Charitar: After the Ball

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for using the strength and power of online virtual worlds for charity and non-profit work. I'm a big believer in both. I do both in RL and SL. And while I'm described as being evil and always going to new lows by a determined clique on the forums I like to call the Poison Posse, I'm not so evil as not to appreciate the value of helping little children dying of cancer by getting other people to pony up some of their disposable income in an onlin game they're playing anyway.

Yet, like all things Second Life, Relay for Life, the mega-event being blogged and RL-media'd to death once again, needs a critical eye. And those enthusiastically hyping non-profit work in SL deserve as critical a review as those hyping business; both are possible; both have their good and bad sides, and both are practiced successfully only by a few, however, and it pays to be realistic.

(A lot of what passes for "non-profit work" in SL is just about...studying new media and new technology itself, getting together and saying "ooh shiny" and saying "ooh we need to get up to speed on that and appeal to young people." More on that topic another day when I can come back to the librarians!)

So I've sat for awhile and waited until it was over to try to come to grips with what bothers me about Relay for Life in SL.

First, in world terms, there is the uneasiness with which I am overcome every time I contemplate this undertaking. I've tried to analyze it. The uneasiness comes with the feeling that for some, charity work is merely part of the old reputation-enhancement game for which SL is famous -- the 3-D resume coat hanger.

This year, oddly enough, Jade Lily asked me to do the P.R. job for RLF. That seemed a very curious choice unless you figure that either Jade, or some of her close comrades-at-arms, may have hoped to prevent me from being critical, as I was last year, by putting me in the very position that would force me to be positive to sell the charity's mission. Or perhaps they just figured anything I'd do would be done with energy and get attention -- and possibly that energy could be harnessed to their ends; perhaps it was a clever social-engineering strategem. I didn't bite.

I continue to be puzzled by the request, which I immediately turned down. For one, I can't take on time-demanding efforts like that on a volunteer basis. SL is for me alreadly largely a volunteer effort where a lot of my time just isn't billable and where it's hard to generate income beyond expenses. So I don't look for new causes; I already have a few.

But I also thought that Jade could only expect static from others if I was in this position and I just wouldn't do that to somebody's project, make it the venue for endless SL-type wrangling.

More to the point, I didn't feel the cause was one I could sell. Most P.R. jobs are not really about P.R. When you have a good message, when you have the means to convey the message, the art of P.R. can begin to take care of itself. If you don't have the first two things, tinkering with P.R. can't fix it.
You have to really believe in something to sell it.

The American Cancer Society, like other big American industries in the charity sector, which function nearly like a big business in the commercial sector, is not something I reach for instinctively as my non-profit of choice to give money to. Why?

For one, there's the media criticism. Not widespread, not mainstream in the headlines, like the scandals around some big American charities in recent years, where CEOs were found to be chauffered around to golf games and leasing jets to go to parties in various cities while the donations were covering their expense accounts. Still, enough to give one pause -- pause about just what it is in America we do when we "give to charity"; just what charity does with our dollars; just what we might be doing better at a more local level.

What's the other reason?

Because it's not perceived as a service organization. It's seen as an advocacy organization. That in itself isn't a bad thing. Organizations have different missions. While they have tax-exempt status and are expected to serve the public weal, the manner in which they chose to do that, if they abide by law, is theirs alone and the affair of their board and staff. The public can always chose another charity if it doesn't like the mission. That's what a free society has to be about; you cannot impose a public mission on a non-governmental entity.

It's just that I want to point out that when you have relatives who are dying of cancer, you don't call up ACS and a nice lady comes over to the house, or do you even get a case worker. It's not the ACLU, La Leche League, the Salvation Army, the Big Brothers, or your local hospice organization of volunteers tied to a hospital. It's a big lobbying concern whose main purpose is to lobby not for prevention (which is why it is criticised in some media) but for treatment.

Treatment means doctors; treatment means pharmaceuticals; doctoring and medicine are a huge business in America and a business sector rightly critiqued from groups that demonstrate against their perceived unaccountability, waste, and greed with signs like "Big Pharma/Bad Karma" and so on.

Well, who couldn't be for the treatment of cancer? Jeez. Of course, the cancer that wealthy, sedentary Americans get for their poor lifestyle choices aren't compelling as disease poster-boys like, say, the birth defects that March of Dimes tries to address or cleft-palates that  groups of foreign doctors who deliver smiles to children abroad can cure.

I guess it's not surprising that ACS, which is very good at media market share; which has a huge budget and staff; which has a huge web page and P.R. strategy, would grab at Second Life -- it's one of a panoply of new media -- and old media -- methods to deploy in their overall campaigns.

