Freeing Tibet

This isn't a post about what's happening in Tibet now, which is tragic -- you can read about the real-life Tibet everywhere else these days on the Internet. Let me just pause and say for a moment that I think it's an absolute disgrace that groups that could rush to mount protests against Guantanamo, and rightly so, or rush to fund and deploy a mass movement with lavish bus ads around "saving Darfur," couldn't see their way clear to mounting a much-needed moral position now, to call for boycotting the Chinese Olympics, a position that would cost them nothing (I very much agree with Anna Applebaum's take on this). However, I'm not here to argue about Tibet with anonymous and often abusive people on the Internet at large.

Let me tell you about my own little tiny effort to make a "Free Tibet" in Second Life, long ago and far away in another galaxy. I was trying to "save the view" at first for one sim where a friend from TSO had moved in and I, too, had bought some land in the interesting seaside sim of Cub -- in the days when there weren't any white-beach sims and waterfront wasn't always available. In those days, whole sims rarely appeared on the auction, and if they did, the 4-5 key land barons would always grab hold of them, and it was very hard ever to get a whole sim to do a project. So you would have to piece it together bit by bit. That's one of the factors that makes life on the Mainland so difficult today for some of us in the middle sims who came after the oldbie core sims, when land was cheaper and people got 4096 m2 tier-free for life, and the later sims that were sold for a mere $1,000 or very little more (there were so many of them) to the huge expensive project sims today (some selling even for $3500-4000 on the newest mainland, and selling as a whole of course).

Next to Cub, first, there was a strip of parcel on Wakeley, a neighbouring sim that bordered this sim -- a strip with Linden water in it, that seemed to be one of those "left-overs" between sims that the Lindens didn't seem to have a bright idea about what to do with. These are all over, of course, and often filled with opportunistic 4-corner sim ads. So I bought this parcel, thinking the red Linden land was a waterway, since in those old days, the jagged red corridors under water that were sold on the auction without roads were waterways.

I then watched in dismay as the rest of the sim was chopped up into big hunks by the Lindens and put on the auction. What would go up next door? We were a hop and a skip from the telehub, which in those days was a mixed blessing -- good for business, bad for residences and in these latter days of the telehub era, a magnet for clubs (Anshe put in a wild west saloon in this particular one ensuring lag and griefing fly-bys for months).

I put in a bid on the auction for a mountainous portion of this sim -- Wakeley -- and won, to my surprise -- only to discover that I had made a mistake. This happened to me 2-3 times on the auction (and to others) -- the picture that went with the auction slice was the wrong one, or misleading, and when you went to the parcel you wanted to buy, the corresponding piece on the auction in fact was attached to another neighbouring piece. Later, more elaborate and automatic systems with an auction ID number was introduced, but this was done with coordinates at that time, if I'm not mistaken.

So there I was inworld after the auction, miserable that the piece I had wanted on the mountain top wasn't the one I bought, when up flew Anshe, putting a price on her just-won auction piece, which was in fact the one I wanted. So there wasn't any chance of getting it. I began to try to bargain with her -- but it was the trademark style of Anshe that she never, never, ever bargained. You don't get to be a millionaire in Second Life by bargaining. Bargaining was something that smaller-potato landbarons would do, sometimes cutting each other deals and trading, but they never realized, in that cosy world of favour-banking, that they never got ahead -- and she did. She set the land at something like $9.8/meter, which in those days of $6/m, when prices were much lower, and the Linden itself was lower in value post-GOM, was very steep for this sort of land, on top of a mountain. Nevertheless, I decided to buy it -- I told her, thinking it up on the spot, that it would be called "Free Tibet" -- and she flew away.

I then set about just experimentally sort of making a Free Tibet kind of place, because basically, I had all this rock, half of which had been purchased by mistake, and it was kind of unrentable. I thought it would be interesting both to try to get people to discuss the East-West sort of issues and Tibet in particular. I put up a little prefab with a teapot, and Barnesworth gave me a pagoda tower to also put out for "atmosphere" (it wasn't very useable, more decorative than anything) and I began to call for events. People came and went, the usual random people of SL. We discussed stuff, on topic and off, and gradually I thought I had better try to get this land's tier paid for (the tip jar wasn't doing it), so I decided to sell the parcels to those who would like to join a community (yes, these were very different days). As with Ravenglass and other sims, I made a notecard about what the intentions were, and put it out on the open market.

