Second Life Does Not Have a Culture

Right on cue, within a week of Grace McDunnough publishing her cultural manifesto, Hamlet nee Linden Au has dutifully published and feted her concept on his much-higher-trafficked blog. Dusan has also discussed the issue and fetched even T Linden to come and apologize on his blog for saying there is no such thing as SL culture. Bad, bad T. Dusan talks about "“affordances of avatar identity" reiterated by T and pronounced "elegant" (I *hate* that word "affordances"; it is SOOOO precious and affected and SOOOOO fucking pretentious). Then T gives us this gem:

On the software UI front, or as you so elegantly put it, the “affordances of avatar identity,” I don’t think we really changed it that much in viewer 2 (not to say we didn’t change a lot, we did) but modulo pushing 500 floaters into tabs at the right hand panel and introducing a browser based navigation metaphor, the paradigm is the same.

We didn’t, for example, launch you into a blank space 40% of the UI is the av in a non-space and 60% of the UI is tiles of items to buy, which you can try/buy. We didn’t force the act of creating a profile or linking your facebook page front and center. We didn’t remove the build tools altogether.

Wow. In other words, "We could have fucked up the viewer even more royally by really jamming that Facebook crap down your throat, but we were merciful." Wow!

So with all this, now we have a growing Cultural Establishment trying to reify itself in the face of what is, of course, enormous opposition. And that's not merely me. That's the tens of thousands of people who are indifferent or unaware of Grace McDunnough, Hamlet Au, T Linden or even *gasp* Prokofy Neva, even if they are my tenants -- and who constitute a kind of passive resistance to the sort of NPR-Birkenstock- green tea haven that Grace would like SL to be.

I banged REALLLLY hard on this the minute Grace put it out because I knew it would follow this trajectory -- Grace wringing her hands slyly in a big for cultural hegemony; all the stars lining up to look philosohically off into the 512 m2 distance; Hamlet tying it up with a bow; even cameo appearances by the much-sought-after T, who seems to run everything at the Lab (or at least talk to the public about the economics and features so that makes people feel as if he really does run everything, although people you never, ever heard from, like Judy Linden, might really run some stuff -- she is Mitch Kapor's hire originally borrowed from Kapor Enterprises who -- oops! She's gone from the People List. She's gone from the management list! Voted of the LL island, I guess. Seems like she was there only a few months ago when I checked. Oh well! Next!)

Lem Skall (not my favourite person) gets it right in the comments to Hamlet at least: his concept of SL culture is TRIBAL. That's it EXACTLY. TRIBAL! Collectivist, primeval, brutal, slavish to an authoritarian leader or "the group".

Hamlet advances a fucking ridiculous notion, that the reason he knows there is an SL culture is

I'll never forget the comment Susan Sontag had about 9/11, which for some reason, I actually found myself reciting in those terrible days: "Let's all grieve together. But let's not all be stupid together."

I really HATE IT when people invoke various tragedies or victories or comedies that are supposed to "bring us all together as a community". I don't want to be in communities like that. I want to be free.

When they took the group photograph at SLCC 1 -- there were only some 100 people back then so they could fit in a group photograph -- Philip and other Lindens were rounding up everybody to get into the photo. He had given a talk in which he advanced this idea -- that the people in the room were the same people who had shown up for other historic events like the founding of the Internet (perhaps his friend Alan Kay was there). Remember, SLCC 1 was put on the backs of State of Play, the New York Law School conference of Luddologists. And he said there were always these kinds of early adapters who would come together at these times, pioneers, believers, wild-eye idealists etc.

As they started herding everybody into the photograph, I had an absolutely stark, urgent imperative I had to act on: I headed for the doors. Fast! I did NOT want to be in that photograph. Interesting, eh? It was very instinctive. I had one prime idea then: that I would not be photographed in a "community" with people who had banned me from their forums. It just wasn't on.  I liked Second Life, but I was a critic of it, and if they going to be making Founders' Photos to look at 50 years from now, I did not want it to appear that I was "one of the gang" when I wasn't; when they had deliberately and wrongfully ostracized me from speaking. I also perhaps had some inkling that not all about SL would be a good thing; that perhaps it would indicate some responsibility for some bad thing to come if one were in this photo.

As I ran for the exits, who should I bump into, rushing *into* the hall to make sure he wasn't left out?! Hamlet Linden. Ugh! Now doesn't that SAY IT ALL, folks? What a moment!

Hamlet's theory isn't even right; if you go look at that thread of "the silly story" about SL being sad and dirty, and the people defending it, in fact, you will find critics among that list too. So it's not some uniform rally around the flag.

I don't need Hamlet as a cheerleader; nor do I need Grace -- who once actively discussed applying for the CEO job of Linden Lab -- to become the Cultural Czarina of Second Life.

