Yavanna Llanfair is Just as Bad as AnneMarie Otoole -- Maybe Worse

Another arrogant bitch much like AnneMarie Otoole, filling up the highways and byways with her scripted unmanned pod vehicles. (see below).

I first started seeing these on the roads around Ravenglass and Maryport -- now I see them everywhere. I just saw one dart across some water -- then I saw one flying through a field. I inspected the creator, and I see it's this person who I've heard people describe as the "better" version of AnneMarie because they think the vehicles, being small little pods, are less intrusive. They're not.

Here's my conversation:

-- Instant message logging enabled --
[17:15]  Prokofy Neva: Get your crap off the highways of SL
[17:16]  Yavanna Llanfair: Excuse me?
[17:16]  Prokofy Neva: Um, no, I won't. Why do you think you have eminent domain with your pod vehicles????
[17:16]  Prokofy Neva: You're as bad as AnneMarie Otoole
[17:16]  Prokofy Neva: worse, because you think you're better
[17:16]  Prokofy Neva: I'm abuse reporting you
[17:17]  Yavanna Llanfair: If you can't have a civil discussion about them, I will simply mute you
[17:17]  Prokofy Neva: Mute away cupcake, you're on the list to get rid of right after AnneMarie
[17:17]  Yavanna Llanfair: I am always happy to discuss rationally with people about them
[17:17]  Yavanna Llanfair: I think your language and attitude is in itself ARable, don't you?
[17:17]  Prokofy Neva: No, there's no rational discussion you can have with assholes who fill up public highways with their own scripted vehicles as a form mof vanity
[17:17]  Prokofy Neva: and self-advertisement
[17:17]  Prokofy Neva: It's really atrocious
[17:17]  Prokofy Neva: and I expose it readily
[17:18]  Yavanna Llanfair: Ooh yes, I just asked a friend... you are well known and disliked in the forums. So I suppose it figures
[17:18]  Prokofy Neva: You're well known and disliked on all the highways and byways
[17:18]  Prokofy Neva: far worse an offense
[17:18]  Yavanna Llanfair: FYI, the pods are Linden approved. You are now muted

[17:20]  Yavanna Llanfair: Should you wish to talk to me in a more civilised way, you are welcome to apologise through a friend, and I will unmute you

Um, Linden approved? How so? What the fuck is this all about? Why do the Lindens approve vehicles to take up the highways like this???

I see Holocluck, who is a bit of an obsessive, has written a lengthy and complex petition against these things. That's all good, but it should have been simplified.

The question is that if you try to make this generic, then, the Lindens will feel like they "can't" adjudicate it because there are too many generics like it. For example, their own unmanned scripted ferries. Or the flights from Abbotts Aerodrome (but wait...wasn't that closing? Or being sold? Or...?)

And of course, there are even Jer Straaf's ferries and planes coming out of Free Tibet! They go on a route, and I haven't heard any complaints, If I did get complaints, I'd remove them. They run a route on Linden water. People seem to enjoy them. But there are people who likely enjoy AnneMarie Otool's cars too...maybe the first or third or 10th time, then the get awful, because there are too many, and they just keep coming and coming relentlessly.

The Lindens often paint themselves into a corner like this, thinking of things generically, and thinking they "can't" do things or "their hands are tied" (that's why they spent 4 years inflicting the Bush guy and the ad farmers on us.)

But you know, they can make policies and judgements and individual decisions -- the AnneMarie Otoole -- and clearly this Yavanna Llanfair who is no different --

What is MOST hugely annoying about these assholes is this sense of high and mighty  privilege and pride of place and eminent domain, as I call it, for their scripted items. They act as if you're the problem, if you don't grasp this, and aren't "civil" (note the typical geeky arrogant gambit coming from Yavanna Llanfair in the convo).

What can you do with these people? Well, keep complaining, ARing, naming and shaming, petitioning.

Comments

[Micha Sass]

I have met Yavanna, I do believe this is a project of hers rather than a Linden venture. She only operates the pods on Linden land, probably to avoid upsetting private land owners and to ensure no parcel changes would affect the pods. The pods glide around unmanned, maybe as an advert to the service, and add some dynamics to a usually static mainland. The service would be pointless if it resided unnoticed on a roadside 512.