I had about 4-5 takers who came and bought the parcels. Two of them made Tibetan-style homes that are still there, one of them sort of abandoned by someone who had to go away in RL and didn't have as much time for SL, another eventually sold to me because the person wanted to start a store and home in the sim next door, not on the same theme. Perhaps there were one or two others who tired of the theme too (a big problem with themes unless you have a really dedicated core) or tired of tier, and under our agreement, they sold it back to me.

One of the people who came to the meeting, whom I had met exploring in SL one evening at some other controversial build I'm not remembering now, was Liam Hornet, who eventually went and built the St. Paul Cathedral replica in Grace.

Another, a Russian, sat through one or two of the themed meetings, put out a prefab, nodding sagely, and then overnight flipped this low-cost non-profit land that was supposed to be a theme on the market for a huge price, rather than returning it to me as in the "gentleman's notecard agreement," pocketing a tidy sum, and departing for another sim to build various tacky businesses of sundry sorts. He had taken the most prime waterfront in the whole community, and now it had been, with his flipping, it had been purchased by somebody with a name like Heather or Brittany who filled it with bling. Yes, these were very different days, when yes, you expected *otherwise*...

Meanwhile, the forums were cranking up right about now. A girl named Charlotte Gillepsie (remember her!) who proclaimed herself as lesbian and Aspie (and could have just been a male prankster for all we know) began to dump on the Free Tibet community, saying it was making a profit off the backs of the Tibetan people, blah blah -- even before the Russian dude sold off his prime piece. What next, cranked Charlotte, Amnesty International Apartments? Save the Wales Seaside Condos?" etc. Ingrid Ingersoll also joined, and there was the usual FIC fracas -- how could you make a community called "Free Tibet"? And charge money for it! And not turn it over to the Free Tibet cause! and isn't this a scandal! The nerve!

I merely shrugged, because the real-life Tibetan cause happens to be something I know about, participated in, and helped when I could where it counted, in real life. And the costs of this community of mine were barely covered -- if anything, it routinely lost out, as in the Russian flipping episode.

Next, I should mention the sheer cliff face that also was purchased by that time from the auction by a then-big land baron, Blue Burke, and put out at a very high (for those days) price. When I tried to bargain with him, he blandly refused to budge by more than a smidgeon. When I objected (yes, these were in the days when we were silly gooses and tried to bargain with land barons), and said that there wasn't anything useful he could do with a sheer cliff face, that it would be hard to sell or rent, he blandly let it be known that he could very easily build a mall there. Dismayed that I was essentially being blackmailed by this big baron into buying difficult land unless I wanted the view on 2 sims to be ruined, I grit my teeth and purchased it. (This era of the mainland sims, when the land barons extorted with big parcels rather than 16 m2 is long forgotten.)

I felt his threat of a mall was credible because of course, he had done just that with this beautiful canyon sim, Dalton, and I had strenously battled him on the forums for doing that (again, these were the days when some of us silly gooses would do that) because he had utterly destroyed the other people's residences and the beauty of the canyon by putting these giant black pylons from his ugly Black Sun sort mall building down into the canyon like big ugly feet (never ceases to amaze, that yearning for ugly feet down hillsides and canyons as if there were gravity in this world for buildings...). I was of course roundly berated for "telling other people what to do on their land," but...by his sense of "eminent domain" and fuck-you hedonism, he had just told all those people what to do with their land, which was to have it devalued and have it facing a giant fat black prim leg of a stupid mall building. Now I was facing the same imperative, being told what to do with *my* land under the guise of another's freedom.

So *that* had been purchased, to "save the view" and "save the themed community" and was now bulging out my tier bill. (No, in those days, people didn't plunk down what was then $995 for a private island for two reasons: it was a lot to plunk down on an untested phenomenon that few took advantage of and there were several very vocal oldbies constantly complaning on the forums at how lousy their islands worked, what troubles they had with them, and why it was a terrible risk to buy an island.)

Looking over the sim, which was perhaps 2/3 owned by my group then (I believe some Vores had bought a club and were eating each other raw on the back of the mountain, and various ugly stores had coagulated by the roadside), I decided to put 5,120 m2 out to abandoned land -- a tier bill was coming due, and I realized there was a clever thing I could do -- chop up the pieces weirdly, in such a way that greedy land barons would buy them seeing their $0 price on their land scanners, but perhaps before they realized they were useless to resell. I made like 5 jagged pieces and put them out to "abandon" which in those days, made them collapse into 16 m2 squares (there weren't ad farmers in those years, just Ice Brodie and other opportunistic script kiddies who were trying to put their script thingies in every sim to gather data or create future "networks" for mysterious purposes).

