Tiny Reporters

I knew that when Julian Dibbell, author of My Tiny Life, famous in cyberspace (and now considered even more cool for giving away his book so I won't even bother to amazon.com link it), contacted me for an interview for Wired about griefers like the PNs, it would be some sort of set-up to make me look bad. But, that doesn't bother me, I believe in the free media, and I also thought, perhaps I can somehow persuade Julian to take SL more seriously, to write more thoughtfully about it. He never bothers with it. Like a lot of Web 2.0 geeks making a living off games and worlds, he never comes here, except for the occasional panel which he decorates like a potted palm as a pioneer of virtuality from LAMDAMOO days. I've met him a few times, and was on NPR with him once, so I figured that he might be able to do a deeper take on griefing than what resulted.

I knew as soon as he never contacted me again after talking to me for more than 2 hours that the focus of the piece would be on the griefers, and not really reflect my critique of them, or my attempt to show him the victims of them. Well, this isn't just the usual "bad news is more interesting" issue of the media, or the "Dante's Hell is more interesting" issue of literature; it's a pose. It's part of keeping up Julian's street cred on the conference circuit that he be seen to be trashing SL; trashing SL means taking the griefers' side and giving us little homilies, as he does in this SL piece, about how we need to deprive the griefers' of their main weapon, which is by not taking them seriously at all, and therefore proving our, um, maturity in not taking ourselves seriously.

I had to chuckle later when a Wired intern contacted me and asked me how/where to find PNs like mootykips and other logistics. I told the girl that Julian was the highly-paid real-life gonzo journo writing for Wired here, not me, and he could stir his stumps and do his homework inworld and get these people without me working as an unpaid fixer. I sent him some screenshots of griefing; I tried to IM him on Skype -- and got nowhere, because, well he was off on a panel or being fabulous somewhere.

I don't at all mind putting my real life name with my avatar name, and I reluctantly agreed to have a Wired photographer come in my house to take pictures of me -- reluctantly not because I somehow fear invasion of privacy, it's been invaded already, but because they take HOURS, pose you insanely for hours on end, take a million photos and then use just one. Like Dolores Claiborne, I ain't doing no beauty contests today, but I hardly expected that what these cynical Wired tekkies would use in an article vaguely feigning to provide some even-handed journalism about both griefers and their victims is a picture of me with my back to the camera at the kitchen sink, with my face invisible. Thanks, guys, that was precious.

That and other aspects of the piece were certainly debatable, so I've answered them here, see what you think.

I also thought it would be good for the annals of virtuality to publish my whole convo with Julian. It's nothing spectactular, mainly reflective of the incredible frustrations of dealing with someone like this who considers himself an absolutely experienced spelunker of virtual worlds, but who has to be told every goddamn little thing about Second Life known to the week-old newb -- autoreturn, land tools, etc. Oh, sure, a lot of the lingo and culture that develops in little worlds like this can't be immediately made accessible to outsiders. But Julian is the kind of geek that fearlessly takes the awesomely complex controls of World of Warcraft or Eve online or even all the innards of those MOOs, and, oh, topics like "open source software in Brazil" and doesn't flinch, so doing the SL homework should be a piece of cake. Whatever. It's also about how difficult it is even for someone like me trying all the time to make the narrative of SL accessible.

What's most operative about this conversation comes at the end, where Julian reveals his arch ennui about games and worlds and economies -- he's already "done" those books (sigh) and therefore there's "nothing left to write about here" in SL. Ok, Julian. Then, um, just do a facile piece on griefing in which you make the griefers look like thoughtful readers of Sartre prompting us all to reflect on our modern lives, instead of what they really are: throwbacks to a pastoral, conservative, backward age resisting technology.

Yes, resisting technology.

I just had a flash, reading Julian's self-righteous and whiney account of himself attempting to get the rights of his book from a "rent-seeking mega-corporation" (um, I guess different than Wired, which pays him a lot, too lol) to give it away with the rest of the copy-lefters on Creative Commons. I realized that Gutenberg of course was all about printing as a business, and that what made the technology of the printed book spread was the ability of printers (and writers) to charge money, and eventually evolve copyright. By stripping that all away, Lawrence Lessig and co. aren't advancing into the techno-geeko future of free stuff everywhere that will, um, spawn "creativity", they are retreating to a world when the Church distributed doctrine through oral tradition and ritual, and only enabled monks to laboriously copy out the works. In the modern Web 2.0 reoccurrence of this throwback, the poor people in India to whom Julian has "outsourced" the digitalizing his book are the latter-day laborious monks.

This transcript is copied exactly as is from world, all that is removed is friends' log-on messages and some passages identifying RL information.

