From the Forums Banned
by Alphaville Herald on 16/06/05 at 8:40 am
Newsflash! Our sources tell us that the ever-controversial Prokofy Neva has received notification from Linden Lab that he and his alts will no longer be able to post to the Second Life forums. No 72-hour ban here, the Prok has been perma-gagged, at least as far as the forums are concerned.
The ban comes for having “repeatedly violated the Community Standards and the Forum Guidelines,” according to Linden Lab, the back-breaking straw having occurred on June 15. As is normal in the sometimes strange judicial system that prevails in Second Life, the identity of any accuser is not made known even to the one being charged, nor is the specific CS violation cited.
But Prok has no lack of enemies in the forums. His “whinescraper” forum posts have managed to engender broad hostility and even retaliatory attacks, while raising some of the most important issues on the Grid, issues that even Linden Lab concedes, both publicly and privately, are valid concerns. It was Prokofy, remember, who coined the term Feted Inner Core, a term that has spread widely over the Grid and has even appeared in the log-on message of LL’s client software.
But he seems unable to raise these concerns without at the same time attacking those he would protect the Grid from. And when the spark from their flinty retaliations hits the kindling strewn about the forums, a series of conflagratory flame wars has been the only result.
The behavior has been reprehensible on both sides of the argument. Prok’s posts are inflammatory and insulting. The community’s reaction to him has been no less than vile, at times. It was probably inevitable that a forum permaban would be handed down. But we’ll be sorry to see one of the most interesting characters in Second Life silenced in that realm.
Tony Walsh
Jun 16th, 2005
Holy shit. Silencing a great agitator, contrarian, and thinker is good for business, right? I bet Uri’s jealous he didn’t get banned first.
Prokofy Neva
Jun 16th, 2005
The straw that broke the camel’s back was my post saying that Aimee Weber’s name reminded me of the prom queen in high school who would have a little heart over the “i” in her name as a dot, and that aircraft designer Cubey Terra’s name actually meant “earth”. THIS is inflammatory? LOL. Only in the hothouse, touchy, provincial, smug little world of Second Life.
Lindens themselves acknowledged that I did not violate the TOS. Everybody knows that Aimee has made a “revenge of the geeks” brand that plays on the reverse prom queen but my point was about the associations with her name, and her cliquishness and exlusionary tactics (she proposed creating entire forum categories and methods to exclude me). My commentary was therefore on associations with her name, and not a personal attack.
I think if you study my history of posts, you will not find that I make inflammatory personal attacks. Rather, I would post an interesting or original thought that challenged the status quo, the bastions of the forums like Chip Midnight or Cristiano Midnight or Cienna Rand or Enabran Templar would get indigant, and they and others would them make personal insults of me, and I would fight back.
The entire system is insidious — like the KGB’s ranks of informers, getting people to rat on their neighbours. These forum nannies would abuse-report me by pressing the little red button, whether or not there was an actual TOS violation (there was not), and Lindens would come running, seeing multiple reports coming across the transom. Lindens are set up only to deal with one case at a time, not actually follow the discussion and peruse all the postings, so they would look at a post in isolation, and more often than not make biased decisions to warn or delete or close threads based on those FIC ARs. Meanwhile for the longest time, I never used the AR system myself because I viewed it as akin to informing on people to an injust police state — you cannot face a jury of your peers, you cannot face your accuser, you cannot hire defense counsel, you cannot sequester witnesses or bring your own, you cannot defend yourself in statements to correct the record.
It’s a horrid vicious little system. LL’s seemingly more liberal forums have honed these vicious informant’s system to a fine art. And the Lindens themselves would behave like KGB agents coming to talk to members of the Soviet Writers Union by contacting me even at 10 p.m. on a Saturday night to have a little “chat” about the forums, asking me to “tone it down”.
I critiqued Aimee and Cubey not out of the blue, but because Pathfinder ran one of those typical Linden blow-job type of endorsements of the FIC, and article by Besty Book which breathlessly described their inworld branding. There wasn’t a lot of “there there” in Betsy’s piece, but the take-home was “buy Aimee’s clothes and fly Cubey’s airplanes they’re kewl kids”. Tongue in cheek, I said the best form of in-game branding was to get a Linden to endorse an insider expert who was featuring your brand in their article LOL. That prompted the usual fanboyz’ howling.
I don’t question their quality, their hard work, their skills. I question their privileging, in having spots like 3 pictures on the SL website for Aimee, or Cubey’s being allowed to advertise in the WA with his ships and notecards, something few other players are allowed to do. So keen is the desire for “kewl content” that they’ll cut corners on their own rules.
