Benjamin Duranske Must Be Stopped

Benjamin Duranske is at it again. He's someone who really must be stopped in Second Life; he is a threat to the social order and does objective damages to people who question his prosecutorial zeal, and criticize his role. How "stopped"? Not by banning from the world, but by pushing back hard, so that he understands that he cannot get away with this sort of spiteful power-mongering to compensate for his lack of a real life or a Second Life for that matter.

I find a certain kind of profile of 30-ish male, reaching a point of disappointment or frustration and spite in their lives, hateful of people who speak their minds and stick to their guns, and often older women who refuse to be impressed by them and tell them off, develop a really sick, stalkerish sort of hatred of me, and become really hysterical about chasing me around blogs and trying to get me banned (Ian Betteride, Csven Concord to name two who come to mind).

Prokofy Neva/Catherine Fitzpatrick are names easily linked on Google. There's no "shaming" value or "outing" value that can accrue to Benjamin Duranske/Benjamin Noble by this juvenile exercise. I prefer to publish and discuss Second Life issues under my avatar name Prokofy Neva. That's my right; there is nothing illegitimate about this. It's a practice all over the blogosphere. It's only a handful of people -- these same losers described in the above profile -- who can't respect this, and think they are striking some blow for justice by linking my names (rolls eyes).

At root, the phenomenon of Benjamin Duranske represents a kind of malignant turn of Second Life, when people without first lives for whatever reason (and that's fine) use the amplification and viral spread and novelty of SL to make a reputation there, and then back-date it to build a reputation in first life. A Google search of Benjamin Duranske never has him saying a single thing in his life that would show up in Google, or perhaps only a tiny handful of mundane work-related things. Suddenly, through the magic of power in SL, by fixating with hate on people he doesn't know but thinks he can best because they are anonymous, and speaking to the zealous, usually anti-SL media, he can aquire the reputation he never could make in RL.

I'm someone who has many accomplishments in real life and Second Life, and have made the first without the second, and the second without the first -- totally unlike Benjamin Duranske. That's why spitefully, jealously, vicously, he comes to spy on a meeting where he's been ejected, and whispers to me in IM: "I'm doing what you do only better" -- the kind of juvenile outburst your teenager might tell you, not a grown lawyer of 30-something. Why? Because people who really do things better don't have to tell you so : )

Here's my rebuttal to this post:

>I am an attorney who is writing a book on virtual law, and I cover virtual law at my website, Virtually Blind.

If you followed the story of Benjamin Duranske/Benjamin Noble, you know that he used to say he was "writing a novel". Oops, no more novel. We never did hear any chapters or plot or characters in the months that Benjamin was claiming fatuously to be writing "a novel". The novel disappeared down the drain as Duranske began to give his sound bytes to a gushing media, and he then morphed his work into "a book about virtual law".

>I also co-chair a committee on Virtual Worlds and Online Multiplayer Games for the American Bar Association’s Science & Technology Law Section. Virtual law is both a professional and personal passion; I’ve been in virtual worlds since dial-up MUDs.

Benjamin's accession to this position came not through any merits he had established in advance; again, it was a question of vain and zealous pushing and prodding, the way people often get on committees like this, sound-byting, stepping on others, creating a reputation out of the thin air of pixelated Second Life and speaking to RL media at a strategic time when they were interested in casinos, so that he could say, walla, I have clippings and Google. Had the ABA rationally set out to create a coherent and credible committee on virtual worlds, and find experts on technology and law, they'd never have come across little Benjamin Duranske, who left his law firm (his second job after law school within 4 years) to "write a book" -- something lawyers at that age and stage in their career never do. They would have cast around and found the real credible experts that are already on panels at State of Play or writing for Terra Nova or existing science and law publications. It's only because this is a giddy neo-field with lots of egos pushing around in it that this sort of thing can happen. I generally find these things to be self-corrective, as others in real life with genuine credentials begin to see they are dealing with an impotent user and climber.

>When I started covering virtual law, I anticipated a number of tricky problems, but the most annoying problem is one I never considered: a resident of one of the virtual worlds I write on considers me her “enemy,” and has written thousands and thousands of words about me, with the apparent sole purpose of damaging my professional and personal reputation. This post is a result of many months of extremely negative interactions, and it is my final response.