[22:21] You: Hi Julian
[22:21] You: well this is Ravenglass, the flagship sim of my rentals company
[22:21] Julian Dibbell: hi prok!
[22:22] You: I have about 15 sims' worth of land spread over 60 sims
[22:22] You: so I have neighbours on just about every sim, that is what makes it interesting
[22:22] You: it's the mainland, it's crunchy
[22:22] Julian Dibbell: wow, yeah
[22:22] You: I only have a few private islands, they're boring
[22:22] You: ok so here's the prime waterfront sim of Ravenglass
[22:22] You: and on it you see a Tatoo Parlour
[22:22] You: which was one of those things put in to annoy me some time ago
[22:22] You: now this poor fellow in real life had a motorcycle accident and literally broke his neck
[22:22] You: he is in the hospital now
[22:23] You: and he can't take care of his land so crap piles up on it
[22:23] You: it's not on autoreturn so it is a griefer haven
[22:23] Julian Dibbell: so... who put the tattooo parlor there?
[22:23] You: ok then over on your left you will see the famous Refrigerator of Ravenglass
[22:23] You: oh this guy, Groove Mechanique
[22:23] You: I mean, in his view, he can do what the fuck he wants with his land
[22:23] You: for ages this old FIC gal had this parcel
[22:24] You: and she was an original purchaser in Ravenglass
[22:24] You: I did this completely daring thing no one ever did
[22:24] You: I sold mainland yet tried to keep it zoned
[22:24] You: just by asking people on a notecard
[22:24] You: and it worked!
[22:24] You: it worked for about 2 years
[22:24] You: people just cooperate you know? it's not all about tools
[22:24] You: I even sold the land for cheaper than Ansheland
[22:24] You: everyone was worried that land barons would scarf it up, but they didn't
[22:24] You: so anyway, in time, the original inhabitants sold out -- ti went through maybe 3-4 generations
[22:25] You: and so this old FIC gal with the free 4096 or whatever they get (tier free lifetime membership)
[22:25] You: suddenly overnight she just gives it away or sells it for nothing to the tatoo guy
[22:25] You: so the Tatoo thing sort of interrupts the sort of Celtic LOTR Harry Potter thing here
[22:25] You: see the tower there?
[22:25] You: it's like you know Celtric LOTR men in tights kinda stuff
[22:26] Julian Dibbell: yeah yeah
[22:26] You: it's built by a guy who I gave him his start in SL 2 years ago or so, now he's famous, Foolish Frost, he works for Millions for Us
[22:26] You: ok so over on the left, same story, an old FIC with a free 4096
[22:26] You: just suddenly sells out, they get sick of SL and leave or whatever
[22:26] You: and whoops this guy puts up a giant refrigerator
[22:26] You: I don't know if you have draw distance, but you can fly over that way and see the giant fridge
[22:26] You: and that was deliberate
[22:26] Julian Dibbell: "draw distance"?
[22:27] You: and we went through many fights over it and finally I just didn't have time to fight it any more, and meantime most people don't have a draw distance that way
[22:27] You: well you know, can you see everything 256 meters or 512 meters
[22:27] You: your draw distance
[22:27] You: I like to keep my draw distance in SL at a drug-induced haze of 128 m2
[22:27] You: because, you know, hell is other people, and SL is other people in 3D, streaming
[22:27] Julian Dibbell: oh yeah, i'm seeing it
[22:27] Julian Dibbell: lol
[22:27] You: so that's the Refrigerator of the Gorean Weapons Dealer
[22:27] You: I got some people to boycott his weapons sales
[22:28] You: ouch
[22:28] You: well so this build I actually like
[22:28] Julian Dibbell: heh
[22:28] You: see that's the thing, the textures and build are cool
[22:28] You: i mean i have tenants with just this kind of store
[22:28] Julian Dibbell: which, the tatt place?
[22:28] You: but when it is done deliberately to annoy well it's annoying
[22:29] You: the tatt store is tolerable tho, the refrigerator is a room-clearer
[22:29] You: so the peole behind it move out, sell etc
[22:29] You: anyway that all makes the sim vulnerable terribly to intense griefing
[22:29] You: it's not that you don't own all the land yourself, that's understood
[22:29] Julian Dibbell: well how do you knwo it was deliberate?
[22:29] You: there's also Governor Linden land here that interrupts the flow
[22:29] You: because we had many go-rounds you know, as it was being built
[22:30] You: the refrigerator started out, the guy just bought it, put up a black box or something
[22:30] You: and I said I hope you will build something good you have people behind you
[22:30] You: and he said, fuck no, I'll do what the fuck I want on my land
[22:30] You: see that's the Second Life thos:
[22:30] You: ethos
[22:30] You: I WILL DO WHAT THE FUCK I WANT ON MY LAND FUCK YOU
[22:30] You: it's rare that you get a spirit of cooperation where people try to get along and mitigate the view
[22:30] You: but I do get that often, and do have informal bargains and agreements and easements and all the rest
[22:30] You: and that's what is fascinating about SL that it does work
[22:31] You: but the Lindens tend to say "we will make the tools for you to ban, eject, mute, and obliterate the view of your neighbour"
[22:31] You: or "we will let the mainland disintegrate into chaos and force you to buy our more expensive islands"
[22:31] You: so anyway, once you have either land with no autoreturn
[22:31] You: (like the MOU land where Daniel Terdiman and Anshe were with the penises)
[22:32] You: and once you have neighbours who intentionally grief and cooperate with griefers
[22:32] You: then you have a sim vulnerable to constant bombardement
[22:32] You: with the latest particles, textures, self-replicating objects, etc.
[22:32] You: I can send you screenshots if you need them
[22:32] Julian Dibbell: please do yes
[22:32] You: right now it's quiet because the Lindens just prevailed in the latest round of the arms race
[22:32] You: they raised what is called 'the grey goo fence'
[22:32] You: that's the barrier to prevent self-replication
[22:32] Julian Dibbell: how does taht work?
[22:32] You: they had it lower so as to enable things like koi ponds or artificial life or whatever
[22:33] You: well the object has a script within it
[22:33] You: that gives another obect
[22:33] You: and it is also on physics
[22:33] You: so it starts rolling around like a tumbleweed, spawning
[22:33] You: and soon the entire sim is filled with giant 10 x 10 blocks with particles spewing and self replication
[22:33] You: so if you don't have autoreturn it starts to pile up and then crashes the sim
[22:33] You: I get a sim crashed about every day by griefers
[22:33] Julian Dibbell: and what exactly is autoreturn?
[22:33] You: the griefing I had this week on another sim was what we call "terror-forming"
[22:34] You: well autoreturn is when the land is set so that all junk piling up on it goes away after one minute or 10 minutes
[22:34] You: or 300 minutes, you set it
[22:34] Julian Dibbell: ok
[22:34] You: unless it is "set to group"
[22:34] You: that means your group or the group owning it
[22:34] You: so all my land around here is set on 1 minute, as low as it goes
[22:34] You: and that's short enough to prevent the pile-up
[22:34] You: of the cubes
[22:34] You: I've also developed all sorts of ways to mitigate what they do
[22:34] You: it's an arms race
[22:35] You: and right now as I said temporarily the Lidnens are winning this week
[22:35] You: but there is already a new form of griefing
[22:35] Julian Dibbell: why would anyone set autoreturn any more loosely than you do?
[22:35] You: well why would this tatoo nut do that?
[22:35] You: because he wants his buyers of his products to be able to put out their little shopping bags
[22:35] You: let's say they buy the stuff he's selling
[22:35] You: he wants them to be able to try it on, look at it, look at the stuff
[22:35] You: most stores put on 10 minutes to give time to rez out the thing you bought, put it on
[22:36] Julian Dibbell: ok
[22:36] You: but he apparently wanted his friends to come and build and hang out
[22:36] Julian Dibbell: so "terror forming."
[22:36] You: he must have had reasons, the script-kiddie sort of arty/programmer types do that because they just treat it as a big blank slate you endlessly scribble on
[22:36] You: I call it "sandboxers versus settlers"
[22:37] You: ok well terror-forming is when someone somehow gets at your carefully landscaped land
[22:37] You: and completely upsets it
[22:37] You: say putting a giant mountain up inside your house4
[22:37] You: or burying all your furniture
[22:37] Julian Dibbell: whoa. how do they do that?
[22:37] You: so I had that yesterday overi n Winnipeg
[22:37] You: I can take you to that sim so you get the idea there
[22:37] You: let me tp you
[22:37] Julian Dibbell: sure
[22:37] You: it's still not cleaned up yet
[22:37] You: brb
[22:38] Yosemite Aero shouts: hello
[22:38] You: Hi Yosemite
[22:38] You: just visiting a second
[22:38] Yosemite Aero: ok
[22:38] You: did you get the land back to normal ?
[22:38] You: I figured out what was up, it wan't anthony it was Michael
[22:38] You: ok you can see this hump here wher eit's not quite put back to normal yet
[22:38] You: we spent like hours putting it all back last night
[22:38] Yosemite Aero: more or less, but since it wasn't exactly like it was before i am going to rebuld the house
[22:39] Yosemite Aero: which i wanted to do anyway
[22:39] You: well do you want me to try to even it out Yosemite?
[22:39] You: you wanted to anyway ok
[22:39] You: anyway it wasn't anthony he was the decoy
[22:39] Yosemite Aero: sure
[22:39] You: it was Michael who had the perms and I didn't realize it until it was too late but he's ejected now
[22:39] Yosemite Aero: ok
[22:39] You: well let me at least smoothi t out
[22:40] Yosemite Aero: i see from the Police Blotter Linden has not taken any action
[22:40] Julian Dibbell: eew, weird
[22:40] You: well of course not
[22:40] You: they never care about terror-forming
[22:40] You: they care about sandbox shooters only
[22:40] You: I have been haranguing Concierge about this all day
[22:40] You: but what can they do he had group perms
[22:40] Julian Dibbell: "sandbox shooters"?
[22:40] You: well those are people who shoot the Lindens in sandboxes
[22:40] You: Julian follow me
[22:41] You: Yosemite I think I have ti smoothed as much as it can be
[22:41] You: you can do "large" and "apply to selection"
[22:42] You: so see this person with all the landscaping here?
[22:42] Julian Dibbell: yeah
[22:42] You: ok so this is completely messed up
[22:42] You: I tried to fix it for an hour
[22:42] You: then the tenant tried to get it back
[22:42] You: see people spend hours doing this in the first place
[22:42] You: what happened is this tenant who is anti-furry
[22:42] You: well long story very long story
[22:42] You: but to cut it short
[22:42] Julian Dibbell: lol
[22:42] You: he had like an anti-furry execution chamber in a sort of bunker
[22:43] You: with like cut off furry heads
[22:43] You: so he was kinda wierd
[22:43] You: but since it was all inside, I don't get involved
[22:43] You: what the tenants do inside their homes is not my business
[22:43] You: if they follow the lease
[22:43] You: so I had him here abuot a year or more
[22:43] You: everything was more or less fine except for the ocasional disgruntled furry
[22:43] You: being mad about that cut off furry head on the stake on the fence outdoors see
[22:43] You: well everything was fine until this gal with like 5 babies moved in
[22:43] You: like prim babies?
[22:43] You: people have babies here
[22:44] Julian Dibbell: ok
[22:44] You: you know they cry?
[22:44] Julian Dibbell: the crying, no
[22:44] You: well Julian, you know it's Second Life
[22:44] You: they do their thing
[22:44] You: they make families, have babies, they cry, wet diapers, get hungry etc
[22:44] You: so this gal left her babies out in their cribs crying
[22:44] You: so I am summoned to the scene
[22:44] You: I try to turn off spatial sound on the parcel so it won't carry
[22:44] You: I try to mitigagte it
[22:44] Julian Dibbell: naturally
[22:44] You: b ut these babies are hungry and cry louder
