The Alphaville Herald

15 Responses to “The FIC is Dead! Long Live the MJW!”

1. 

   montserrat
   

   Sep 2nd, 2005
   

   so if dear prokkie belongs to the FIC and it changes its name
   to metaverse justice watch or whatever, does that mean that
   the FIC is now Good and not Evil?

   and if you join the metaverse justice watch or whatever,
   do you get a good costume? is it like spongebob and
   mermaid man?

   did i wear that cute little free prokkie shirt for absolutely NOTHING?
2. 

   oogles
   

   Sep 2nd, 2005
   

   I would respond but I am merely a tourist and a content facist to boot.

   I will let the MJW speak for me. ALL HAIL THE METAVERSE JUSTICE WATCHERS. YOUR JUSTICE IS THE RIGHT JUSTICE.
3. 

   marilyn murphy
   

   Sep 2nd, 2005
   

   not all that shadowy. group is open membership. several dictatorships have hidden behind semantics. some dictators have named their support groups communist, some socialists and other semantics.
   no i am not comparing this groups jockeying for position as a dictatorship. i am pointing out that a smoke screen of words does not mean truth is being spoken.
   sure it is open membership, but only those who were asked knew about it, and only the chosen few who share a certain view were sitting at that table.
   now that everyone knows about it, and they are going to get flooded with members, the inner cabal, the new fic, will remain in that group as a show of, yes, look at us, we are just one of you, but will create a new group to hold their elitist view above the rabble.
   i am uninterested in what anyones comments about this meeting are. participants, or people who read the transcript as i have.
   read the meeting transcript. work from that, form your own view of what these people were trying to do.
   going to prok blog, looking at others comments, is all biased crap.
   just read what was said at that meeting. and decide for yourself what this group is trying to do.
   i think the real mistake was made by phillip linden in showing up for this meeting.
4. 

   Urizenus
   

   Sep 2nd, 2005
   

   When do we get a group for mack daddy virtual journalists?
5. 

   Walker Spaight
   

   Sep 2nd, 2005
   

   you’re already in it, d00d
6. 

   Prokofy Neva
   

   Sep 2nd, 2005
   

   [elided by reason of spoofing prok]
7. 

   Urizenus
   

   Sep 2nd, 2005
   

   I guess I don’t quite get the problem with special interest groups meeting with Philip. I mean, they may be full of themselves etc., but that isn’t a reason not to meet with them.
8. 

   Prokofy Neva
   

   Sep 2nd, 2005
   

   Uri, someone is posting using my name. I didn’t put that post there that says “lol next you’ll be calling us the FRC – Fetid Rotten Core” with my name put next to it — that’s surprisingly easy to do, but check those almighty IPs that you capture, and you’ll see someone merely stuck my name in there to try to legitimize some nickname for this group that is actually an attempt to discredit it.
   Pretty classic Bolshevik trick, the old False Dmitry, feh.

   Far from being a FIC, this group is advocating basic principles of justice that the game/platform needs. That sort of effort is effective in trying to fight that diffuse and inchoate but very effective lobbying group known as the FIC in all its manifestations but not by positing some silly conspiracy theory with the Trilateral Commission and me in a tinfoil hat, but by picking issues that will simply separate the wheat from the chaff.

   I find a good test question is this: are you for Jeska modeling for the SL Boutique or not? I think marilyn might get behind a simple statement like that. Or not. If she wants to play up to Lindens and sees Lindens as avatars as the currency of the realm as much as the Linden dollars, she’ll play the game of trying to grab them for her cause or event or business. The rest of us are repulsed by that kind of blatant cronyism.

   The group being all likeminded among the founders is not a crime. Jesus, I’ve been really shocked to find out how intolerant, hysterical, and sectarian all these leftoid blowhards are on the forums. They don’t get how a normal civil society works. Groups form, with their own agenda and their own leaders. They don’t try to represent the entire population, and they don’t have to be all things to all men. They pick some issues and they work them. Government meet with them. Cameras are not always present. Sometimes they talk to the press sometimes not. It’s just a group. It’s not a government.

   I think people need to keep their eye on the ball here. This vaunted economically powerful group did…what with their moment in the sun with the Sun God Ra’ as I have put it? They didn’t lobby for telehubs to be kept — this is a FICtion on the forums. There isn’t such a fake thing because a group with this agenda open to everyone doesn’t need to take on what can already be taken on in other groups or even with a simple email to Robin Linden, which anyone can write.