It's curious that someone who claims to be an expert on virtual worlds and law -- but has no real demonstrable credentials -- can vainly imagine that they will never be criticized. It's astounding that an overzealous, pompous ass like Duranske can strut around in his suspenders and pinstripes and urge prosecutors to crack down on what he says are Ponzi schemes and prosecute Linden Lab itself, and not expect any reaction from people who have a stake in the world.

I'm a big critic of Linden Lab; I only have test amounts of cash ($6000 Lindens) in Ginko's to see how it does; it was a tenant for a time at a measly and symbolic rent just as a courtesy to customers who made heavy use of the terminals, as they do with Slexchange.com and other terminals typically at a mall. I don't see that Duranske's incitement of a run on this bank, and a call for prosecution, was justified or warranted or prudent. I think it caused an enormous amount of damage to individual savers at Ginko's and the world. I'm not going to stand idly by while a major-league asshole -- and I will say it again, loudly and clearly -- a major-league asshole incites prosecution against people about which he has no information, which are not the subject of a legal probe, and not on behalf of any client except his own vanity.

I don't believe attorneys should behave in this way in RL or SL; that they can do so in SL with impunity is merely the lack of oversight of any bar association (not surprising, as Duranske has handily made himself the president of the major bar association lol). You don't notice any other attorneys or judges from real life or SL speaking on the Ginko's matter; Duranske does this for reasons of overwhelming vanity and zeal, and the kind of aggressive self-promotion for which attorneys are often known, and therefore hated in real life.

>The person who has decided I am her enemy is a fifty-something year-old woman named Catherine Fitzpatrick from New York City. She spends an immense amount of time in, and writing about, the virtual world of “Second Life,” operated by Linden Lab. Second Life is one of the many virtual worlds and games that I regularly participate in professionally, and for fun.

I have to burst out laughing at this one. Duranske has probably logged in more hours writing for his blog and speaking to the media and "writing his book on virtual law" *cough* than I've logged on in recent months because I have real jobs and kids -- two things he doesn't have, with a wife who evidently does the bread-winning in his family while he writes his "book". He does his activities with deadly earnest and an unseemly zeal to make a career -- people playing games and doing their blogs "for fun" don't angle and wheedly to get on ABA committees ROFL. Unlike Duranske, I don't seek SL or RL credit, office, position, or advantage for my writing. I write by the light of my conscience. I write because I feel it is urgently needed in this world just being formed, and already being blighted by such creeps like Duranske eager to use their own vain notions of prosecution featuring themselves prominently to control the world and control other people. That's wrong -- seriously wrong -- and I'll be fighting it.

Suddenly, Duranske is writing about his "professional" life -- as if he has some sort of profession, paid, recognized position as a virtual lawyer. But...how? Where? He was an IT guy before becoming a lawyer, and liked playing games. That makes him an expert on how a virtual communities should be governed? NOT.

>Catherine Fitzpatrick has an avatar in Second Life named ‘Prokofy Neva.’ ‘Prokofy Neva’ appears in Second Life as a slight blond man of indeterminate age. Catherine Fitzpatrick says ‘Prokofy Neva’ is a “transgendered avatar,” which makes referring to the avatar and the person who controls the avatar using pronouns difficult, as she mixes the identities whenever she talks to the mainstream press. In this note, I’ll use female pronouns for consistency.

I wasn't aware that we have to apply ages to our avatars. Usually people refer to avatar ages by their actual years -- mine is nearly 3. I'm 51 in real life. Prokofy looks to be about 35, I imagine, I'm not sure, I never really worked at ascribing him an age. I don't feel he is "slight" as he is some 7 feet tall I think in avatar equivalents and often can't walk under a doorway. I imagine his duffle bag slider is set at a higher number than Benjamin Noble -- and that wouldn't be hard to do, trust me. The idea that transgendered is something that has to be put in scare quotes is silly. People chose the opposite gender for avatars. Get over it. It's not news. And you refer to them as "he" if they've asked for that as a preference -- unless, of course, you fit the profile of the tiny percentage of griefer, spiteful, stalking types like Csven or Benjamin, who need to try to humiliate others to make themselves feel better.