[22:44] You: so if I return them to inventory
[22:44] You: there's a good chance these days they will be lost, killed
[22:45] You: like disappear
[22:45] You: so I don't dare return them to inventory off the parcel
[22:45] You: so I try to get the gal to pick them up
[22:45] You: meanwhile this kind of sicko furry dude?
[22:45] Julian Dibbell: wha? they're scripted like tamagotchis sort of?
[22:45] You: yes yes
[22:45] You: they do stuff
[22:45] You: you know move their eyes
[22:45] You: say stuff
[22:45] You: anyway the antifurry dude decides to put skulls in all their cribs
[22:45] Julian Dibbell: and need TLC and food and so forth or will wither away?
[22:45] You: so when the mom comes home she finds these skulls?
[22:45] You: yes they die
[22:46] Julian Dibbell: ok
[22:46] You: well they go into a failed state that you fix by just doing whatever
[22:46] You: I mean they dont' die die
[22:46] You: so he puts out these skulls
[22:46] You: now she was VERY UPSET
[22:46] You: well you know people get into their babies here and stuff
[22:46] You: so I come and return the skulls
[22:46] Julian Dibbell: the polite thing
[22:46] You: and the anti-furry fellow is offline so I go in his chamber of horrors and I put a little teddy bear and hang it
[22:46] You: and I put on a message to it
[22:46] You: DO N OT FUCK WITH YOUR FELLOW TENANTS' HEADS
[22:46] Julian Dibbell: lol
[22:46] You: you know, just a gentle reminder in the spirit of how he does things
[22:47] You: so at first he seemed to appreciate it when he finally noticed the teddy like 3 weeks later
[22:47] You: but then he was upset somehow
[22:47] You: so h e and his goon friends went into a rampage
[22:47] You: they terror-formed every single parcel on 2 sims
[22:47] You: and they cuold do that having group perms see
[22:47] You: but they used a decoy
[22:47] You: they put out a guy who I didn't htink had group perms
[22:47] You: and he had a shield
[22:47] You: so I try to eject him -- nothing
[22:47] You: they use some kind of rogue browser?
[22:47] Julian Dibbell: a shield?
[22:48] You: well a shield to prevent the regular Linden made stuff from working
[22:48] You: the arms race again
[22:48] You: they have a way to foil the normal eject button on a land
[22:48] Julian Dibbell: oh right, like a PN browser
[22:48] You: it's either a browser
[22:48] You: a PN rogue browser
[22:48] You: or in this guy's case, maybe just some kind of other shield he wears
[22:48] You: he's an arms manufacturer too
[22:48] You: these are 22 year old kids who script weapons
[22:48] You: so they are way out in front on this
[22:49] You: anyway I see that anthony guy parked on here and I see all the earth moving and I think holy shit
[22:49] You: they now have a terror-forming without having group perms
[22:49] You: see normally terrorforming could only be done if you have been invited to my group to be a resident
[22:49] You: and have those powers
[22:49] You: usualyl you have edit land turned OFF
[22:49] You: and it's a power you get oncey ou pay the rental box
[22:49] Julian Dibbell: so any resident could terraform the whole place?
[22:49] You: so what happened tho is that the original guy who had the cut-off heads -- he still had the powers
[22:49] You: and I couldn't see him, he was up in the sky out of view
[22:50] You: so yes, anyone on group land can terrorform
[22:50] You: it happens rarely, but does happen
[22:50] You: so before I could figure out it was HIM and eject him from the group, oops he wiped out 2 sims
[22:50] Julian Dibbell: why would that even be permitted?
[22:50] You: distracting me with the decoy
[22:50] You: hmmm
[22:50] Julian Dibbell: i mean why woudl tenants need that?
[22:50] You: well originally Second Life was created by hippies in California?
[22:50] You: it took a LOT OF WORK
[22:50] You: to get them to granulate the group tools
[22:51] You: originally any gruop member could also vote me off my land and sell my land out from under me
[22:51] You: so I actually was one of the pioneers leading the charge to reform those tools to granulate them
[22:51] You: BUT
[22:51] You: there isn't a way to have powers on group land that accrues only to that one parcel
[22:51] You: only on a private island
[22:51] You: could you deed the land to a group that is separate that cuold control their parcel exclusively
[22:51] Julian Dibbell: weird
[22:51] You: but see on an island
[22:51] You: you retain the property in your holdings still
[22:52] You: it's deeded for use but n ot sold away
[22:52] You: on the mainland, if I deed land over to someone and their group, it's gone
[22:52] You: they get it then and pay tier on it
[22:52] You: so having the group tools is a way to have land grouped to manage and you fix the griefing problem
[22:52] You: by having levels of powers
[22:52] You: I'm probably the only mainland rentals agent that has an open group where anyone can come in and join immediately
[22:52] You: because I don't believe in country clubs
[22:52] You: I want people to not queue up for an invitation and be looked over, are they furies or gay or whatever
[22:52] You: I want them ot just come in and rent
[22:53] You: and that gives them the right to put down the prims or build and set home to here
[22:53] You: then after I see they are settled I send them the invitation to be able to use ban/eject, access media, and terraform
[22:53] Julian Dibbell: is that velvet rope thing more how anshe does it?
[22:53] You: which is like the next level up
[22:53] You: after I see they aren't PNs
[22:53] You: yes
[22:53] You: if you want to rent in Dreamland
[22:53] You: you make a gruop and pay $100
[22:53] You: I'm a tenant there too and sublet her land
[22:53] You: then you have her join as an officer
[22:53] You: then she deeds her land to you
[22:54] You: but of course then she can take it back
[22:54] You: and that's grounds for a lot of disputes obviously
[22:54] You: well come up here to see another form of griefing
[22:54] You: this is what is known as the ad farm
[22:54] You: an unscrupulous land baron buys a parcel
[22:54] You: cuts it up into little pieces
[22:54] You: and charges $2000 Lindens or $10,000 Lindens for each piece
[22:55] You: so if you want to buy back your view you have to pay a fortune
[22:55] You: normally 16 m would cost $100 or $160 see
[22:55] You: so they try to extort people to buy back their view
[22:55] Julian Dibbell: ah
[22:55] You: in this case it's a "bank" or something
[22:55] You: and they also claim to be raising money for the American Indian Movement
[22:55] You: which could be fake
[22:55] You: Support Native Peoples. Proceeds go to the American Indian Movement.
[22:55] You: anyway so I boycott this
[22:56] You: eventually they go away
[22:56] You: this guy SL Bay Auctions is a notorious ad farmer Robo Marx who extorts everywhere
[22:56] You: anyway you can see I have two empty lots
[22:56] You: that this caused move outs
[22:56] You: people moved out due to this
[22:57] You: oh actually
[22:57] You: somebody moved in already
[22:57] You: but that's because they probably went up ion a skybox and don't care about what's on the ground
[22:57] You: sorry
[22:57] Julian Dibbell: to the empty lot?
[22:57] You: so the PNs hit this parcel
[22:58] You: well see this land we're standing on is rented
[22:58] You: but the people are up in the sky somewhere
[22:58] Julian Dibbell: how can you tell?
[22:58] You: because I'm looking at the officers' view of the menu in the group
[22:58] You: and I see their prims
[22:58] You: 450 prims
[22:58] You: that means they ahve a building a skybox or whatever
[22:58] You: and the box is paid see
[22:58] You: the little blue info cube
[22:58] You: the next lot over is rezzed out and not paid, empty
[22:58] Julian Dibbell: but i can't see that info. only officers?
[22:59] You: no
[22:59] You: if you could you would be stealing the land or whatever
[22:59] You: that's the point of the group tool layers
[22:59] Julian Dibbell: ok
[22:59] You: the officers have the right to buy and sell
[22:59] You: then you can set it up any way
[22:59] You: you could have hippies or you could have Gor
[22:59] You: any slider for any sort of configuration of giveaway land or keep land or whatever
[22:59] You: most people are not giong to give away land completely tho it's too expensive
[23:00] You: so anyway the PNs attack this sim a lot
[23:00] You: because it's a sim with a river and people make these nice landscaping and homes and whatnot
[23:00] Julian Dibbell: with particle bombs and such?
[23:00] You: so they want maximum greifing effect
[23:00] You: yes they usualyl attack it with that batman texture or Jellowned
[23:00] You: batman makes this screeching horrible sound
[23:00] You: self replicates and crashes the sim
[23:00] Julian Dibbell: have not experienced it
[23:00] You: Jellowned is that sort of racist stuff they do
[23:00] You: they have this sort of fetish over black people
[23:01] You: now I had a racist attack today earlier
[23:01] You: over next door
[23:01] You: but I don't think that was PNs
[23:01] You: there was a guy who is black in RL
[23:01] You: he has that on his profile, or did
[23:01] You: and this griefer started coming up "nigger, nigger" etc
[23:01] You: in his condo
[23:01] Julian Dibbell: now at this point with mootykips giving away malware, how would you know these were really PN or not?
[23:01] You: I don't of course
[23:01] You: however
[23:01] You: there is a kind of profile
[23:02] You: usualyl the PN thing would be like Bill Cosby textures with the Jellowned
[23:02] You: or they have like these avatars dressed in blackface with buckets of KFC
[23:02] You: stuff like that that is very very visible
[23:02] You: this griefer didn't fit that profile
[23:02] You: the PNs don't say "nigger" like that
[23:02] Julian Dibbell: right
[23:02] You: although I did see them do these wierd anti-semitic attacks
[23:02] You: I ahd that a few weeks ago
[23:03] You: they put out this screaming thing "the Jews did WTC"
[23:03] You: then they have people show up sort of "looking jewish"
[23:03] You: and they even join an actual bona fide Jewish group
[23:03] You: that has a name like Jews in SL
[23:03] You: and that group is like Ravenglass, it's open
[23:03] You: see that is the challenge
[23:03] You: you close the group, how do people find you and join that you want to join?
[23:03] You: if you have to dole out invitations
[23:03] You: just for the sake of controllign a few asswipes who grief
[23:04] You: I would err on the side of openness and so did that Jewish group
[23:04] You: of course that means the PNs join it and grief it
[23:04] You: and fly around with like fake star of David stuff and grief with it to sort of incite hatred
[23:04] You: are you following what I mean?
[23:04] Julian Dibbell: sure
[23:04] You: they do this sort of Eddie haskell routine
[23:04] You: "Gee Mrs. Cleaver that's a lovely dress"
[23:04] Julian Dibbell: lol
[23:04] You: so they'll say like "I love Jewish culture and that's why I joined this group"
[23:05] You: or "I love your rentals Prok why can't I just rent in your rentals"
[23:05] You: but then they fly around and grief
[23:05] You: griefing is something you can't understand until you feel it on your own skin sometimes
[23:05] You: I feel that what the Pns do is racist
[23:05] You: they claim that it is like art or something, shock value
[23:05] You: I find that to be bullshit
[23:05] You: racism is racism
[23:05] Julian Dibbell: do you distinguish btwn PN and w-hats, at this point?
[23:06] You: inciting hatred of Jews and inciting ridicule of blacks is racism
[23:06] You: well it's like Gogol's overcoat in Russian literature
[23:06] You: "we have all come out from under gogol's overcoat"
[23:06] You: that's what every Russian writer says
[23:06] You: and all griefers come out from under W-hat's overcoat
[23:06] You: they all use the wws.somethingawful.com website
[23:06] You: there are long SL threads there they use to recruit griefers and do victory dances
[23:06] You: the PNs claim they fight with W-hat
[23:06] You: but one of the first ritualistic thing that each PN does to harass me
[23:07] You: is send me a repeated annoyance TP from Baku