Prokofy : You said..'it's the constant automatic dispatching of them that's really the problem. If they just idled there waiting for when people chose to use them, they'd be far, far less offensive. '..that is a constructive comment which Yavanna would probably be interested in. You opened your communication to Yavanna with 'Get your crap off the highways of SL'. You cannot expect people to respond to that with anything other than defensiveness.

[ichabod Antfarm]

But, Micha, Prokofy's suggestion is the normal, obvious thing to do (wait until an actual avatar clicks on a rezzer to get a pod to go touring in) so you have to wonder about the reasoning behind *not* doing it that way in the first place. Furthermore, you have to wonder to what effective degree you could offer "constructive criticism" to a person whose thinking didn't already arrive at the obvious implementation.

In my naivete, I always took the "better world" ethos of virtuality to mean that, shorn of the real world pressures to act responsibly towards each other (via anonymity, etc), we had to summon from within ourselves the actual desire to be good to each other and thereby make a "better world". You would think the geeks (insofar as the majority of them consider themselves atheists) would take the opportunity virtuality offers them to prove their argument that man can be good without God except when you realize that geek atheism is really just an oedipal sleight of hand by which God is replaced by Code as the object of fear and veneration.

[ichabod Antfarm]

Dollars to donuts, the incontinent puppies messing all over this blog right now consider themselves atheists; they aren't, of course, but it makes them feel all grown up to toy with the idea.

[Micha Sass]

I do not believe Yavanna is griefing the mainland. I think Prokfy made a link between AnneMarie's clutter bugging, and Yavanna's unmanned pods, then flew into rage. The observations which are embedded in her tropes are often constructive. This whole 'geek' hate-fest is lame. You keep referring to Oedipus as the sole psychological theory behind the 'geek'. That is a narrow view, I think Freud was often studying himself when proposing such theories. Maybe Freud was a 'geek'. Also there is a different name for this complex when it applies to a female, I believe only a bonding with the parent of the same sex (the mother in the case of a girl) can balance the complex. A lack of balanced parental bonding may be an underlying problem for the development of young minds for sure, but the oedipus complex is linked to sexual development (rather than a link to disruptive behavior). I suppose one could imply that scripting things is a form of masturbation, but I know many software engineers who would find that untrue.

[Micha Sass]

I think there is a difference between what is right and wrong, and what is 'not my cup of tea'. It needs to be proved that Yavanna is some menace to the status quo of the mainland, and then it needs to be further proved that her actions are universally disliked. Yavanna is merely doing what she believes is a good action to better the mainland and provide an interesting dynamic (i think). The fact the auto pods are a roaming advert is an interesting point which does need examining. Roadside ads used to blight SL, maybe road roaming ads will also become a burden. I think not as SL is moving away from eyeball grabs into a connected word-of-mouth (blogs) form of raising a product profile. The unmanned pods are advertising the coolness of the pods, rather than drawing eyes to some other product.

[Micha Sass]

Going back to Oedipus..Maybe the 'Geek' sees Prokofy as the castrating ever-more-powerful father.

[Micha Sass]

Remember that the female Oedipus complex often leads to a woman who feels the need to overpower males (some call this 'penis envy'). Gender roles and gender roleplay is very much a part of this blog and the Prokofy persona.

[ichabod Antfarm]

Thanks for the Psych 101, Micha, but old Oedipus's career goes back at least to Sophocles and the dude gets around, showing up in story after story so it's not really an obsession of mine to place him in this context; when relationships of power are in question he insists we call him by name. In other words, my use of the term is not meant to refer (exclusively) to Freudian psycho-sexuality but to the history of the story of Oedipus himself.

But anyway...

You will never be able to universally prove anything from a set of particulars no matter how large the set so if you establish universality of agreement as the condition for taking action, nothing will ever get done. So, you have to ask yourself, why do you hate democracy?