>Catherine Fitzpatrick insists on using my full, real, name whenever she writes about me, even when she is writing about my actions as my Second Life avatar, ‘Benjamin Noble.’ She does this in order try to make sure that my friends, colleagues, and family read her rants when they search for “Benjamin Duranske” on the internet. I post this so that her rants will be found in context, and because I learned a long time ago not to back down to a bully. I’ll remove this single post — the only one I have made or will make about her — the day she removes the dozens of posts consisting of thousands of words of scathing bile that she has directed at me.

I began the practice of using Benjamin Noble/Benjamin Duranske precisely because Duranske himself did this. And also because his aspirations to now write a book on virtual law and try to shape the discussion, and his ambitions in doing things like getting on ABA committees, mean that every effort must be used to try to bring attention to the problematic nature of this character. I've learned a long time not to back down on bullies, either, and I slap *right back* when they try that tactic on me. Benjamin hasn't made a "single" post on me, but has made a number, including some nasty ones on high-trafficked blogs on the Herald and Metaversed. He's definitely met his match -- or actually someone superior to him -- in calling his bullshit.
I don't take the attempts of someone attempting to rule our world, establish legal norms, whistle for real-life prosecutors, spout out sound-bytes lightly. SL is still a free marketplace of ideas, and that means fighting back when people do this.

And fighting back entails sharp criticism; it even entails name-calling. That's legal; that's legitimate; that's necessary when you are dealing with people making this big a grab for power and influence like Duranske.

>As her alter ego ‘Prokofy Neva,’ Catherine Fitzpatrick regularly posts lengthy screeds attacking me personally and professionally. These appear, predictably, whenever my name is mentioned in a blog or a news article. She has also targeted her attacks at the Second Life Bar Association, an informal, apolitical, professional association of attorneys and legal scholars that I started in Second Life (though she is neither a legal professional nor a legal scholar, she joined the group anyway, apparently for the sole purpose of receiving the group’s internal communications so that she can attack me about them).

Originally when Benjamin Duranske came on the scene, I thought he might be a positive figure and joined the SLBA in good faith because I'm terribly interested in legal developments in SL. I'm especially eager that "credentialled" people (particularyl people with nominal RL credentials who don't actually have RL credibility but seek it in SL) do not take over this discussion that must be accessible, transparent, and democratic and open to a variety of people in many professions. I don't think there's anything especially qualified about "real life lawyers" for grappling with the very complex problems of online societies in virtuality. I don't think any special powers should be ceded to them or to programmers in establishing the rule of law.

I'm certainly not any "legal professional" but I have been professionally involved in human rights for 25 years, on the staffs of a number of human rights NGOs. I've had a great deal of experience studyig international law in practice -- where it counts. I have knowledge of domestic and international civil rights from actual case work. I think anything called SLBA, absent any formal procedure for establishing credentials and banning those who aren't credentialled, must remain open to all those interested in the topic. The day it closes is the day we need to form a counter organization to constantly keep a watch on it and expose it.

Duranske's claim that the SLBA is "apolitical" is a bald-faced, arrant lie. This "informal" group, through his offices, has taken up already two very politicized issues and fallen down on the bad side of them: a) supporting a caliphate in Second Life (!) and b) condemning Chinese dissidents to being reported to their government in advance (!). This is hugely despicable.

>Her modes of attack include deliberately misquoting people she wants to discredit, personally belittling anyone who disagrees with her, making up horrible lies about interlocutors, and ultimately, taking what appears to be an immense amount of joy in being one of the most wantonly disagreeable people in the virtual world.

I've not deliberately misquoted people -- I'd challenge Duranske to come up with proof of that. He claims the circulating of the notice on the caliphate is "just a notice"; I disagree, and i know members of the SLBA who were discomforted by the tacit endorsement. The SLBA is not required to serve as an events/projects announcer, and picking and chosing certain projects to promote in announcements is a political act. Holding a discussion about Chinese dissidents without prior agenda notification (including of me, who was cited in the counter-position taken by Jessica Holyoke) is also poor practice. Um, I'm not aware of any "horrible lies" about interlocutors, but I realize the truth hurts when you're literally in your own private Idado. As for belittling -- that's an act of social protest that really needs doing, when you are dealing with a crusading and zealous attorney like Duranske, untethered to real life practice, forcibly changing our world without our participation. It's awful stuff, and I, for one, do not chose to stand idly by.

