The Sickness of Helping Newbies, the Sickness of Freebies

We've all been forced to think about newbie-helping and freebies these days a lot because of the corporativist merchanteering going on with the overhaul of Xstreet policies.

It's really awful to watch, and fills me with dismay -- it's the ugliest face I've ever seen the Lab show to us all these years. If I thought copyleftist goofy tekkie-wiki social engineers and their extropian wacko brethren were a problem on the left we had to tackle with all available means, whoops, like Titoism, after the Balkan wars set in, you will be yearning for that leftist corrective when you see what the creator-fascist right has in store for you: draconian controls over the economy and a horrendous privileging of certified merchants that will squeeze everybody out of commerce except the Lindens and their friends. Why Godwinism so soon in the post? Because it really is the worst kind of controls I've seen in a long time -- suggestions that only people with payment on file can hold virtual currency or virtual inventory or create; suggestions that only merchants with a certain degree of quality or quantity should be allowed to sell on the web shop; bad idea after bad idea invoked by these strange touts and alts and seeming Linden plants.

But before I think too much more about this awful stuff, I have to circle around and look at the root of the problem, so to speak, or rather, the symptom of other problems that could enable the creator-fascists in the first place to declare everybody's content but their own "crap" and "clutter" and demand that freebies be removed from Xstreet -- or pay a whopping taxation to keep them there. (Ordinal Malaprop's description of this system and what's wrong with it here is likely to be easier to read and more agreeable for most people to read).

I'd like to tackle the problem of the sickness of newbie-helping and the sickness of freebies today, however.

These *are* sicknesses -- dysfunctions -- unlike real life in many ways, and are an outgrowth of the artifices of our world, the strangeness of life online, the outcome of various bad California ideologies, etc. And as such, they need resolute tackling. And pondering.

Right now we're seeing literally hundreds -- thousands -- of people be rudely disabused of this ardent fantasy that they have -- that they "help the community" and that Linden Lab and that community (defining what community is, is of course another matter) want nothing more but for them to post their freebies forever.

In fact, as this thing heats up, we even have a posse of very irate divas demanding that "community tools", i.e. "socially useful" freebies be privileged and now be exempt from the fees.

Sigh.

Then we get an idea of how everybody's "community tools" differ. For one guy, his spank-me animation, some romance bling thing, some other ridiculous titler or something -- these are "community tools". That's ridiculous. They're just gimmicks. If he values them and likes sharing them with his particular social niche of tackiness, let him, but don't inflict that on the entire community as a "utility".

I think of utilities in SL as being things like the door scripts, and scripts for notecard giver, and even more important, notecard-taker; and all the functional simple scripts that make the basics like kill particle, talk, teleport, hover text, etc.

Somebody else might think the x-flight or feather flight devices or the pose stands are essential.

So, let communities distribute them without all the fuss. Let somebody put them up on XStreet in aggregate to save on fees. Or pay the fees -- they aren't that much in RL terms if you give up one latte or two a month.

But...let's look closer at what it is that makes people want to give freebies all the time and "help newbies".

There are seven reasons people do this, from my experience:

1. They are genuinely altruistic and really want to give back because they themselves were once helped and they think it's a good thing.

2. They need to be needed, they are lonely, and the vulnerability and dependence on them that newbies develop because they help feeds their sagging self-esteem.

3. They like controlling people and being know-it-alls and the newbie helpie business provides ample scope for heavily shaping people's experience, impression, knowledge.

4.They wish to enhance their reputation and be seen as being generous and Lady Bountiful because they can then parlay that social capital into privileges with Lindens, or even sales in their business.

5. They have a crass notion of exploiting vulnerable newbies by making them slide into their commerce circles by helping them and staging them into stores or clubs to buy things (SL Mentors were particularly notorious for this, and misused their roles constantly to sell their own stuff or their friends' stuff and to lord it over people -- good riddance to them, I say).

6. They are empire builders -- the thought of legions of people who "knew them when" and got helped and are grateful makes them feel big and powerful and they love the ego infusion.

7. They need loss-leaders to get people to their stores, and need free advertising which comes from posting freebies on XStreet, because they are in a world with severe competition and poor media capacity.

Most of the time, people are helping newbies not for reason no. 1, but for reasons number 2-7. It's a nasty business, because if you call them on this, they become defensive and invoke reason number 1, as if that gives them a cover endlessly.

It doesn't.

I'm personally am not idealistic about newbies, nor do I romanticize them.

Newbies, as I say relentlessly, are just adults like you and me, with disposable income and/or time, affluent enough to have a computer with a good graphics-card, and a DSL line. Why infantalize them and treat them as if they are war-torn refugees?!