And I am allowed to hate geeks (although that is your characterization, not mine), as I can't escape the notion that I probably am one and I am allowed to dislike myself, in that regard, to the degree I still feel negatively influenced by the great geek enthusiasms.

Oh, and going back to Oediups, if you weren't being facetious with your final comment then I agree wholeheartedly with that insight; I've often thought that the genuinely obsessional nature of the griefing Prokofy suffers is driven by a psychic disturbance tied to oedipal frustrations. It was, in fact, through Prokofy's story that I first began to think of virtuality in these terms.

[ichabod Antfarm]

Catcher in the Rye? Fuck, dude, nobody more than two or three years past adolescence references Catcher in the Rye!

"How the fuck do you get atheist of mindless trolling from boredom"

I didn't say the puppies were gleefully pissing and shitting *because* they were atheists - that would have been retarded (both for me to have written and for you to have read) - I said I bet they identify as atheists because my contention is that they are members of the ridiculous geek tribe that does, in fact, make big noise about their "too cool for sunday school" brand of atheism. If they aren't, who cares, really? It was an off the cuff comment made *actually* to ruffle feathers, you know, out of boredom.

Anyway, who trolled whom, fuckwit?

[Micha Sass]

Ichabod: Sorry if I misunderstood your use of Oedipal. I just remembered the term from some psychology classes I took in infant development. I never really bought into Freudian theory too much anyhoo. You can make links between any chosen theory and a RL situation.

This discussion seems to have got buried in sophomoric spam now.

[Rex Cronon]

this is so wrong. it is no longer a joke, a prank, a trolling, or a lolz thing. in quite a few parts of the world this would be considered a criminal act. the police would come to your door and take u away in handcuffs. is it not enough to swear like a sailor, but u have to come and threaten to kill somebody? are u nuts?

[Ann Otoole InSL]

Michael Linden is the low level LL staffer that is protecting these region abusers.

[ichabod Antfarm]

Well, quite, lol; fun, though it was, to tickle the wee tykes behind their ears.

What makes a car a car in Second Life? I think this is what's fundamental. A car in SL isn't a particular arrangement of prims, the set of textures applied to those prims, and the scripts that activate it - that's just an assemblage of stuff, just the base matter of Second Life - it's only a car when a person expresses the wish to drive in a car by "driving" that assemblage of stuff as though it were a car. So, when I see a car driving across Second Life, I see the car as car because I see a person making the virtual actual by investing in the creative drama of their fantasy - and I am compelled to respect that fantasy making; otherwise, what the hell am I doing in a virtual world?

On the other hand, when I see a car like assemblage of stuff bounding across hell and creation with nobody at the wheel, I just see the stuff because that other person's immersion isn't there to actualize it and I am *free* to see it merely as "stuff" because I am not compelled to actualize it by proxy in the absence of another person's agency at the moment it appears to me.

So, if you made a machine that simply put "stuff" out and then that "stuff" sorta just bobbed along following a path of least resistance, what, other than pollution, would you call that?

[Ann Otoole InSL]

Threats on Michael Linden's behalf now posted. LL racketeering, corruption, and thuggery now apparent: http://twitter.com/#!/SLAnnOtoole/status/80389523028189185

[gordy]

I imagine he is referring to residents that appreciate the work he does, that is all. Michael is a popular Linden, one of the few.

[Ann Otoole InSL]

Threats are threats. This is not the behavior a responsible corporation would tolerate. Michael Linden needs to be fired for cause or moved to a janitorial position while all logs of his communications and activity are reviewed in detail to see what favors he has been granting.

The fact the CEO has to be dragged in to one thing after another should be enough for the CEO to terminate most of the entire company and get rid of anyone that has been there more than a year to break up the good old boy networks.

[Prokofy Neva]

Atra Lupis cannot post here, it's not a valid SL name, RL name, or blogger's name, it's just a nick on SC.

[Ann Otoole InSL]

Go away Michael Linden. It is too obvious what you are doing.