>She is the worst sort of tabloid gossip writer, yet casts her ideas as literal truth spoken from on-high. She eschews civil debate, and instead employs personal attacks, sly falsehoods, emotional temper tantrums, and multiple alter egos (or, I suppose, alter alter egos) to lend apparent support to the often bizarre highly personal accusations published on her blog.

I'm perplexed by the idea that there are some sort of multiple alter-egos. Alts? I have no idea what this is about. I write under the name Prokofy Neva. Everyone knows that. My alts inworld for my rentals are transparently work alts of mine (Random Unsung). I have no knowledge of any "alts" or "alter egos," but I realize that sometimes completely separate people who say the same things I do are called "my sock puppets".

What is tabloid gossip? Writing for the Herald? Hardly. I'd challenge Duranske to come up with a single statement that qualifies as "tabloid gossip". I stand by my ideas and articles, yes, and I believe in them. I imagine Duranske is more cynical, and therefore projects that on others.

Why would I debate someone crashing into my public meeting for the purpose to disrupt, loudly proclaiming that this meeting 'was called to discuss him' (it was not) and was "about him" (the transcript shows otherwise) and then skulking around on the edges, taking advantage of Governor Linden land, to keep eavesdropping.

Is Benjamin Duranske aware of how silly he looks?! Hiding under the Sutherland Dam, treading water under the dam blocks and banging up against red ban lines, skulking behind red blocks put up to keep him from harassing the meeting, spying and taping chat???

>She has managed to poison her relationship with hundreds, if not thousands, of virtual world writers, business people, professionals, designers, and other residents by being completely intolerant of any idea — indeed even any expression of an idea — that does not originate from her.

No, I think the only people who are "poisoned" are people of a similar profile to Duranske. Young, insecure, 30-something males who have trouble with those who take strong positions and criticism them. Oh, Dan Hunter comes to mind, too. I stick to my guns. I don't cave to the tribal pressure of Second Life. That's called, in the wacky, sectarian world of Second Life, "being completely intolerant of any idea".

I think there are a number of odious ideas that indeed you have to be intolerant of -- that is, you cannot accept them. A caliphate oppressively placing women as less than men and making the state a subject of theological fiat is one of those ideas I simply won't accept. The need to use RL prosecution on Ginko's is another idea I find intolerable -- and hey, apparently I'm not alone there, as neither RL federal agencies nor Linden Lab have taken any of the prosecutorial steps the impotent and vain Duranske has advocate. I'm not sure Ginko even became the Ponzi everyone imagined until Duranske began to prosecute it virtually and forced it to close and reject withdrawals.

>I don’t read her blog any more, and I try my best to follow George Bernard Shaw’s advice, (”I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig, you get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it…,”) in resisting the urge to respond to bilious comments she posts following mention of me on other sites.

This is someting Benjamin has been saying for months -- but ignoring his own advice, instead, obsessively posting on my blog at 3:30 am; crashing my meeting and then skulking under the dam in Linden water trying to eavesdrop.

Probably got his Brooks Brothers suit ruined, and no, I won't be paying the dry-cleaning bill.

>In spite of that, she persists. Because I’m not willing to either, a) spend sufficient time discrediting each of her individual lies, or b) let her get away with it entirely, I am posting this instead and will link to it in lieu of a specific response to her in the future. I know that some of Virtually Blind’s readers pay closer attention to Second Life’s blogosphere than I do; those that do should feel free to post a link to this wherever appropriate.

>Getting in to a lot of detail here gets close to Shaw’s “pig-wrestling,” so I’m not going to. But here are a handful of highlights that put her attacks in perspective.

> * Prokofy Neva / Catherine Fitzpatrick is the only person who is prohibited from posting comments on my website, Virtually Blind. This is because she has attacked me and other posters personally (sometimes libelously) rather than engaging in a debate over ideas.

Duranske operates under the curious notion that if I am the "only one" banned from his blog that therefore the banning of my speech is "right". But it's not. Any panel of experts operating in good faith, examing my posts by any actual civil rights criteria (or even, I suspect, the usual more cramped notion of an ISP TOS), wouldn't find anything objectionable in what I write. Instead, they'd find the neuralgic, insecure, vain, and inspipid reaction of suppressing my dissent out of weakness as they only way to stop criticism they don't like.