Half the time, these starving orphans from real life make double or ten times your own income or the income of the person helping them, but are too damn cheap to spend money and give up a few lattes to buy some clothes. The Lindens don't make it particularly easy to just buy a packet of house and clothes to start nor enable inworld businesses to offer this.

So they wander around whining about cost with their hand out.

The expectation among gaming geeks who make $80,000 a year or even $40,000 a year is amazingly high that they shouldn't have to spend a dime on a MMORPG beyond a possible monthly subscription, which is how they see SL, and that there should be a game-gold path for them to skill-grind or just loot and get money.

I would say 6 out of 10 newbies ask me how to make money, and don't want to hear that this will involve getting a job that will require real work.

A hard core of newbies -- I'd say 20 percent -- are hopeless. That's because they are too young, too clueless, or just too high on drugs to work the relatively straightforward controls. They can't search like Google -- they can't even do that on Google (we forget that's the case with people still in RL who use a Yahoo or even AOL page for links and never search for much of anything).  They can't seem to learn the basics of editing a prim to take out clothing and put on themselves and give up. They are rapidly bored unless you hold their hand endlessly -- it's very hard.

For a certain percentage -- I'd say 20-30 percent again -- it is richly rewarding to help them because they are helpable. But most people don't know how to distinguish THAT 20 percent from the hard-core aggressively stupid that wind up in infohubs now -- as the cream of the crop has gone off to pre-set Community Gateways like "steampunk" because they have some notion in their head of what they want from an online experience.

Carl Metropolitan is obviously a pro. I watched him help a newbie yesterday that I'd put in the "hopeless" bin because she'd been helped and was still asking the same stupid questions days later merely to get attention and get her hand held -- it's a certain type of newbie dysfunctional that works well with the already-existing need-to-be-needed dysfunctionals in the infohub, and the two dysfunctionals, having found each other, can go glub-glub-glub down together into the sea of Second Life. They perpetuate, and feed the need to spawn even more dysfunctionals to find each other. They breed...

It really is an art empowering newbies and not making them dependent and whiney. Carl is good at leading them from accomplishment to accomplishment with focus and direction. "Do you know how to make a landmark?" "Try making one here". "Good, now you can get back". "Now try going to this club" etc.

What the fake Woodbury and Emerald and other griefer regulars do in the infohubs is impose the geek way of life on people -- telling people to go learn to build or script or take classes, or one gem from the infested ones was to tell people to go squat on Prok's rentals.

With the helping obsessive-compulsive dysfunction -- it is often very broken and very sick people who become obsessed about the need to help others, I find -- comes the freebie sickness.

People are absolutely sure the world needs their plethora of amateur and often ghastly free stuff. Or the box of the same bunch of freebie crap that has circulated in Second Life like shit in an icehole for years -- the Siggy Romulus beach house, to cite one horrid example.

Everybody dutifully -- fearfully even -- collects free stuff. But they never use it. What, you actually shot an arrow in Second Life?! You needed a jetski for more than that one time? And so on. It's all pretty stupid. People are too embarassed to admit it.

I've asked the Lindens a pointed question here:  what percentage of items on XStreet are freebies, and what percent sell?

1. What percent of goods on XStreet are freebies, what percent are dollarbies, and what percentage are under $50? Should be an easy data base query to run.

2. Of these freebies, dollarbies and fiftybies, what percent of them sell, i.e. are distributed for a $0-50 payment? In each category.

If you want to convince people that their notions of altruism and helping the community are misplaced, the fastest way to telling us that is to let us know how many freebies there are and how many sell.

I'm going to guess that the number of freebies on XStreet are not greater than 30 percent of the items, and that of those 20 percent of items that sell, the freebies or dollarbies among them are less than 2 percent.

I'm also going to bet that the Lindens will not answer this question, because to do so will reveal that their claim that freebies and dollarbies clutter the experience and clog the servers is false.

The insidious newbie-helping sickness with its bloat of freebies is not going to go away. Each day, somebody five minutes older than the next person landing next to them swells up with pride that they are no longer so new and can "help" somebody else. The traits I've outlined that are mainly negative are very, very hard-wired in online games, consciously promoted by the game gods and world-makers to do their dirty work for them for free, and notorious problems everywhere.

I had no idea there were so many people playing the freebies/altruism game -- most of them as a form of free advertising to their store, which is the result of poor advertising capacity.

I thought the relentless newbie-helping syndrome -- whereby the need-to-be-needed losers insist on newbification of all polices, invoke "what about the newbs" at every juncture, and make themselves indispensable as helpers by making sure newbies never have an easier time of it -- was limited to geeks.