A little-discussed issue of charities, one that individual states have tried to develop more in recent decades, is the question of accountable fund-raising. Some people began to notice that certain charities would be so much about fund-raising and keeping their highly-visible dinners, balls, events, and high-paid CEOS afloat, that little seemed to be left over for their mission. It wouldn't be uncommon to see a charity ball roll by at the Waldorf with a price tag of $250,000 just for events managers, sound system, the 400 covers (i.e. plates), the rental cost of the venue, the orchestra, the favours, the media ads, etc. etc. -- and thereby have the revenue generated past the covers of only, say, $250,000, thus represent a fund-raising cost of 50 percent. That's pretty awful if you are trying to raise money to help people overseas, or in inner cities.

Thus the attorney general of New York State set a goal of 15 percent for fund-raising costs for charities to show a healthy balance. Fund-raisers hired by charities would have to be registered and a good fund-raiser would not take his own fee as any kind of percentage of the overall take. Various good practices were established. No doubt ACS follows these practices, too; as a nationally-registered charity their 990s, or income tax returns in which they show the payment to their top officials and their donations over $10,000, should be obtainable from state authorities. I don't happen to know what the ACS fund-raising percentage is, whether it is well under 15 percent or what; it would take time to investigate, and it's not so important.

I raise this issue, however, due to the issue *inside* SL and what it means to the society and its economy *inside*. As always, RL costs and RL amounts of giving intrude on the fragility of the virtual world, at least at this early stage.

What are the fundraising costs of something like RFL -- or the costs of having the ACS avatar within SL, with his salary and expenses paid? The islands all have to be leased; some people's work has to be paid for; and there are all those unbillable hours that everyone is expected to produce for SL. Is it cost-efficient, then, to use SL, if you'd have to rent or buy islands, if you have to motivate and supervise volunteers working long hours under difficult conditions to make builds, if you only generate, say $10,000 or even $30,000? A lot of it in micropayments of $100 LL? Surely, it's cheaper than the Waldorf as a venue...but...

If I told you that you could come to say, Kenosha, spend days building a fairgrounds, that would be blown away periodically by local tornados, for free, and for a fat fee to the farmers of Wisconsin, and you had to huff and puff to get the local people pay $1 here or $5 there for peanuts, and only took home say, $30,000 after that, I'd pronounce Kenosha, Wisconsin and its fairgrounds as way, way too costly a venture to use as my fundraising and advocacy tool. Yet everyone will be afraid to say that about Second Life because it's, well, shiny.

Now, to come to the world terms of SL. Once again, as I was last year, I was exasperated at the failure of the RFL people to find a simple, clickable, doable, and rewarding way of participating in this world in which so much is achieved by clickability.

They could not seem to find a way to have people put their logos on billboards or signage somewhere in exchange for paying a scripted object -- to harness their natural desire to see and be seen to this effort. A faint echo of that concept could be found in the luminaries; you could light up a luminary on the path by paying it an amount and your name would show up. This is nothing like the billboard or signage or corporate logo concept, however, and I can only conclude that I have to give up the dream of SL's lefty socialist do-gooders ever being willing to draw on the considerable wealth of inworld businesses willing to help charity in exchange for logo visibility -- it must go against their religion.

That is...they do go after some big "logos" or Charitars, avatars who completely take on the function of a kind of 3-d powerhouse frenzy of virtual charity-raising, ball organizing, ball-gown creation, building media promotion -- and all on the 24/7 news cycle. All charity hinges on the concept of vanity. Big charity balls and events, a peculiarly American institution (one found more on the two coasts than on the interior) are largely about providing venues of vanity for their donors. Very wealthy people of the Rockefeller and Vanderbilt types have seasons in which they dress in their finest black tie and tails and long gowns and tiaras (the clothing sometimes costing as much as the money raised!) and grace the halls of the public library or a hotel like the Waldorf or mansion in order to be Seen Doing Good.

That's all fine! That's what you need to get things done in this world. Playing to people's vanity is fine; in fact they're right to want to be noticed, and if they didn't have that motivation, it would be hard to get them to care about somebody starving in some dusty hellhole somewhere. The charity world hinges on this reality, and it's respectable. The balls, the fancy dress, the big names, the coverage on that special page in the Times -- all of this is part and parcel of charity as it is done, American-style -- and the money goes to good causes.

But you have to make it easy for them. Only a small committee has to work endless hours; the rank and file buy their rubbery chicken and melting sherbert plates for $500 just by sending a check -- but that check gets them the "ad in the journal," the logo in the publication at the ball.

In SL, this natural RL phenomenon takes on a magnified and accelerated glare, of course. It's not enough just to show up in Versace with a check for $10,000 US; in SL terms, you have to auction a pink car for a fantastic sum of $2000 US which in SL terms is more than what it costs to buy and terraform an island.

That larger-than-lifeness, and the publicity around personalities like Aimee Weber and Torrid Midnight are so huge, though, that I wonder if it has a chilling effect rather than an inspiring effect on others. There are various ways to run charities. Some of them depend on getting those big wealthy patrons or corporate sponsors -- the law firms or companies that buy the tables for 20 of their junior partners to sit at and fill out the ranks of your charity event. Others depend on those $20 checks that the rank and file send in. To have that latter sort of system, you need a cause that is bite-sized and that people can understand; free this person from political imprisonment; feed this starving child; save this river from the dam project, etc.