[23:07] You: that's their way of saying "we are with W-hat but you will never prove it hahahaha"
[23:07] You: they are hoping you will click on that TP see
[23:07] You: Baku is the home base of w-hat
[23:07] You: so sure, PN is a separate group, a faction, whatever
[23:07] You: but they are all interrelated
[23:07] You: they all sort o f intermingle with the IRC channels around SL, and the script kiddies
[23:07] Julian Dibbell: what do you mean victory dances?
[23:08] You: there is cross-pollination of libsl, w-hat, PNs
[23:08] You: this was always why I stormed libsl
[23:08] You: victory dances are what you do when you have achieved a griefing mission
[23:08] You: and often that's how you track a perp
[23:08] You: becaue they can't refrain from victory dancing
[23:08] You: let's say a party afterwards, a screenshot of themselves griefing
[23:08] Julian Dibbell: but SA forums are closed, how would you see these?
[23:08] You: so they may have had plausible deniability
[23:09] You: but then you see the victory dance
[23:09] You: people send you the chat logs sometimes, they rat each other out
[23:09] You: SA forums aren't closed
[23:09] You: you just follow the links and read them
[23:09] You: they also have their own websites
[23:09] You: they get closed sometimes but you can follow them
[23:09] Julian Dibbell: mm, ok, no there are different tiers
[23:09] You: well Julian sure there is the membership only or whatever
[23:09] You: and closed plotting sites and whatnot
[23:09] You: but they also have open ones
[23:10] You: where they demonstrably post links to try to victory dance or even do fake psy wars and publish misleading propaganda
[23:10] Julian Dibbell: you mean like the SL Safari writeups?
[23:10] You: that's what the whole Woodbury University scam was like
[23:10] You: You know Julian
[23:10] You: I know you are on the side of the griefers
[23:10] You: I take that as a given.
[23:10] You: You think they are groovy and creative.
[23:10] You: You think people with babies in SL suburbia are stupid.
[23:10] You: You think I'm stupid.
[23:10] You: I realize that.
[23:10] You: But fuck, this is a DNS attack
[23:10] You: it's anti-civilization
[23:10] You: it's wrong
[23:10] You: it costs me hundreds of US dollars
[23:11] You: so I don't care that you think they are intresting and creative
[23:11] You: and thaty ou never stood up for me on Terra Nova
[23:11] You: when they come for you, you'll get it
[23:11] Julian Dibbell: well, depends what you mean by "stand up for" but that's a way nother story
[23:12] You: I didn't notice you complaining about w-hat telling me to post pictures of my tits
[23:12] You: notice they didn't get banned for that kind of vulgarity
[23:12] You: but I get banned because I question Dan Hunter being a raving asshole
[23:12] You: whatever
[23:12] You: : )
[23:12] Julian Dibbell: right and they didn't come back
[23:12] You: they ahd miles of threads
[23:12] You: it merely got tired
[23:12] You: they aren't back because I don't publish what they do
[23:12] You: and I am a big believer in not being silent
[23:12] You: we aren't silent about bin Ladn's latest video
[23:13] You: I don't get why I'm supposed to follow this fanboyz crap about not publicizing what they do in SL
[23:13] You: for one, there is the shame factor, I can appeal to some of the libsl to cut it out
[23:13] You: I really don't give a fuck if some like you or Nick Yee thinks we are in suburbia
[23:13] You: this is a community
[23:13] Julian Dibbell: lol
[23:13] You: SL makes it possible for that woman in a wheelchair over there to have more socializing power
[23:14] You: it makes it possible for that black Puerto Rican tenant who got attacked to have a gay relationship
[23:14] You: so I really say fuck you Nick Yee
[23:14] You: I really do not give a good goddamn what you think of my suburbia
[23:14] You: since you livei n one yourself in real life
[23:14] You: and I don't
[23:14] You: I live in HUD housing in NYC
[23:14] You: : )
[23:14] Julian Dibbell: oh where?
[address removed]
[23:14] You: let me see if I can find some screenshots
[23:15] You: oh but the thing is then you'd have to convert them
[23:15] You: let me see if I can find some I took to the harddrive and send on email tomorrow
[23:15] Julian Dibbell: the screenshots?
[23:15] You: I have the PNs on the road to Ravenglass
[23:15] You: see that's another thing I need to show you
[23:15] You: let me tp you over there
[23:15] Julian Dibbell: kk
[23:16] You: see here's how these older sims work the Lindens put infrastructure out
[23:16] You: they put roads and bridges and such
[23:16] You: but that means like a safe zone for griefers
[23:16] You: I mean it wasn't supposed to mean that
[23:16] Julian Dibbell: the roads?
[23:16] You: but each and every thing installed in the world to create communities and travel and communication is also hijacked to grief
[23:16] You: and that led to the closed island solution
[23:17] You: so Tizzers and all those PNs will stand on this road
[23:17] You: where i can't eject them
[23:18] You: and shoot and particle blast and grief
[23:18] Julian Dibbell: so this is all gov linden land?
[23:18] Julian Dibbell: the infrastructure stuff?
[23:18] You: 7es
[23:18] You: se right click on the land
[23:18] You: or go to the top of the game screen
[23:18] You: press that bar at the top
[23:18] You: it gives you about land
[23:18] You: general tab
[23:18] Julian Dibbell: yeah yeah i'm seeing
[23:18] You: "protected land not for sale"
[23:18] You: see this is perhaps 20 percent of the mainland
[23:19] You: er the old mainland
[23:19] You: they stopped long ago because they just got greedier to sell it all off
[23:19] Julian Dibbell: there's new mainland?
[23:19] You: my newer sims have none of this
[23:19] You: I have to put it in
[23:19] You: yes I can show you my newer mainland and also a private island
[23:19] You: and you'll see how you can protect the island better
[23:19] You: but let me show you one more furry issue up here
[23:19] Julian Dibbell: k
[23:19] You: just for sort of visuals
[23:19] You: follow me
[23:20] Clever Kitty Creations (CKC)
Can't enter parcel, banned.
[23:20] Clever Kitty Creations (CKC)
Can't enter parcel, banned.
[23:20] You: ok see this is one of the parcels in my land preserve
[23:20] You: I have 50,000 m2 of land like this wetlands
[23:21] You: forest and such where anyone can come and put out a cabin for just $10 or eevn nothing
[23:21] You: so I am trying to create like parcels in between the development
[23:21] You: this whole side here used to be a wetlands that this guy preserved and I was able to buy one parcel of it
[23:21] Julian Dibbell: hmm ok but why let people build on it at all?
[23:21] You: but then it got developed by the furry with that BDSM giant store thing over there
[23:21] You: well you know there is this fond fantasy of liberals that people just want to come and look at pretty landscapes
[23:21] You: but mostly they don't
[23:22] You: that is, they will for awhile
[23:22] You: as I have found
[23:22] You: but then they want to put out something
[23:22] You: a chair, something
[23:22] Julian Dibbell: the store is out there across the water? or here?
[23:22] You: anyway see that gian t steel tower over there?
[23:22] You: well follow me
[23:22] You: see I am banned there for protesting that guy's failure to put on autoreturn
[23:23] You: he has me redlined so I can't enter
[23:23] You: so I bang up against the outside of it
[23:23] You: but see his big ass tower sort of wrecked the nature here
[23:23] You: but what can you do
[23:23] You: I got along with him
[23:23] You: until these savage wave of PN attacks this fall
[23:23] You: he simply refused to believe they were happening
[23:23] You: and refused to put on autoreturn
[23:23] You: and just figured, well, it's all your fault, fuck you
[23:23] You: although frankly those PN attacks happened to everyone
[23:23] You: it was all over the grid
[23:23] You: and he just wouldnt' be on line when it was happening
[23:24] You: so the PNs used his land as a staging ground
[23:24] You: because of the 0 autoreturn
[23:24] You: now why wouldn't he put that on?
[23:24] You: because again, he has customers or builders or whatever he just REFUSES
[23:24] You: people are selfish dickwads
[23:24] Julian Dibbell: lol
[23:24] You: just a sec
[23:25] Julian Dibbell: oh *those* little blue boxes
[23:25] Julian Dibbell: i thought you meant some check box in the gui
[23:25] You: yes see this person just moved in
[23:25] You: so now I open up the group tools
[23:26] You: and I click them off to have more powers
[23:26] You: powers to eject others and terraform
[23:26] You: once they are seen as paid
[23:26] You: and like not an obvious PN alt
[23:27] Julian Dibbell: honestly why though prokofy. you're such a hippy!
[23:27] You: sorry I was frozen what?
[23:27] Julian Dibbell: lol
[23:27] You: oh I don't have time to check over them all of course, there are hundreds coming and going all the time
[23:27] You: but I might just eyeball it to try to protect the rest of the customers
[23:27] You: so they won't be enduring an ugly tubgirl texture
[23:27] You: yes but if you think I'm a hippie
[23:27] Julian Dibbell: it just seems kind of -- and i'm sure this is a very bad word in your lexicon -- very utopian to give renters this much power, no?
[23:27] You: you should see the Lindens
[23:28] You: well all the mainland agents do
[23:28] You: it works
[23:28] You: the thing is, griefing is not the norm Julian
[23:28] Julian Dibbell: huh. ok.
[23:28] You: I have a police blotter
[23:28] You: and I have something ilke a PN attack perhaps once every 2 weeks
[23:28] You: and something like the terrform also once a month mainly
[23:28] You: it's a percentage of the people that's under 10, more like 2
[23:28] Julian Dibbell: is the police blotter something the Lindens maintain or you have to set up?
[23:29] You: I made my own because the Linden one is retarded
[23:29] You: they don't really report what is really happening
[23:29] You: they selectively put out what they wish
[23:29] You: you may have heard my tenant bitching
[23:29] You: nothing about those terrorformers
[23:29] You: of yesterday
[23:29] You: and that's because they figure well too bad foryou
[23:29] You: you are on the mainland and SOL
[23:29] You: you gave someone group powers and they turned on you
[23:29] You: your problem
[23:29] You: I basically boycott the Lindens now
[23:29] You: I never AR anything unless it is a massive attack not on my land
[23:30] You: let's say somebody savaging an infohub
[23:30] You: if it is on my land, I have no reason to AR it to the Lindens except to sort of build up a case file with them
[23:30] You: but they are now so inundated, they are getting rid of the system
[23:30] You: they are moving already to a beta
[23:30] You: whereby all the island ownes will ahve ARs come to them
[23:30] You: to them not LL
[23:30] You: and that's awful
[23:30] You: because what if you are ripped off by some prim diva?
[23:30] You: what will your recourse be?
[23:30] You: your AR will go to that very prim diva
[23:30] You: I find that awful
[23:31] Julian Dibbell: prim diva?
[23:31] You: well you know, some hotshot SL gal running a business
[23:31] You: running and island empire whatever
[23:31] You: say she confiscates your land
[23:31] Julian Dibbell: right not to name names or anything ok
[23:31] You: or whatever
[23:31] You: name names?
[23:31] You: how do you meean?
[23:31] You: I mean the generic island dealer there aer gadzillions of them
[23:31] You: actually not Anshe Chung as she has professional staff now
[23:32] You: they are no longer as arbitrary
[23:32] Julian Dibbell: nothing. yeah, just being ignorant i guess of how many there are.
[23:32] You: well what I mean is
[23:32] You: let's say there's some Master of gor
[23:32] You: or BDSM or whatever
[23:32] You: he runs your island
[23:32] You: he treats you like shit as part of his RP
[23:32] You: but perhaps he goes to far
[23:32] You: now he's the one receiving your ARS
[23:32] You: you have nowhere to go
[23:32] You: and too bad foryou
[23:32] You: move if you don't like it
