Has Plastic Duck Migrated Back to SL?
by Alphaville Herald on 07/04/06 at 10:29 am
Camp Darfur trashed — by Plastic Duck?
Sources tell the Herald that the notorious griefer and W-Hat associate Plastic Duck (the Herald’s third-place Avatar of the Year for 2005) is back. This time, if it’s him, he’s trashed the re-creation of a Sudanese refugee camp [<-- SL link] that’s been built as a consciousness-raising exercise in the Better World sim.
Evidence is slim as to whether or not Plastic is actually the person responsible for flinging Camp Darfur’s prims into disarray, but the av who seemed to be doing the damage was overheard to refer at least obliquely to Plastic himself in the following public chats:
“PS already permabanned :V”
“PS I’m in Africa”
“Plastic says ‘Hi’ “
Two av names have been bandied about as being Plastic’s new handle in SL, one of which is unfindable in the Find utility, suggesting he’s already been re-banned from the world. If the Duck is back, though, brace yourselves. Another wild ride may be in store for SL.
Prokofy Neva
Apr 7th, 2006
I think the Herald needs to step up to the plate re: the public’s right to know and it’s public-interest responsibility and publish the names of the new PD alts.
We all know PD and company blow through SL periodically on new alts all the time, but their M.O. is usually the same repetitive dumb stuff and they get easy to catch. Yet they have the means, using the new cell phone sign-up capacity especially, to keep doing this over and over.
This looks very much like their handwork, but it could be a copy-cat.
If you ever find an interesting activity in SL that is building civil society, getting the world more civilized, making it more than a game or a place to shop and cyber, you can bet dollars to donuts that the terrorist Plastic Duck will be there to destroy it — or his like-minded idealogues. I found this numerous times, i.e. when I tried to create a job recruitment center or create building contests and the W-HAT PD people event-griefed — and I do indeed hold all of WH and all of SA for this ugly phenomenon because they do not disassociate themselves except when people point out the connection and they need to turn the attention away from this connection so they demand political correctness — and they do not denounce these actions, and they do not stop recruiting using the celebration of griefing as a tool.
When we can see a robust denunciation of this trashing of Camp Darfur on the home page of SA or WH; when we can see them clearly disassociate themselves; and most important, when we can see them to cease recruitment by celebrating griefing and violence, then we might just believe they have no connection.
And the ideology is simple, and you’ve heard it before: “they hate our freedom”. That’s why they want to replace it with *their own unfreedom* which in the name of extreme licentiousness to grief destroys the productive freedom of developing a world for others. It’s a classic phenomenon — take your own freedom to the extreme such that it violates others’ freedoms.
It’s really sick-making that PD et. al. would target something that is trying to draw empathy with the plight of the Darfurians by trying to create some visual 3-D representation of them.
It’s sad that this happened and destroyed the work of the Better World people trying to do this on a private island — which they didn’t lard up with ban lists and access-only and invisibility but kept it open to the public precisely because of its educational capacity.
It shows that SL is not ready for non-profit work with the general public yet — only closed projects not open to the public can be guaranteed security.
I blame the Lindens first and foremost for this becase of their absolutely insane, sandbox-celebrating, uber-liberal, extremist laissez-faire policy toward grief-builds: *the Lindens create an enabling environment for terrorism of this nature by refusing to evenly and globally enforce their own TOS about spamming, destroying the enjoyment of SL by others, etc. and refusing to do anything about the Bush guy’s signs or other types of griefing, harmful builds designed to inflict emotional and material damages, destruction of property value, and extortion.*
While the Lindens might ban these latest incarnations and might help quickly reverse the destroying of property in a high-visibility private-island build with high-end customers, they haven’t made the world safe for the rest of us because they do not enforce their own law.
How were they able to move around or destroy prims? Easy — they are no doubt prims put on “share with group” or even “group deeded” to enable a group of people to do a project. I had this problem in Ravenglass where the waterfalls and other items like tenant TV were either on “share with group” or “group deeded”. Griefers, likely the PD gang, were able to join the group on open and simply start editing and moving the prims around, replacing pretty textures with the ugly pictuer of the evil Half-Life guy (one of their iconic signs).
The answer is not to close groups, the answer is not to remove “anyone can move” from the menu that facilitates group project building and education.
The answer is to make griefing with group tools a punishable and bannable offense and enforce it.
