Lenin and Lunacharsky, the Bolsheviks' Commissar of Culture.
Oh! Now I get why Grace McDunnough, Dusan Writer and others have been so volubly and furiously trying to Define Culture in Second Life, something which I vigorously pushed back on.
As always when people seem to show a new round of aggressive activity that isn't visibly motivated, you have to look for the back story -- and this is just one I didn't know enough about until now.
It turns out that this Linden Endowment of the Arts (LEA) is not only going to be a sort of vague do-gooder committee that perhaps holds contests now and then or gives out some small grants or perhaps steers its special friends to high placement in the Destination Guide. That's all sort of "within the norm" in the lovely Game of Second Life which some people play.
No -- this is something of an order of magnitude different. It turns out M Linden (Mark Kingdom) is going to provide a whopping 70 sims to this cultural-cooptation effort. Holy Fuck!
Seventy sims being added for free, with a grand socialist flourish, to the grid, completely disrupting the free-enterprise support of the arts that has so painfully been established in SL in seven years.
This so far out-FICs anything I've ever seen in SL -- Neualtenberg, the free sim for socialist self-governance; Bedazzled and Chinatown, the free design sims for temporary attractions of a month or two; Linden Homes, the loss-leader that competes not only with resident business but the Linden's own mainland 512 tier -- well, it's hard to even comprehend.
Seventy fucking sims. That's bigger than Caledon (or maybe the merged Caledon is somewhat bigger, but still). That's bigger than lots of things.
Let's go over this:
The Linden Endowment for the Arts (LEA) met for the first time this weekend. This group is Linden Lab’s response to supporting the arts community and rich content providers in Second Life. Mark Kingdon indicated that the contribution to the arts will be made by the donation of a great deal of land (he estimated around seventy Sims) and the content and activities of those locations would be curated by the arts community through the LEA Committee, a group hand chosen by Linden Lab.
Why-are-we-not-surprised that the group is eye-hand chosen by Linden Lab. But...70 sims?! Curation by "the art community"? Again, no wonder Grace and Dusan are trying so hard to define and shape what "the art community" is -- being sure to cull out the riff-raff and not even respond to legitimate critics (like me). No wonder Carter Liveoak is telling me to "shut up".
Except...what's in it for Carter? He pays tier on several full-prim islands, and no doubt struggles to get the tier paid and to pay the musicians something who perform regularly on Heron Island. He has stores selling rich content -- I love the stores and shop in them myself. I am happy to go there to listen to Frogg and Jaycatt despite Carter telling me to shut up -- I can always tip them more and Carter nothing. He has rentals that aren't always full, trying to add to the revenue stream. He has tip jars -- which I used to tip -- and probably gets enough to barely break even from all this -- that's my guess. Even so, he does this not only for support for the work of SL artists but out of a certain love of the chase. Can it be done? Can you get the tier paid and music supported and even have a bit left over to pay a phone bill or two?
So what happens to an operation like Carter's, when suddenly, he has competition from *70 free sims*. When a socialist art committee put in place by the state runs culture. With the power not only of the land-purse, but the power of Destination Guide. And this will be interesting to watch. Will he quietly have his Heron sims moved to this big socialist continent and now have the burden of tier relieved? Will he still get to keep what is in the tip jars? Will he pay musicians more now? Or? How will this work? Remember, tier isn't trivial for a new full-prim island -- it's US $295 a month. Four of those, which you need to host a decent concert at the four corners, to fit all the avatars, is then $1,180. That's a lot of tip jarring.
Now, you say, Prokofy, why are you going on about socialist this and socialist that again? Are you mad? The arts need to be supported. You can't have all crass commercialism. You can't expect the arts to get themselves supported, the People often don't value them enough.
Oh, I totally understand that. The public *should* support the arts. In real life, however, we do this in liberal, democratic states with representative governments we elect, with three branches of powers and a system of checks and balances -- and a free media. Our taxes pay for the arts -- and we also support them with tax-deductible donations in the U.S. The entire edifice of "the arts" in a country like this is a complex web of private and public agencies and organizations and funding, federal, state and private with lots and lots of freedom at all levels.