In SL, I found myself -- and anecdotally found from others -- that the largeness of the ACS itself and the FIC figures that it gathered unto itself kind of froze initiative at a lower level.

I first began enthusiastically putting out those purple donor kiosks. I also encouraged tenants to use all the many public spaces we have at Ravenglass Rentals and related groups to hold charity events, and some did, which were a success. Most people wouldn't put a dime in these purple kiosks though, especially if no one else first put in a dime. Their Linden dollars are scarce; they also gave at the office. I went to one of the hugely fabulous shopping islands with their white pancake sands and stunning builds and blinged out shoppers, and found a huge amount in the purple kiosk, so kiosks must have worked somewhere. In many other venues, not only my own, I saw them collecting pittances. Who knows?

Instead of their being an easy way to give corporate sponsorship -- the equivalent to being able to fill out a check and a card and send it in the mail or on a website to your charity -- as often is the case in SL, we were also called on to join in applying our unbillable hours to various group gropes, as I call them. That mean meetings, endlessly discussing this or that. List-serves. Wikis. People making up agendas and lists.

Instead of just having a billboard to click on, I had to be a Team Captain. I'd have to take on the job of supervising and deplying events and event staff -- adding it to my already overwhelming SL schedule. These teams were the usual SL hustle -- trying to get big groups of people to make big builds -- building seeming to be the only visible manifestation of Doing Something that anybody can ever conceive of in SL.

I was about to change horses in midstream and in fact come back as a Team Captain -- I was put on the mailing list under The Herald for some reason -- when I began to notice the tenor of the listserve discussions and drew back.

Instead of finding enthusiastic people trading tips or suggestions about how to raise money and plan events, I found the usual jaded star turns. Catherine Linden would come on and ask if anyone wanted to talk to a reporter about the wonders of virtual worlds being used to raise money for charity. I'd raise an eyebrow to myself and wonder whether this wasn't more of that typical SL "about-itselfism" that I've come to find rather repugnant.

People like Lordfly would fall all over themselves to tell the list that they were not very important ninjas, but might be able to make some time for the interview -- clearly the story about the story was more important than the story. It left a bad taste in your mouth; and this in a game where you are deprived of all but 2 of your senses.

As seems almost de rigeur in SL nowadays, the Team Captain stuff morphed into the idea of making Big Builds, with the theme of RL versimilitude. The very architects who are seen yawning on the forums criticizing their fellow non-building residents for making RL picket fences and suburbia went about making up all the cliches of the earth, the CNN tower, the little quaint Mexican village, the London pub. So we were treated to the sight of gaspingly ambitious builds like the London Eye replica by Timeless Prototype or Barnesworth Anubis' Taj Mahal, which were rightly touted as tour de forces and resume-toppers for these prominent builders and scripters. But...they aren't buildings anybody uses or lives in or works in or does stuff in; they are like giant backdrops for show. (I'm going to get really cranky here now and say that the skating rink by the CNN tower is *all wrong* and is *nothing like* that in RL as it had no pine trees in it and was surrounded by concrete--I used to spend many chilly evenings at midnight skating around it alone or with one friend.)

Like all the other architectural Gigantism in SL, I'm left cold. I recently made a tour of all the much-hyped sites of islands where huge media blitzes had occurred -- the BBC island, the 20th Century Fox build on Avalon, Microsoft's on10.net island, Democracy Island.

I found the on10.net people hadn't logged on since April, and the place was deserted. Even those marshmallows I feted some time ago and put in the no. 1 spot on my Picks at Pharos Island were gone! Tumbleweed was rolling around the BBC, and only one other newbie in a white shirt was aimlessly circling the lights of the empty 20th Century venue. These places had the look and feel of the old Queens fair grounds way after the World's Fair, and all the excitement of our old local country fair in October, without the empty popcorn boxes blowing around. American Apparel was deserted, too; does anybody ever go to these big builds after the big events?

I couldn't help remembering my grandmother's quavery and cracking voice at the age of 94, signing a song she loved and remembered as a young girl in the 1920s on the Victrola:

"Af...ter the ball....Af...ter...the ball.....
Many a heart is broken....
Af...ter the ball."

What I had hoped when I first heard of RFL was that we could walk through all of SL; that we could have many local areas involved; that people could choose easily the level at which they wished to be involved; that it would help build the community; that we would somehow feel a part of the RL causes, too. The only tie to RL was that some people emotionally reported on forums or in chat inworld that they had relatives with cancer. The actual relationship of the big ACS to this cancer and their relatives wasn't clear, and therefore, for me, became suspect.