Of course, I have my own critique of the Darfur representation. It’s eerie how they chose the most sanitized version of that horror, and it’s eerie being in a game-world environment trying to relate to it. Newbies walk by with boxes on their heads — people are goofing around — somebody’s in an IM — somebody’s half naked or flying around in a dragon outfit or whatever — and that all distracts from the suffering of the people in Darfur and objectifies them and even makes the whole thing into what humanitarians call “disaster porn”.
This sort of troubling issue is what I took on when I first debated Jerry Paffendorf and Hamlet Linden after commentary around the first Future Salon, where Hamlet was linking to a guy writing “let them eat prims” and showing screenshots of starving Africans next to some sexy avatar playing Tringo.
You sometimes wonder if PD is smart enough — i.e., with the intellect of the Unabomber, lets say — though his methods are evil and nefarious — to realize that at the heart of the Darfur pixel presentation, there is something hugely troublesome: it’s new technology that is so speedy and 3-D that it can objectify misery *and* make cavorting white kids have the *illusion* they are doing something about black people’s misery just because the clicked on an edu-prim or saw a movie or clicked on a fatuous email to President Bush — whose chief contribution to all of this has merely been to invoke the threat of a NATO invasion, which only worsened the situation markedly.
And possibly, PD’s concept involved recognizing such a great evil in our time — that unlike eye-witness reports, or writing, or radio, or TV in past centuries, which were delivering the news of plights of people and then spurring RL action, these speedy 3-d representations merely spur pixelated placebos of action. And perhaps recognizing that evil, and also wishing to satirize some of the high-flying pompous do-good self-congratulation always available to be seen in such a project, decided it had to be destroyed instantly. Well, that’s an interesting concept but…
…I actually think PD is NOT that smart or thoughtful. I think he just saw that some group of people were earnestly trying to do good, trying to develop something, trying to make others’ aware, trying to educate, and he trashed it to prevent the development of the world, in part because of a hysterical egocentric notion that the world didn’t appreciate his own “creativity”.
Marsellus Wallace
Apr 7th, 2006
Not bad Plastic! Maybe I should put you on the payroll!!! LOLOL Did I say that outloud? lol *wink*
Marsellus Wallace
Boss, The Sim Mafia
http://www.thesimmafia.com
Hiro Pendragon
Apr 7th, 2006
Wow, Marsellus, way to be added so rapidly to my “tasteless individuals” list.
Marsellus Wallace
Apr 7th, 2006
First off Hiro, it was a joke. Secondly, as if I wasn’t already there already for my past and current shit.. Thirdly, like I care… lol
Marsellus Wallace
Boss, The Sim Mafia
http://www.thesimmafia.com
***Serving Hiro a nice tall glass of Hater-Aid***
800 Pound Gorilla
Apr 8th, 2006
why do you guys give this asshole exposure?
wtf prokofy? when you write a comment that is 10 times longer than the original article, it is no longer a comment. you sound like youre desperately to come off as as an academic but are really just being self absorbed, redundant and pedantic. you come off sounding like some one who is so far up their own ass that they could give themself a tonsilectomy from the wrong side.
Aleena
Apr 8th, 2006
I found Prokofy’s comment to be well-thought. I liked it.
anon griefer
Apr 8th, 2006
Sure these griefers are horrible people for fucking up a sim, but really if it wasn’t for them then you’d have half the plots in SL with land edit on and half the objects in-game with full shared/movable permissions. By exploiting this stuff and screwing with you for comedy reasons they’re teaching you to not be a fucking retard and are teaching you to learn permissions/land options.
When I err, remodeled some of the stuff on your land Prok, I could’ve gone ahead and thrown a griefsphere script into an object owned by you and shared with group and taken the grid down in your name, but that’s no fun. Instead I just put in some random movement scripts and set some of your buidings to physics
Is Plastic still in SL? Of course. Was Plastic responsible for the above? No.
Stillborn Prunes
Apr 8th, 2006
I’m the one that said the stuff, I am not the one that screwed up the sim. I just don’t like Hiro, so I started harassing him. I am also not Plastic Duck, but I figured it would piss off Hiro if I told him that “Plastic Duck says ‘Hi’”
A Concerned Resident
Apr 8th, 2006
Plastic Duck griefed my car yesterday and made me late for work. I hope the FBI catches that elusive African! >:-(
OMG Anon
Apr 9th, 2006
Look at me. OMG. I can fill out a form anonymously and claim to be people I’m not! Ooooh, the boogy man is out there! Boogety boogety boo! OOooh, believe ME, because I’m SO credible in my anonymoty, when I say, “w-hat had no idea this happened”. This is clear and prudent truth!