That's very, very different than one executive power, without any legislative or judicial branches, installing its own friends as a committee that becomes an arbiter of taste and actually has land to dispense and money to pass out -- and most important, location in the Destination Guide to provide for actual visits and eyeballs. That sort of power far exceeds any public or private art council in real life, and has far, far less democratic check on it.
That isn't, again, to say that the mob has to democratically rule art in some literalist tekkie e-voting sort of way (which is often the only way geeks understand democracy -- the checks and balances part always eludes them). It is not to say that taste is dumbed down by the masses. Even publicly funded art, or state-funded art, can take bold steps and be controversial and not to everyone's taste in a system of freedom. Even so, when it reaches the point of the Piss Christ, Mayor Guiliano can say, wait, why are we using tax dollars to support the Brooklyn Museum where this is showing? We don't need to be doing that. And he's right.
Given that we don't have a normal democratic government in SL, and don't even have the sort of nominal channels of democratic expression that some very authoritarian countries have in RL, this entire caper has to be looked upon with the same sort of dismay that you look upon, oh, the circus in Turkmenistan. Yes, the new less-authoritarian regime has restored the circus removed by the previous evil dictator who found that it wasn't compliant enough for state propaganda, especially when he lacked the bread to put with it. Yes, the new circus complex is magnificent and a tribute to the Era of Great Revival. Yes, the women's colourful dresses and men's amazing skills and the high-stepping Akhal horses are marvelous -- the pre-clearances and government pressures and stern reprimands and dismissals in disgrace all mercifully hidden behind the Big Top. But...then...there's something about the fact that little school-children are woken at 5:00 am to traipse to the stadium in national costume and rehearse for their dutifully patriotic and enthusiastic clapping, for when the President comes out to mount a horse himself in a great flourish of state propaganda...Someone then wonders who the trained animals are...
Well, you say, come on Prokofy, Second Life is a lot more free than Turkmenistan, isn't it? And if you don't like it, fortunately, torture in jail or impoverished exile aren't your options, you can just log off. And people will have plenty of opportunity to express their wishes to Circus Art Linden without having to get all technocommunist on their ass.
(Joke: what do you call a Linden hanging on the wall? Art. Fortunately that won't hurt in a virtual world!)
Kingdom said in his speech at MetaMeets that not only music would be supported, but the literary arts. So mind you, while a whopping dilution of the land market that was sustaining the arts in SL on its own until now, it's not THAT huge. Let's say you give 20 sims off to "literary arts" and "visual arts" like M's own doodles. That would leave 60 sims that would have to be divided by 4 to be providing venues to fit the 100 people or so on a 4-corner arrangement. That means only 15 concert venues/clubs/maestros whatever will get the benefit of this deal. Still, in our still-relatively-little world, that's enough to terribly displace the indigent native economy supporting music and art now. Terribly!
And likely, to qualify to go on Art Linden's Reservation, they will have to prove that they have licenses to the music they DJ or allow to be performed live, or certify that it is their own work, and provide their RL name and addresses. So only the wealthy and established can benefit. If you are the virtual equivalent of a subway busker, I guess you will have to come to someone like me with stadium seating on part of mainland sim and play to just 25 people...
Of course, part of what made the arts and music sim more rich was that it was combined with unabashed commerce. The stores, vendors, rentals, community hangout areas made it all that more fun to work on and fun to visit.
The 70-sim Technocommunist Arts Emporium will likely have no sales of content or rentals of vending space allowed (of course, another grandly lost opportunity for providing advertising opportunities in this wretched company town environment). Hopefully, tip jars will be excluded from the technocommie "no commerce" rule -- but I wonder if in fact even those will be scrubbed out under the theory that the musicians and organizers are already getting a giant gift of a tier-free sim. However, don't let that moral consideration stop them...