[23:32] You: or, as Adam Linden says
[23:33] You: just go to Governor Linden land and file the AR from there to the Govrnor
[23:33] You: and they plan to have a master ban list
[23:33] You: which I also oppose
[[23:33] Julian Dibbell: a master ban list, like for hardware banning of accounts?
[23:33] You: well that's another level within the Lab yes
[23:33] You: they try that with PNs but it's futile
[23:34] You: I mean the land bans within the world
[23:34] You: I oppose it because the global lists like that are terribly abused
[23:34] You: I am on it for example
[23:34] You: because FlipperPA doesn't like what I wrote about him on my blog
[23:34] You: so that means hundreds of people pick it up and ban me
[23:34] You: thinking I'm a common shooter or script-kiddie
[23:34] Julian Dibbell: wait
[23:34] Julian Dibbell: so this is something not Linden based?
[23:34] You: I was actualyl able to get 12 land owners to unban me from that Ban-Link by posting an appeal to it back when it allowed appeals now it doesn't
[23:34] You: yes Ban-LInk
[23:35] You: it's a master ban list shared by all the main land owners and venue owners
[23:35] Julian Dibbell: Travis Lambert's thing?
[23:35] You: so they share their list and while they claim it is
[23:35] You: like based on trust
[23:35] You: it's based on the opposite
[23:35] You: what happens in practice
[23:35] You: is everybody grabs the list as they fear griefing so much
[23:35] You: people become absurdly fear of griefing because they lose money from it
[23:35] You: so they hire detective agencies and have maximum security and orbs and scanners
[23:35] You: I forbid all that stuff
[23:35] You: because it makes for a nasty experience
[23:36] You: you fly around banging into red lines
[23:36] You: I am for an open society.
[23:36] You: If you begin banning the shit out of everybody
[23:36] You: it makes a horribly closed warren of little enclaves
[23:36] You: but that's what people want, so they make it
[23:36] You: so then Governor Linden basically wants to make a thing like that
[23:36] You: copy some of those ideas
[23:36] You: they love the idea
[23:36] You: so I spend al ot of time going to Linden office hours and bitching about it
[23:37] Julian Dibbell: ha. a popular move no doubt.
[23:37] You: well what can I tell you
[23:37] You: there area lot of battles to be waged here
[23:37] You: I was storming the office hour today ranting about the Sheep viewer and the CBS invasion
[23:38] You: a million detective watches will descend on SL next week
[23:38] You: they may burn out the servers
[23:38] You: anyway that's a whole other story
[23:38] Julian Dibbell: "detective watches"?
[23:38] You: the4re's this show on TV
[23:38] You: I never heard of
[23:38] You: but then I'm in a cave without a tV
[23:38] Julian Dibbell: oh CSI
[23:38] You: it's called CSI:NY
[23:38] You: yes
[23:38] You: I blogged about it from V@
[23:38] You: VW
[23:38] Julian Dibbell: right i read
[23:39] You: well now I'm in a fight with the Sheep over their viewer
[23:39] You: and teh Lab too
[23:39] You: because I think SEARCH should be a public utiility
[23:39] Julian Dibbell: the CSI lab?
[23:39] You: not sold off in special licensed viewers
[23:39] You: no the Linden Lab people
[23:39] Julian Dibbell: kk
[23:39] You: I've been having this fight for 2 days with them about this viewer
[23:39] You: see they are licensing a special browser just for those sign-ons
[23:39] You: that will show only Sheep shopping links and apparently cover up the generic search
[23:40] Julian Dibbell: ok just so i'm clear: CBS and Sheep viewrer? separate battles?
[23:40] You: make it less visible, while accessible
[23:40] You: no they are all one battle
[23:40] You: one battle with the sheep
[23:40] Julian Dibbell: ?
[23:40] You: to convince them to uncover the viewer and do the right thing
[23:40] You: and not block out everybody's classifieds and search ads in the generic Linden viewer
[23:40] You: and the other with Lindens
[23:40] You: to get them to realize they can't just sell off the interface of SL just like that
[23:40] You: to the highest bidder
[23:40] You: there has to be SEARCH that isn't so Googlized in one day no one has any competition
[23:41] You: I don't know how to explain it in one paragraph
[23:41] You: the key to making money from worlds is the search
[23:41] You: like google
[23:41] You: who can pwn the search pwns the attention economy
[23:41] You: they get the news about what the ad hot spots are
[23:41] You: they direct the ads there
[23:41] You: and walla they get the ad revenue
[23:41] Julian Dibbell: right right
[23:41] You: the Sheep are starting a paid advertising network
[23:41] You: and that's something I'm also ranting about
[23:42] Julian Dibbell: did not know that
[23:42] You: because if they infuse cash into those extorters I showed you over near Winnipeg
[23:42] You: they will make them dig in more
[23:42] You: right now Coldwell Banker has bought up the ad spacein another extortionist network
[23:42] You: it's the first RL company to do so
[23:42] You: the irony is that all thse socialists and hippies afraid of billboards and regulation caused this
[23:42] Julian Dibbell: paying the extorters off as it were?
[23:42] You: they were so afraid of signs that they didn't allow them and regulate them
[23:42] You: so they go the ad farmers
[23:43] You: because their ethos of "you can do WTF you want on your land"
[23:43] You: trumps everything
[23:43] You: they don't zone
[23:43] You: they say move to the islands
[23:43] You: so let me tp you to my island
[23:43] You: so you can see how that works
[23:43] Julian Dibbell: ok
[23:43] You: one of my islands
[23:43] You: brb
[23:44] You: ok well if you typed this island name into the map list
[23:45] You: you'd actually land at a sort of landing pad
[23:45] You: you can set it up that way
[23:45] You: and then see all these people renting on a typical island
[23:45] You: they could opt to red bar you
[23:45] You: or orb you
[23:45] You: I don't allow that on mine, but a lot of them have it
[23:45] Julian Dibbell: orb?
[23:45] You: this isn't so typical that I have townhousesl ike this for rent in the center
[23:45] You: most people have like chopped up flat pancakes and people just put out orbs
[23:45] You: well orbs are these things
[23:45] You: they scan the land
[23:46] You: if they don't find a name set in its list
[23:46] You: they orbit you, which is the term for sending you flying away into hyperspace
[23:46] You: Julian Second Life is a game
[23:46] You: it has levels and skills and grinding and all the rest
[23:46] Julian Dibbell: oh that's like where you're falling in place in some limbo?
[23:46] You: you skill-grind you get up to a prettier island like this
[23:46] You: well yes it's nasty on an island
[23:46] You: because it boots you and then you just bang around
[23:46] You: here I'll boot you so you get the feeling
[23:47] You: what I'll do is pull down my master menu
[23:47] You: which I don't have on a mainland sim
[23:47] You: see if I were on the mainland
[23:47] You: I'd boot you from this parcel
[23:47] You: you'd just be pushed over to the next
[23:47] You: so you could taunt me from there
[23:47] You: and that's the problem of the mainland
[23:47] Julian Dibbell: ok
[23:47] You: so I'd have to either own that land and boot you again
[23:47] You: following you around
[23:47] You: or call my neighbours, convince THEM to boot you
[23:47] You: or convince a Linden, very hard
[23:47] You: etc
[23:47] You: but on an island, I can just ban you period globally
[23:48] Julian Dibbell: ok g'ahead
[23:49] You: but see that ban from all estates function
[23:49] You: I thnk it has a limit of like 300 or something?
[23:49] You: so all these security nuts are always trying to get that increased
[23:49] You: so they have the Ban-link thing scripted by Trevor
[23:49] You: and it has a timer
[23:50] You: so like I'm on it
[23:50] You: and I'm on a timer of 500 days or something
[23:50] You: or 500 hours
[23:50] Julian Dibbell: oy
[23:50] You: then it circulates out to someone more bad than me
[23:50] You: not sure how it works
[23:50] Julian Dibbell: and anybody that's in the Ban-Link network has to accept that or leave the network?
[23:50] You: and by bad I mean that my blog is disliked
[23:50] You: well yes
[23:50] You: Travis claims that it is "trust"
[23:50] You: that I pick what is "trusted"
[23:50] You: that is arrant bullshit
[23:50] You: I fly around and BANG
[23:50] You: I call some girl renting boats
[23:50] You: WTF? I don't know you
[23:51] You: she says she got it off Ban-LInk
[23:51] You: I say I'm your neighbour, with rentals just like yours
[23:51] You: I am not a griefer
[23:51] You: I jut have a blog that Filpper doesn't like
[23:51] You: so then she MIGHT say
[23:51] You: oh, ok, that's retarded
[23:51] You: I'll unban you
[23:51] You: but she might not
[23:51] You: I have to chase each one down
[23:51] You: those stupid SL Safari goons for example
[23:51] You: they go around in this ship
[23:51] You: it was actualyl made from something I sold on Slex
[23:51] You: so that refrigerator guy?
[23:52] You: he took my object that was modifiable
[23:52] Julian Dibbell: go around in a ship?
[23:52] You: well they go around in a ship
[23:52] You: you know, an airship?
[23:52] You: battleship
[23:52] Julian Dibbell: the little pirate boat?
[23:52] You: and its name is the SS Prokofy Neva
[23:52] You: and it's made from my object see
[23:52] Julian Dibbell: oh...
[23:52] You: you can take my modifiable object and tart it up into something
[23:52] You: so they did
[23:52] You: and that way somebody sees my name not only as the object name
[23:52] You: but the creator name
[23:52] You: so they go, oh, griefer nee-noo
[23:52] Julian Dibbell: lol
[23:53] You: then I have to spend ages explaining, oh, but this is blah blah
[23:53] You: I have spawned an entire renaissance of art among these people : )
[23:53] You: I ahev to blog about that some day
[23:53] You: they have entire avatars made to look just like my real life self
[23:53] You: they fly around and harass me
[23:53] You: they have made a giant bust 10 storeys high of me
[23:53] You: and they have it talking
[23:53] You: or they have like this other avatar with cats on it, like I'm the cat lady
[23:53] Julian Dibbell: yes about that one. now how would they know what you look like IRL?
[23:53] You: or they have like anime art
[23:54] You: herald
[23:54] You: the Herald ran a picture of me from SLCC 1
[23:54] You: I don't stop press freedom
[23:54] Julian Dibbell: right right
[23:54] You: so I've been harassed with that since then for 2 years
[23:54] You: it gets very nasty
[23:54] You: it is very very creepy
[23:54] You: to fly into an infohub
[23:54] You: and see a megaprim
[23:54] You: with your RL picture on it
[23:54] You: I mean, it's nasty stuff
[23:54] You: or you see your RL picture as a particle cut up and blowing around a sim
[23:54] You: and they try to have this shock value because I have a transgendered avatar
[23:55] You: so the idea is to say, wow, Prok is female in real life gee who new?
[23:55] You: and there will always be someone who hasn't gotten this news lol
[23:55] You: and then they will IM me and say, wow, you have a different gender than RL, that must mean you want to have sex with me AND my girlfriend both woot
[23:55] You: lol
[23:56] Julian Dibbell: so like. i get that that's creepy, the giant picture of you. but i can't quite articulate for myself why.
[23:56] You: well perhaps if it happens to you, you'll get it
[23:56] You: you have an avatar that already has your real life name
[23:56] You: so you are already a public figure
[23:56] You: but what if you came here not wishing to have your RL name and face here?
[23:56] You: I sure didn't
[23:56] Julian Dibbell: ok
[23:57] You: i was griefed and outed on the Linden forums
[23:57] You: the Lindens did nothing
[23:57] You: that was done by the SSG and the Herald
[23:57] Julian Dibbell: ssg?
[23:57] You: but again, I refuse to be intimidated by it
[23:57] You: Sim Shadow Government
[23:57] You: they were the griefers in TSO
[23:57] Julian Dibbell: oh them