The first person to show up was Anshe (lol) who bought a chunk of Free Tibet and set it to sale...and there it sat. I had figured out a great way to get through a lean month if I didn't have tier! The second land-scanner and grabber to show up was...Charlotte Gillepsie. Hahahahaha -- yes, that's often how it was then, as now, that the loudest mouths on the forums shouting for everyone else to be moral and condemning them would turn out to be lowlife land grabbers and flippers. A couple more came, grabbed -- and there they all sat, their claws stuck in the rocky soil of Free Tibet, unable to sell. The exception was the club that moved in -- clubs always move in! -- and sat on its mere 1536, lagging and filling up the sim, creating ugly ban lines, and even arrogating to itself a vacant prim lot of mine to use as a kind of overload area.

P.S. Another famous inhabitant of this sim, who got the first land there, was Buster Peel. He did some of his first builds and script-testing there, and then sold his land, which consisted when he left of I think 2-3 parcels he had bought from others.

After a month of people looking over the remainder of the 5,120 not taken by land baron scanners or script kiddies, I decided to buy it back, especially because it was now quite marked down and I faced the dilemma of all then-mainland owners -- either make good on the existing purchase by trying to control the sim FPS, or take a loss and sell out this beautiful sim to a collection of opportunists, and let one more sim become uglified. I was too oriented toward aestheticism then, I guess, so I opted to try to "save the sim" which is of course silly in retrospect only if you fast forward to a newer era, when you can more easily buy islands that in fact do work better or even wait for a cheap mainland sim to come on the auction.

I began to try to think how to get the thing rented for real, and declared it to be for experimental builders -- and then I got a few more tenants -- one was Jessica Qin, who went on to become the IBM virtual architect, and who was famous for mounting a protest in this sim against this really obnoxious club, that was sexist and stupid with the usual naked girls all over it, etc. -- she put up a giant poster of a buck-naked guy as a kind of re-buttal -- and of course, wouldn't you know it, the Lindens didn't bat an eye at the naked babes, but sent me a warning to take the male buttocks down -- some things never change, and you can see where they got their start...

This club could even be there because of a period, during the forums war, when I had no tenants, and sort of a haphhazard patchwork of land. But the club being there was one of the reasons Jessica and a few other experimental building types finally had to leave -- the lag, and the idiots packing the sim will do it to you on the mainland.

P.S. Another famous inhabitant of this sim, who got the first land there, was Buster Peel. He did some of his first builds and script-testing there, and then sold his land, which consisted when he left of I think 2-3 parcels he had bought from others.

Now, I had a bulging tier bill for a sim with a lot not rented. So I had to battle for the sim's soul. I then decided to deal with the club problem by creating a regular event with a huge voting poll on a wall about 9 options for what to do with this sim. Let it go to land barons and be flipped? Make a themed community that would always require one or two people to subsidize it (they always need that especially at the beginning)? turn it into condos? a mall? And I explained in detail the problem we had with one of the world's early land extortionists -- this nit on the 1536 was putting it to sale for a ridiculous price to force us to buy back the FPS. I never did that, after doing that once in my very early days -- it never pays. A lot of people came and voted -- the responses were all very close, i.e. you would think they'd all vote for the subsidized community, being good little lefty forums dwellers, but quite a few voted for the condos or the mall or whatever.

A guy who seemed to be a Linden disguised not very successfully on his alt (you can always tell narcs) kept flying in on several occasions and kept asking me questions -- I think he was disturbed at this idea of organizing community democracy that was getting a lot of attention.

I waited out the club...and waited...it was all going nowhere. I finally decided to dump some of the land AGAIN when I made a decision to tier down a whole sim after another fracas that involved trying for two months to run an open construction public sandbox combat sim...only to have the Lindens put in more combat sims and steal away the market (another Pathfinder special). Shaun Altman bought the land for a song, enabling me to tier down, for something like $4/m, so I had to take a loss on it. He then set it out again to sell quickly at something like $6 or $6.5 which was the norm for mature in those days. The mountainous territory sat there, I continued to puzzle and contemplate over what to do. His land didn't sell, but eventually it would, I still had some rentals there, and it was all neither fish nor fowl.