Of course, some people could angrily say that the community was built up. But that's because "the community" is made up of the limited cadres of Linden lifers and FIC types and their stable of talented builders and scripters who work like mad against terrible odds (the sims were crashing; the entire game was taken down a number of times due to this awful latest patch). They feel a very passionate and intense sense of community working on what  amount to these Broadway shows or these Hollywood movies with their giant stage sets; the rest of us feel either passive viewers or unaffected and uninvolved.

That wasn't supposed to happen in a virtual world in which getting people involved was supposed to be easier, faster, better, accelerated, and yielding better results.

The chief reason you couldn't have a "Walk for Water" type of venue actually walking all over town and getting blisters to raise awareness was griefing -- and of course, cheating by flying and p2ping!

These giant walks for charity are themselves a cultural phenomenon that you can trace back centuries to various workers' or peasants' marches or parades, of course, but which in the last 50 years were associated with causes like peace or anti-nuclear campaigns, and then gradually morphed into local causes like breast cancer or clean water or saving pets at the ASPCA. The ambitious mileage, the sore feet, were to be a kind of stand-in, a metaphor, for the actual suffering that people went through in wars; or more desperate marches caused from actual hunger and privation or slavery.

It's a curious thing, these Americans do; they take a card around to their workmates and neighbours and make them fill it out with a dollar amount; then wear themselves walking all weekend, stamping in their mileage, so they can tell everybody at work on Monday, sunburned and beat, that they raised $417 by walking 19.5 miles. (British are big on these giant serious marches, too, for peace; Germans tend to do them more for beer and gays and fun.) They could have just put a check in the mail, but the media coverage and sense of cameraderie in walking the miles is supposed to Raise Awareness.

In SL, we couldn't do that due to griefing, I was told. Imagine trying to have people walk through some sims where the owners weren't logged on, and griefers began shooting at marchers like ducks in a bucket. What if sims were deliberately crashed? How to control the venue?

So the massive event-stagers had to gravitate to controlled venues; and that gave us things like the Linden land or Linden-rented sims and even stuff Jade grabbed and called Lily Protected Land -- thereby becoming the third person after Governor Linden and Anshe Chung to make Protected Land in Second Life LOL.

The limitations of 40 per sim; the largeness; the sense that if you went and raised only $417 now you'd be utterly dwarfed by all the big names -- that creates passivity in people. I found anecdotally that some people were put off and simply wished to give to "causes closer to home". They'd describe what they were doing for people right in SL who needed help, say, with making their rent after breaking with an abusive spouse. They'd describe how they already use part of their SL income to help very local educational causes in their town with children at risk. The largeness and multiplicity of SL as it has become has made some people want to shrink, not grow larger; they want to be more sure where their money goes; they want to "see" or at least come to trust the people they hand even Linden dollars too; they don't want to be caught up in giant Hollywood productions.

I think it's safe to say that 75 percent of the population of Second Life probably didn't even know there was something called Relay for Life. Or if they saw it on the Message of the Day, they clicked through it and ignored it and figured it didn't relate to them.

The measure of the viability of virtual worlds for charity and aware-ness really ought to be measured by unique avatar participation, shouldn't it? If the same 100 rich people who could have just sent the checks in RL or SL are all that participate, mainly at their own events viewing each others views, has Awareness Been Raised? If we can show that in fact even 2,000 or 3,000 unique avatars clicked on the purple kiosks, that might be real progress. That means we're getting somewhere, doesn't it? I ask these ask questions to explore the issue.

The other pointed question to ask is whether griefing -- and the fear of griefing that causes people to warp their plans -- and the crashing of sims and instability of the platform also harmed the cause. Clearly it really put a wrench in the works when some of these giant builds got undone by the rollbacks. Clearly there was less participation than there could have been if the game was down for hours at the start of the event. How much did this affect the fundraising, however, given that the stars had already arranged and given at their top balls or auctions by that time?

Walker Spaight of our world (Mark Wallace of the outside world), blogged enthusiastically about RLF as follows:

"The money is great, and my mom, who’s struggling with cancer, will be pleased to hear about the whole thing, and tickled that I’ve auctioned off a Herald profile as part of the event. (”I gave you more work!” she said when I told her about it on the phone just now.)"

Each story like this is personal and tugs at the heart strings. That shouldn't stop us from asking bigger and harder questions. Does ACS come to your rescue when you have cancer? I know when my father, grandfather, neighbours, friends have died of cancer nobody called up the ACS or even went to their website. That's because they are seen as a big lobby that mainly works on lobbying the issue against other lobbies, say, the tobacco industry. Perhaps they have more outreach than one knows; it doesn't matter when at crunch time, you reach for something else, not ACS.

For real niched-support, you go to the Internet pages, support group, sites that are about your specific type of cancer. You become an avid reader and contributor to that arcane world of that particular subset of that cancer you have. Other than that, say, your church or synagogue might help you. Some people will come over with meals; they'll visit you in the hospital and hold your hand through the chemo. Some volunteer group, as I said, at the very local level will assist you through this awful passage which often culminates in death; I remember sitting with my grandfather as he struggled to breathe from an oxygen cannister, and I wrote a poem about it with the line that he was "dying in the living room."