[23:57] Julian Dibbell: yes
[23:58] You: I should fetch your picture and put it on a giant prim and put it on your head now Julian
[23:58] You: maybe you will get it
[23:58] Julian Dibbell: were you in TSO before this?
[23:58] You: it's just very unsettling
[23:58] You: and other people find it creepy
[23:58] You: they move out obviously
[23:58] You: imagine a mega prim
[23:58] You: that is 16 sims wide, joined together
[23:58] You: in that area we were just in?
[23:58] You: with the wetlands and the tower?
[23:58] You: picture a giant board completely covering the sky
[23:58] You: and pushing everyone down below
[23:58] Julian Dibbell: wait, that's like acres and acres
[23:58] You: and they IM you and say
[23:58] You: "Um, I think this is your RL picture? or?"
[23:59] You: and they move out
[23:59] You: I mean, it's just too creepy
[23:59] You: and they do that for it's shock value
[23:59] You: yes I was in TSO before SL for 2 years, I was in the beta
[23:59] You: I'm sorry I don't have a house to ask you to come and sit down
[23:59] You: I do have a cafe tho you could come to and sit
[23:59] You: I just never bother making a house here
[23:59] Julian Dibbell: was that the first virtual world you were in?
[0:00] You: let's see
[0:00] You: I guess so
[0:00] Julian Dibbell: heh, no worries, the actual chair i'm actually in is comfy enoug
[0:00] You: I don't recall every going to the others,k they didn't interest me
[0:00] You: I don't play games
[0:00] You: I don't like Wow or UO
[0:00] You: I get killed in the first frame and I dump them
[0:00] You: they are dull
[0:00] You: thse are worlds, it's different
[0:00] Julian Dibbell: you would have liked LambdaMOO i guess is hwy i ask
[0:00] You: it's open ended
[0:00] You: well I had a friend ages ago that tried to get me on that
[0:00] You: but it was too geeky and complicated
[0:00] You: I just couldn't get into it
[0:00] You: I had the sims offline
[0:01] You: I made stories with the Sims offline
[0:01] You: and traded them in a club
[0:01] You: I made a club for adults and teenagers to make stories in the sims and post and trade them
[0:01] You: and trade the families
[0:01] You: and that was just more interesting
[0:01] Julian Dibbell: cool
[0:01] You: I could script and stage and set the story using the Sims
[0:01] You: the offline
[0:01] You: which had more capacity
[0:01] You: for user content
[0:01] You: I could put my own textures and objects
[0:01] You: or I could buy someone else's custom content
[0:02] You: so there was sort of a hard core of us who did this
[0:02] You: and we used the family albums function
[0:02] Julian Dibbell: was that ever commercialized, your club?
[0:02] You: and finally Will wright figured that they should more consciously promote this so now it's more part of the later versions
[0:02] You: no
[0:02] You: I still have it but it kind languishes
[0:02] You: Sim Albums
[0:02] You: we had like categories of albums
[0:02] You: so some were real life issues
[0:02] Julian Dibbell: but it was online?
[0:02] You: let's say historical events
[0:02] Julian Dibbell: is
[0:02] You: or like I did one on the Oklamhoma bombing
[0:03] You: or I made one "Starbuck Sucks"
[0:03] You: or people made like romance fantasies or sci fi
[0:03] You: its on a web page
[0:03] You: let's see http://simalbums.tripod.com
[0:03] Julian Dibbell: oooh tripod
[0:03] You: http://syminalist.tripood.com I think
[0:03] You: well yes there wasn't some kind of 3-d world
[0:03] You: they didn't have them then
[0:03] Julian Dibbell: SA started out as a tripod site too :)
[0:03] You: this was 2000
[0:03] You: I used to have tripod and Zing
[0:04] You: Zing which promised "unlimited storage for life"
[0:04] You: and closed
[0:04] You: lol
[0:04] You: so we made slideshows
[0:04] Julian Dibbell: ha
[0:04] You: with Philip Rosedale's invention of that error [era]
[0:04] You: RealSlideShow
[0:04] You: then we put music on them and captioned them
[0:04] You: and you could upload them to tripod back then
[0:04] You: now, something about those files and the servers at Real, don't support them
[0:04] You: that product was retired
[0:05] Julian Dibbell: so then naturally you jumped into TSO?
[0:05] You: I think probably the music companies hated that you could p ut up clips into them
[0:05] You: yes but we found that TSO was very hard to make stories with
[0:05] You: no custom content
[0:05] You: and this sort of exigency of game action
[0:05] You: where the sim redds out
[0:05] You: in the offline we had all kinds of hacks
[0:05] You: to make the action stop
[0:05] You: to pose the sims
[0:05] You: to make them green up and defeat the game mechanism
[0:05] You: people sold the hacks even
[0:05] You: but online you were stuck with that exigency
[0:05] You: so you would try to chase around and keep up with it
[0:05] You: but it got very hard
[0:06] You: so we moved to sort of a different format
[0:06] You: we made like living soap opera
[0:06] You: so you build a lot and have people sort of spontaneously act out something
[0:06] You: not role play
[0:06] You: not like some stylized thing
[0:06] You: more like free form
[0:06] You: I thought we would be able to transfer that here
[0:06] You: but that proved impossible
[0:07] You: this house was made by Barnesworth Anubis
[0:07] You: he used to be one of my best friends in TSO
[0:07] You: his name there was Cornelius Vanderbilt
[0:07] You: and we were all in a group called SimArts
[0:07] You: and we used to have architecture contests and shows and things
[0:07] You: I had to modify this house to make it tintable and lockable
[0:07] You: he never does that
[0:07] You: well he makes them tintable now but lockable only to the group
[0:08] You: so with a group like mine with 700 people just in this one group of course it can't work quite
[0:08] Julian Dibbell: but all this, with you, is a hobby more or less? you've never made it your main line of work?
[0:08] You: No i have it as a part-time job, I make it work a profit
[0:08] You: I wouldn't need a hobby that is this time consuming that didn't pay geez
[0:08] You: I keep my regular jobs as well
[0:08] You: because I wouldn't want to be doing this fulltime
[0:08] You: it's too risky and too hard
[0:08] Julian Dibbell: what are your regular jobs?
[passage omitted on RL details]
[0:14] You: Why don't you study Second Life more Julian?
[0:14] You: there is so much to study here, I hope I have given you that sense
[0:14] Julian Dibbell: ha. it's too much like LambdaMOO.
[0:14] You: that's why I'm here
[0:14] You: oh surely it's more complex
[0:15] Julian Dibbell: i wrote that book already.
[0:15] You: it has an economy
[0:15] You: well you sound like you can't get beyond that
[0:15] Julian Dibbell: yeah it has that. but i wrote that book too :)
[0:15] You: this isn't game gold and it isn't just a rape in cyberspace
[0:15] You: although I've had tenants raped by goons
[0:15] You: and it is not fun
[0:15] You: well but this is different
[0:15] You: you're just not seeing it
[0:15] You: and why do you have to write an entire book?
[0:15] You: it will only get out of date
[0:15] Julian Dibbell: what am i not seeing?
[0:15] You: a magazine article would do
[0:16] You: the complexity of how people make communities and groups and how they lobby for change
[0:16] You: how the game gods wreck havoc
[0:16] Julian Dibbell: well it's tricky
[0:16] You: I mean this is the making of the Metaverse
[0:16] You: it's all being laid down ehre
[0:16] Julian Dibbell: i spent much of this year working on an article for New York magazine sort of about all that
[0:16] Julian Dibbell: Philip's pretensions to replacing NYC with SL and so forth
[0:16] You: well they might rather have more of an entertainment piece
[0:17] Julian Dibbell: yes that's prolly why it got killed in the end
[0:17] You: I'm always amazed that the Voice has only Bonnie Ruberg's tripe about cybersexing
[0:17] You: which is retarded
[0:17] You: did you read David Kushner's piece in Rolling Stone?
[0:17] Julian Dibbell: i did
[0:17] You: that's the best piece on Philip I've seen, lots of research
[0:17] You: I was interviewee for that
[0:17] Julian Dibbell: yes i know of course
[0:18] You: Why did you come to the Metanomics seminar to speak if you feel there is nothing new under the LambdaMOO sun?
[0:18] You: seriously we have to overthrow you game journos to get this story out it's maddening
[0:18] Julian Dibbell: i'm being flip, Prok, i'm sorry, obviously this is a big deal
[0:18] Julian Dibbell: but the hype issue is a real problem at this point
[0:19] You: oh we're on to anti-hype now
[0:19] You: the numbers are all fake
[0:19] Julian Dibbell: here' in SL maybe
[0:19] You: I was arguing with a Linden again today on that
[0:19] You: they post their own real numbers like 900,000 uniques in 30 days
[0:19] Julian Dibbell: which sides?
[0:19] You: then you say, oh, good!
[0:19] You: and they say suddenly like they are on drugs
[0:19] You: that those are just whatever
[0:19] You: that there are 10 m illion
[0:19] You: there are 2 million
[0:19] You: there are whatever million
[0:19] You: but really there's only 302, 145
[0:20] You: number of people who spent more than $1 L that month
[0:20] You: those are the numbers I go by
[0:20] You: but then this linden says oh but blah blah
[0:20] Julian Dibbell: those are good numbers
[0:20] You: they cling very hard to this idea of all these people coming for free and accessing SL and flying around
[0:20] Julian Dibbell: clay shirky likes those numbers
[0:20] You: and then, um, feeding their families in some third-world country
[0:20] You: this is Philip's dream
[0:20] You: but when the dream materializes in the form of my tenants from Brazil
[0:20] You: then he's like, oh, that's not so interesting
[0:21] You: they are miiddle class
[0:21] You: they are selling $10 sneakers
[0:21] You: bleh
[0:21] You: I had a Brazilian call me today
[0:21] You: and he wanted me to hire him
[0:21] You: he had a great idea for a job
[0:21] You: he said he saw these expired boxes
[0:21] You: and he could go around and call those people and tell them to pay
[0:21] Julian Dibbell: ha. very brazilian.
[0:21] You: of course the boxes send them automatic messages
[0:21] You: yes so he could collect rent
[0:21] You: with like 3 words of English
[0:21] You: well you have to hand it to him
[0:22] You: I haev these other Brazilians that opened up a furniture store
[0:22] You: they are just booming
[0:22] You: they already got themselves to the number one slot for jacuzzis lol
[0:22] You: I just think all that stuff is fascinating
[0:22] You: I have the top three Japanese designes in my rentals
[0:22] You: I have mainland with more character than the island pancakes
[0:22] You: so they come there
[0:22] You: pull up the map and see the next island over to see the pancake thing
[0:22] Julian Dibbell: heh. very metro.
[0:23] You: well I have an area called Free Tibet
[0:23] You: so I have like Asian builds
[0:23] You: and one of the stores went in there
[0:23] You: I just think it is hugely cool to get all these people started in business doing stuff and I watch them try to think up something to sell or do
[0:24] You: the story is that a lot of people make money but it's more like $100 a month not a million
[0:24] You: it's not Anshe Chung
[0:24] You: I can show you some Anshe Chung empire if you haven't seen that
[0:24] You: she does have it beautifulyl landscaped
[0:24] Julian Dibbell: i've seen.
[0:24] You: I rent 2 areas from here
[0:24] You: a void sim and like 5120
[0:24] Julian Dibbell: and then sublet?
[0:24] You: because it is the only real desert texture in SL
[0:24] You: yes it doesn't make much
[0:24] Julian Dibbell: can i see?
[0:24] You: I will probably have to fold it soon
[0:24] You: ok
[0:24] You: brb
[0:25] You: this is a void sim
[0:25] Julian Dibbell: what's that?
[0:26] You: it is a sim with only 1875 prim capacity
[0:26] You: so it's like a filler that spaces between islands to make water
[0:26] You: so the Lindens started selling them in 4 packs
[0:26] You: and some people then rent them out as cheaper whole sims
[0:26] You: so I bought Anshe's back when she dumped some of that $195 tier island stuff