Geeks, especially Asperbergs' geeks, love the obsessiveness of knowier-than-thou newbie-helping. It really scratches that superiority itch that geeks need to scratch. There is a certain brand of opensource nerd, too, who spends every evening of his life "helping". He prides himself that he is "helping the community". That he is "giving back". That nobody ever really checks on his work, or sees if there really is retention, or asks if all this frenzy and obsession of "help" is really so needed never troubles him -- and if it comes up, he brushes it angrily aside. The newbie helper is an aggressive fuck when provoked -- question  his reputation-enhancement gambit deeply enmeshed with his sense of self, and he will likely ban you. I had an aggressive know-it-all empire-building newbie-helper named xstorm Radek ask me to join his empire group and when I questioned it and questioned his methods, he turned on me and muted me.

The halo-effect on newbie-helping has obscured deep troubles within NCI, for example -- the burnout of leadership, the difficulties of sustaining tier, the problem of finding fresh recruits, and the griefing groups constantly trying to replace it and decivilize it.

Griefers naturally gravitate to the newbie-helping racket as it is the perfect cover for criminality.

When I first came to Second Life, I got goddam sick of all the newbie helping crap trying to frog-march me into scripting and building classes. These were horrible for me, they didn't work, it was not for me and I didn't want to be forced into it. I had another concept: I wanted to pay someone to spend an hour listening to me what I wanted to do and helping script it. I had a really simple idea of making a yellow pages which really involved merely a notecard giver, as it turned out, and some landmark givers to boot, and possible a website linked if that were possible, but mainly just notecard giving -- and I was willing to pay someone to come and do this for me. I wanted to pay to skip steps on the skill ground. I caught no end of grief on the forums and inworld for this simple, normal real-life request.

My knowledge of the newbie-helping sickness came from direct experience in the early days of every single one of those types in my list of 7 appearing -- and most from the 6 other categories than the altruistic one. I spent months gathering freebies -- freebies I wore once or used once and can't get rid of merely for sentimental reasons. I learned how things worked and how things were put together and that's all good -- but I could have learned this creating myself, too.

The Lindens have done something uncalled for and draconian; the only benefit is to force people to question their sickness and see if they might recover by setting their products even to one dollar.

Comments

[AnnOtooleInSL]

I think Linden Lab knows exactly what they are doing and they have finally figured out how to get people to willingly distribute everything free to kill the economy and if not someone else will do it for them.

Was fun while it lasted.

[Travis Lambert]

One only needs to spend a few hours at the Shelter to realize that this article is based upon only a narrow scope of experiences & assumptions helping newbies.

There are many reasons I helped newbies in SL, none of which appear to be mentioned in this article. The primary, most important reason - was that I sincerely loved Second Life, and saw newbie-helping as a form of evangelism. I suppose that concept might be completely foreign to someone who makes cynicism an artform.

The theory I hold, is that social networks are the sticky glue that keep people in Second Life despite all its flaws and frustrations. The Shelter tries to give new people that initial social network so that they can more easily look past the flaws & frustrations; and give SL an honest chance.

While many folks come to Second Life with a friend or family member already here, many come here knowing no-one. Without a social network, these people have a stronger tendency to not give SL a chance, not see the amazing things it has to offer, move on and try another 'game'.

The Shelter tries to provide that initial social network, and regardless of whether its temporary or permanent, if folks remain in SL through their first week we feel our mission has been accomplished. We're ecstatic when they stay for a month.

The folks who have carried on the torch at the Shelter since my retirement share these sentiments as well, and I'm proud of the efforts they continue to make to help more people stay & enjoy Second Life.

[Crap Mariner]

*sigh*

I really, REALLY hope someone is watching Colossus' handling of this situation and rethinks his involvement in *any* focus on music on SL in 2010.

The Would-Be King Midas is now turning gold into ordinary objects.

-ls/cm

[Desmond Shang]

Nick Yee pretty much nailed the primary motivations of people in online worlds a long time ago ~ and what he found speaks volumes with regard to the "helping new people" experience.

reference: http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/001612.php?page=2

Look at the top six or seven motivations:

1 Progress
2 Immersion
3 Explore
4 Socialise
5 Teamwork
6 Friendship

#1 is very, very important: a sense of progress. Help other people and you'll get a good inexpensive dose of "I've progressed!" when there are few solid metrics.

It's a little weak on immersion for the helper, but for the new resident there's a rapid rush of immersion, exploration, and both experience socialisation.

I kind of don't buy into Nick's "teamwork" motivator much, except as a sort of mask of a different, underlying motivation. Which is sort of a blend of "enjoying one's (good, comfortable) position in online society" and also a sort of rewarding sense of feeling a little bit indispensable. Note the use of group titles and so forth, and the pride people take in them. It's very often not so much the joy of teamwork itself, but rather, being valued by others.