I'm naturally wondering how Treet TV and Metaverse TV will fair on this new socialist content. Since MBC News was part of the sponsorship of MetaMeets where Kingdom made his famous Lunacharsky-like speech (see the full machinima version here), does this mean they get a free sim? They have to pay tier like other mortals now, too, and rely on advertising income to meet tier.
There's some other creepy aspects of M Linden's speech, with terrible looming consequences
First, there is the awful bifurcation of the Second Life world and economy into two distinct categories, "consumers" and "creators".
He calls these "the two engines" of Second Life.
He's wrong.
Those aren't the "two engines of Second Life".
Second Life has one engine: a relative free economy in which people can move from the role of consumer to creator relatively freely, with a range of amateur to professional.
It's THAT FREEDOM that is the engine of SL -- and the engine of Search/Places that broadcasts the news of that freedom in merited traffic on parcels of people exercising that freedom.
By dividing the world into more strictly defined categories, the amateurs are put out of business, and even the professionals have to climb a much more brutally steep pyramid to visibility. That, in the end, kills culture because it cannot be refreshed easily by new people; by learning people who excel from amateur to professional; by temporary people who sometimes can professionalize in one area while remaining amateurs, etc. etc. It's death. Ask the people of the Soviet Union who had only the works of the Soviet Writers' Union and the films of the Soviet Cinematographer's Union and the music of the Soviet Composers' Union in their stores -- and who turned to a thriving black market in underground music tapes and samizdat writings instead.
The question is, under this new Linden Assisted Living -- moving the Geriatric Grace-Oclockers on buses from Linden Homes to Linden Arts Sims -- not only Who Benefits and Who Loses, but where the "samizdat" and "magnitizdat" (as the underground music tapes were called) will live.
I predict that at first, the 70-sim-emporium will cast a pall over the world. Crap, spying the photos on Flickr (one always has to scan the social media meticulously to get clues of these FICing capers, good eye, Crap) spots Bettina Tizzy (sigh) and Bryn Oh (too bad) among the ranks of the Linden eye-hand picked arts committee. It will create a big division of Winners and Losers much like the Pink's Merchants problem.
If you want to join this arts committee yourself (yes, I realize you are a "can't beat em join em" sort of reader), go here to a strange Google spreadsheet doc that isn't clear whose server it connects to.
I'll pass, thanks. I don't want to enter into this terribly co-opted magnetic film of smarmy virtual-world platform embrace that will pass for "culture" with a soundtrack only including the throaty Grace or whoever the Linden Pick of the month will be, and where I am strapped down viewing even the lovely Bryn Oh's works not by choice or serendipity but because it's been shoved into the Destination, which is the only thing that works -- search/places and search/events being woefully -- and deliberately! -- broken likely under repair (and now we know why).
I like being able to go into an arty sim, buying a ticket, putting an additional tip in the tip jar, and seeing the work of people who volunteer or make their tier from tips and content sales and ticket sales. If that's not enough, contemplate what it means to enter the realm of M. Would the Avatar Reperatory Theater go to one of these coopted sims if chosen by this little socialist guild? I could understand if they did -- $500 tickets don't bring home the bacon -- but their lustre would have gone dull for me then.
There's another creepy thing that M talked about that Maggie Darwin, odious creature that she is, has aptly identified in the comments on the MBC page:
Mesh public beta “within six months”? I understand it’s in a secret beta now.
What we haven’t heard is how this is planned to fit into a prim-based economy, or heard any free 3D building tools (like Blender or SketchUp) that will be supported.
Or whether you will be required to have some special status (Gold Double Platinum Certified Licensed Certified TPV-compliant Solution Provider) to be allowed to import meshes.
Well, Maggie is concerned about opensource extremist technocommunist free tools being supported, rather than Maya that costs a fortune. I share her concern about whether you need a Double Plus Good status to even be allowed to import a mesh -- and probably care more than she does about what all this will do *to the prim-based economy* which is something that amateurs still operating on the assumption that this is a free as in "accessible for anybody" platform rely on, and which professionals still count on as being a free as in "not costing more than the land tier" platform.