[0:26] Julian Dibbell: because of the controls?
[0:26] You: well just to have all this space
[0:26] You: see you can have a whole house like that castle up there
[0:26] You: but get all this water to sail around in
[0:27] You: then I have some townhouses over here I sublet
[0:27] You: but because Anshe is reclaiming all the land now I may have to restructure all this
[0:27] You: over here
[0:27] Julian Dibbell: weird
[0:27] You: I just got asstached there
[0:27] You: crossing the sim boundary
[0:28] Julian Dibbell: asstached?
[0:28] You: well somehow the game takes off all your hair and shoes
[0:28] You: and attaches it to your ass
[0:28] You: so you detach it then
[0:28] Julian Dibbell: oh! indeed
[0:28] Julian Dibbell: what's that crackly sound?
[0:28] You: hmm
[0:28] You: I never put sound on
[0:28] You: let me see
[0:28] Julian Dibbell: the asstachment array?
[0:29] You: oh that
[0:29] You: probabl somebody has a crackling campfire nearby
[0:29] You: see?
[0:29] Julian Dibbell: i do
[0:29] You: well Anshe is going to deparcel all this
[0:29] You: and then I may get my build dumped
[0:29] Julian Dibbell: why?
[0:30] You: I dunno it's all retarded
[0:30] You: I think what happened
[0:30] Julian Dibbell: that sucks
[0:30] You: is that PayPal China won't deal
[0:30] You: or PayPal won't send to China
[0:30] You: or China won't let her keep PayPal
[0:30] You: we all pay her on PayPal
[0:30] You: so anyway, she is moving to Linden payment only kiosks
[0:30] You: like Desmon has or others on continents
[0:30] You: and she has some script then that has to like calculate meters or something
[0:31] You: and she has too many islands to just go to the trouble to count every little parcel
[0:31] AP15 whispers: Ave Sinner!
[0:31] You: so she is just alloting everybody their subscription tier amount and be done with it
[0:31] You: Hi
[0:31] Julian Dibbell: pfff. and you say lambdamoo was too geeky...
[0:31] You: sorry to bother you
[0:31] You: I was just showing a friend the build
[0:31] Chandra Bleac: Allright
[0:31] You: come up here Julian
[0:32] Chandra Bleac: This beeing MY house tho
[0:32] You: yes I realize it
[0:32] You: I'm the landlord
[0:32] You: : )
[0:32] Chandra Bleac: Oh right
[0:32] Julian Dibbell: she looked a bit asstached herself
[0:32] You: lol
[0:33] You: well you were going to get slashed by a master of Gor in a minute there
[0:33] Julian Dibbell: right, i was gonna guess...
[0:33] You: anyway I will tp you away from here to another place because convos cary 20 m2
[0:34] You: this is my home sim
[0:34] You: I developed this infohub that used to be a telehub sim
[0:34] You: this is one of like 14 user-developed Linden infohubs
[0:34] You: it was sort of an experiment they had about 2 years ago or so
[0:35] You: so I commissioned a build sort of like Casablanca
[0:35] You: and I tried to make it like Memory Palace
[0:35] You: that you can walk through room to room and learn things by seeing the objects and remembering them
[0:35] Julian Dibbell: yeah what even is an infohub?
[0:35] You: well it's what they put in place of telehubs
[0:35] You: telehubs used to be how the transportation worked
[0:35] You: there was no point to point teleportation
[0:35] You: so let's say I wanted to go to Refugio
[0:36] You: I would be routed to Ross and have to fly 350 m
[0:36] You: and that forced people to land and socialize and shop
[0:36] You: they found they had these big empty sims
[0:36] You: so they like social engineered it
[0:36] You: then they decided to drop it
[0:36] You: I could explain my whole econnomic analysis of it
[0:36] You: but in a nutshell, these used to be malls open to anyone
[0:36] Julian Dibbell: Thomas Malaby has talked to me a lot about it
[0:36] You: and Anshe and a few other barons owned them
[0:36] You: and they made a fortune
[0:36] You: but they rented to anyone
[0:36] You: so that was different than the boutique system of oldbies
[0:37] You: which they did by FIC apprenticeship
[0:37] You: you had to suck up to divas or get a spot in a boutique
[0:37] You: or buy land yourself
[0:37] You: and the telehubs in my view made it very democratic
[0:37] You: and that infuraited the old master class
[0:37] You: so they agitated to have them removed
[0:37] You: and the argument they said was that they were ugly and av trapped
[0:37] You: but that was not the case for all new sims built after dec 2004
[0:37] Julian Dibbell: 'av trapped'?
[0:37] You: where Lindens actually zoned out 4096 m so there was no av trap
[0:38] You: well let's say you land
[0:38] You: and you are stuck inside a store
[0:38] You: youc an't fly out
[0:38] You: it rezzes around you and traps you
[0:38] Julian Dibbell: o i c
[0:38] You: while you wait for it to rez you buy stuff
[0:38] Blaccard Burks is Offline
[0:38] You: yes I had this long drawn out battle with Thomas Malaby
[0:38] You: my God what a stubborn ass he turned otu to be
[0:38] You: he now says I am not a worthy interlocutor
[0:38] You: but hey somebody writing a court scribe's account of SL
[0:38] You: please
[0:38] You: ethnography
[0:38] Julian Dibbell: lol
[0:39] You: history writetn by the victors
[0:39] You: so the telehub thing led to us all rebelling
[0:39] You: the land barons
[0:39] You: because the Lindens were deceptive
[0:39] You: they decided to remove them
[0:39] You: but didn't tell the public
[0:39] You: they kept selling them
[0:39] You: just as they keep selling mainland now
[0:39] You: with no intention of keeping its value after the open source
[0:39] You: same idea only bigger
[0:39] You: so they sold these sims knowingly opening up the bidding even for a higher price
[0:40] You: even tho in June 2005 they knew they would be dumping them
[0:40] You: so after enough agitation, they agreed to compensate the barons
[0:40] Julian Dibbell: why will it not hold value after open source?
[0:40] You: any one can print land
[0:40] You: and some will subsidize the printing of it
[0:40] You: and some will have better economies of scale
[0:40] You: Mitch Kapor himself said in Davos
[0:40] You: in February 2007
[0:41] You: that it made no sense to keep buying land, that investing in land was too risky
[0:41] You: so I took him at his word and so did Anshe and others
[0:41] You: and of course he was too far out ahead of their land auction department which hoped to keep selling it to chumps until they OS'd
[0:41] You: so now since Bragg was settled they have raised the bar for compensation suits
[0:41] You: you would have to have a value of $12,000 and pay all legal fees if you lose
[0:41] Julian Dibbell: how so?
[0:42] You: they put in a new TOS that you must go to arbitration
[0:42] You: or above $12,000 sue in CA and payd legal fees
[0:42] Julian Dibbell: didn't the old TOS say as much?
[0:42] You: no
[0:42] You: but it was declared unconscionable by Bragg
[0:42] You: the judge in Bragg ruled that the TOS was unconscionable
[0:42] Julian Dibbell: byt the bragg judge
[0:42] You: on the matter of forcing litigation in CA
[0:42] You: it may still be
[0:42] You: but they now have it offering arbitration
[0:43] You: I decided not to sell mine back
[0:43] You: anyway so they agreed to buy back telehub sims
[0:43] You: Anshe faked the dates of hers and sold hers back
[0:43] You: and they know she did that
[0:43] You: they claim they had no records to prove it
[0:43] You: they just monkeyed with the auction like that again
[0:43] You: the auctino now has no memory again
[0:43] Julian Dibbell: why would she need to fake the dates?
[0:43] You: because the compensation offer was for June 2005-December 2005
[0:44] You: she bought this sim where we're standing in Dec 2004
[0:44] You: I know because I ws here too buying then
[0:44] You: and she sold me some of it in May 2005
[0:44] You: so I watched her sell the land to herself to make the new date pop in
[0:44] Julian Dibbell: ha
[0:44] You: well then they fleeeced her back
[0:44] Julian Dibbell: ?
[0:44] You: they put out 44 bulk sims for auction
[0:44] You: like huge packs of sims
[0:44] You: and this was when they wanted like IBM to buy
[0:45] You: so she bid on them with her telehub money see
[0:45] You: anyway I thought it was more intersting to keep and see how it might be reborn
[0:45] You: so I put in to redevelop it
[0:45] Julian Dibbell: why would you need to "put in" -- it's your land, no?
[0:45] You: no
[0:45] You: it's Governor Linden
[0:46] You: look at the about land menu
[0:46] You: they had like a contest
[0:46] You: you could apply to redevelop their lame infohubs
[0:46] You: they were desperate
[0:46] You: they had 20 traffic on them
[0:46] You: no one came
[0:46] You: they had no way of putting out all their little messages on boards and whatnot
[0:46] You: so they offered people finally to put in their own orientation and content
[0:46] You: so now it has 3700 or even 20000 traffic
[0:46] You: I think sign-ups are down
[0:46] You: I see even the top one is at 9000 today
[0:47] You: usually they are like 30000 and I'm at 15000
[0:47] You: this is like the number 4 or 5 slot
[0:47] You: then they have orientatino islands which they force-port people to now
[0:47] Julian Dibbell: sign ups?
[0:47] You: you may have read the Herald on that
[0:47] You: well people sign up to SL
[0:47] You: they land on that orientatino island
[0:47] You: if they want to skip all that stuff they hit a kiosk that deilvers them here
[0:47] You: then they can sort of walk around and get the cards at their leisure or not
[0:47] You: some people arrive already knowing where they are going
[0:48] You: and others you point them to stuff
[0:48] You: I have like places to visit listed etc
[0:48] You: see down here
[0:48] You: they land here
[0:48] You: it then sets this place to home
[0:49] You: so then they come back here until they buy their own land or whatever
[0:49] Julian Dibbell: Jesus Prok, don't you have to get up in the morning?
[0:50] You: yes but I usually take a nap in the evening
[0:50] You: because I'm working on a publication [passage omitted]
[0:50] You: anyway you must be tired
[0:50] You: so come back any time
[0:50] You: you get the idea
[0:50] Julian Dibbell: heh. yeah.
[0:50] Julian Dibbell: have to get up at 645 and pack the kid's lunch
[0:50] You: I can't fathom how you could say this is "like" Lambda MOO
[0:51] You: oh well I take them to school and they have the school lunch
[0:51] Julian Dibbell: read my book :)
[0:51] Drama: What is Drama and How Can I Avoid It?
[0:51] You: well live my SL
[0:51] You: seriously, you have no idea
[0:51] Julian Dibbell: i think likewise
[0:51] You: I did read your book ages ago
[0:51] Julian Dibbell: and it's no insult to say they're similiar either
[0:52] You: I realize
[0:52] You: but it's more complex
[0:52] You: you can see thre are those pepole like Nick Wilson
[0:52] Julian Dibbell: well of course
[0:52] You: that use it for business seminars
[0:52] You: and people doing all kinds of things, not like most of my tenants who are either doing little businesses or socializing
[0:52] You: god knows what those IBM people do on here
[0:52] Julian Dibbell: indeed
[0:53] You: well Ih ave flown around their islands
[0:53] You: they have all kinds of training stuff
[0:53] You: you know that kind of boring power opint
[0:53] You: how to integrate your this with your that to have added value for this thing
[0:53] You: it's all terribly dull even in 3-D
[0:53] Julian Dibbell: yeah i've flown around them a bit too. very weird.
[0:53] You: I bet those employees are all in IMs with their girlfriends
[0:53] You: that are on the sex sims
[0:53] You: lol
[0:53] Julian Dibbell: lol
[0:54] Julian Dibbell: anyway off i go
[0:54] You: kk
[0:54] You: nice to meet you
[0:54] Julian Dibbell: thanks for talking
[0:54] You: thanks for coming by
[0:54] Julian Dibbell: likewise
[0:54] You: if you don't give me credit I will skin y ou inmy blog
[0:54] You: like I skinned Terdiman
[0:54] You: : )
[0:54] Julian Dibbell: i'm counting on it
[0:54] Julian Dibbell: :)
[0:54] You: : )
[0:54] You: have a good night
[0:54] You: day
[0:54] You: lunch packing
[0:54] You: lol
[0:54] Julian Dibbell: ciao
[0:54] Julian Dibbell is Offline