   No, we used this meeting, lasting like 45 minutes, to ask for the Lindens to publish their code of ethics. I think that’s long overdue. And if they don’t have one, they can draft it soon. Or if what they releases is not something that accommodates that Jeska-as-SLB-model problem, then we’ll draft language maybe to help them get such a conflict-of-interest policy stated.

   FIC has been long on nasty and vicious posts and gleeful gloats about supposedly getting another “gotcha” by crashing this meeting, but very, very short in its response to the substance of the issue: is it ok for Lindens to endorse and promote resident business? What are the ground rules for partnership between LL and resident business? And what happens when Linden Lab crushes a resident business, is there a process for adjuciation or even compensation or damage limitation? These are all questions that the FIC themselves would often like to ask but are afraid or else take for granted will never affect them.

   The FIC really hates that sort of thing, because they’d like to keep this big FIC booster machine of the Linden’s web site and media pitches churning forever. But even the common av is getting a bit tired of all those Aimees jeering on the website and flapping their wings.

   I find it absolutely hysterically funny that the five-percent-forum-FIC so shriekingly allergenic to player government give a total pass to the odious Neualtenberg, the leftist experiment in soi-disant “social democracy” (they place a limit on how much land you own so what kind of democracy is that???) which emphatically calls itself a resident government and emphatically would like to see its model replicated and emphatically campaigns for socialist projects to influence the entire grid (like removing the 10 percent bonus for mainland land groups — now that they’re all on a private island where it doesn’t apply LMFAO).

   Just as they give a pass to all kinds of things, like Ouranos, with Pathfinder as its member and its leaders the prize winner in the architectural contest to build the Linden Recruiting Center; like the SL Educational Senate (senate??? huh????) that has Lindens and FIC alike as well as some other well-meaning types who never publish transcripts of their meetings, never explain what they do, and never face lynch mobs on the forums or inworld.

   Guess if its a group the FIC likes, or seems “harmlss” to them, they give it a pass, eh?

   Hilarious too that suck-up fanboyz like Cristiano Midnight confess that some of their communications to the Lindens are to sic the Lindens are their fellow residents to try to crush their businesses — and keep their own advantage. I’m bewildered by his gotcha claim that he blew in Anshe to the Lindens for “taking advantage of the grace period” to pick up sims and start paying tier. Huh? If the Lindens provide a 7-day period (or whoever long it is or was) before you have to pick up your land, that’s a customer courtesy. The Lindens sometimes have things on the auction that you’d want to bid on but you can’t actually take the tier on it until something else is sold so you’d have the tier for it. If the Lindens have a 7-day period to pick up a sim, then pick it up on the 6th day, geez. Pay no tier before it’s name. That ought to be obvious. I actually have the opposite habit because I usually have a reason for betting an auction parcel the infrequent times I do and I immediately want to get it under construction or under a rental box. A land dealer might have other reasons to delay, and if LL provides that, it’s normal. It’s not up to Cristiano to be a smug little weenie and tattle on people, anyway. Let the Lindens to their own land policing. Does Cristiano pay his bandwidth bill when it’s due, or early in the grace period lol? Geez, what a smug self-righteous toad.

   Cristiano is also now wailing on the forums that I’m “corrupt”. It used to be that Cristiano would at least argue with facts, and it was a matter of him interpreting the same event in sapce and time that others could see merely differently, by his own lights. Now he’s just making up stuff! What are the chapter and verse of my so-called corruption, Cristiano? Huh? What did I do now lol? For the life of me, I can’t understand what this reference is — except it’s just the usual crap.

   Walker, that was a good piece, but I am so often in world or reachable that you could have either gotten more info from me, or conversely, gotten more info from all the lynch mobsters that ganged up on us. Anyway. I think you have to ask what it is about the world now that would make barons who don’t even really get along that well and actually have very different takes on the issues would cooperate very quickly in a very determined manner now. This could be because the world really too a major fork in the road. It’s not about telehub lobbying, sheesh. It’s about a real revanche of control by the Lindens and a real sorting out of even the FIC in terms of how much they’ll suck up or how much they’ll let go. It’s a very interesting moment.
9. 

   marilyn murphy
   

   Sep 2nd, 2005
   

   oh uri, i am not that political. i probably speak badly on this issue and cant really relate my own position well. (*looks to see if she has a position)
   i think basically, i dis like the hypocrisy. its not a secret meeting, but wait, it was a secret meeting.
   that people who shout from the roof tops about conspiracies to gain favor or influence with the lindens, form a group and attempt to do that very thing themselves.

   bah. humbug.
10. 