Whatever the sharpness of my critique, it never approached anything like the hysterical, sick effluvia of the FIC and friends. Dark Cellador posted pictures of my forum raven avatar with his head blown off and bloody. In the last few days, somebody called me a sick, fat, masturbatory gay man with no life, and that was allowed to stand — it was only me going against my own sense that informing is wrong and AR’ing it that got the Lindens to look. Ulrika Zugzwang had a jpeg of my forum avatar as an asshat with a naked butt crack for weeks, it’s still there. Jauani Wu was able to start 6 threads in which he falsely accused me of skimming, scamming, scumming, whatever in a blatantly hypocritcal attack on the 10 percent bonus available for all land groups, including his own!
There are countless examples of ad hominem unfair attacks. Merwan Marker blackmailed me within the forums, claiming he had RL news articles that said I’d committed a RL crime — he and other google witch-hunters had the *wrong* RL person on the Internet — a person who had committed plagiarism completely unrelated to me. Nolan Nash, Cienna Samiam, Weedy Herbst and scores of others routinely disclosed my RL information, something that is
a TOS violation if that information is not written on the in-game SL profile — which it is NOT.
And they were helped to do that by the Herald, which in its day, scrounged around to try to out my RL by using their winniing combinatoin of tracking IPs and googling and trolling for HUMINT in games. I’ve stood by the Herald only because it’s the only free press we have for SL and TSO. Yet there’s no question that it was the SLH that helped to ruin my Second Life — something you don’t get a second chance to make if you have tied your profile to a name.
Scores of people — including the Lindens — have believed the utter tripe they have found here in the article “The Second Coming of Dyerbrook”. This article claims falsely I was banned from TSO and more feverish nutballs like Nolan Nash thought I then was a proven “community wrecker” — that was what originally gave him incentive to stalk me, dig up my RL info, and blow in on the SL forums and in-game. Lindens are still admonishing me that I was “banned from TSO” although nothing of the kind took place whatsoever. I am a member in good standing in both TSO and Stratics — a temp ban for the TSO or Stratics equivalent of swearing in PG is something many have suffered in that more restrictive environment.
I’m unimpressed with the SL’s very lukewarm response in my defense. I didn’t attack those whom I mean to protect, which is actually the broader public of SL, including many of my customers and the customers of other businesses. I can only conclude that the SLH itself has a vested interest in keeping its ringside seat at the formation of the Metaverse.
Unless we fight it now, the Metaverse is going to be worse than you know, worse than the elitist technocratic utopia envisioned in Snowcrash, more insidiously controlling, exlusionary, and annihilating.
I’ve learned still more about the lack of human solidarity in light when I not only see the silence of my fellow human beings regarding this blatant form of misuse of the AR system and selective prosecution of the TOS. I see how much the SLH claim to freedom of speech and its values is worth. I stood by Urizenus in his hour of need. I even spoke to RL media about the principles at stake, despite my loathing of some of the things Urizenus was doing in TSO and my disagreement with some of his politics. These were basic standards of a democratic society we needed to defend. I see that SLH’s very lukewarm response here sets the stage for my further mauling.
What you don’t realize is that is that now, Lindens have explained to me, I’ve “gotten off lightly”. But in the future, those who “misuse the forums” are going to face inworld discipline as well. I asked whether this would lead to having one’s land seized and investment destroyed. SLH has sometimes asked this question. For now, I’m told no, but once the whim of the perlustrator is unleashed, it knows no bounds. I have no doubt that people will actively harass me with every conceivable ARable offense they can think of, to try to force me from the game. The Lindens, getting these AR reports for swearing or having a “pornographic” sign or whatever, will conclude that I’m a repeat offender and will boot me and seize my considerable land holdings.
The SLH has to be mindful of this if it has any notion of staying related to SL and critical of this environment. It means that like Russia, a Khodorkovsky can be seized and thrown in jail and ahve his assets seized in a blatantly rigged and selective prosectution for challenging the government.
I’m glad that I was able to post 3,311 posts, many of 2000-word length, to document these critical issues at the outset of the Metaverse. My last post was “Is SL Ready for Investment?” in which I questioned how LL would respond when RL businesses and non-profits began to live and function in the world, and began to deal with all this Mickey-Mouse MMORPG-induced culture of fanboyz reaching for tattle-tale AR buttons, griefing, playing ratings games, and blocking access to goods and services through control of IPs. You really need to be contemplating this!