The claim that I have engaged in "libelous" writing is completely unsupportable. And it's this false claim that prompted me to ban Duranske from my blog and from my meetings -- you can't have someone who wishes real-life prosecutorial *harm* and *damages* to you to be running wild on your blog and land. I have a reason for banning Duranske that is supportable by my rules and defensible; he doesn't have one for banning me. I dont' have time to go sifting through his blog to find posts to prove this -- he may have removed them. Let Duranske submit all my posts to a panel of experts and they will find that criticism that specifies people's actions as objectionable isn't libel; it's robust discourse necessary in a democracy!

> * In spite of this (and probably against my better judgment) I have told her that she is welcome to rejoin the community of commentators, if she will simply agree not to attack people personally, and instead, focus her comments on the ideas at issue. She has refused.

No, I've refused to subject myself to arbitrary and unlawful determinations of what is "libelous" and "ad hominem" or "objectionable" from someone with clearly no basic notion of human rights; no basic notion of what robust discourse is in a democratic society; and someone thin-skinned, vain, neuralgic, and controlling. That's certainly reasonable and rational. You can't cow-tow to a sullen and insolent type like this who pounces and tries to control at every turn. No, you have to give them the most robust slap.

>* Notably, she is also prohibited from posting at (among many other sites) the official Second Life forums, the official Second Life blog, Tony Walsh’s Clickable Culture, Hamlet James Au’s New World Notes, Nobody Fugazi’s Your2ndPlace, Terra Nova, SLUniverse, and SLInsider.

And proud of it! Each one is a badge of honour, a blow for freedom, and when the normal people examine this some day, they'll be condemning the banners, and not the banned -- of that I have no doubt.

Each and every one of those places also contains insecure, 30-something males who have trouble with strong women (especially as transgendered male avatars!) and strong commentators in general who question their judgement -- which is indeed questionable -- in being able to allow: a) vulgar and obscene postings on Terra Nova, such as the kind asking me to "post my tits" from w-hat, but ban me because...I said stuff like Bonnie Ruberg was ignoring political censorship in SL and exaggerating sexual censorship or because I criticized the contemptuous Dan Hunter; b) in allowing stalking and really frightfully deranged commentary of the type Csven Concord put on Clickable Culture and Terra Nova, claiming falsely that I aided and abetted a crime in Second Life by failing somehow to report alleged child pornographers (!);

As for Nobody, he's the same kind of vain and insecure busybody that needs a pushback like Benjamin Duranske. Thank God I'm here to perform this public service, or we'd only have one kind of commentary in Second Life, that of the smug and arrogant tekkie.

Hamlet banned me in advance, before his blog even opened, merely because I criticize his friend Aimee Weber -- me calling her name "like a cheerleader" was what ultimately got me banned from the SL blog, a move that Lindens confessed involved a "business" decision to promote their mascot at the time and remove critics like me, even if I didn't violate the TOS. Slinsider and Sluniverse are merely fanboy sites that follow suit from Mother Linden, especially when they too are criticized for their bad behavior.

In the hothouse, precious, tekkie-drive, neuralgic little world of Second Life, where these arrogant 30-something losers prevail, I can get banned from these sites merely by writing the obvious, using common sense, and speaking the truth normally.

> * She has, as alluded to above, listed me in the first tier of her periodically updated three-tiered “Enemies List,” along with such Second Life notables as Hamlet Au, Aimee Weber, and FlipperPA Peregrine. Given that I share that tier with several others who have also prohibited her from commenting on their websites, I suspect I’m included for that reason, though one never really knows.

My rules are simple. People who cause me damage, who incite hatred, call for libel prosecution speciously (there is no libel), harass me in various ways, belittle the harm caused me by w-hat calling me at home, etc. -- these are people causing damages, and they go on the enemies list. Pure and simple.

>Amongst many false, bizarre, and frequently inconsistent accusations, she has accused me:

* Of supporting a fundamentalist Islamic agenda of repression (because I announced, to the Second Life Bar Association’s internal distribution list, an in-world governmental/legal build based on 13th Century Islamic principles undertaken by a member of the SLBA, and posted about the build on Virtually Blind — as I do about all government simulations in the virtual world).

It's up to the SLBA to use some basic, ordinary discretion in picking and choosing the governance projects to announce. It is under no obligation to serve as a loudspeaker for other people's projects. The choice of announcing this one was motivated by political correctness. The scurrying to differentiate his own positions from the caliphate and ask some questions came AFTER my challenge and would not have happened UNLESS I made that challenge. THAT'S WHAT IT TAKES. There's nothing false or bizarre about this; other members were uncomfortable about this but did nothing.