    The Invigilator
    

    Sep 3rd, 2005
    

    There’s a fun little thread for you kids! . . . . .

    http://www.sluniverse.com/forums/Topic5938-18-1.aspx

    Over 5 hours of the MJW group IM in chaotic, power struggle action, as Prokofy and Anshe’s egos clash like handfuls of overcooked pasta flung across a junior high lunchroom!

    “Long live the MJW” my arse – it made it a whole four days before the corrupted would be FIC ate itself!

    Can I get a woot woot?
11. 

    Joe Public
    

    Sep 3rd, 2005
    

    bwhahahaa . . . . . . . . . . .

    http://arago4.tn.utwente.nl/stonedead/movies/life-of-brian/scene-18.html

    Prokky, old girl/son, you should have just used the trotsky solution…
12. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Sep 3rd, 2005
    

    Hey, I thought that analogy about the overcooked pasta was a real hoot! Well, four days in the dog-years of SL might be a record for an effort to make a player-based government, I dunno.

    I’m not interested in that, however, so if it fails and I am recalled or left with only myself and W-Hat and have to fold, that’s fine. I’d just go over to one of my other groups to work the issues. I think the job of this group, or any similarly named group, is to keep a watch on power. Power right now is in the hands of the Lindens and their chosen tekkie and design partners in the FIC. So keeping a watch on power would also involve watching and calling to accountability groups of residents who try to take advantage of this moment to do stuff like create an NGO then bus in hundreds of their tenants and hold “elections” like they do in communist countries. That’s what Anshe Chung was doing, and I wasn’t willing to try to exploit my tenants in this way — and thankfully, they’re not as dependent on me as Anshe’s tenants are because if they don’t like me, don’t like my groups, they can very easily right-click and refund or they can stay and we can ignore each other unless they don’t right-click and pay their rent LOL.

    I personally am not interested in becoming a would-be FIC. I think a smaller group working and articulating the issues primarily about the abuse of power and the lack of justice in SL is just what the doctor ordered. I think that’s happening is that others are seizing a moment when they hear Phil say something like “find a way to make an organization that represents all of SL and we’ll talk to you”.

    That sounds an awful lot like the dictator giving the go-ahead to a few people to make a government that is really more like Nathan Detroit’s permanent floating crap game than anything else — and he’ll be happy to keep it that way and break up the game any time he likes. Later he retracted that and said it wasn’t his right to dictate and it and I agree – we cannot make a group that represents all of SL, and trying to do that is demagogic. So I for one will prefer to work in smaller, less ambitious groups that face and frame the issues and use the traditional methods of documenting, reporting, naming and shaming in dealing with power and justice.
13. 

    Guni Greenstein
    

    Sep 5th, 2005
    

    Being part of Dreamland myself I can attest that Prokofy’s story about Anshe bussing in hundreds of tenants to some vote is just utter bullshit. I also fail to see why it should matter: Prokofy is equally unpopular in all of Second Life, not just Dreamland. I would assume that any vote about Prokofy held among more than 3 people ends with “Prokofy go to hell!” no matter how you select the voters. Lol.
14. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Sep 6th, 2005
    

    Guni, we all know just how much a part of Dreamland you are. And she didn’t bus in “hundreds” — her group only has 100 something — but she sure did bus and sure did work her tenants, please. Look at the transcripts of the meetings:

    “Jade Opel: hmmm was wondering why i was added to the group today?
    Matthias Zander: was wondering the same, Jade
    Jade Opel: no i just got an invite and went oh ok lol and joined i have no idea why i was asked”

    Geez, is that like *obvious* or what??? Do you take peope for idiots! She bused! And even if these two people aren’t tenants, Anshe just politicked and sent out lots of group invites to pack the group. This is the old Bolshevik packing and displacement technique. Pack the hall and clamour for “democracy” and then displace the legitimate group even if you have to create another one with the same-sounding name.