This world is upon us, and it’s not a pretty one. The Metaverse originally described in Snowcrash described a technocratic elite that would control access. We are there now. Their right to this privileging is by no means self-evident to me, and scores of others just using common sense.
Particularly appalling was the Linden cave-in on the bounce script issue, after Chris Linden was beat up in the IRC channel. That’s the kind of story SLH should be covering in between the girlie pictures, because it really affects our quality of life.
It’s my hope that now that my critical voice is absent, others not yet bloodied in forum battles will pick up the torch and run with it, but keeping in mind the great personal risks involved. Soon I will be writing a blog about “My So-Called Second Life”.
Urizenus
Jun 16th, 2005
true enough Tony, I’m jealous as shit! I can’t even get kicked out of Area 51 these days.
But I do want to say that while Prok’s posts are outrageous and yes insulting I have yet to see one that is banworthy. It seems to me that the real concern for the Lindens is the shitstorm that he brews up and all the recriminations and cyberstalking and threats that come in its wake.
So the Linden’s decided that banning him is warranted not because of what he says or does, but because of the dangerous reaction he is eliciting from other gamers.
It is almost like the Lindens are putting him in Virtual Protective Custody.
Urizenus
Jun 16th, 2005
“I stood by Urizenus in his hour of need.” Prok, that is the greatest piece of revisionary writing since Al Gore invented the internet.
I’d also like to know what r/l info we’ve published about you. I must have missed it. I’d also like to know what you think one can learn from an IP address. Your ISP? How often you log on from Starbucks?
But despite all that The Herald is concerned about these recent developments.
Walker Spaight
Jun 16th, 2005
“I didn’t attack those whom I mean to protect”
I agree with you, Prok. That’s not what I said. I said you attacked those you would protect the Grid from, i.e., the people you disagree with. And I didn’t leave out their behavior toward you, either. In fact, I used the word “vile” in reference to that.
Aimee Weber
Jun 16th, 2005
I will not miss Prokofy’s relentless forum assault against me and my character. The non-stop stream of lies, mischaracterizations, accusations, innuendos and speculation that I had to fend off nearly every day are finally finished.
Prok can now rant on his blog and on SLHerald in a desperate attempt to rewrite history and make herself a martyr. But the SL Forum Archives forever stand. Both of our posts can be searched to reveal the patience and decorum I exhibited while suffering from Prok’s vicious campaign against me.
Even here and now you post vicious lies and half truths. Only now it doesn’t matter. GOOD RIDDANCE!
Fudge
Jun 16th, 2005
They finally shut your big, ugly mouth. You’ve been an angry, jealous little turd from day 1.
toy
Jun 16th, 2005
long live the FIC hehehe
Lordfly Digeridoo
Jun 16th, 2005
About god damned time. In any other forum, prok would have been banned six months ago for the inflammatory bullshit he constantly provokes from the community at large. If anyone still listens to him and his multiple personalities other than confused newbies and illiterates who can’t read his bible-length conspiracy theories, they need to be beaten with a cluestick, pronto.
Good riddance.
Eboni Khan
Jun 16th, 2005
I hate myself for saying it, but I will miss Prokofy, sort of.
Cristiano Midnight
Jun 16th, 2005
I could not have said it better than Aimee’s comment above – it mirrors my own experience and sentiment about Prokofy.
Prokofy Neva
Jun 16th, 2005
Aimee, you’ve let to show anything I’ve written to be a “lie”. What, your name is *not* taken up by prom queens and put with little hearts on the “i”? *Of course it is*. Did you not suggest forum revisions to get rid of me? Of course you did. Did you not take angry, touchy exception to my careful methodic arguments against you wacky introduction of yet another button to the UI? *Of course you did*. In fact, I never understood how your other scripterati friends who sell these aggressive bounce scripts were going to put up with your button that would render them useless — ever think of that? You were obsessing about your belief that I “slandered” you by accusing you plotted against me in the IRC channel, but you didn’t get my more subtle point — you created an enabling environment by leading the back to shun me and revise the forums totally around me. You have your way now, but it is a battle lost and a war won — sometimes winning is losing when it helps expose the creepy little cliques of wannabees who populate the lifers at the SL forums.
Lordfly, you are a typical fanboy — it’s a phase I hope you’ll grow out of as you get older. Soon you will realize that if this can happen to me, it can happen to you, too, and you will realize this isn’t a world you can live in.