> * Of supporting the torture of Chinese dissidents (because I was President of the SLBA when the SLBA voted to hold a non-partisan panel discussion regarding the ramifications of different responses by internet service providers to requests from governments for personal information).

Absolutely. This position is absolutely unsupportable. There is no reason for SLBA to speak out calling for the conscious, active participation in oppression of dissidents; if they can't agree to condemn what Google does or what LL might do, they can refrain from comment and not subject these dissidents to harm overtly.

> * Of being a puritanical “fanboy” supporter of Second Life who fails to sufficiently criticize Linden lab (for saying I thought Linden Lab’s move to ban casinos was smart from a legal perspective)…

Selective horseshit. I support the casino ban too -- who wouldn't, as it is demonstrably *the law* and *it applies* and the Lindens proactively *asked whether it should apply* and *agreed to the ruling pre-emptively*. Duh!

A far cry from the Ginko's case where the law isn't applying; the information isn't available; the Lindens haven't invited the feds to comment; the actions haven't been taken. Big difference!

> * …and then, a few weeks later, of trying to destroy Second Life and have its founder arrested.

Absolutely. In article after article, Duranske has called for Linden Lab to be prosecuted as the cashier for Ginko's and has marvelled that nothing has been done against LL.

> * Of committing “malpractice” for pointing out that a self-styled Second Life “bank” called “Ginko” that offered 40-150% interest a year was a fraudulent ponzi scheme, in spite of the fact that I was not even practicing law at that time. Also of “causing a bank run,” and trying to “destroy the second life economy” for breaking the story of that bank run — which had already begun — at the beginning of the disaster.

Yes, this is malpractice. Yes, this is unsupportable and unjustified behaviour. Someone not practicing law shouldn't be issuing prosecutorial pronouncements. And Duranske objectively aided and abetted the bank run, not only publishing transcripts on his blog (hilarious, that from someone ARing me over a IM log ROFL), but speaking to the RL press and delivering pronouncements. Wrong, wrong, wrong!

> * Of being a “corporativist,” and of being a “leftist liberal.” (Those two comments, rather incredibly, came in the very same sentence.)

Yes, they often go together, brown/red coalitions abound in real life.

> * And of being a half-dozen vulgar anatomical terms including — at the PG-13 end — “massive asshole,” and “giant dick.”

Major-league asshole is I think the expression. Giant dick? No, I think "little prick" is the more apt expression!

>This is truly the tip of a very large iceberg. Though I no longer read her blog, and I try to avoid reading other comments about me by her that I encounter, occasionally, people still email me or get in touch in Second Life to ask if I’ve seen what ‘Prokofy Neva’ has just written about me. I tell them truthfully that I’ve not, and that I won’t. It is sort of a real life version of the “mute” button that is available in most virtual worlds, and it makes my experiences in Second Life rather more pleasant.

Everyone knows that Duranske stays up all night reading blogs about him LOL.

>So this is my policy regarding ‘Prokofy Neva’ / Catherine Fitzpatrick: I don’t read her, I don’t link to her, and I don’t — after this is posted – I don’t plan to write about her or interact with her any more, in any way. I suspect that in the long run, a sufficient number of other people will decide to approach people like her in virtual worlds the same way, and that as a result, she will simply disappear into irrelevancy.

Be that as it may, I will keep fighting the good fight. People like Duranske trying to make grabs for power and influence to pump up their vanity need to be stopped. It's hard work, and I hope I will have more company in this. If I'm stopped, I have no doubt someone else will pick up the torch. Seriously, it's a job that needs to be done.

>Finding a take-home lesson here is difficult, because I don’t want to suggest that attorneys and other professionals should avoid virtual worlds, particularly since that appears to be exactly what ‘Prokofy Neva’ wants. She has viciously attacked almost every member of the first wave of professionals to show up, from writers, to lawyers, economists to journalists, and professors to psychologists, and all of us are still here. Unless you agree with everything she says, you will also be a target, but you should not let that stop you.