Mind you, I get it all. Tragically Misunderstood Artists are always whining that they have no support, that the Lindens Don't Care. I do wonder why they need the Lindens to care and why they can't get support from the public (it would mean more advertising, rentals, and content sales, which some of them find aesthetically displeasing). I do realize that the public doesn't pay very much for the arts when most of them would prefer to cyber in their humper bunkers, rising occasionally for a round of Tiny Empires or Vampire Bites or visits to huge shopping sims that themselves are works of art, in fact.
In fact, the interesting art could increasingly move there to the spacious malls if the artists weren't too uppity and socialist about their venues -- hopefully, anyway, as there will not be enough room on the 70 sims, in one sense, and they won't allow sales, which *might* make the shopping emporiums try more to support arty sims.
Crap talked about the 70 sims "filling the Rezzable void" -- as if...Rezzable in fact attracted a significant following. It didn't. That's why it's not here anymore. Content sales, ticket sales, and even traffic numbers to impress real-world CPM ad buyers just didn't cut it. They couldn't make it on that basis. That is not a business model for virtual worlds.
Yet, after the initial FICation shock wears off and the Losers are left off-stage gnashing their teeth, I suspect what will happen is that the stark cooptation of the arts such as to create a visibly stultified and denatured group of state-run artists will not be so visible. It seldom works that way in virtuality. Instead, there will be a burst of energy and the Lindens will give the beauties of at least their eye-hand selected favourites a HUGE windfall of visibility they've never had, leading to more "engagement" or "hours logged on" or whatever the metrics will be for defining "success".
The corrosive effect of this takeover will be longer in being felt. The venues going out of business will be trees falling in the not-in-Destination-Guide forest. Those who don't make the LEA cut are likely to be amateurs -- at first -- that people won't recognize as merited anyway. The emergence of a more free culture existing outside this repressive framework will take awhile. Eventually, however, the LEA will be a marker for "lame" and "suck-up" -- never fine features to encourage in the arts.
Perhaps a free alternative to the LEA could get started among landlords, merchants, interested patrons of the arts who don't want to be in the Linden FIC field. Such things are awfully hard to get started in a world where even the limit of 25 groups can be an excuse not to do something like this. But call me if you want to start some alternative like this.
So let me declare the first casualty of this cooptation to be Crap Mariner. In a funny way, I have to say that Crap Mariner is my favourite SL artist. I view him as much of an artist as Filthy Fluno or Bryn Oh. Every day, he posts a story of his adventures in designing his sims or responding to various difficulties, and the photography, the staging, the props, the landscaping -- they are all pure art. It's a running story of the sort that only a virtual world can produce, and I'm a number-one fan of that sort of "new TV" or what I call the Novotar, the avatar-as-novel online in 3D.
He should be criticizing this roundly -- and isn't. Instead, in order avoid accusation of sour grapes (he single-handedly did more than anyone to support live music in SL, with little thanks from Lindens or even musicians!), he's laying low, limiting his remarks to comments like this:
Including performance art, as opposed to excluding it as LEA member Bettina Tizzy initially suggested before being helped to her senses, is acknowledging the importance of music, theater, and other event-driven community/culture as opposed to location/prim/static build-culture.
Uh...well. Yeah. I'm going to be boosting prim/static build culture LOTS more than I used to now that I see the threat of mesh and the Double Plus Gold Gooders coming to ruin free art and free enterprise.
My comment on Bettina Tizzy of course is available for sale -- you know, I'm an artist, too -- in my store in SL. It's called "My Tiny Life" and is available for $10 -- a price that is well worth the prims, which you can always dissemble and just keep some of the cool stuff inside. Alright, I lied. That cool stuff is all actually just in your library, and shrunken, but if you get my companion piece, My Tiny Life, Ventilated, you will find my own tortured turd-in-the-square sculpture and a cool Hobo bench.