Urizenus, I am damn tired of having my private RL details pawed over on the Internet by a bunch of fucktards. Neal and Walker can help you find the relevant links that they dug up with their own sleuthing. It’s a combo of googling and making the right links and talking to the right people, and that enabled the creepy little stalker Nolan Nash to first attempt to blackmail me, then disclosure RL info on the SL forums, which is a TOS violation for which he was given only a slap. Really, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. And any notion that I have “outed myself” is false, I merely joked using an old joke we had already established in TSO as you may recall. I’ve never seen a single apology or retraction for that scurrilous piece you ran about Dyerbrook’s Second Coming. I guess you are still mad about the Selena Witch hoax.
Prokofy Neva
Jun 16th, 2005
I indeed stood by you in your hour of need precisely because I criticized your journalism as inept, I critized what you did with your stories, as is my right, but I defended your right to do it and to stay in TSO and I criticized EA.com for banning you, including in RL media. I’ve always defended your case as you know. Or does standing by you only include sucking up to you Uri? Surely you know that the more valuable defense is something like what Eboni has just written.
Curse you, Cristiano Midnight! What, you can only hide behind Aimee’s skirts?
Enabran Templar
Jun 16th, 2005
Haha, the blind, impotent rage is very amusing.
Justice has finally seen its service.
Cristiano Midnight
Jun 16th, 2005
It’s nice to see you hitting refresh like crazy waiting for new comments. Get used to it.
Chrestomanci Bard
Jun 16th, 2005
Heh. Looks like it finally happened. Prok, you can rant all you like, hon, but you can’t say you didn’t know this was coming…it was only a matter of time.
I’m mixed on it all, really. Love Prok or hate him, worship or vilify, we all know who he *is*. And as the article stated, somewhere among the hubris were some decent suggestions that, if able to be taken seriously and implemented, probably would have/could still help the game’s structure immensely.
As a friend of mine said after reading this article: “It’s like the end of an era.” We are now in SL Forums, AP: After Prok. Let’s see what happens next…
And I swear, Prokofy, if you rip me to shreds for this post, I’ll…I’ll…ignore it completely…as many others probably should have done in the first place. Ah well.
MrsJakal Suavage
Jun 16th, 2005
Finally, I personally have had Prok on mute for about a month now, on the forums and IW. Although most would disagree with me on doing this like its some sort of censorship. I did this because I was tired of hisher personal attacks, half truths and paranoia towards me. I was one of those that actually supported prok in the beginning and even helped this person out IW. Only to be repaid with a bunch of paranoid garbage about how everyone is part of some sort of conspiracy. When I disagreed and decided to not support himher…then the lies and attacks began toward me on the forums. I defended myself for a little while but then quickly realized that I was not speaking to someone that had a healthy mind. Am I insulting Prok? No, I don’t really think so. This is my honest opinion based on countless conversations with himher.
I’m am not going to try to deny the fact that I’m happier than Bear with honey that Prok is gone. Noone got rid of Prok but Prok hisherself.
Goodbye Prok!
MJ
Trimda Hedges
Jun 16th, 2005
Prok, I do have to say that your posts have always been an interesting read and a test of my willpower to not hit the reply button in shear “I must beat this person’s head in with my keyboard” temptations.
As for the ban, its been a long time coming Prok, its not like this is totally unexpected. Infact, I am quite suprised that LL let the trolling go on for as long as they did. Its not like you were lining yourself up for it or anything.
jauani
Jun 16th, 2005
prok that’s a ridiculous accusation! i did not attack you. i was just trying to discusss tier donation vs tier lebverage with you and you went bonkers that i disagreed with you. apparently disagreeing with you is attacking you. apparantly if you don’t let prok choose your friends for you, you are an abomination. you are such a hypocrite, sending me the most hurtful and immature messages and then pretending to be vicitmized on the board.
get a life prok! get a second life!
Prokofy Neva
Jun 16th, 2005
Enabran, I don’t experience blind rage, I experience the inner calm that comes from living in the Light of Conscience and the Passion of Justice which I hope you can experience some day. I know I’m right. I know I did the right thing. I know my sacrifices are not in vain. Enabran, you are sluggy little fanboy who pushed the AR button with your pudgy little finger enough times to make your Lindens come running. Are you proud of yourself? You know in the dark night of your soul, if you have one, you secretly wonder if this is the world you’d want to live in, that it might not be a little bit — heck, a lot like! — the Cuba your family fled from. Think about that.