The first wave of professionals, like the first wave of corporations, are pompous, ambitious, vain assholes for the most part. They claim to be the first -- when they are not. They step on people who are here already and have some recognizable expertise -- because that would belie their own ignorance. They muscle in and do outrageous things like set up an island with the name "Info Island" (a public utility grabbed by a private entity) as if they alone can arrogate themselves to be the entire yellow pages for Second Life "just because".

They open up a bar association and engineer elections with their own little pals they've hastily put into place, without a really legitimate majority of members aware and voting. Journalists who I've criticized who have written on SL have often been of the paid-for corporate variety like Hamlet Linden; I can't see that I've criticized journalists who are professionals from recognizable major media, other than a dweeb that we call knocked for dumping on SL on Forbes.tv while bragging about his WoW guild.

I've been critical of the work of Robert Bloomfield and I think legitimately so. I've engaged him in debate and had many fruitful conversations with me. He doesn't insult me on his blog, run for cover, or ban me; I haven't had to insult him because he has genuinely tried to promote debate and listen to criticism and take home any lessons worth taking home.

I guess some males on Second Life have their dufflebag slider exactly where they need to have it, and are completely secure and comfortable in their real lives and their second lives.

Unlike Benjamin Duranske.

>I hope that others will learn from my mistakes — as I have eventually learned from them — and will do as I say and not as I did, and ignore people like this from the beginning. Had I never responded to her initial messages, never replied to her posts, never acknowledged her in any way, she’d have likely grown bored with the game. But because I didn’t know who she was when she first contacted me, I responded, and it snowballed from there. I now have to waste time and energy posting this.

Benjamin imagines that he can smear my reputation and discount my legitimate criticism in this manner, but it's just proof of the corporate smothering of Second Life that has taken place first from LL itself, then spread to their little fanboyz, then sycophants like Duranske, who lurch from prosecuting things like Ginko's for "Pionzis" or me for "libel" to control the world his way and criticizing LL for not moving against the Ponzis, to sucking up to them strategically.

>On the upside, these will likely be the last words I write about ‘Prokofy Neva’ (aside, perhaps, from a chapter in my book advising lawyers on how to deal with web forum trolls when participating in virtual worlds). There’s simply too much interesting stuff going on for this to consume any more of my time or energy than it already has.

I'll have to have a chapter in my book some day about how to deal with insecure but pompous assholes who don't have credentials in real life, but seek to obtain them via Second Life. The very notion of "web forum trolls" applied to someone like me is a power play that silents legitimate dissent. This is social media. There will be more and more of us. Thank God for that! And people like Duranske will be put on the run.

>Addendum

Other pages where writers and site editors have dealt with ‘Prokofy Neva:’

* http://www.knowprose.com/node/16993
* http://www.secondlifeinsider.com/2007/01/08/censorship-and-freedom/
* http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/…c73838214
* http://www.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2005/06/from_the_forums.html
* http://www.sluniverse.com/forums/Topic15252-18-1.aspx
* http://www.secondlifeinsider.com/2006/12/07/prokofy-…banned
* http://www.secretlair.com/index.php?/…permabans_updated/

Feel free to link back to this post.
Note: Because I do not want to add fuel to this fire, this post never appeared on VB’s main page, and will not be linked from there either. It is only available by search, or via a link posted on another site.

I have no doubt that in time, others will come forward to challenge Duranske and his accomplice, Jessica Holyoke. These kinds of people never prevail in life, I've found. It can take awhile -- sometimes decades. But eventually, I find, justice does prevail.

The frightening thing about Second Life and its cordon-sanitaire of corporate blogs is that they can get away with suppressing legitimate dissent and their smug core of fanboyz applaud. But as it gets bigger, more and more people will question this.

I've had a weekly podcast, and regular posts, on metaversed.com The moderator there, Nick Wilson, is simply not the insecure little dweeb like a Hamlet Linden or Tony Walsh or Dan Hunter, all people who ban me from impotence, not strength. Nick has done something none of them would do: he MODERATES his blog. this isn't the time-consuming thing everyone imagines, he just DOES IT and doesn't make any apologies.

Duranske whines and snivels to him in IMs and emails about my critical posts and begs for threads criticizing him to be closed. Eventually Nick *does* close them -- when Duranske himself has become abusive and hysterical ROFL. And that's really how it needs to be done.

Banning someone from a blog is not a sign of strength of moderation; it's a sign of weakness of moderation.