Finally, with the idea of actually getting people randomly and spontaneously to join together in a community sort of waning, because those there were only loosely linked, I decided to commission a build and market it more sensibly. So I invited Foolish Frost and his wife Botany Black to build cliff homes, and Frost went even further, making a lodge and a Japanese spa. That meant more prims and land were required -- I bought back land just sold to Shaun, but he didn't accept my sale price for it, insisting that it sell for his new market price. Again, you don't get to make money in Second Life by making deals, and backing down from your price. The proceeds of that sim's sale and another sim's sale *back* to me formed part of the basis for Shaun's first Cyberland company and Metaverse Stock Exchange (originally it had a name like "SL Stock Exchange" but even back then, the Lindens told him to take the name off to avoid confusion.) Shaun departed from Free Tibet free from non-selling mountainous land at last, well on his way toward becoming another SL millionaire; I had now to finish this project.

Frost's idea was "Asian fusion," as his own build was only very loosely anything like what you'd find in Tibet, and its textures even had a Western-style atom design on it -- there were many themes and discussions to be had here. He laid out a sand mandala sort of park and a Buddha shrine. At first I left room for other people to have builds -- but then scrapped that idea -- few takers. Cliffs are hard to build on. I ended up putting out more of Frost's houses. Then, soon after, I held an event in commemoration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6, attended by about 2 people as old as me -- I think many didn't even realize the date was significant any more.

I called the community of rentals then "Airvata" for "white elephant" -- it was a kind of inside Nabokovian joke, playing off the idea of the "white elephant" of the English language, the big ugly thing that was hard to sell, and the Hindu sacred white elephant that was the mount of the gods, and also associated with creativity that appeared to the goddess in a dream and impregnanted her in the legend.

Somewhere around then, after Frost's build was done, a man who is a Tibetan monk in real life approached me about building a monastery there in Free Tibet on the mountain top, as part of a network of monasteries and holy places in SL. I set aside land and extra prims for him that was subsidized as part of the SL Public Land Preserve but kept in the group Free Tibet so as to be able to access extra prims during times of events. He had an enthusiastic group there for awhile, and a number of events, including an art exhibit, but real life claimed his attention and he couldn't log on as much.

The first several rounds of tenants in the second year of Free Tibet Rebuilt were people who were quiet and respectful. Several were famous SLers on alts; some were actual Buddhists in RL; some were just artists and people who knew how to appreciate a place like this which had no "program" imposed on it, no "community" that you had to show up at and meditate with at 5:00 am every morning or something like that, but had a kind of spirit of decency and cooperation that you can get on a sim with not too much theme, but just enough rules. A few Relay for Life events were held there, some discussions, and I added a "game room" and put in SL's first creation of the game "Go" and other games.

The rent charged was low, $350/300 prims and $450/400 prims, and gradually this went to $450/300 and $550/300, still very low, and not even making cost, given that you couldn't guarantee full occupancy. I had always had a concept that you could get communities like this to survive if you had part of them be stores, and part residences. I was to come to find out in Second Life that trying to do that on one mainland sim, or even two mainland sims next to each other, was really unworkable, not only because of lag that can come from stores, but because of the ways in which mixed uses just never mix -- the people coming in the stores always wind up griefing the residences, if nothing else, by flying in and going on their pose balls or spying on them.

In these earlier renditions, Free Tibet wasn't really a pose-ball kind of place, if you know what I mean, running to contemplatives and artists, but as always happens, when there are cheap rentals on the open market, in an open group (principles I have always tried to uphold), when the population of SL as a whole began to explode in 2006, the cheap rentals, rather than attracting the artists, lead to the lowest common denominator seeking it out. Part of the reason I couldn't charge much was because we didn't allow you to have your own build, you had to take the constructed town houses, and some of them on the sheer cliff face weren't dedicated on their own parcels such as to be able to use media without it being change by the person above you. That didn't stop a series of XXTaneshaXXs and Jason1247s from renting the place, overfilling it with ugly and gross sex furniture and big horrible porn TV screens, sometimes on the roof. As the sim was in mature, and I didn't believe in writing prescriptions for lifestyles into the lease on the mainland, I couldn't do much, but usually these folks tended to move on when they found out that 20 m2, although observed as a building concept, wasn't enough for their constantly shouted chat not to be heard, and their gangs of flying and invading friends annoyed other people who ejected them.