* * * * *

All that said, there are still tons of people out there who are simply nice, and just kind of feed off the positive energy when helping other people. But it's also important to note that such motivated helpers can and will leave and do other things at any time. For those people, it's not their whole life. Such focus suggests an entirely different sort of motivation.

In any case, there is one true~ism that is readily understood: many people new and old enjoy being at welcome areas. For whatever reason; which may be as simple as people watching or a good conversation, or perhaps even nefarious reasons. There are probably more reasons than people.

In my case, my motivations clearly have an element of empire building, but I say that unabashedly. But it wasn't for the reason outlined above. I just figured that having such an area would be good for the estate in general. Few newcomers even realise that I have anything to do with it, even when I'm right there.

* * * * *

I'm still contemplating the Resident Help Network thing, too. If we are already doing everything anyway (and I am pretty sure we are, and more) then, maybe it's worth filling out the forms for more traffic and exposure. On the other hand, if it's going to be a lot more work, then that's another issue. I guess it comes down to this: if Carl wants to apply for it (or not), I'm totally cool with that. I don't need 'ownership' of a Resident Help Network myself, and if it happens, hey, that's cool.

Interestingly enough about the Resident Help Network application, it's been one of the first places where the actions of group members are clearly stated to have consequences for the entire group, if significant enough. Seems to me that someone's actually got an idea of what's happening out on the grid, and is paying attention.

[AnnOtooleInSL]

Guess NCI won't be qualified for the RHN.

[melponeme_k]

Truthfully I don't know why people are obsessed with helping new users.

I've discovered the controls of all VRs are wonky and take time to learn. In WoW, if you don't have RL friends hand holding you, its sink or swim. Same with other VRs. It works that way with SL for the most part too. I never heard of NCI or other helper groups until a year or so after I started using SL.

At heart, the SL VR is for self starters, it was started by self starters and made for self starters. Its inherent in the very design. I've come to the conclusion that the makers didn't want just anyone to come into their world. However they were disappointed by the people who did stay. We weren't the type of self-starters they were looking for....

[Prokofy Neva]

I stand by my categories here. I think most people don't fall into the first category. Likely Travis and Carl would be accepted as undertaking what they do out of genuine altruism.

But no human being is perfect and even they fall prey to empire-burning.

One of the reasons people burn out with newbie helping or have bad incidents is because they are not in touch with their true motivations. When they can accept that they need loss leaders to their stores or rentals, as I do, and get paid by the people they help, as I do, they will find they have less trouble sorting out who really needs help and who is there to waste their own time and yours : )

I've had many illusions of helping mankind in my day, and trust me, I've been disabused of them in the harshest possible way in RL and SL, so I'm no naif here.

I used to have this illusion in SL that all that humankind awaited from me was the provision of public spaces where they could have meetings. I thought if I magnanimously laid out a dozen ampitheaters and cosy meeting spots, why, people complaining that they didn't have events space on the forums would flock to me.

They didn't.

I was forced to change them to other things -- and give up the illusion. People rarely ever need meeting spaces because only a tiny percentage of people ever organize meetings. Look on the events list under "Discussions" if you don't want to hear this point from me, and see the collection of odd-duck BDSM, New Age and lefty Obama stuff and you'll see the paucity of content.

Trust me, the left Obama stuff is actually a welcome addition to a field that had BDSM classes as "discussions" and fake rentals sales as "discussions" for ages. This is a patch that anyone could very much work with true benefit to end the insanity of Extropia having hijacked the Thinkers and there being no regular discussion of SL issues except my Sutherland meeting, often griefed.

There are philosophers and such that meet but they often don't put their events open to the public to avoid griefing. The patch of making events-going coherent and organized awaits its maestro in SL just as shopping an music has many groups to join for greater effectiveness.

Anyway, I've had to watch how my newbie helping fantasies foundered on the rocks of reality, and substitute all my quiet contemplative glens for book readers with a free bazaar, paradise blankets, etc. People want stuff to do that they like to do, not what you like them to do. I could get even better traffic if I put up goth blood fountains and neko.

Neko and blood is usually where I start to draw my own personal line in SL though. Someone half my age can put that up if they like lol.

The land preserve gets just enough traffic to be worth it - -500-1,000 on the most popular but 200 on the less popular or even 0. So it's a challenge to fix it -- or sell it.

Recently I was disabused of another humanity-helping fantasy I had, that of my perceived need to help educators who weren't part of the U.S. industrial education business with its legions of expensive consultants and expensive sims that don't allow people to even rez a prim or turn on a TV.