Comments

[Profky Neva Must Be Stopped]

Profky Neva Must Be Stopped

Profky Neva is at it again. She's someone who really must be stopped in Second Life; she is a threat to the social order and does objective damages to people who question her prosecutorial zeal, and criticize her role. How "stopped"? Not by banning from the world, but by pushing back hard, so that she understands that she cannot get away with this sort of spiteful power-mongering to compensate for her lack of a real life or a Second Life for that matter.

She finds a certain kind of profile of 30-ish male, reaching a point of disappointment or frustration and spite in their lives, hateful of people who speak their minds and stick to their guns, and often older men who refuse to be impressed by them and tell them off, develop a really sick, stalkerish sort of hatred of her, and become really hysterical about chasing her around blogs and trying to get her banned (Ian Betteride, Csven Concord to name two who come to mind).

Benajamin Duranske / Benajamin Noble are names easily linked on Google. There's no "shaming" value or "outing" value that can accrue to Benjamin Duranske/Benjamin Noble by this juvenile exercise. he prefers to publish and discuss Second Life issues under his real name That's his right; there is nothing illegitimate about this. It's a practice all over the blogosphere. It's only a handful of people -- these same losers described in the above profile -- who can't respect this, and think they are striking some blow for justice by linking his name (rolls eyes).

At root, the phenomenon of Profky Neva represents a kind of malignant turn of Second Life, when people without first lives for whatever reason (and that's fine) use the amplification and viral spread and novelty of SL to make a reputation there, and then back-date it to build a reputation in first life. A Google search of Profky Neva never has her saying a single thing in her life that would show up in Google, or perhaps only a tiny handful of mundane work-related things. Suddenly, through the magic of power in SL, by fixating with hate on people she doesn't know but thinks she can best because they are anonymous, and speaking to the zealous, usually anti-SL media, she can aquire the reputation she never could make in RL.

[larryr]

lawyers amd blahgers,
eating their own- woody allen

precious....

[Lem Skall]

Benjamin is indeed a young man and in time he will become more mature and hopefully he will not make the same mistakes again. You, Prok, OTOH, will probably get only worse in time.

[Lem Skall]

Oh gee, how dare Caleb Booker and Metaversed endorse Virtually Blind by posting a serious link to it and recommending it for an article?

http://metaversed.com/18-sep-2007/second-life-terms-service-tweak-favors-little-guy

[Ashcroft Burhham]

You are one of the most spiteful and disingenuous people that I have ever encountered.

[Prokofy Neva]

My, you're sectarian and dim-witted, Numb Skall. Seriously, that kind of comment is just plain ridiculous. Virtually Blind is a blog that covers legal issues. Benjamin does a fairly good job on pouncing on them as they come up, reiterating them, and offering them to readers. I'll read it now and then for that reason.

But his pompous, overweening, annoying personality, and skewed, leftoid and self-important commentary clutters the analysis. We have to absorb an awful lot of self-congratulation and wade through the typical "progressive" sort of agenda on our way to getting at the news.

This post is a good example: cheering on Linden Lab and claming it is help for the little guy is completely false. If the little guy means an individual with less than four islands, sure, possibly, but as I've pointed out, this would have a lot more credibility if they removed the clause that enabled them to boot you "for any reason or no reason".

$10,000 for a small business is a threshold easily reached -- and now it simply will be a lot harder to try to sue LL if you business is harmed. So the little guy in a small business -- a very small business, even -- will in fact not be served.

[Laetizia Coronet]

My, you're sectarian and dim-witted, Prok Nebula. Seriously, this kind of article is just plain ridiculous. Second Thoughts is a blog that covers SL issues. You do a fairly good job on pouncing on them as they come up, reiterating them, and offering them to readers. I'll read it now and then for that reason.

But your pompous, overweening, annoying personality, and skewed, hard-core conservative and self-important commentary clutters the analysis. We have to absorb an awful lot of personal attacks and wade through the typical "neocon" sort of agenda on our way to getting at the news.

And sometimes there is no news at all. This post is a good example.

[Prokofy Neva]

It's funny how people like Latexa -- Lettucia? -- La-Tissue? engage in imitation as the sincerest form of flattery!

And confuse insistence on liberal principles as "conservativism". Laff riot!

[Veronique Kaminski]

still scared of the mirror Prokofy??

[Rang, Eyu]

Hi Prok :)