It's a lonely and hard walk, and not one where the American Society Cancer is at your elbow.

Comments

[Mark Wallace]

The ACS hasn't directly done a thing for me or my mom, but I don't mind. I don't expect anything of them at this point. What *has* been nice has been to know that they are out there working on something. It might not be the One True Solution, but I think at this point we don't know what the One True Solution is, and it's much more likely that we will have to settle for Many Fairly Close Solutions, in any case. I'm just happy to know people (including the ACS and other organizations) are looking at various aspects of the disease and what might be done about it. So I'm all for the Relay. The ACS hasn't done anything for me directly, but to tell you the truth, it's been great source of moral reassurance to have all this going on around me while my mother's so sick. Now obviously, that's not a very cost-effective way to boost someone's spirits, but I'll take it.

[Mark Wallace]

NB: We never went to the ACS and asked them for anything is mostly why they haven't done anything for us directly. I don't think that's their mission, really. As you say.

[Prokofy Neva]

No, it's not their mission. And of course there are all sorts of aspects to subjects like this, and of course the idea that someone is trying to cover the issue of new treatments or new effective drugs is a good one. But if you can, read the media article I linked to, and see the critique of ACS. It really got me thinking.

The Relay continues to bother me because it is virtual. It is not that it is a virtual world. That unreality I'm cool with. It's because walking -- the stand-in for doing something hard, suffering, the key to "awareness raising" -- is virtual. And awareness-raising itself -- paying for doctors to be on panels, or drugs to be tested, also has a kind of virtuality to it.

I don't know if you've been in a situation where you are trying lots and lots of wierd new untested and experimental drugs on loved ones, who suffer all kinds of awful side effects. It's really not fun. You begin to ponder the entire virtuality of the whole medicine thing itself...

I appreciate your willingness to talk about this very hard subject. It's not easy to have your parents seriously ill. I've been through it.

[Prokofy Neva]

Oops, sorry, lyrics go like this:

"After The Ball is over,
After the break of morn,
After the dancer's leaving;
After the stars are gone;
Many a heart is aching,
If you could read them all;
Many the hopes that have vanish'd
After The Ball."

[Prokofy Neva]

A few more comments after thinking and researching this a bit more.

I had looked at the website, and felt ACS was big, glitzy, impersonal. I still do. Your mileage may vary. There is a "services" section here: http://www.cancer.org/docroot/shr/shr_2.asp

And some people might find the booklet or groups or empowerment (gah I hate that word) stuff useful. It left me kinda cold, as all these polished, high-sheen things do.

Before Randy Moss comes on here to spin it, one can only say, sure, ACS has a services orientation of sorts as part of its mission.

And, let me hasten that this "new site" I've sited isn't necessarily any "major RL media". It actually looks to be, upon closer examination, to be something a bit sectarian, with even links to wacky stuff like Grocery Warnings about how we can all get cancer from Diet Coke, etc.

But all that aside, that article makes you THINK. You do begin to ponder -- just what is this big business of charity and doctors and drug companies in America? I'm the last one to posit big evil corporate conspiracies as I don't oppose capitalism and corporations like the hard left does on the forums. But I do ask for some things to be more humane and human-sized.

I'm just, in the end, telling of my own personal experience. What I've seen. That this is not an organization, or a cause, that I could go and raise money for in SL for a lot of reasons, some of them merely subjective. Some may find it useful. I don't. I do question also the usefulness of using the medium of SL for this purpose in this way.

I also suspect that the reason the Lindens go for this stuff, grabbing on to Katrina, and ACS, and Friends of the Urban Forest, and anything they can grab, is that they want to be able to face down the inevitable congressional commission that says, wait a minute, you have this big cuddle puddle in the sky with furries and vampires and BDSM and Gor -- what the hell is this all about and why should we allow it on the airwaves?

And then they can say, oh, but oh, Senator, you don't understand, we use SL to raise money for hurricane and cancer victims and just the other day, a man whose legs were horribly mangled in a truck accident or shot off in Iraq was able to find a Second Life as a land dealer or skin maker and make enough to feed his family etc. etc.

So that part of it irks me too.

[Cubey]

Thanks for reminding us that cancer is simply the result of being wealthy and for showing us all the missed advertising opportunities for businesses wishing to cash in on cancer.

http://www.cubeyterra.com/2006_07_01_archive.php#115381318855997036

[Prokofy Neva]

Hi, Cubey, a good deal of cancer in America is caused from wealth, yes. From living longer. From smoking. From lifestyle choices. From food additives. All of it comes from having the wealth to even be around longer to die of cancern instead of some other thing; and also to die of things related to lifestyles.