I thought if I created a parcel where people could do that, I'd have a lot of askers to use it -- but I only get a trickle every day. I think it's worth paying the tier even if only a dozen come through a day, but naturally, it needs more use to justify the expense. So since the parcel was destroyed by griefers anywhay who ripped up the earth and grabbed some stuff people had accidently left in share and demolished it all over, I have an excuse to start over.

I think humility is endless in the newbie business, and SL is a harsh task master -- it very quickly shows you where your humanity-helping illusions are stupid and only based on your own ideas which may be retarded.

I say this as someone who has tried and abandoned many retarded ideas in Second Life, like my job fairs, my architectural contests, my voting on consumer issues, etc. etc. That is, maybe the ideas were ok, but there were so many obstacles and problems that you'd have to have money or time to fix them, and I didn't.

melponeme as usual has written something very eloquent here -- the games seem to be deliberately hard to ensure that largely male bonding and cameraderie over knowing wonky tech is sure to kick in.

Like I said, nothing makes you swell up with superiority like being able to tell the next hapless idiot who lands next to you in the hub that YOU know how to take a box off your head now lol.

It's fodder for endless self-importance, and I think most people don't manage the challenges.

"there is no limit to the good you can do if you are willing not to seek the credit".

[Prokofy Neva]

Most of the people at infohubs are not there due to their modesty and self-effacing good will.

I'll be the first to say that I'm there because I have an idea of how education can work and I want to push that idea, and I also want a place to send tenants or a loss leader nearby for tenants to enter the system.

These self-interested ideas of mine are ok, and that's how free economies work. If there weren't the profit motive, and weren't the ideological motive, most people wouldn't bother. They are not Gandhi or Jesus Christ.

I'll be the first to say I have a) the profit motive to cover costs at the very least! b) the ideological motive to test theories of learning and communication. These two things are fun for me.

I don't pretend that I'm "helping newbies" because I'm God's gift to the metaverse.

And I think that regulates some of the excesses and empire-building I might do because my empire consists of two such places -- more, I couldn't handle.

I don't want to manage vast hordes of people.

I think most people are just like me and won't admit it -- either they have ideological control or financial gain or -- most important -- reputational gain.

Getting a good reputation is something I've never been concerned about in SL, and I am definitely not encumbered by the desire to keep a good reputation.
I'm happy to tell people to go fuck themselves when and as needed.

I realize the newbies I help are probably a pretty small slice as a result, as I don't suffer fools terribly lightly -- the fools I suffer have to pay rent, and have to read the directions.

I suspect Desmond is no different, and his need for profit margins and ideological testing in a sense is even far greater than mine.

Travis makes the point that he is selling not just orientation but a social network.

After going to the Shelter about twice in my newbie life, I quit. I found it creepy. There were too many overly enthusiastic helpers. There was the sense of the boring community room run by the management at my housing and the sense of these rather tedious parish affairs one goes to simply because one has to wave the flag.

Something about the PG pall, perhaps, I don't know. But...not for me.

But, I've never found a club I liked going to in SL -- clubs tend to bore me pretty quickly.

[Kyle]

I had a ton of stuff in inventory, I wanted to give to a noob, just because I no longer used it and thought someone might benefit from it.

But I got so annoyed and ran out of patience trying to help the noobs or even get them to answer an IM, I just ditched the stuff to deleted.

[Angela Talamasca]

From "The Wealth of Nations":

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.

[cube inada]

Only when the mass understands the minimal requirements that virtuality DEMANDS oF THEM, will the larger culture have a hope in hell of not wallowing in the media tech as we did in radio, film and tv before it.

BTW-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EZ5bx9AyI4

has this been shown on network tv at any time in the last 60 years?

i never had even heard of it till seeing "Capitalism" movie by mike moore.

anyhow... in sure nick yees, notes on vr in 2006 will surfice.;)

it was a good post. further pointing out the growth and standardization of the media induced psychosis that our culture has been stuck in for half a century.

[melponeme_k]

"Only when the mass understands the minimal requirements that virtuality DEMANDS oF THEM, will the larger culture have a hope in hell of not wallowing in the media tech as we did in radio, film and tv before it."

Yes.

And to add...what SL is asking its users to do is go back in time. Yes, its asking its users to go back to a time before radio, TV and film. Back to that time where people were required to amuse themselves. And what did people do then? They played instruments, they hung around in pubs. they read books and had long dinner discussions. The successful communities in SL are, hey no surprise, RP places that try to replicate that past. Back in those days, people who couldn't amuse themselves were pitiful creatures.