Mrs. Savage Jackal, I think you never really honestly read your own chat history hon which proved you to be an annoying, self-righteous bitch in terms of an inworld land dispute that in fact I worked overtime to solve, solve at a loss to myself, and solve in your favour. Some people can never take “yes” for an answer. I hope your SL has been enhanced by my purchase of your land : )
Chres, I don’t get mad at people, I just fight back as you know. All of these personal attacks begain against me first. Where is the substance of the conversation? Where are the ideas? Enabran, Cristiano, MrsJ, Eboni — all of them can only spin their wheels and fume hysterically without explaining really what it was I *said* or *did* except prick the balloon of their arrogant self-adulation. Honestly, where is the grappling of ideas? Chres, I know at least you tried to reason through my ideas, for which I’m grateful.
SL was and remains a smug, provincial village full of self-satisifed burghers with a medieval guild mentality. It is not a tolerant, urban space in which your imagination can really be implemented. Once again I have to say it is Their World, Your Adaptation, Their Imagination, Your Adaption and that if you do spread your wings and implement an imagined tolerant and free world, they will try to clip your wings and make you fall to earth. I’ll keep fighting.
Prokofy Neva
Jun 16th, 2005
Trimda, I continue to maintain that I did not commit any TOS violation, that Linden Labs cannot demonstrate the forums posts that commit TOS violations, and that I am a victim of selective prosecution and lack of due process.
Cristiano Midnight
Jun 16th, 2005
You know, Prokofy, I actually did not want to see you banned, and like Eboni, will miss you in an odd way. In some of your posts, you did raise valid issues. You just never ever learned how to do it without dragging someone through the mud in the process. In this case, it was the messenger, not the message, that rightfully got shot. There is nothing wrong with being critical of an establishment, and asking questions. However, your style of “reporting” was a bottomfeeding attempt at wielding the forums to get in personal attracks under the guise of “asking questions”. The forums will certainly be a better place without you – there are far superior critics – verbosity and endless references to Russia do not an effective critic make. Good luck with your in world ventures and that blog of yours. Perhaps there will be a book deal in your future.
And to close, I offer my favorite of your IMs to me, which takes on a new level of irony given that you have now been rendered impotent:
“Suck my dick, Cristiano… and if you don’t think I have a dick, don’t wait until you are choking on it to find out the turth.(sic)”-Prokofy Neva
Cienna Rand
Jun 16th, 2005
I am honored that, even though I replied to perhaps three or four of your whinescrapers, I am counted among the “status quo” as a “bastion of the forums”.
This is truly a good day.
Enabran Templar
Jun 16th, 2005
My family fled from Puerto Rico, not Cuba. And not so much fled as my mom and I got on a plane one day to go to New York.
But thanks for playing!
As for the rest of your ragings, well, keep on! Your new impotence is hilarious.
Forseti Svarog
Jun 16th, 2005
To walker, re: your line “The community’s reaction to him has been no less than vile, at times.”
There is no “community” here. There are merely individuals reading Prok’s posts and making decisions about how they want to repond. Some handled it well, some less so. Personally, I tried to treat prok with respect when he was respectful, and pushed back hard when he was being a hypocritical dickhead. Unfortunately, there was way too much of the latter, and a paucity of the former.
Prok may have skirted the letter of the TOS law for a while, but was definitely breaking the spirit all along.
Walker Spaight
Jun 16th, 2005
Forseti, I stand corrected. You are absolutely right, while some individuals reacted as strongly as Prok’s original posts, or even more strongly at times, there was no collective or organized reaction on the part of an imagined community, or at least none that I intended to refer to in the story.
pandastrong Fairplay
Jun 16th, 2005
Prok’s faux bonhomme douchebag erudition is now going to translate into boo-hoo pixel martyrdom. I CAN HARDLY WAIT!
montserrat
Jun 16th, 2005
so tell me.
what are YOU going to wear when you go see jon stewart?
Prokofy Neva
Jun 16th, 2005
Hmm, pandastrong you’ve been strangely MIA lately and silence *gasp* have you been *banned*????
Cristiano, I’m as hard as ever and continue to go on screwing the establishment if that’s what it takes. I’m not rendered impotent in the slightest, you are, by remaining with those wimpy dickless wonders who are the Lindens lackey fanboyz. And you know it and you know it is your secret shame.
All of your FICs were the ones who were past-masters at insulting in the guise of a guestion or a fake generic statement, and now you’re latest trick is to go up in the Hotline to the Lindens to post the perfect bullet-proof post free from criticism from another player, eh?
