These children, some of them directly related to the Lindens, were terribly thin-skinned! And still are. The nearly 20 years they've had to grow up hasn't helped one bit.
Today, when friends of the Lindens get to have their virtual wedding in a new community center in Fantasseria, when the BBB gets a 4096 and double prims for their RP game in Bellisseria, when certain businesses are touted in front page videos and blogs and others ignored, causing forums drama, I don't have to explain about the favouritism system at all. If only if were just a favouritism system! If only it didn't also involve selective Governance inaction, and even the enabling of griefing of dissidents who won't worship at the altar of the selected ones, and call out their grift. I think some of you have no idea what it's like to live in a world where you see the Lindens hanging out and partying with people who have constantly griefed you and crashed your sim.
The other point is that I have never worked for the US government or any government as any kind of "agent" or staff person or analyst. I was a freelance translator and news writer as a contractor for RFE/RL, which is a US Congressionally-funded set of radio stations and web sites broadcasting abroad. It properly has "state media" as a label on Twitter. It was and is a tremendously valued resource. That it was funded by the CIA at its origins in the 1950s, and was closed in the 1970s when I was in junior high school as part of a general whistleblowing on CIA support of various US organizations, is irrelevant to my career today or even 30 years ago. When you work for these kinds of agencies, or Russian state TV as a translator, which I did for a time at a NYC TV station, it doesn't mean you are a government agent. And most of my jobs have been for non-profit organizations, and this is all a matter of public record. I'm not suffering from some kind of angst or nostalgia from "my days as a Soviet analyst" because a) this isn't the kind of job I had -- journalism isn't government analysis -- and because I've always had jobs up to the present related to the post-Soviet space, which of course, has many features that grew out of the Soviet Union.
I wish more of these kids would study the history of the Comintern to understand the origins and methods of their beloved Anti-Fa movement as well.
Weatherwax, who is evidently a failed creator who left SL for a time and now has re-spawned as a live musician, falsely denounced the makers of gatchas as greedy grifters. He got static not only from me, who will be the elephant who never forgets on this one, and partially beat a retreat, and remains a non-entity.
Prok? Now there's a name I haven't heard in a long time.
I think trolling Prok into a meltdown is a rite of passage in SL. Most of the time you never hear of Prok, but when you do run into her, even if you aren't naturally a troll, it's just too hard to resist messing with her a bit. She just brings out the inner troll in regular people.
Don't worry about the clubs, David. Nobody will take her seriously at those venues. Every time I've seen you, you've put on a great show. No club owner who knows what they're doing will ditch a performer like you over Prok's weird drama. If they do, just tell the FIC about it, that'll show em! LOL
sounds like I'm blessed to not know who the hell this person is...
Prokofy Neva, Salome calls her the Crazy Cat Lady of SL. Hates anyone more successful or popular than her, calls them FIC. Also hates Linux users and MTF transfolk. Don't call her she, he uses a male avatar. I suspect Prok is a self-hating FTM. Prok is one of the few SL users I've WANTED to troll when I see her. Basically I'd call her Comrade and wave around a kitschy Soviet flag that plays the soviet anthem on Kazoo. Not that I've actually done it, I've just wanted to do it.
I only know about him indirectly, from forum stuff, but that's enough. When I was land shopping once I noticed the plot next to the one I was looking at ease one of his. I noped out of there.
...Also hates Linux users and MTF transfolk. Don't call her she, he uses a male avatar. I suspect Prok is a self-hating FTM.
ewwwwwwwwww, nothing I can't stand more than people in oppressed groups who think they should be a special exception to their own bigotry... Kind of like gay men who hate lesbians and feminists or immigrants who want to shut the door behind them.
ewwwwwwwwww, nothing I can't stand more than people in oppressed groups who think they should be a special exception to their own bigotry... Kind of like gay men who hate lesbians and feminists or immigrants who want to shut the door behind them.
Noted and edited. He may be a jerk, but I'm not OK with misgendering. Da5id, what did you say that set him off? I couldn't find it. Was it one of the ones that Kristen Linden removed?
Noted and edited. He may be a jerk, but I'm not OK with misgendering. Da5id, what did you say that set him off? I couldn't find it. Was it one of the ones that Kristen Linden removed?
Until that one (Prok) directly states that they are - indeed - Trans, you are not misgendering whatsoever.
I am amazed. I thought Prokofy left a long time ago. Maybe he just stopped posting on the forums. I see he is still a land-lord, running Ravenglass Rentals. It is not that easy to run a mainland rental, because you don't have the privacy and control of a private Second Life island.
I've been using Grumpy Cat "Good" quite often lately.
Prok is Prok, If I was running LL I'd have banned her from the forum AND the grid years ago....like 2006.
Prokofy Neva, Salome calls her the Crazy Cat Lady of SL. Hates anyone more successful or popular than her, calls them FIC. Also hates Linux users and MTF transfolk. Don't call her she, he uses a male avatar. I suspect Prok is a self-hating FTM. Prok is one of the few SL users I've WANTED to troll when I see her. Basically I'd call her Comrade and wave around a kitschy Soviet flag that plays the soviet anthem on Kazoo. Not that I've actually done it, I've just wanted to do it.
The only time I've ever interacted with Prok, was on a walk around Mainland, led by Cubie. Prok didn't say much but was quite civil and quietly participated in the walk.
I didn't understand what was happening then , and I certainly have no more clue today, but it's always been one of my strongest memories , reminding me we can't always predict what will happen in SL.
He was banned from SLU, and because of that, Cris asked that we not discuss Prok in our forums since any discussion was one-sided. Aside from the occasional oblique reference, we pretty much held to that line.