The business that cashes in on cancer isn't mine; it's Linden Lab's. They sell this game better to their venture capitalists and to the media by flogging their do-good work. And Torrid Midnight and other big names in SL also got a huge boost for their business. So I don't know why I'd be singled out to be slammed just because they didn't make it easier for people to put in corporate logos. I run a medium-sized rentals agency, for Christ sake's, not Azure Islands or the Aerodrom, which as a media and a business probably has far more recognition and income than mine.

I didn't notice Anshe around the RLF -- why? Was she asked? Did I miss something?

I don't see how I would "cash in on cancer" by having my logo on some walk for cancer. THIS IS HOW IT IS DONE IN THE REAL WORLD DUH. Businesses turn in their logos to charity ball publications; to signs on windows for walks; for publications/newspapers/ads related to walks/events. It's all normal, it's all expected, and there's nothing evil in it as you imply.

But then, you're a virtual businessman in a virtual world, so you wouldn't understand these things, I guess.

Your friends Linden Lab and Aimee Weber and company are the ones cashing in -- getting reputational enhancement, media coverage, and adding to sales. Not me. So stuff it, Cubey.

[Prokofy Neva]

>guess it's not surprising that ACS, which is very good at media market share; which has a huge budget and staff; which has a huge web page and P.R. strategy, would grab at Second Life -- it's one of a panoply of new media -- and old media -- methods to deploy in their overall campaigns.

BTW, I want to comment that one of the favourite little legends told about this stuff is that "the residents themselves did it" and "it wasn't ACS that organized this".

I find that completely unconvincing, even misleading. It's because I remember last year, how this stuff got started; how an avatar appeared in the world; how he was the one who was the owner of objects in this big build in the Linden-owned sims; how his owned object was featured in the architectural contest that was held during SOP III -- I just felt it was all hype from the get-go, nothing spontaneous about it whatsoever. There's nothing necessarily bad about that, but to portray the ACS thing in SL as some kind of spontaneous grassroots movement is to utterly overlook how the Future Salon and co. hyped this very early on, as they saw this as a way in which they could SELL THE PLATFORM.

Try to convince me that this isn't ultimately about SELLING THE PLATFORM. You will not.

[Cubey]

I hope you've notified the cancer researchers of your findings. I wouldn't want them to wast more time searching for the causes of cancer when you've already pinned it down to wealth. I'm sorry that you weren't able to capitalize more on the event and earn more from cancer. But take heart: cancer hasn't been cured yet. You have many more marketing opportunities!

[Prokofy Neva]

Um, nice try at hysterically exaggerating something I said. In fact, what I said is true, Cubey. Read it again:

"Of course, the cancer that wealthy, sedentary Americans get for their poor lifestyle choices aren't compelling as disease poster-boys like, say, the birth defects that March of Dimes tries to address or cleft-palates that groups of foreign doctors who deliver smiles to children abroad can cure."

You're trying to portray me hysterically and tendentiously -- something you're often prone to do -- as saying that all cancer is caused by excessive lifestyles, when of course I haven't said that. I've said that the cancer Americans get from lifestyles isn't as compelling as other diseases. What, you find something untrue about that statement? Huh?

Furthermore, surely you can see that cancer is a big business in America. And it's a big business, precisely because it affects a lot of people, and they have it because they live long, and suffering things like lung cancer from smoking, which is about their lifestyle.

Now, what, you're going to deny that? Don't be ridiculous!

And cancer, while a big business, for some people, isn't that compelling a cause as other disease-of-the-month clubs that provide lots more compelling, heart-string-tugging pictures. There's something exploitative about this, I find. I question it. I wish to discuss it.

Can you handle that, Cubey? Or does everything have to be set by your rigid, orthodox canon? Only you are noble, and only you "do the right thing for the right reason"? Huh?

My point is merely that the big business of cancer doesn't focus on old geezers dying of lung cancer, but on wan and shaved-head children dying of leukemia or even on other types of diseases -- in fact some people would rather work on diseases they know they can cure, but just need more money, rather than ones that have no cure yet.

Naturally, there are cancers NOT caused by lifestyle, but just genes. Possibly they're caused by environmental toxins, too, which is another byproduct of a wealthy, industrial, society.

I'm surprised you can't see that.
You must be blind.

Um, I didn't need to capitalize on any event. Trust me, if I did, I would have either become the PR agent when asked, or a Team Leader. But I didn't precisely because I felt it was in fact about a lot of people capitalizing on it.

My, you get hysterical and nuts in your responses.

I don't have any need to market around cancer.

Do you?

[Prokofy Neva]

BTW, Cubey, being as you are some yahoo out there (I have no idea what your A/S/L is and life experience) who hasn't ever heard of the concept of corporate logos, let me explain that this is a normal, time honoured American custom. And for a Canadian who is writing me now in email and ranting at me after reading your selective and tendentious "digest" of my post.

Go read this website please:
http://www.uni.edu/studentorgs/relayforlife/corporate_sponsorship.htm

Um, what do you see there.

Corporate logo sponsorship. Pay $75, get your corporate logo made visible in the RELAY FOR LIFE held on a college campus. Duh. That's how it works DUH.