Enabran, you yourself talked in the forums that family that fled from Cuba. I didn’t make this up. I read it in the forums. If it wasn’t personally you, well, you said, “Family” so it wasn’t clear. And I don’t care if you fled your way out of a paper bag, it’s not material, the point is you take the fight against socialism so far over to the right that you have become as rigid and intolerent and indignant permanently as they are.
Walker, I can see you are grooming yourself to become more of an establishment journalist. You all genuflect now in so many directions that you must have arthritic knees, gah, the bunch of you, old ladies.
Prokofy Neva
Jun 16th, 2005
Cristiano, by the way a little crucial CONTEXT might be an order to understand why I would tell you to suck my dick.
1) You published a rabid mixture of falsehoods and libel from the wrong RL on your scurrilous forums. Disreputable! Yes, published. Deciding to allow your posters to violate your own TOS against libel is exactly that, and you know it. You may have no sanctions against RL disclosure or verbal harassment or publication of chat logs — all verboten within SL and on SL’s forums — but you handily skirt the TOS by being on your own server, as intimately connected as you are to LL by your operation to weld yourselves at the hip. So sure, if you do things on your site that you can’t get away with within SL, I’ll call you on that when you are also a touted and feted third-party site which is a partner to LL.
Oh, did you notice? The fanz are calling these second-party sites. They few the real third parties — the extras, the walk ons, the lesser beings — as the players, the customers. The first party is LL. The second party is the fan sites like Cristiano’s or Adam’s. The third party is the rest of us.
When will this Pinnochio game grow up and become a Real Boy?
Nerferder
Jun 16th, 2005
Oh did you notice? Prokofy is now relegated to the Herald. The same fanzine he denounced as full of shit, especially with reference to the virtual paper trail she has left behind here.
[personal info stuff elided. --Uri]
Prokofy Neva
Jun 16th, 2005
Walker, your notion that there was no organized and concerted shunning campaign flies in the face of the facts. We’ve all seen the IRC chat history — the story you never wrote about “Lindens in the Chat: How They Do it” — getting together to plot how to ban me (of course Lindens never plot, they just listen to players and then say stuff like “you didn’t hear it from me, et”. Or look at the mass shun-in on the forums where everyone put me on mute and ignore — they had a field day with that 6th grade stuff. Of course it is organized, duh.
Enabran Templar
Jun 16th, 2005
Wow, Prokofy is encouraging men to suck his dick and telling me, a Puerto Rican, that my family fled from Cuba.
The first may be a matter of personal taste but the last is just not a true thing.
[stuff about mental health elided --Uri]
Satchmo Prototype
Jun 16th, 2005
I’m not one for censorship but as far as the TOS goes, I’d look at the line that says flaming, spamming, trolling.
Prokofy Neva
Jun 16th, 2005
OMG, check out the new Draconian forum rules! One might as well call this the Prokofy Act not unlike the Smith Act, and like the Smith Act, I’m sure we can count on it, oh, in 50 years time, becoming an odd historical artifact studied in the history of seditious libel and how nations overcome their dependency on such repressive tools.
toy
Jun 16th, 2005
Goodness, now a temper tantrum Dyer??? this must have got to you more than you say
Urizenus
Jun 16th, 2005
Steering Post: OK you guys, the rules here are that you can say pretty much whatever you want except you can’t take it to RL. That is, attack the avi all you want, but don’t bother with allusions to r/l identity and suppositions about r/l mental health yadda yadda yadda. Any remarks that are too close to these rails will get elided by the editors before the comments are posted. Thank you. –The Management
Enabran Templar
Jun 16th, 2005
Poor Prok. His true colors laid bare for all to witness. Gone is the mask of verbose bravado. All that is left to him is his truest self.
pandastrong Fairplay
Jun 16th, 2005
“Hmm, pandastrong you’ve been strangely MIA lately and silence *gasp* have you been *banned*????”
Naw, I just posted the other day. I have been rather busy IRL, however I was informed of your recent ban and had to pop in to watch your digital breakdown. This is rather enjoyable in a really fucking sick way!
Big smiles all around, Prok!
Ardith Mifflin
Jun 16th, 2005
I was the leader of the extemporaneous shunning effort, Prok. It was a movement started by one person (myself) which spread simply by virtue of its appeal. When presented with a malignant and disgusting cancer, most people are more than willing to do their part to eradicate the disease without needing coercion from the ruling clique.
Cocoanut
Jun 16th, 2005
Well, I AM an established journalist. An award-winning one.