Its that way now in SL...except for an evangelical group who feel the need to go out and save the perpetually bored from their hapless habits. lol

Also, I believe SL wanted more people like Cube. Professionals who would use the platform as a sketchbook. That is what they wanted to see in world. They didn't want us regular users. Their plans didn't include us running around in our clown skins, wearing silly clothes, playing in worlds with oversize bunny rabbits and jumping on sex beds. That was not in the plans. XD

[Carl Metropolitan]

To be absolutely honest, I think my motivations are as much #2 (self-esteem) and #6 (empire building) as they are pure altruism. I don't try to delude myself that I am a great benefactor to humanity through what I do in Second Life. If I wanted to help humanity, I would get out from the front of my computer and volunteer at a local food bank. What I'm doing is having fun, doing something interesting, and helping some people along the way.

[Carl Metropolitan]

Prokofy is correct that there is a lot of junk in the various SL freebie collections. When I was at NCI for a long time I was reluctant to prune the collection under the assumption that one man's trash is another's treasure. Ultimately, I came around to realizing sometimes junk is just junk. One of the last initiatives I undertook at NCI was getting a new Freebie Director (Blu Laszlo) and giving her free rein to purge the collection of sub-standard items. I know she's done a lot of that since I left, and I'm sure the NCI freebies are better for it.

We have a collection of nice free avatars are Caledon Oxbridge, and a place for Caledon citizens to put out stuff they have made and want to offer. Ultimately, we will probably need someone to do quality control on this, as well, but for now it is a pretty small assortment.

[Carl Metropolitan]

Ann OToole wrote: "Guess NCI won't be qualified for the RHN."

NCI was an original member of the Resident Help Network, and to the best of my knowledge that will carry over to the RHN v2.

[Carl Metropolitan]

Prokofy--I did my best with the newbie you are talking about, but I'm actually skeptical whether I was able to help her or not. She seemed very unresponsive. I hope she found what I was able to do for her helpful.

What I think she really was looking for I could not help her with. If I remember correctly, her name was "LadyBDSM________". She was probably looking for some type of a adult activity, and I didn't have the time that evening to play twenty questions about what she needed and where to send her.

It occurs to me that LL could probably up its retention somewhat by opening up an Adult Community Gateway where people can immediately get fitted with porn shapes and skins and demo genitalia, and go practice on public sex balls and BDSM equipment.

Somehow I don't think LL wants to up its retention THAT badly.

[cube inada]

well, they should have told you that... and should have told me that as well...lol. but i didnt expect they would..:)

im a few months away from leaving SL. They have created policies and methods that have cut my business interest in Sl down by a factor of 10x.:) my account history is 10x less interesting to me;) figure it out.)

The cold truth is that LL has wanted and beleived they needed no one and that "then and now" they dont know what they are..

the most honsest they are is in the name- LAB. All else has been ANWAY or Scientology- choose your delusion:)

They love the power and adulation way to many have given them. Thats a truth too.

They believe in Singularities and the code of them as god. And the slavery of the user/fan who pays them for the privelege to bask in their glory:)

This is web 2.0- (the naked truth of what social media really means to corporations and power egotists)

web2.0 and a shiny tech that feeds the bad scifi comic movie copycat and undereducated, under experienced insecure young egos of way too many who cant view the past beyond a 9-11 world history.

look below to see how "news.com" has gone web2.0 and closer to 1984.:) they created there own problem of greifers and now force the non griefer to be adver-info fodder for large new- media "social" corporations that only exist to sell your IP and ID to others. the utlimate in avatar slavery and usage of an indivsiduals rights reduced to a private corporations spread sheet and computer readout...

I actually only came to "SL flavor of vr" in 2006, i had known all about phillip/sl and all since 2003- but it was just another tech then...no "people" no "humans" using it. -
when i felt enough people were in world to make a original entertianmemt- story/world IP a possible go($ and mission) in the medium it was designed for in 1995.

But it beame clear fast that LL could only be "trusted" as a testbed experiemnt for my efforts, and not a growing partner. I saw this rather fast- but i had many years expereince to "see this" as the "tech company" way and i tried to tell you all then..;)

this was always gonna end this way.

Ive tried to be honest with you all..Not so much can be said for ANYONE who publically defended the BUILDERBOT extortion or so many of the FIC crap that is set up for a you vs me control, all under one companies "bank"

this is a fine method for a TEAM FORTRESS Game played for entertainment, but not for a platform for SOCIAL HUMAN REAL COMMUNICATIONS... so again i say. WEb2.0- social media needs to be shown as the naked emporer it is.