    What she has now is a controlled, filtrated, lustrated group of her cronies, tenants, and faithfuls or at least people that can be expected to “behave” at least long enough to get into power like Aimee Weber or Lordfly who suddenly have acquired enormous respect for land baroning and enormous interest in fighting for the people’s justice lol. Aimee is remarkably silent in these meetings, no doubt busy in IMs. Imagine this: before such an important thing as elections. in a group posturing to portray itself as “representative,” the group is “closed” ostensibly due to “griefers”. People keep IMing me and asking me about these groups with *a sincere wish to work on these issues.* They can’t go in Anshe’s group even if I send them there *because it is closed*. Imagine if you did this in RL — closed off voter registration before an important election. Everyone knows that some time deadline might be in order but the SPEED and HASTE with which Anshe is doing these elections is dictated by her *unseemly need* to show off to Robin Linden that she has “a representative group of SL residents”.

    And what about the known griefers in it who just heckle every meeting whoever holds it?

    This is the sort of thing we don’t need to argue about. Go inworld, open up the FIND on groups, read the list of names. That tells you all you need to know. They are people originally invited in, not because

    I don’t try to get elected and I have no illusions anyone would vote for me (I still think being the no. 1 male at ratemyav.com is some kind of collossal fluke or some wit figuring how you can defeat the system to be hitting the button 1000 times somewhere). I don’t pretend to “represent” SL or anything of any sort. Notice I didn’t jockey for position and try to get on the ballot or whatever in this group — I had never agreed to elections because I thought it was a smaller group of likeminded people willing to work in a different structure.

    It doesn’t matter to me if I’m universally hated and I couldn’t get elected dog-catcher. I play an extremely important role in speaking the truth as I see it by the light of my conscience. Many people are afraid to do that, or they think it is laughable to even speak of such matters; I don’t. Indeed, for the sake of this very important cause of trying to get the Lindens to see that they dare not fuck us over so irrationally like this (with GOM and stipends and so on), I hitched my wagon with Anshe and all I got was a lousy t-shirt saying “Shut Up Tourists!” — a tar I continue to be brushed with though I never used this term and didn’t even hardly speak in the meeting with Phil except to pointedly ask at the very end if he’d sign a Magna Charter.

    Um, I’m not holding my breath.

    Note what Anshe did originally: she created a group of 10-12 of the top land owners in SL to create a powerful response to what Philip Linden was doing with GOM and other issues, but in fact side-stepped the GOM issue (we all agreed it was pointless to raise it) to politick and maneuver to see what she’d get by putting this out and getting the meeting with Phil (it was actually me who suggested simply writing to him and asking for a meeting normally like you’d do with any powerful figure). Once she had all the world watching and even attacking her and the group in the forums for the “secret cabal” etc. she then swiftly cut off her radical flank who kept raising the problem of FIC privileging (me LOL) so that she could appear to serve it up to the FIC, whom she loathes even more than I do (don’t even get me started on this lol).

    You have to wonder, Guni, why your Business Girl would ask me to be the second officer after she founded this group if I was universally hated and unpopular why?

    It’s all tactical and political and example of how the Business Girl may also have aspirations to be Queen of SL — note how she cited her vast experience organizing *guilds and nations* in other games. She has her 50 sims or whatever in Dreamland and can do that. She also has other people who grudgingly concede her power and merely want to ride on her coat-tails to glory in meeting with Phil and hobnobbing about not only the game but how to control other people — especially in businesses they don’t like or are competitive to theirs — like making them eat harsh business losses (Anshe sold her main telehub long ago and laughed all the way to the bank before the crash, so this “telehub compensation” issue will not apply to her very much lol — it’s hilarious really how she’ll be able to appear to be “suffering” and “doing the right thing for the people” on this one when it comes to that.

    What matters it isn’t that any three random voters out there voting on Prokofy would end up saying “Prokofy go to hell” — that’s fine. What matters is that any three random voters wouldn’t all be voting for Anshe, so that she’s ensured she gets the votes by picking her “random” voters carefully.
15. 

    Janus Sartre
    

    Sep 22nd, 2005
    

    It is a commonly held platitude that truth will set one free. In reality and in meta-reality it holds more often true that the more dearly one holds to a version of the truth the harder one will be persecuted for it.

    Prok, I don’t know you, but minimally I have to admire your determination. There is no bad publicity, so fame/infamy are the same when wanting to generate a buzz.

    My general $0.02 on this whole bash-up is this. People will continue to force reinvention of cultural order until they are happy with their status. This, inevitably, will unseat some others from their social status and they will then become the guerillas hoping to assert their adgenda.

    And while all this happens, Lindens will Laugh, because it keeps people engaged, for good or ill.

    Does it really matter to them who it is they turn an ear to or pretend to turn an ear to? Not as long as they have some of their top investors and developers (Read free employees) still churning the wheels to force the economy forward.

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