I have to make a new piece, as My Tiny Life just got a lot more oxygen sucked out of the room...
Crap hopes earnestly that "the Labbies" will fix search to remove at least the terrible hobbles to finding events and places experienced now. I think the point, Crap, is that they want to enforce use of the Destination Guide. Better hope you and your friends land in it.
lol.
whats nasty? me or this further gamezing of the walter mitty's.
. and totally expected. I did tell you insilico-- cyberpunk skil hax -copybot saviouer?lol-land sims- couldnt in anyway exist without LL "help".
so SL SIMS... but without the "production costs" what do we call that again? ah slavery.
company town art.. able to be valued by the LL accountants...or devalued in the open markets of "reality".
and artists will flock and hypster like bettina will "lead them"
all straight to non value. except for those who "blog" and dont actually do.:) woody allen satire becomes reality.. the PROMISE of virtuality realized...
"Im an Artist" M- cube3
Posted by: cube inada | May 12, 2010 at 03:54 PM
BTW- i just applied to be on the LEA...:)
consider my "running" the "dark knight of the arts"
the "hero" SL deserves...:)
im batman -cube3
Posted by: cube inada | May 12, 2010 at 04:07 PM
Will likely be the 70 most under-used sims in SL history. So much for LL being 'green'.
Posted by: Darien Caldwell | May 12, 2010 at 04:20 PM
LL moves all live music to LL art sim venues.
LL bans use of radio station urls on any non LEA sims.
End of nightlife in SL.
That is the future I see. Hope I am wrong.
Posted by: AnnOtooleInSL | May 12, 2010 at 04:45 PM
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20004811-261.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0
common sense and law will push back...eventually... though lets hope we dont "need" another millenia, to find it again.
can i haz free stuff masa.? sur
Posted by: cube inada | May 12, 2010 at 05:22 PM
Company store...Company homes...Company line. (unless your not onboard the Company line, in that case you're in the unemployment line)
Posted by: brinda Allen | May 12, 2010 at 09:06 PM
Prim buskers, the lot of them!
Posted by: Cube Republic | May 12, 2010 at 09:47 PM
Ouch.
Could not be in more agreement with Prok ~ this is devastating.
Why should Carl Metropolitan bother to sponsor his SL art gallery in Caledon, for instance? He's got some incredible art in there from SL artists.
What about Persephone's theatre in Caledon Penzance ~ anyone who has been inside knows exactly what I'm talking about, it's an absolute jewel, nothing like it anywhere else on the grid. Can Persephone get free $L to keep it right where it is, in its native environment, where it's not just yet another exhibit amongst a dissonant jumble of others? I didn't think so.
And who is going to decide what is worthwhile?
Who gets to fete the artists with free land, and who writes the rejection letters?
Welcome to officially sanctioned diva drama, and another rocking blow to everywhere else.
Because if you aren't in the blessed 70 with an endowment, you are obviously second rate.
And though I have no dog in the hunt with regard to edgy art, I wonder how the artists who were packed off to Zindra will get treated. Carl once got suspended for an exposed nipple on a classical painting. Imagine what the Statue of David could do.
>_<
Posted by: Desmond Shang | May 12, 2010 at 10:06 PM
history.. the first casualty of google brains. Well, good to see some "reality" of the obvious and completely predictable getting hammered in on "todays" post.
while yesterdays post- ancient;)- still has "better world" and "what we can do for game gods" tones coming from walter and mittie..;)
the irony is that LL is doing exactly what coconutz said they shoulnt do (cuase they are so swell for free markets)-- but are- for uh "the MARKET" or at least "their" 6 month version of what "the market" "is".(for them alone) no two needed to tango in the singularity..;)
abstractions for corporations and the loss of analogies for individuals- free citizens of "old school" countries or not...
a wonderful better worldz gamez.
truly the forest gump approach to civics for adults.
meanwhile - the FEDERATION OF VIRTUAL WORLDS descends on Washington DC...
maybe Obama will be there to beat them off with an Ipad.?! ;)
Posted by: cube inada | May 12, 2010 at 10:28 PM
You smoke too much . . . something.