That's all. Not greed and cashing in on cancer -- unless you think the local businesses like dry cleaners or restaurants or copy shops that these kids in this college town are interested in greed and cashing in on cancer.

What I mean is something like that -- that RFL in SL not be a star turn for top builders, but that local business be given the opportunity to pay $75 and get their logos put up as part of a sponsorship drive.

I don't know why this is rocket science.

It's done in RL all the time INCLUDING WITH THE RELAY FOR LIFE IN REAL LIFE DUH. So why can't we do it in SL? Without Cubey Terra being a total asshole and making it seem like it is the execution of innocents. It's just ignorance and lack of cultural knowledge, I guess.

Here's what they write:

"Corporate sponsors are a valuable asset to the UNI Relay For Life and the American Cancer Society. Monetary donations are the most important because they go directly to the American Cancer Society; however, services and resources from businesses are also necessary to minimize the expenses of the Relay.

Please consider a generous donation from your business or encourage your employer to make a donation. The money is for a very noble cause. There are many advertising and marketing benefits when donating to the University of Northern Iowa Relay For Life."

Are you going to go rant at THEM now for seeking business logos?? Are you going to go rant like a fucking idiot on those local businesses for wanting to put their corporate logo on something related to RLF????

Here's what you get for the Gold $750 donation:

" Gold: $750+

* Your business advertised in pre-event publicity to local media outlets (i.e., radio and TV promotions; newspaper advertisements)
* Certificate of recognition presented to a business representative during opening ceremonies at the Relay
* Your business banner displayed at the event (provided by business)
* Business logo printed on approximately 2,000 t-shirts
* Your corporate logo on newsletters to participants
* Poster in your business recognizing you as a sponsor of the University of Northern Iowa Relay For Life and the American Cancer Society (Provided by us)
* Your business logo on our website that thousands of people will view, with a link to your business’s website
* Recognition on corporate sponsor banner at Relay event
* Receive five complimentary Relay For Life t-shirts
* Pride in knowing you are making a donation to the American Cancer Society to fight cancer"

OK, so why the *fuck* don't we have that in Second Life? That's all. That's all I have been saying for a whole year about this. It's simple.

Instead, we get people with their little cliques and team relays and special private sims having little salons and parties and feting each other.

What I want is a public, open, participatory board inworld or website in which I click, pay the $750, get the gold, put up the corporate logo.

THIS IS HOW IT IS DONE PEOPLE. IT IS NOT EVIL.IT IS NORMAL.

[Stan Pomeray]

How many years do you have to play SL before you become unable to simply look at statements without becoming hysterical? Maybe I should get some tranquilisers on standby just in case I come down with it.

I jest of course.

Or do I????

[SandyJ2007]

Prok, you are the most rude hateful person I have encountered. If you do not like Second Life and all you can do is criticize it, why don't you go somwhere else. Why spend so much time where you are miserable. You did not have time to chair the pr for a charity event - probably because you are too busy cutting everyone and everything down and then wondering why people don't want to deal with you. Why don't you leave the non-profits and education alone - at least they are trying to do something constructive with Second Life and complain about people such yourself. You say nasty thing to people's faces, nasty things behind their backs, and on your blog. Do you ever consider you might be hurting someone's feelings - or you must be so nasty and hateful all the way through and you really don't care. Why don't you shut the hell up, take down your hateful blog, and go somewhere else - like back under the rock from which you came.

[Squeedoo S.]

Prokofy, darling, I think you're thinking a bit too much about this situation. :)

[Caliandris]

I think people who have dismissed Prokofy's doubts about the American Cancer Society should have a look at the history of cancer treatment. One of the most gifted doctors of cancer patients was Dr Josef Issels, a qualified medical doctor who practised in Bavaria. He took hopeless cases which have a normal remission rate of 2% amd turned that into a 15% remission rate. What did the American Cancer Society do? They blacklisted him. He used homeopathy among other things, shock horror. They blacklisted him what is more without checking for themselves the claims of the clinic. The Bavrian Medical Association arranged for his arrest on trumped up charges, and his clinic was temporarily closed down, while he was held for two years before being exonerated. The Issels clinic is still in existence, run by Josef's son, still getting amazing results with the holistic treatment he pioneered.

see:
http://www.issels.com/Testimonials.aspx

The other person in the 20th century who came up with a innovative cure for cancer was William Kelley, a dentist who cured his own cancer, and that of his wife. He was a dentist, who researched his own illness, and discovered some treatments that had been very little used since the beginning of the 20th century. Patients from all over the place made appointments to see him as a dentist in order to discuss his thoughts on diet and enzymes as cures for cancer. He achieved a rate of 80% remission on cancers which at that time had a 0 remission rate. What did the Us authorities do? He was prosecuted for practising medicine without a licence, and run out of the country, but his work is still saving people today.

http://www.whale.to/cancer/kelley.html

I agree with Prokofy that intention is all. If the American Cancer Association has made gaining money the aim of the organisation, instead of the aim that should be its true purpose, to cure or eradicate cancer, then it has lost its way, and no amount of money will help it find it again.