Comments

[Share Holder]

Hi,
Thank you for the interesting post.
Could you please elaborate more on your idea of a a 'search as a public utility' in your future articles? The issues that probably should be discussed are:
1. Who pays for the maintenance of 'search as a public utility' (it is relatively expensive to maintain, google numbers are available, they are pretty much minimal per record per source per kb or info)?
2. (kinda related to 1. economically) Who polices the search? Search can be abused in a lot of ways. Please give us your take on the procedures that must be in place to exclude spam, 'inappropriate content' and obviously false commercial messages, etc.etc. from the search index and results?

Thank you.

[Hojohto]

Oh Prok?
I got my copy of Wired yesterday, I'll be buying a frame for it tomorrow.

[Cocoanut Koala]

Here's what I wrote on the SL forums, when I read of this there:

----

OK, and herein lies the logical flaw of those who grief in order to prevent others from "taking the Internet too seriously," and who therefore claim themselves not only superior, but actually to be performing a sort of societal service.

They aren't doing it to teach people not to "take the Internet too seriously," and - no one assigned them that job.

They are doing it because the Internet is the only place where they can get away with being (paper) hooligans.

Imagine a bowling alley filled with people. Now here come these guys, throwing bricks onto the lanes, turning the lights on and off, etc., claiming they are just preventing anyone from "taking bowling too seriously."

I imagine all the people who are bowling would get pretty peeved, not to mention the bowling alley owners.

And if some of the bowlers became frustrated enough to cry, these guys would laugh at them and say they were obviously "taking bowling too seriously."

Or transfer the scenario anywhere. To the movie theaters, to teach the patrons not to take their movies "too seriously." Or running rampant through a restaurant, upending tables and throwing food, to teach people not to take eating out "too seriously."

I'd like to see them try that. But these guys wouldn't do these things, because they ARE only paper hooligans, without even the balls of proper hooligans to do their crimes in the real world, where they would likely find their helpless little flabby cowardly selves tossed in the slammer, but only AFTER the bowling alley patrons got through with them.

This little meme they have going about "teaching people not to take the Internet too seriously" is simply a bit of nonsense that one of them thought up ages ago, and the rest thought sounded good.

coco

[Khamon Fate]

In the spirit of shredding your analogy Coco, rather than accepting it's viable points as an illustration of your point, which is the way we argue here you know, in the case of Second Life, the owners agree with the griefers that we shouldn't take it all too seriously and give them free reign.

Not only that, but they sit the bowlers down and tie their hands while the griefers destroy the alley. As long as this remains true, we haven't a prayer of ganging up and defeating them. We would have to gang up on LL; and the only way to do that is for thousands of premiums to dump their tier.

[Khamon Fate]

Sorry, I should have said dump our tier.

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

Agreed, Cocoanut; the "don't take the Internet too seriously" line is just the rationalization. Griefers are nothing but bullies and vandals. Whether one calls them terrorists or not (virtual terrorists?), the tactics can be similar because the griefer doesn't value his account in the "game" any more than a suicide bomber values his life--less so, since it's trivial to create an alt.

[Cocoanut Koala]

I agree, Khamon, that the Lindens don't seem to help matters much.

One theory is that the Lindens are mostly little hacker boys themselves, and I don't discount that.

And I do believe it is clear that they never met a scripter, coder, or bot they don't like and (sometimes secretly) admire, regardless of what their crimes might be.

Whereas they have mostly contempt for the regular residents who actually are dumb enough to try to follow the rules and be good citizens.

Really - contempt. I mean that.

*****

But I think there is another likely explanation - that the Lindens like to have all this compassion for the criminals, and like to give them all kinds of second chances and looking-the-other-way's.

This allows the Lindens to feel magnanimous. I just wish they would feel magnanimous towards the good citizens, too!

*****

My own personal experience is they can be too harsh with those who actually are their best allies, and help their business.

While, as we've seen, coddling those who hurt it most.

And part of that seems to stem from this notion that the worst crime is having ideas and thoughts that the Lindens don't like.

Griefing other residents is just a minor thing to them, compared to that.

Seems to me like that, anyhow.

*****

Since I've been in SL I've noticed this real hammering on residents they don't like, who in the normal world, would be the good guys! While those who make our lives miserable get to come back and do it again and again.

Complicating any analysis, though, is the fact that there isn't much of a managerial system at LL, and everyone at LL more or less gets to do what they want to, and not all of them are even aware of what the TOS is supposed to mean.

So you get a lot of rogue activity and lots of loose cannons, as well as a lot of just unsupervised, stupid activity, depending on the Linden involved.

*****

Me, I gave up, oh, maybe a year ago on expecting SL to be anything like the real world, or have any sort of reasonable justice in it.

I recognize it as a place where normal values are turned on their ear, by the Lindens, on purpose; and recognize that we will always suffer for it.

But I ALSO recognize that as a total anomaly. I know Prok probably disagrees with me on that, but I do think it is a total anomaly, and only gets currency due to the fact that the Internet itself, at this point in time, is also a sort of anomaly.

I really don't think this deal where criminals get whatever they want and good citizens suffer is going to be the norm.

*****

By the way, there is another backasswards thing going on, mentioned by a land dealer on a smaller forum, where the Lindens are overlooking tickets residents are turning in regarding small, abandoned plots.

Supposedly, these residents would be able to get these plots offered for sale to them if they turned in a ticket.

But what is happening, at least some of the time (maybe all, not sure), is that instead, the Lindens are running around manually setting these plots to $1 a meter so that landbots, primarily Elantheus Flagstaff, can buy them up immediately (not the owners next to them who had turned in a ticket), and thereby help Elantheus make, I believe the person said, half a million U.S. dollars annually.

Now this is just the sort of thing I'm talking about: Screwing the regular, law-abiding, policy-following citizen so the clever con-artist coders (which is not ALL coders - I mean specifically the con-artist coders) can benefit.

This is second hand (you can read about it on the Duchy of Darkmere forums), but it is just the sort of thing that drives me wild.

*****

Things like the land deal above really makes me think that the Lindens think kind of criminally themselves, if you will permit me to go totally off the wall here for a moment.

It makes me suspect they divide residents into two categories: The Clever (non-socially conscious, rather asocial and amoral)and the Chumps. And they not only admire the former (as long as some sort of coding is involved), they aid and abet them, to take advantage of the good, socially conscious citizens; a.k.a. the Chumps.

coco

[Khamon Fate]

I can't speak for anyone else; but per Robin's instruction I recently submitted a land ticket for a couple of scraps in Slate. It took four days but they were eventually set for sale to me for 1L/sm.

So in this case, at least, the process worked.

[Cale Vinson]

A few rather scattered thoughts ....

a)
It does seem rather odd that someone who doesn't know what autoreturn is could believe themselves capable of offering any serious insight into SL.

b)
Really liked your analogy Coco. :-) One of the other justifications that griefers give is that they have just as much right to play "their game" as we do to play ours. I can't remember the quote exactly, but one griefer sig in Eve read to the effect of: "be warned, you may be playing Eve, but we're playing Something Awful".

The scope of a bowling alley is so small that its easy to declare what its real purpose is - to bowl. The PvP MMO's are a bit more difficult, as player-A is intended to take actions that player-B won't like, and it can become a rather grey area as to which of these actions are legitimate and which are griefing. For SL, its purpose, for the proverbial man-from-Mars, is not at all obvious, due to the scope of activities it supports. To prevent griefers from arguing the "I'm just playing my game" line in SL, I'd like to see a really strong statement from LL about what they, the (initial) creators and current admins of the system see as "the game" of SL.

If it truly is "every action that is possible is also acceptable", then they should state that up front so the rest of up can get out of Dodge. :-)

c)
Khamon, I know you've been through this like ten million times already, so I'll understand completely if you chose not to answer. But lets say there was a massive tier revolt against LL as you suggest. What would you be looking to LL to *do* in response?

[Cale Vinson]

Edit:

Sorry, it clearly is not "every action that is possible is also acceptable", because we now have casino and banking bans. I needed to add a caveat about excluding actions that LL perceive may get them into legal problems. :-)

[Prokofy Neva]

Cale,

I think the answer to your question is that the Lindens, as technolibertarians, as tekkie wiki anarcho-capitalistas, did begin with the idea that "every action that is possible is also acceptable." (Dostoeyevsky put it like this: "Without God, anything goes".)

And they were absolutely neutral in one sense to anything that went on -- gambling, ageplay, they just thought the "creativity" would drive out anything "negative".

Of course, they had their own little clutchy NPResque orthodoxies of the leftist type, that works like this:

o no hate speech against gays, but hate speech against land barons is ok

o no attacks of individuals on the forums in threads just about one individual or polls on one individual, but such things are ok if they are landbarons like Anshe or hated critics like Prokofy

o no encroachment of parcels with trees meant to disguise ugly spinning ad towers, but ugly spinning add towers have the right of way and cannot be abuse reported for anything, or removed for any reason

And so on. You get the idea. The is a world where the simulation of child rape didn't get a blink, where outrageous screaming racist and anti-Semitic automated particle and texture attacks doesn't get a condemnation, but just try and make a critical comment about a BDSM Linden, a hacker Linden, a transgendered Linden who has gone over and threatened to get somebody banned for what they wrote on a third-party site -- well, then it's different. There's free speech, and then there's free speech.

It's like the way Cory Doctorow of all people will not respond to my queries about why I'm banned from the supposedly free and easy copyleftist site Boingboing.net -- I'm mystified why I cant' register or post there as anonymous, but am blocked. Pre-emptively, I guess.

There are no people more aggressively hateful and orthodox and conformist than the licentious and the technolibertarian.

That's how I see it.

You raise some interesting point about "my game" and "your game". In Eve online, or Wow, sure, apparently ganking newbs or preying upon innocents is part of the game, in a way. That is, perhaps frowned upon, but it becomes a way of life for some. Because you *can*.

SL is more complex in that there are lots of different games.

I know in TSO, the games people found the most fun were making stuff work not the way it was supposed to, but in some funny, buggy, not-expected way. Lay down a pattern, or a fixed function, and people try to break it or see how hard it will bend. It's just perverse human nature.

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

"I think the answer to your question is that the Lindens, as technolibertarians, as tekkie wiki anarcho-capitalistas, did begin with the idea that 'every action that is possible is also acceptable.'"

Eh?

From the Libertarian Party FAQ: "Essentially, we believe all Americans should be free to live their lives and pursue their interests as they see fit as long as they do no harm to another."

Note the final clause.

[Danton Sideways]

Julian Dibbell apparently wanted his article about griefers to be lilting and trendy, to fit into Wired magazine. It's totally superficial, just skimming the surface. One learns more about the reality of griefing from Prokofy's chatlog above. Incidentally, in the chatlog one can just feel Dibbell standing back, getting ready to grief Prok – with the article.

I had the vague impression that griefing was a sort of game, boys will be boys type of stuff. Dibbell, who is clearly indulgent towards the griefers, does give information showing how violent, racist and immature they are. What the hell is funny about mutilated furries? But as someone said about the Kathy Sierra case, why should anyone be surprised? With violent video games, splatter movies and even a gore kiddies show like Happy Tree Friends, youngsters are completely submerged in violence. And who is telling them it's not cool?

Someone should take the time to do *serious* research about the griefers, who they are, how they think, what they do. Mr. Dibbell is not going to write that book, because it would be nauseating, rather than trendy. The response to griefing and the culture of violence in general should be to document it, talk about it, study it, collect statistics. I wish someone else would do this, because I have a weak stomach.

I did not see that the journalist had much of a chance to say anything, much less be winey or whatever else you called him. I do see why griefers might bug you though. :)