And I don't like cocoanutz. Call me Mittie!
Posted by: Cocoanut Koala | May 12, 2010 at 10:33 PM
lol.
though im still- for a very short time, stuck in berzerkley and SF--- so fake- area... i dont actually smoke anything:)
one day you may find i was the most lucid in this peanut gallery;)
i do hope you find a pastime that you enjoy that hasnet been created to destroy free humans, mittie.
there are other flavors of virtuality, 3d and model making...
its a big internetz. so far;)
Posted by: cube inada | May 12, 2010 at 11:03 PM
Well here's the thing. I had a really wonderful and fun five years. And - five years is long enough.
I figure I got into SL at just the right time, well before it got too junked up with corporate this and that ("all ur businesses and art are belong to us").
Never did I think of it as something that destroyed the free me.
The other thing is, I have already more pastimes irl than I can possibly shake a stick at! Since I closed my business, in fact, it has sort of opened up the floodgates of real-life creativity.
I will be happy and busy till the day I die, because that river flow never dries up. Never has, and I guess never will.
Posted by: Cocoanut Koala | May 12, 2010 at 11:17 PM
ah mittie...
youve made my point;)
if only 5 years "was" long enough and rivers never became dry.
and THAT is the seductive power of virtuality, and why it was a "horrible" story all along.;)
Grim's (no long) Tales : Cube3
Posted by: cube inada | May 12, 2010 at 11:31 PM
Well, if virtuality is the only egg you have in your creative basket, I suppose that might be "sad" for some. But I suppose others spend their whole lives happily at it.
By the way, I just visited one of your builds - the "Sky Cinema Fly-In Theater!" I love it! I'll go watch a whole movie sometime.
Posted by: Cocoanut Koala | May 12, 2010 at 11:48 PM
mostly for Prok..
http://calacanis.com/2010/05/12/the-big-game-zuckerberg-and-overplaying-your-hand/
can make you really nervous what web3.0 might "hatch" from the serpents egg.;)
Posted by: cube inada | May 12, 2010 at 11:53 PM
;) its a fun environment. thanks.
it'll live on beyond LL efforts in two locations in the Reaction Grid (today), and soon, in a web browser MU format.
PS- all forms of media are forms of "virtuality". Thats what humans do. And why we "should" care , and "examine with adult eyes" how it affects others.
Posted by: cube inada | May 13, 2010 at 12:52 AM
Prokofy... you quoted my article without crediting *poke*.
Still flattered you read it though.
The M Linden interview by Dousa Dragonash and the article is available on The Metaverse Tribune here... http://metaversetribune.com/2010/05/10/linden-lab-ceo-previews-community-focus-and-coming-attractions/
Why does this have to be a bad thing? Why so much cynicism out of the gate? Surely we are all interested in seeing more rich content and cultural enhancement on the grid?
How about we wait and see what actually transpires before shooting holes in it? I think this is going to be a great thing... and will acknowledge the arts (finally) and draw more of the creative community into Second Life (if promoted correctly).
:) Can we just wait and see?
xoxo
Skylar
Posted by: Skylar Smythe | May 13, 2010 at 08:51 AM
I'm actually kinda relieved to be a casualty.
Now I can just write my twerpy little stories and go for more walks or hit the workout room.
-ls/cm
Posted by: Crap Mariner | May 13, 2010 at 09:41 AM
Why it's a bad thing, is explained in crystal clear detail already.
Some of us have been doing all we can to promote rich content and cultural enhancement for ages.
But we aren't multimillion dollar corporations, we are regular people, and we are stuck having to charge for it.
WE are making sure that the multimillion dollar corporation can afford such largesse.