The people responding with glee on this thread are, as far as I have been able to determine, the very people who have caused most of the trouble.
And yes, they do act as a group.
Prok’s amusing – if not diplomatic – analysis of the associations with people’s names was in no way a bannable offense. In short, it amounts to, “he said my name was the sort of name a prom queen would have.”
I do believe this isn’t nearly as terrible as what happened to me when I got on those forums. I spent a month being dismissed with jokes and winks as an alt. I went to the trouble of telling a great deal about myself, when I met Prok, how we differed, and all that, how yes, I was thought an alt on here too at first, to dispell that happening. (Note: Aimee did none of what I am saying here to me.)
It didn’t, so I started yelling about it. I BEGGED Pathfinder to please post my IP or whatever it is so people would know I was my own person. No response.
Eventually, people who could not recognize an independent mind if it splatted them in the face began to realize I was an individual. Then they started saying I was a “troll” (and no I’m not Uri; board ho yes, troll no), a “wannabe troll”, a “bedazzled follower,” etc.
It was appalling.
Then they started a “shunning” campaign that was the ugliest thing I ever saw on the boards. They called Prok every name in the book, including “sick f***”, and, well, so many variations I couldn’t remember them all; possibly a hundred or so attacks on him with words like these which I just happen to have personally viewed myself.
They followed him around from forum to forum. He couldn’t post the most innocent post, or poll, or ANYTHING without some of these same names you see above coming in on his thread to start with the abuse.
Because . . . they are incapable of being rational beyond their hatred; of approaching each statement for what it actually contains.
Now they have gotten rid of Prok. What’s worse, the new plan is to tie what you say with the game: If you are banned from the forums, you are also banned from the game.
Obviously, had this existed earlier, they would have been able to rob Prok of his holdings in the game as well.
Clearly it will offer more opportunities for influential people acting in concert to rid the game of anyone else they hate. Not just the forums – THE GAME.
That the Lindens are in bed with some of these influential players is not only pitiably obvious – I won’t bother to go into all the ways here, but some of them are astounding. Now, that is natural, in practically any system. And not totally bad.
But what is bad is the person who pointed this out – who even coined the term for it – got silenced.
And why? Because a few people couldn’t handle the heat. Since they owned the kitchen, they kicked Prok out.
coco
Nerferder
Jun 16th, 2005
What a joke, the management edits the hell out of our posts.
Mine wasn’t edited for “personal info stuff”. It was edited because I pointed out that Prok’s RL info is on the Herald.
Whatever, this place is facist.
It’s been duly noted that this aggressive editing seems o have suddenly sprung up in this particular thread.
Prokofy Neva
Jun 16th, 2005
My RL information is NOT on this site anywhere in terms of ME consenting to put it anywhere or ME linking it to any avatar in any game or ME agreeing that the witchhunts led by a combination of BDSM queens and SSG operatives from TSO, and joined by SL sycophants and FIC fanboyz, can get a confirmation from me. Whatever Uri and co. sleaziliy put together about me is wrong, because I did not consent to it, and they are merely operating by innueno. It is a sacred principle that your avatar in a MMORPG gets to be intact. Of course, we’re told that SL isn’t a game so people now feel freezer to fight back by trying to out RL.
Enabran, you spoke about Cuba in the forums that seems to me to indicate your ties to that country. If you have no ties to that country, didn’t say anything about Cuba in the forums, well, you’re not denying that, instead you’re talking about Puerto Rico. Well who cares where you came from? The only bearing it has on the subject is that in literature as in life, in RL as in SL, people can flee one oppressive tyranny, literally or figuratively, and only replace one form of rigidity and ideoloical fervour for another. I invite you to look at that issue. It has no bearing on your literal national origins. What matters is your oppressive posting to the Hotline, urging Linden to ban me, which is to take the lead of the pack of charging wolves on the forums. It’s not that I’m writhing or showing true colours or twisting in the wind or anything of the kind. I’m living in the light of conscience, absolutely free. I know I’ve spoken my mind and lived free, lived in the world as I wish it to be — and you haven’t. I know that you are all cowed now, trying to figure how the hell you will manuever out of this one, keep your position on the forums to jockey for position in the economy or in the meta-ratings game. That’s all.