[Prokofy Neva]

Anne,

I share your skepticism of the Lindens, but I do think you're going way over board both on impugning things to Michael Linden and to Qie. Qie is just a suck-up fanboy, he's not making threats on behalf of Lindens that in fact don't snap to his bidding anywhere near as much as he would like (or even as much as they used to).

Michael Linden is not the Linden who has sanctioned these. And Lindens testing sim sims don't seem to be either. But some Linden has, and it's important to keep looking on this. It could be a case of each Linden responsible for a certain patch not putting his head up on this and it falling between stools, but the belligerent claim from Yavanna that "the pods are Linden approved" needs some back-up, for sure. Yavanna needs to be challenged to name names here, and tell us the Linden or Lindens who provided this approval. Ditto AnneMarie Otoole.

Michael Linden is not a Linden I will ever completely trust or like, after this:

http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2007/11/the-source-of-t.html

and even drove me to boycott the Lindens for a very long time:

http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2008/02/on-being-done-w.html

But he does his job, he is dedicated, he has done a lot of good for the mainland, and he does try to be helpful.

[Ann Otoole InSL]

Threats have been made. Michael Linden can refute them or leave. I won't care either way. Rod Humble needs to polygraph the entire company and get rid of every person that has been granting favors and any form of racketeering including running businesses at an advantage. yes they have been doing this. And no, as per LL support, LL does not track IP addresses so it is open season on SL.

[Selador Cellardoor]

Well I am happy to see any activity on the roads of sl. It strikes me that people who are upset these pods have to ignore the ugly builds, the ad farms, the ban lines, and all the other clutter that unfortunately make sl what it is. I think it is a brilliant project, and breathes a bit of life into a mainland that is, to say the least, a bit moribund.
And Prokofy, I have never heard you be so unpleasant before. In the quoted chat you sound as though you are not interested in any discussion other than your own insults. I thought you were intelligent enough to understand that if you want to put your point of view you don't do so in a way that will make the other person stop listening to you.

[Prokofy Neva]

Selador, once again, you're not grasping the obvious: *fucktards* that fill up the public domain with their crap have committed an assault *first*. You don't take a polite and civil or even cringing attitude to such people -- you push back hard and equally and just as obnoxiously with as much force as you can.

I guess you don't spend much time on the mainland. Because ad farms are cleaned up, the LPDW has rebuilt and landscaped rodes, the sim seams work better, and real people are out in their vehicles and it's much, much nicer than it was. That's why it's so *fucking obnoxious* that these two are filling up sims with their vanity crap. They have no call to do this and are just inflicting their own particularist software hubris on the general public -- and you're justifying it.

You act as if there is a "point of view" here that has some legitimacy -- that the perspective called "I get to send my vehicles all over the world and inflict my creations on everyone" is something legitimate.

That's where you're wrong. There isn't a *fucking thing* legitimate about such hubris. That you justify it as an oldbie charter geek doesn't make it right.

The mainland isn't the ugly ban-line filled thing you imagine. And indeed, if it were, these vehicles couldn't get two feet even on Linden roads.

You have no possible way you can justify the infliction of this clutter on the public.

Michael Linden is quoted on sluniverse.com as saying at an office hour that if someone wants to make a potato vehicle with 20 noses and an ad "Eat at Joe's", they can.

And you can bet that if I made a giant raven with 20 heads and wrote "Rent Ravenglass Rentals" you'd all be howling in your FIC headquarters.

But put the vehicle in the form of a "pod," or make it seem like some cool scripting exercise, and hey, it's ok.

[Cinder Roxley]

nothing "breathes life" into mainland like a dozen derelict taxi cabs and oil tankers spazming and twitching into the side of someone's store i guess...

mainland is vibrant and alive if you spend any stretch of time there regularly. watching people come and go, setup shop or a home or an enterprise, host parties, build clubs. it's wonderful really if you don't huddle in your bunker with security on waiting for the next invasion of your neighbors coming by the see what YOU'VE invisioned.

yesterday i saw annmarie resident making regular sweeps over the sandy beach trail looking for dead cars. progress? i dunno, or maybe she's just trying to save face since i've been putting the pics and video documentation of the mess online for everyone to see.