I looked at the situation and raised the price $100 or so, which in the harsh world of SL land barony, is what you do when you don't have time to provide more intervention and more service to keep the clients from harassing each other (another reverse engineered lesson of SL). Gradually the area settled down, the occupancy was filled, a nice Japanese designer was found for the store space roadside, and another golden period ensued. To be sure, one or two tenants kept experiencing the kind of clueless gits that always seem to find that the phrase "Free Tibet" means that they should just invade everybody's home and grab what they could.

Then, I would say about a 6-9 months ago, a new problem ensued, and that was primarily what I would describe as the Eurotrash day-tripper. I say "Eurotrash," because Americans don't have quite the same propensity for off-brand religions, nor the same rabid determination to squat for free that you find in some Berliners and Parisians who come out of a sacred squatting ideology in Europe with deep, one could say *organized* anarchic roots lol. The kind of people who backpack into the Na Pali and come out 2 years later with their brains permafried from acid. These types also tended to love the cause of Free Tibet as a cause, that seemed to supply them first of all, with a kindly leader who never seemed (unlike the Catholic Pope) to ever pronounce on people's sex lives, and whose people were off stage for the most part in their own country or India, and not really appearing up close except in movies, and who generally seemed cheerful and busy making colourful clothing and prayer flags that were the perfect accessories for the international backpacking set as it picked its way through the world's most comfortable beliefs and drug paraphenalia.

Occasionally, some of these people would appear with titles like "Zen in SL" and would say they were "Buddhists" but they had as much to do with Buddhism as I have to do with the Islamic caliphate. Normally, don't peer too closely at tenants' profiles, backgrounds, groups. If I did, I couldn't be in this business. If they pay on time, obey the rules, I don't care what they do, think, represent, etc. Furries, BDSM, they have all lived in Free Tibet. People have yiffed and they have meditated by the pond and solved Sudaku puzzles in Free Tibet -- it's SL.

However, what would happen occasionally would be that I'd get somebody with one of these really aggressive freebie ideologies. A woman with a bunch of groups with names like "Squatters of SL" and "Camping Queens of the Metaverse" moved into the cheapest, absolutely most humble Free Tibet dwelling for $150 a week, and began to relieve herself with first a vent about how it was impossible to find land for a decent price and it was all gougers and then set to asking lots and lots of questions, all of whose answers were...on that card that in some of the other communities I have turned into a card that now says YOU MUST HAVE A HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMA AND READ AT A 12-YEAR-OLD'S LEVEL TO LIVE HERE.

This gal ranted and raved and I tried to answer her questions about 10 times, and then came to find out some of the messages had capped, but still she persisted. Finally, I just faced her down, told her to move out, and to stop imposing her ideas on other people. She was one of those obsessives who combine their lack of a high-school diploma and ability to read at a 12-year-old's level with the ability to speak like a 35-year-old on speed about what obsesses them, and to bring a 75-year-old's tenacity for ordnung and "decency" AND with a 25-year-old's newly-minted degree in psychology, as so many SL dwellers do, not commensurate with her 11-year-old reading skills.

"What are you afraid of?" she asked me, mining the depths of warmed over 70s feminism, to come up with her solution for a failure to supply her with cheap housing and an endless game orientation session -- it must be due to this male landlord's chauvinism. Trust me, I'm not afraid of these types -- and certainly don't fear their pressing the refund button : )

About 5 more messages to other officers (alts or builders lol) pleading justice from this rude landlord, then even more outraged hortatory admonitions to "get a life" because she "felt sorry for me because I must be a lonely person". Yes, um, I have only your overprimmed dirt-cheap rental and your 10 requests for answers to questions answered already on your lease card for...company ROFL.

Sigh. Then, come the events in Tibet in real life. I didn't even realize at first the connection, and at first was surprised that suddenly, 4 people asked me urgently for a space to sell t-shirts and posters in the marketplace. I didn't get it at first, and then realized, ah, here were these opportunists, such as those that showed up on about 9/13/01, that have the t-shirts for every tragedy to hawk -- and the baseball caps, too. I waved them away.

The people who sell in the marketplace have been there for years, some of them, all of them long before this tragic round, and sold their modest wares quietly, and that's how I wanted to keep it. Perhaps I should have built out a mall -- the view was now particularly blighted on that side by the erm aesthete at something called Spirit Realm Yard Sale (only in SL) that had a giant billboard of a BDSM couple in skimpy bondage regalia now leering over the quiet contemplative Tibetan tents with their bell tones playing, and the contemplative cliff-hanging homes... But, I didn't want to build a mall...