What Uri has done now on this forum right now — nipped in the bud any efforts to out RL info as a form of weapon, and out RL slurs like “you’re sick and mentally ill and blah blah” is the kind of common-sense, effective moderation that the Lindens should have instituted MONTHS ago and instituted TO PROTECT ME. Indeed, had they done that, we wouldn’t be here now. Had they protected me as a newbie, when I made my first forrays into the world, but the nasty, condescending, prickish attacks I suffered on that forums, I wouldn’t have fought back. The difference between me and the hordes of people driven off the forums and intimidated by the forum jackals is I FOUGHT BACK. And when I FOUGHT BACK, everyone AR’d me, and it never occurred to me for months to use those same KGB tactics.
Tonight at the events planning meeting, Flipper Peregrine proposed adding Abuse Reporting to events. Great! Having loads of little net nannies and vicious vindictive fanboyz now harass people not only on the forums, but in world. Hate the “too much Tringo” problem? *AR* *AR*. “Well, I just had to do SOMETHING because I was facing a near riot,” Jesse Linden will tell us sheepishly when he closes down some innocent Tringoist. Honestly, where will it end?
You would think that a group of adults would stand up to this troublesome new development and get LL to back down. After all, when they wanted to, the scripterati were bullying Lindens to back down from their decision to get rid of teleporthome
I must say that thing that really strikes me about all the fanboyz who have emerged from the dank, dark, cave of the SL forums into the light of the SL Herald, is how wan and pale they are and timid. I don’t hear ideas. I don’t hear arguments. I don’t hear persuasive rhetoric. Instead, I see a bunch of fakers who, without their Lindens to back them to ban and boot someone they don’t like, they don’t have much starch in them. They can’t fight. They can only call names. Forseti can only call me a hypocritical dickhead, but without citing a single example for any kind of persuasiveness. For two long, all of you had a free ride lording it over the “community” and over the Lindens. Some ants come to your picnic, and your knickers are all in a twist.
Walker Spaight
Jun 17th, 2005
Nerferder, every single newspaper in the world edits its letters to the editor column.
Is Nerferder a new surname in SL, btw?
toy
Jun 17th, 2005
“My RL information is NOT on this site anywhere in terms of ME consenting to put it anywhere or ME linking it to any avatar in any game or ME agreeing that the witchhunts led by a combination of BDSM queens and SSG operatives from TSO, and joined by SL sycophants and FIC fanboyz, can get a confirmation from me. Whatever Uri and co. sleaziliy put together about me is wrong, because I did not consent to it, and they are merely operating by innueno. It is a sacred principle that your avatar in a MMORPG gets to be intact. Of course, we’re told that SL isn’t a game so people now feel freezer to fight back by trying to out RL.
Comment by Prokofy Neva — 6/16/2005 @ 11:59 pm”
How conveniently you have forgotten that it was YOU who initiated the attacks.
montserrat
Jun 17th, 2005
it is a marvelous thing to watch a real board ho in action.
Urizenus
Jun 17th, 2005
I’m tellin’ ya. This is shaping up to be the Royal Rumble of the Board Ho All Stars. The only thing missing is AJ.
Pulling up a lawn chair, cracking open a cold one…
Forseti Svarog
Jun 17th, 2005
the so-called “shunning” effort, prok (which i did not participate in) was still a minority of people who read the forums, not a pre-planned event nor a majority-driven event. A few people just happened to agree with the concept.
I happen to like the new rules. It shouldn’t be so hard to write about ideas and yet remain civil. Anyone who gets banned only has themselves to blame.
Ingrid
Jun 17th, 2005
Coco I get the feeling you’re the kind of person who would see a dog getting beaten and feel bad for the guy beating the dog.
Prok, when you came to SL I spoke to you about the forums here, I remember you telling me “I’m playing nice for now, I don’t need enemies… yet” It’s hard to not think you enjoy all the negative attention. But fulfilling your need for attention at the expense of others isn’t cool and that’s why they banned you. Try to enjoy the rest of your second life.
Chrestomanci Bard
Jun 17th, 2005
“it is a marvelous thing to watch a real board ho in action.”
See…it’s posts like that that are just…stupid. Did you have a point, or were you just that desperate to see your name in print?
Coco, I had no idea you’d been mistaken for an alt. That’s silly and pointless and I’m sorry to hear it. To clarify: I’ve known both Prok *and* Coco, the separate individuals they are, for quite some time. They couldn’t be any more different…but whatever. Believe me or not, doesn’t ruffle my feathers any. I agree with what I agree with, let people know (tactfully) when I disagree with them, and at no point have I needed to resort to pointless ad hominem attacks to get a point across.
I don’t see why you guys feel it’s necessary. But c’est the nature of a forum, I suppose. Carry on, or what have you.