Let's look at this in the proper light. I had my openspaces jacked from 50 to 95 USD, played chicken with destruction of my estate two years running (125/month homesteads would have obliterated half of it, I don't checkerboard mine as private humper bunkers)... and now, with those added profits, they are going to *give away land* ... wtF!?
How can I possibly tell an artist to join up with Caledon any more? Oh no, far better to get an endowment! But if you can't make the cut, then come to us and pay dearly for land like everybody else, in what is now Second Rate Artist Land.
Obviously, there are some exhalted Arbiters of Culture somewhere that need to be impressed.
Do you not see a problem here?
We've had commercial land gutted by XStreet, small parcels gutted by Linden Homes, and now we have two classes of artists.
Yes, it's a *very* bad thing.
Unless blowing my estate right off the grid sounds like a victory for Second Life culture.
Guess I should have just diced all my regions into 16 sandbar islands, or rented to the humper bunker crowd. But stupid me, I did my very best to attract top creative types, largely succeeded, and now I'm about to pay dearly for it.
Want my support for this program? Scrap the free sims, and give the artists $L for endowments to do as they please, wherever they happen to be, and have the whole damn grid decide who is worthy.
Posted by: Desmond Shang | May 13, 2010 at 09:47 AM
The twitter thing you have here is killing your blog. twitter credentials is too fucking slow and unreliable to have it on a blog.
I come to Prok's blog and it is white space on columns 2 and 3 for 3 minutes. Meanwhile the status bar says waiting on twitter. The cure for the internet is to stop putting twitter, google, and facebook crap on pages.
Posted by: AnnOtooleInSL | May 13, 2010 at 10:20 AM
Regarding live music in SL, these 70 sims are adressing the wrong problem, in my opinion.
It's not lack of places to play that are holding back many SL live musicians, because there are hundreds, if not thousands of venues they could play at, if they only wanted to play for free or only for tips.
The problem is, not many venue owners want to pay them the $5000L or more they ask for playing an hour (and I am not criticising them for asking a fee).
I doubt very much whether LL or the LEA is going to be paying performers to play on the sims they manage, so I expect these sims will be relatively empty of live music funded by the LIndens.
Posted by: Magnet Homewood | May 13, 2010 at 11:48 AM
"Want my support for this program? Scrap the free sims, and give the artists $L for endowments to do as they please, wherever they happen to be, and have the whole damn grid decide who is worthy."
Now THIS - would be a great idea.
Of course that way, LL couldn't own you, control you, sanitize you, make you grovel, or take credit for you.
Therefore, they'd likely never go for this.
Posted by: Cocoanut Koala | May 13, 2010 at 12:26 PM
"Of course that way, LL couldn't own you, control you, sanitize you, make you grovel, or take credit for you."
lol.. ermerge, mittie emerge!.
Posted by: cube inada | May 13, 2010 at 12:38 PM
Oh, ok, I'll ditch the Twitter thing. It doesn't matter to me that much. If you're on Twitter you can find me there.
Funny how Desmond is griping about Xstreet taking store parcels, Linden Homes taking newbie parcels, and Art Sims taking art parcels when...supposedly he has only embedded/lifestyle/roleplay stores in a context that would never want to be denuded on Xstreet; when he doesn't sell $150/150 prim rentals to newbies like I do (he has free land without a premium, which is even more attractive); when his entire continent's milieu is the art that the 70 sim thing couldn't possibly duplicate. Yet Desmond is worried. He must know something I don't know.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | May 13, 2010 at 01:31 PM
"Desmond is worried. He must know something I don't know."
I think everyone should be. I've been watching the remake of "V" that's been showing (pretty good btw), and I'm reminded of something the evil V leader says. Her assistant asks "why are we giving the humans our Blue Energy technology?"
She answers: "Because they will become dependent on it. And then we can turn it off."
I see the same strategy here. LL will basically have the people who accept this land by the balls. Faustian bargain if there ever was one.
Posted by: Darien Caldwell | May 13, 2010 at 03:30 PM