Stillborn Prunes
Apr 9th, 2006
W-Hat has been more or less inactive for a very long time.
In Kenzo
Apr 14th, 2006
We were griefed again last night at Camp Darfur; this time I could see everything as it happened (as one of the builders on BWI I greeted a guest at Camp Darfur when it all went down). Our team spent hours rebuilding just before our RL Camp Darfur opened in Los Angeles…..after five exhausting days teaching kids and adults about atrocities in Darfur I came home, logged back on and was attacked within minutes.
Beer Brewster was the perpetrator of the latest attack. Two other newbie avatars were present but no statements were made as to why these attacks on Better World Island continue. BWI is an experiment to test the boundaries of social ventures and nonprofit outreach in SL and with two griefer attacks within a week I think we’re proving that a lot of people can’t handle it when good things happen in SL. There are also many many great people stepping forward to join the better world scouts and in many ways we have the terrorists to thank for more free press and attention for this project.
Hiro is not connected to BWI and should not be considered a related target. He is, however, someone I respect and I have appreciated the numerous avatars, bunnies and superheroes who have agreed to help us monitor Better World.
Any griefer who attacks BWI will be reported and prosecuted, but this is not enough….new avatars can always be created until those actions are tied directly to IPs.
To those who would attack, please know that we will continue to build bigger and better and our team is now growing fast thanks to your antipublicity. There are many better world scouts on there on BWI and beyond who will hunt down anyone who feels it necessary to repeatedly attack a REFUGEE CAMP in the middle of nowhere.
I’m sure we can all find something better to do that attack virtual spaces trying to raise awareness for some very troubled regions of the world. None of us are arrogant enough to think that a virtual refugee camp is somehow going to save the over 2.5 million people displaced with NOTHING….but I pity those who want to be associated with genocide perpetrators and terrorists RL. In a world with such capacity for creativity and joy that’s a sad way to choose to live.
Hiro Pendragon
Apr 16th, 2006
I’ve got to ask, though – why was the whole build set to “anyone can move”?
Persephone Phoenix
Apr 17th, 2006
One good thing is that this idiocy did make me aware of the project when before I wasn’t. Thanks, Herald. I’ll be sending them my support in-world.
While I disagree with Prok on many things, on this I think he is right on target.
In Kenzo
Apr 17th, 2006
Good question Hiro. We were working on it collaboratively, five builders still in process. A few of us, myself included, are new builders and had not been exposed to this kind of griefer damage before. After two attacks in a week we’ve done a LOT to lock down and bring positive attention to the island.
We’ve found that griefers are a lot like janjaweed rebels; they get excited thinking that they can really go do some damage only to end up frustrated that some spirits are too strong to kill. Camp Darfur as a campaign will continue to grow no matter what attacks come along; the griefer damage only brings more attention and support our way. We’re thankful for the hundreds of avatars who have visited this week and taken the time to get involved in some way.
Designer Callie Cline premiered her new fashion line for the Save Darfur coalition: Are You In? will be premiering in stores soon in support of the Camp Darfur project.
Plastic Duck
Apr 18th, 2006
In Kenzo: use the “Share with group” option instead of “Allow anyone to move”. Create a group for your sim, and invite all the builders, and close off the group so no one can join. This not only gives builders MORE control over the objects (gives them full perms so they can take copies and resize/retexture/script/etc) but also prevents people from who aren’t in the group from messing things up.
Alternatively, you could just just “friend” all the builders and give them modify permissions on your stuff. Never EVER use “allow anyone to move” though, and be careful with “share with group”, set the right group on the objects and such. Share with group permissions are a fun thing to exploit as some people can tell you. Find an object (99% of Linden prefabs) shared with group, join said group (the majority of them will be free to join) and throw in some fun particle scripts or grief spheres! The owner of the objects/PVP will show up as the person who shared the stuff with group, and no one will suspect you. Watch for hours as an innocent bystander while Lindens try to figure out what the fuck is going on
Tutti Frutti
Apr 24th, 2006
No one involved in the attacks actually gave a shit about Better World. Not specifically; it was just a target of opportunity. It might as well have been a club or shopping sim. It was there, it was entertaining, and that was all there was to it. The idea that this was a “hate crime,” and that anyone could conceivably be convicted for moving prims (which had been set to “movable by anyone”), is preposterous. If anyone would care to spend tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to prosecute such a case, they are of course free to do so, but perhaps you guys could write this off as an educational experience and donate that money to a worthy cause instead.