I noticed that about 20-30 people had joined the group, and I now had 3 people IMing me loudly demanding that I "do something". "You must hand out placards," one French dude demanded. You must let me sell t-shirts, cried others.

Not for the first time, I sent out notices, and dismissed all the day-trippers from the group. I explained that it is not a "cause" group, for that there were others to join, and named them, but this was just for residents and event holders.

See, that's the funny thing about holding open a public place of this nature, that anyone could join and hold an event in merely by consulting with the group to avoid double booking: few ever do. Most people are not doers. They ware takers. They want somebody else to "do" and to consume. Somebody else must make the Free Tibet placards, hold the demonstrations, pass out the meditation mats, then they will consume. It is a very Western way, all this "doing". Somehow, my instinct about the current situation was simply not to engage in this scurrying and "doing" (some of which I was doing in RL on this cause -- SL really isn't the effective place for it).

Next, a person who paid rent for a time, and put out a number of prims on the public commons which had to be returned (it was said to keep the areas free), objected that she was expelled. She instantly reacted, when told it was a residential group, claiming that yet again, it was a greedy profit-making motive. I was making money off the cause, blah blah. I explained that it didn't break even. That she should talk to some of the others in the group who joined to hawk t-shirts lol.

And...That she no longer paid rent. Even if I wished to make a profit from this community, that would be my right, it was my land. She told me something pious and self-righteous about how she had cared for the temples. I explained that what she lived in were the houses, and not even temples, and that it was great if she gardened or landscaped, but that I couldn't always have the luxury of prims all over, especially after people moved out. Despite the leasecards and notecards amply provided, she had gotten it into her head that she was starring in a RP of her own device called "Myself as Temple Goddess and Care-Taker of the Sacred Place," and here I was, disrupting the immersion.

Sign. I urged her to find the roots of her anger in her vanity. I usually try to shine on especially spiritual and wise with these types and I dish it right back to them. Humility is endless, I tell them. You wish to Look Good, Doing Good, but observe yourself. What profiteth a man? When fasting, wash your face and hands and don't stand in sackcloth and ashes on the corners.

Then, time to clean out about 10 people who squatted again on one of the parcels, building skyboxes and even elaborate houses on the ground, all without benefit of rent paid.

Look, there's an awful lot MORE of this, but you get the idea.

I might hold one of those community voting boards again, where people can decide -- turn it into a mall? chop it up for landbarons? Close it and keep out anybody with poseballs and let in only certified monks? lol
But...I think I will just keep it open to the public for both quiet low-impact residential living at the right price, and quiet low-impact events or small group meetings.

I'm sure to keep encountering people who will fly into a might huff because I expel them from the group, and explain, no, this isn't just a group to wear like a new style, a tag, a placard, a feel-good, it's a place to live. That no, you can't hawk a t-shirt here if you weren't here back in the day, when after the movies and the Beastie Boys fad passed by, people stopped being as interested in Tibet. Free Tibet is Free, and isn't even about Tibet, anyway. I thought about the time I got to meet the Dalai Lama and hear him speak and he talked about how Tibet was already a virtual country, living in exile and unfree, and how the Internet was the perfect place for it.

P.S. I edited this because I saw the text repeating in what was already a very confusing shaggy dog story!

So I'll add today's episode just as yet another chapter in the story.

[After ejection from group] I'll call this person "1/2 Tibetan". I can tell from the minute I see someone with "ACLU" and a jillion Buddhist groups and a snotty profile about not giving out first-life information, plus a faux-erudite "That would be because?" imperious demand to me, just EXACTLY what I'm dealing with -- and I'm not wrong. Conversation ensues:

1/2T That would be because?
Prokofy Neva: That would be because you didn't read the group charter? This isn't a cause group, but a residential group.
1/2 Tibetan: My humble apologies.
Prokofy Neva:
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2008/03/this-isnt-a-pos.html
1/2 Tibetan: Thank you very much for the link. Yes you are correct I do not belong there. You see I am part Tibetan and this seems to me to be rather un-Tibetan place.
Prokofy Neva: I bet you've dined out your entire life on being "part-Tibetan", and your judgement is based on prejudices and presumptions, and they don't serve you well : )
Prokofy Neva: It's for people renting the residences, or putting on events. If you aren't doing either of those things, you are kindly asked not to join what is kept as an open group
Prokofy Neva: if that's too hard to understand from the charter itself, then you get a notice, I'm sorry it makes you angry, or makes you feel self-righteous.
Prokofy Neva: But now I know you are anything but humble : )
1/2 Tibetan: My goodness, you should calm down my friend. Perhaps learn to meditate. May I send you a link?
Prokofy Neva: You ought to do your own meditating, dear, if you feel you must fly around Second Life pronouncing judgements on things as being "un-Tibetan".
Prokofy Neva: Is that like being "un-American"?
1/2 Tibetan: OMG this is unbelievble.
Prokofy Neva: OMG it sure is!
Prokofy Neva: Has no one in your entire life called your bluff?
1/2 Tibetan: Some one told me to be careful the other day that there were some really strange people in SL. I told her I had not met any. I surely hope that this is not my first encounter.
Prokofy Neva: well it's not my first : )
1/2 Tibetan: Take care, namaste.
Prokofy Neva: You have spent your entire life telling everyone with pride you are "part-Tibetan". What are your other parts?
1/2 Tibetan: I will not continue this beyond a reply to your question. My father is Tibetan and my mother Chinese. Again, take care.
Prokofy Neva: Then solve your own inner contradictions, don't impose them on others who are doing something very simple that you simply fail to understand because you wish to impose your own idea.

Usually in these sorts of encounters, that range from people telling me they have been to Tibet; have met the Dalai Lama; practice Buddhism; etc. and usually include a mandate for me to "go and meditate" (see, you can always tell the aggressive and anonymous Internet fucktard when they can take something like meditation, and try to "force" you to do it, the way some idiots scream that you "need help" and need to get "psychiatric help". It comes from that same aggressive, tribalist Internet spirit.

Very rarely, I've had a few people who joined the group, upon being told it's for residents or those doing events, that they would like to put on event. Then I help them put on the event lol.

Most people want to hang out in a group that has the title Honourable and Esteemed (I put those in deliberately lol) with the group FREE TIBET to sport on their profiles, and just hang around in a build. They don't want to *do* anything. But, akh, *doing* that Western excuse for lack of *being*, eh? lol.

Remind me to tell you the story about the Lindens in Cub, wow, more on that today.

Comments

[HBA]

Blimey Prok - that was hypnotically interesting to read. I shall have to come and visit this place. A few notes on your post:

1) It's probably because I'm a lazy arse with no business acumen, but I like the 'cutting a deal' attitude. That is why I'm not rich.

2) "read at a 12-year-old's level with the ability to speak like a 35-year-old on speed about what obsesses them, and to bring a 75-year-old's tenacity for ordnung and "decency" AND with a 25-year-old's newly-minted degree in psychology, as so many SL dwellers do, not commensurate with her 11-year-old reading skills." - HBA breaks out calc... That would make her... 8. Or -8. I'm not sure.

3) What is happening with the community now? Is it flourishing? If not, what would you *love* to see happen to it?

4) Have you thought about an archaeological dig... :)

HBA

[Prokofy Neva]

There were actually 2 parts of the story I didn't tell -- there was a Linden drama that deserves a separate post.

The community still exists. It's got some old-timers and some relatively new folks. Last night I spent an hour on clean up, removing about 10 squatters, two of whom had managed to build elaborate houses below an unpaid rental home.

I also dealt with a few of the day-trippers and cleaned up the group. That produced a few howls. I printed a standard card to give them all.

The dog barks, the caravan moves on.

[Prokofy Neva]

Some day, future archeologists in Free Tibet will come across a strange trove deep within the churned and burnt earth. It will contain a few gnawed bones and feathers from the Vores, wrapped in a Tibetan prayer flag, with a "please her" pose ball and a wrinkled "Save Tibet" t-shirt. Nearby, a broken chess piece, a scripted box counting avatars, a Bird of Paradise flower, and scientists will ponder for many centuries what kind of civilization -- or uncivilization -- produced this curious mound.

[mike3]

I say end Chinese oppression of Tibetans and Tibetan culture in Tibet. Whether the best way to
achieve that is through "free Tibet" (independent Tibetan government) or not is more of a political question and politics is such a mess anyway. What's far more important is an end to the continued violation of human rights in Tibet. This need not require a free Tibetan government, it could be something else like if somehow the Chinese Communist Party lost it's power. Regardless of the politics, though, I say protest the oppression. Whether or not the oppression is ended via a free Tibet or not is not anywhere near as important as whether or not it is ended.