LL has followed the path of all tech companies who "believe" that they are media companies, untill they fail, ex. YAHOO and AOL who vacilaite between the two identities backed by millions spent in PR, as they continue to damage many, over a decade plus.

anyhow//

CNEt now dosent allow reply post unless tied to "third party accounts" so CNEt has finally lost any "news.com" respect, and in orwellian speak. news.com can no longer be spoken back too- unless you open up to third party ads and linkage of you ID and sales INFO.

more "rights" lost as if the cbs corporate media still allowed for online news beyond the rememants of posting 60 minutes logs...

. more fake/blog news as news.com
the cost of rebute is now even higher.:)

watch the FDR speech url i posted... and realize it as film/video was pretty much "hidden" from you all for half a century. and get mad...or buy a new avatar outfit,and call it metaculture and try convince others its so "new"

choice is yours...

Frankly I still think vitual media online will make tv and radio look like childs play as to its efect on humanity and that this IMPORTANT MEDIA is being totally crapped on by those who most vocally claim leadership, whore for attention and blog false expertise to make bank only for themselves and the persons that convince they will make the next apha app for SOCIAL web2.0 media Glory and fame.

alpha or obsolete... no place for humans to just live....

Its really sad that i can only find one blog on the entire web that asks questions like this about virtuality, and that offers any thoughts that are not imediatly parroted from another metablog of the moment.....

this is it.

i guess ill sign my linden slave name;)
better than my facebook ad ID.;) at a place called "NEWS.com:)"

cube (im a number) six inada.

[Xenius Winslet]

Fun read, but YAWN, a pathetic whining chorus of old unflexible pessimists who failed at SL business. Where are Stroker and RaR? Every platform has its losers. While you are busy crying for attention, blaming others for your own failure and predicting the end of the internet, others laugh and move on with innovation while counting their money. Also cube: too many smileys, fag.

[Prokofy Neva]

All that's really sad, cube. As usual, I'm not sure I understand it all, even reading it a few times.

I think probably a different kind of virtual world is too hard to make because it's expensive, but eventually, they will be made.

I still harbour some hope that there are reasonable Lindens who don't believe in the singularity nonsense, but in fact, I know that they likely really do.

The idea that the FDR clip was "hidden" is odd to me. The four freedoms talk about freedom from want. Eleanor Roosevelt at the UN worked on the UN Declaration of Human Rights which have some of these economic rights as well.

The U.S. went about security labor, health, and education rights by making public programs that supply these goods at a far higher level than countries that claim to supply them as "rights".

Carl, I think a reason you succeeded in NCI is that you didn't cloak it in altruism and said you did it because it was fun to do and gave you self-esteem and you liked building the empire. *And that's ok*. I wish more people would be frank like that. Building up self-esteem by needing-to-be-needed and building empires are OK.

[Xenius Winslet]

Your references just show you are clearly living in the past.

[cube inada]

Prok,the 2nd bill of rights clip was filmed after the radio speech -state of uniuon 44-. FDR couldnt make it to capital hill(polio) and used radio from the oval office to deliever speech... but he made a special "new media" appeal about this special idea of the second bill of rights...an idea spawned of the depression and excesses of unregulated capitalism of the 20s, and the threat to democracy such excesses brought on.

he died a few months later and what i am refering too is that this film clip and his message ---
to my knowledge( and im real good at media history) has been all but forgotten and obviously not taught or spoken about in the "education" that Xenius got and probably is still paying off tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of loans for.

I know that the idea of a second bill of rights and its place as an end of presidentcy role speech, is not even close to the tv time the Eisenhower, Military/Ind. Complex speech, which sadly did offer not promise but a warning, got over the decades.

One speech about fairness, the other about fear. And one wonders why Linden "governs" the way it does.:)

CNET has now moved to social web and wiki means of discourse while "owning" the " news"url sad or mad? up to you. But its orwellian use of "news" is clear and now complete.

im as mad as sad, and a different kind of online virtuality - democracy- is looking further and further gone while the future is more of the stupidity offered by the self named
xenius's of the world.

Clearly i never saw SL as any sort of civic system and couldnt believe anyone would blog away as if it was one, it's why i questioned many of your posts for the last years.

But left to the xenius's of the world, it's methods have become more and more accepted and adopted as civics.

such a waste of a good media.

anyway.

[Prokofy Neva]

Xenius Winslet is a day-old alt, and as such, violates my policy of requiring that you post on here with a valid SL account -- to tie your hateful post to inworld accountability. Post the hate -- but link it to your main.

cube does not use too many smileys.

It's also unacceptable to call people "faggots" -- ugh.

I fail to see what fabulous business this day-old alt could represent such as to claim that there are people who are ostensibly rich already from SL and now looking back and sneering at everyone else. Um, names? The people I know actually rich from SL aren't the sneering type and have as many complaints about LL and SL as anyone.