ALL that will happen from her pontificating is that she and whoever her friends' list is these days will get themselves feted in yet another feting, this time, with a sort of belated guilty Linden catch-up on the music sector, which Crap told us the other day they are going to pump up again. Sigh. Of course, licensing and copyright issues abound and that's why they've shied away from the music of SL.

ALL that will happen is that some little committee or commission with her on it, and a bunch of the other Grace Oclockers, who will...help the Lindens spend their money. Or something. I never thought the Lindens would be stupid enough to answer the siren call of "Save Our Sim" on Socialist Svarga, but good Lord, they did. Svarga is like the self-managed workers' paradise of the old Yugoslavia, however, because even though it is Linden owned and paid for, it remains under the sole proprietorship of Laukosargas Svarog, who, typically, says this:

Hello :)
Please do not send me notecards regarding Svarga or my old products...
I'm hardly ever  in SL at all, I might pop in once every few months just to see how things are.
 I no longer sell anything and all my shops are closed.
Svarga has a new owner now.

Right.

See, here's the thing. The Linderns, their liberal/leftist FIC friends, they desperately WANT their ideology to be baked into the tools, to be shaping consciousness, to be the Marxian "material affects consciousness". They are absolutely *mad* to have it be this way. They are DESPERATE for collectivized community. They *have to have* the tools dictate a "shared experience" -- or else! Or else they flounder, feel at sea, feel there aren't any moorings.

But it's not just tools; they want to feel as if there is "openness" and "freedom" -- which so often they define in ways that signal that they are just the opposite -- "openness" turns out to mean "opensource software" which as I've often explained is really a closed society; openness doesn't mean free enterprise but repudiating capitalism; freedom doesn't mean freedom for the next door neighbour to create, but only for me to create in his face, endlessly, like a jackboot on a face.

Someone named Jack Doulton also objects to Hamlet and the gang by saying that his notion of collectives banding together in unity against a shared perceived threat is tribalism; is primativism.

So what is the shared threat that these tribalists are experiencing now?

Well, Viewer 2, of course, shaking and shattering the world, but I think it's something else. I think it's all those Lindens leaving. Droves of Lindens have left, and that makes people who orient to them very insecure and upset. Many people get through the difficulties of SL by having "their" Linden who "does" for them. 

To be sure, when the founding Lindens leave, it is very unsettling. When Philip stepped down from the CEO position, I knew it in advance, not only because the Magic Compass had predicted this Ides of March, but because all the birds stopped singing eerily. When Cory Linden left, a crack went right through the world. When Robin left, all the sim seams fell apart and may never be put back right. When Jeska left, the trees were poisoned and wilted...Of course...Jeska herself had a hand in the poisoning of the well with her rule of the old forums and feting of her friends but still...

Even so, the world heals, the servers turn on their axis. If the Lindens had to close tomorrow, it might well be that a consortium of businesses could take over the server rental payments to 365 and hire back some of them to run the grid. Still, Second Life is not too big to fail yet; not too big to close, even though far more institutionalized than it was, and it means they need to get new board members, and one of those board members has to be a resident. Put Grace on the board; this will keep her out of trouble. Even better, have resident elections.

Where are the Lindens? There are more of them now, they talk more, they even coopted the Herald publisher to talk for them, they do more than they've ever done in their lives, and yet -- it's never enough. The Customer Service State is all=consuming; it is never happy.

It's getting so that now, even a routine call to the online Concierge produces these bots, these people who aren't Lindens, who about one in four times simply don't answer you at all, despite long waits, or answer you with platitudes pasted out of the CS manual -- maybe they are bots (although one told me he wasn't).

I've actually found myself physically calling the Lab on the telephone lately to solve even mundane problems because the online people are creepy, uninformed, and ineffective (and not Lindens) and usually when I call on the phone, I get a real Linden with a Linden last name who I actually know. Then there's the soothing message tape in that unflappable "There Will Always Be a Mainland" British from Jack.

And another thing. I think the SL culturerati are also feeling shaken by lots of other people in the world; they were supposed to have accepted the fact that North Americans weren't reigning supreme anymore, but there may be a bounce effect to that, as they start to burn it in. I don't know if there are really good high-traffic blogs in other languages, say, German or Japanese, that also have highly thinky stuff on it like Dusan's or Grace's or my blog (and no, we don't "share something" by being in this sentence together). I don't think there are. Some of the non-North American voices still speaking in English have an influence, like Draxtor Despres but others have dropped out (Tao Takashi). Of course there's Gwyn, but Gwyn has stopped making sense.