No organisation should be above criticism, however benign its reputation, or the work for which it is renowned. None is immune to mistakes and misjudgements.

[Tad]

I think you are the most interesting read of all the bloggers related to SL. I initially got a SL account thinking it would be an interesting way to keep up with a friend who had moved out of town. After trying it a few times, I found plain text messaging more interesting than IM through SL. With TM it seems like your brain fills in all the visual stuff to make the conversation more complete. In SL, the silly looking avatars and their gestures distract from the conversation. After giving up on using it as a means of keeping in touch with my friend, I explored some more in SL and was just bored. I find following the blogs about SL much more interesting than SL itself now. As to a previous comment, interesting how you can be called rude and hateful by a person who proceeds to then state rude and hateful comments.

[forseti svarog]

By the CNN tower did you mean my CN Tower?

The story behind it is actually simple... we thought of some key visuals about canada... the CN tower, the gardens in ottowa, the mountains and forests, and the cold outdoors (hence the ice skating pond). No symbolism beyond that. It's certainly not the fanciest build in RLF.

Regarding Torrid, you're going to argue that I'm circling the wagons again but really, I think she's put in a lot of work for a charitable cause. I have no problem with your asking tough questions about that charity, but I don't really think Torrid deserves criticism here. It's silly to claim that her motivations were driven by a desire for reputational enhancement. I think she just wanted to help a cause. In any case, neither one of us can speak for her.

Since RLF happens for a lot less money than 30-40K (raised) in lots of small town around the US if not the world, what's wrong with having one more in the virtual world? I agree that there is higher excitment because it is "shiny"... but do not really see the problem with that. I feel like you're stretching to find something to criticize (not talking about your questions about ACS itself, but the event). I think it's cool that people can attend from all over the world. I don't have a problem with creating some nice spectacles for people to gawk at, experience, and hopefully convince them to give some money to a cause.

[Marc Sirkin]

I thought this was a terrific post to be honest and blogged some reactions that I hope are appropriate.

[Stan Pomeray]

"As to a previous comment, interesting how you can be called rude and hateful by a person who proceeds to then state rude and hateful comments."

Yes indeed - "Everyone's entitled to their own opinion provided it happens to coincide with mine" - everyone's getting into that these days, aren't they?

There's an abbreviation for people who subscribe to that. It goes "TAPAHAFU", but I won't go into that because it might be rude and hateful.

:P

[soft_tabs_ap]

[url=http://linux.kmdi.utoronto.ca/bugzilla/attachment.cgi?id=6]adderall[/url] [url=http://pact.insider.org/bugzilla/showattachment.cgi?attach_id=21]nexium[/url]
[url=http://linux.kmdi.utoronto.ca/bugzilla/attachment.cgi?id=7]adipex[/url] [url=http://pact.insider.org/bugzilla/showattachment.cgi?attach_id=23]oxycodone[/url]
[url=http://linux.kmdi.utoronto.ca/bugzilla/attachment.cgi?id=8]bontril[/url] [url=http://pact.insider.org/bugzilla/showattachment.cgi?attach_id=24]oxycontin[/url]
[url=http://linux.kmdi.utoronto.ca/bugzilla/attachment.cgi?id=9]butalbital[/url] [url=http://pact.insider.org/bugzilla/showattachment.cgi?attach_id=25]percocet[/url]
[url=http://linux.kmdi.utoronto.ca/bugzilla/attachment.cgi?id=10]cipro[/url] [url=http://pact.insider.org/bugzilla/showattachment.cgi?attach_id=26]ultracet[/url]
[url=http://linux.kmdi.utoronto.ca/bugzilla/attachment.cgi?id=11]claritin[/url] [url=http://pact.insider.org/bugzilla/showattachment.cgi?attach_id=27]valtrex[/url]
[url=http://linux.kmdi.utoronto.ca/bugzilla/attachment.cgi?id=12]clenbuterol[/url] [url=http://pact.insider.org/bugzilla/showattachment.cgi?attach_id=28]vicodin[/url]
[url=http://linux.kmdi.utoronto.ca/bugzilla/attachment.cgi?id=13]clonazepam[/url] [url=http://pact.insider.org/bugzilla/showattachment.cgi?attach_id=29]winstrol[/url]
[url=http://linux.kmdi.utoronto.ca/bugzilla/attachment.cgi?id=14]diazepam[/url] [url=http://pact.insider.org/bugzilla/showattachment.cgi?attach_id=30]zoloft[/url]
[url=http://linux.kmdi.utoronto.ca/bugzilla/attachment.cgi?id=15]didrex[/url] [url=http://pact.insider.org/bugzilla/showattachment.cgi?attach_id=31]zyrtec[/url]