They just may not bother wrestling with Pink Linden.

As for this "second bill of rights " that were "discovered" by Michael Moore, this is just a long cherished technocommunist dream I guess lol - the idea that some evil forces kept this sick man from his dream of installing socialism in the U.S. Ridiculous.

The New Deal was a response to the Depression but of course, to communism too -- Soviet communism presented a competition -- and a nuclear armed one -- to the U.S. and the U.S. wanted to meet that challenge -- and it's a good thing that it did. What, you like living on a collective farm?!

A lot of these "rights" in fact were policies that are in place, whether public education that is free, emergency health care that must be provided, Social Security etc. so the idea that the U.S. is this benighted evil place where evil capitalists reign and all these poor people eke out a miserable existence is silly and Soviet propagandistic -- the U.S. does a lot better than some countries that claim to have these "bill of rights" in their constitutions but don't really deliver them.

These rights are not justiciable, and devising laws or constitutional 'rights' around them is pretty hard once you study that problem and the problem of definition and metrics. But as policies, they work and are needed. What does it mean for every family to have a decent home? In the 1940s, that might mean the kind of tiny suburban tract house made of ticky-tacky or cheap urban row house that became the dream of the G.I. Bill -- it doesn't necessarily mean a suburban home of the affluent.

50 years ago I remember seeing the new improved "humane" migrant labor homes -- shacks -- built in apple orchars upstate that were meant to be the "social improvements" of that era, improvements over tent camps or hovels on the wrong side of the tracks or people living in vans. Today, they don't represent progress and something better would be built.

But basically, if the point of cube's intervention was to say: "This was a humane goal that we once had as a nation that we have lost," well, I suppose, but...how are these things defined? Not by fiat. By democracy -- and as we can see from the unelected wired, they'd be happy to cancel all the townhalls where people raise their voices and just ram through policy undemocratically.

It's not that these values are "forgotten" or that some evil force hid them -- that's ahistorical and tendentious and Moore is manufacturing a socialist myth here. In fact, these dreams (and they *are* dreams) were being realized under FDR and are still being realized.

cube, face it: Americans will not support the taxes that such "dreams" do require.

[cube inada]

taxes..and american psychosis...

yes. i know. which is why i wanted to design for outer space but found myself at 20 in a world only spending money on inner(vr) space. So all i get to do is fake spaceships on the web..:)

no new frontier left by 1980.:)

An ACTUAL second Bill of rights, WOULD have had a value beyond the programs of up and down size that did get done over the post GI years... and maybe it was "just me" who found the video footage new.... and was surprised, i dont require M.MOORE to make my beliefs, trust me, but i do believe capitalism has run amok and in its dogmatic form of corporate avatars, its eaten away the real strength of wnat america should/could be. democracy.... and that such a "video recording" from such a leader, has been not lost..but not SHOWN...as the real issue of media effect on the civic populas.

as i said it didnt bleed, so it wont lead:) or for Xenus, its just too old to be valueble...:)

social democracy. is as you know what im talking about, cetainly not any totalitaran communism

and NEWS>COM and todays new rulez..offer further evidence that the role of the "now maybe really lost" 4th estate. the PRESS as a checks a balance mechanism is really going away..only to be replaced by opinion blog blather thats as deep as People magazine at best.

Just as we dont see any caskets returning from Irag, we didnt see this film of FDR anywhere on national tv ( as far as i know) in the last 30 years...this i believe was not a conspiracy, but a fect of the lessening of the EDIT the expert-, and the reason for journalism as a profession.

capitalism unchecked, unbalanced will kill democracy... i cant see any other reality of this idea after the last 30 years or so of the american experiment...:)

dosent Lindens experiment show the same truth?

so im not sure that the intent of a second bill of rights does exist or has much realization anymore, Obama has so far been at best another David Dinkens... but cant fail him for not wanting to get shot i guess:)

but hey, you should love the new Moore, hes gone alter boy and all christain god meme to defeat ayn rand literalism based capitalism..:)

hes trumping all the secular humanists social democrats by using christ as the weapon....

whats so funny is how true it is..

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

"It's also unacceptable to call people "faggots" -- ugh."

Reading that from someone solely capable of name-calling is probably the best laugh I will have today.

[Prokofy Neva]

I'm happy to call *you* a mangina, Melissa, because you savaged me first -- and repeatedly -- and I push back.

I see no reason not to push back on the use of the term "faggot".

Laugh all you want -- you're an asshole. That's a description of your behaviour. It's something you can change.

Being gay or black or whatever is not something you can change.