I do rely on T to stick to his guns here, and say there isn't some unifying culture that he will put his friends in charge of, that he will concede there are multiplicies of culture. It's funny in all these discussions how Dusan or Grace or T *never once mention the TOS and Community Standards*. Never. Law never enters their thinking. Although arguably, the one thing that really makes it a "community" are the "community standards" that do say, still and all, that you cannot interfere with another's enjoyment of SL -- which is the best it gets for the Golden Rule on the Internet. One could argue that the Judeo-Christian heritage, such as it is, is contained in this TOS, which doesn't allow spamming or incitement of hatred or Nazi insignia (although communist insignia is just dandy).

If there were a few things you could sum up about the Judeo-Christian heritage it would be the rights and dignity of the individual, private property, protection of pluralism and minorities, the rule of law. All of these features make up "Western civilization". The point isn't that these values are violated; the point is that when they are violated, people work hard to put them back. Asian and Islamic and Native American and other cultures privilege the group or the collective over the individual; they prefer his duties over his rights; they favour property in common. These different civilizations are at war on the Internet. Grace or Dusan or Hamlet don't think they are promulgating "Asian values" or communism when they demand a definition and a delivery of culture by a company town; instead, they see themselves as deserved curators of taste.

Brenek Warwillow disagrees with Lem and Jack on Hamlet's blog, saying that tribalism and culture need not be synonymous or in direct opposition.

But of course they are. The tribal culture that Hamlet and Grace and others want, this "shared sense of purpose" is a kind of lukewarm, provincial leftism that clings to the notion of a "Better World" that will likely include lots of photo ops posing in front of Beneficial Things like "one laptop per child". But Second Life business and entertainment and socializing doesn't care about these things; it is supremely indifferent. Brenek concedes that culture is rooted in property -- progress! -- but of course, that's just what the Lindens and the Grace Oclockers flee from, as from poison, as capitalism is fundamentally unaesthetic to them -- the very capitalism whose crass underside makes their posturing possible. It's always the dilemma of these urban sophisticates.

What I personally hope to preserve -- and this is a contradiction in terms -- is the wildness and authenticity not only of native-grown online communities or SL-specific roleplays like furries or elves. They tend to take care of themselves -- to keep fairies, for example, you need only provide them with an occasional piece of birthday cake made with egg whites, and some clean water without chlorine for them to wash their babies in.

For me, the cultures of real and what they generate are interesting and North American Lite isn't as much. Mind you, I'm not going to be basking in these cultures and joining the Caliphate sim. I'm talking about cultures that manifest, but do not suppress.

Example. What is more thrilling than a Japanese woman slowly coming across the road to you, dressed in full national costume with all kinds of embroidered kimonos and huge hair trailing, with Japanese characters sprinkling in the chat...followed slowly by a HUD with hilarious bad English...a woman who has rented your store! Who puts out funny stuff that you would never have thought to buy, like puffy little blankets or drink boxes with straws.

And what is more obnoxious than that Italian neighbour who has somehow put 12,000 scripts on to the sim, grinding your land to a halt. You absolutely marvel at this engine of commerce, this maker and seller of shoes; this amazingly large box of a store; this brimming emporium with beaches and rentals and...did I mention scripted shoes? I mean, it's awesome.

A woman IMs me and tells me that someone has insulted her on my property.

Baffled, I say, well, ok, leave then? Or?

"I'm Chinese," she says, as if that explains everything.

"And so?" I say.

"But I have been insulted."

"Hm. Well, you could file an abuse report."

She kept telling me "But it's on your land". As if...this being on my land made me responsible. In fact, I'm happy to take such responsibility - if there is a tenant who is being an ass and making racist remarks, he'd get a warning. I wouldn't adopt the Woodbury School of Ethics-Free Online Living that says no group member and no sim owner is ever responsible for anything, ever.

On the other hand, I'm not interestd in some collectivist approach, nor some scrupulous "saving face" and "honour and dignity" approach either -- the solution there is your mute button, your teleport button.

I finally said to her, "Look, you seem to think that because you came on my land for some unspecified purpose and encountered someone who insulted you or ejected you, it's my problem. But these tenants can eject people. If you give me a name and fuller details, I can follow up but basically, I'd use your mute button."

Fascinating!

Comments

[Lem Skall]

"Lem Skall (not my favourite person)"

Awww... A long way for me to get on your enemies list.

[cube inada]

insult story-- thats priceless..

and the fact that "interface" as "inyaface" as mediated by T Linden as "Product Officer" is there to make it all a "better world" with the other cheerleaders.....

ah. im glad im not understood by ordinals....;)it reassures me im the sane one.;)

LL and its FIC really should have just sold the hammers and nails since 2003. But they "can't" and that is their cultural psychosis.

[קוסמטיקאית ברמת גן]

ALL that will occur from her pontificating is that she and whoever her friends listing is today will get themselves feted in yet another feting.