King Philip Joins the Cast of SecondCast
by Alphaville Herald on 02/04/06 at 10:09 am
I’m listening to Episode #10 of SecondCast at the moment, the first of our two-part podcast with Philip Linden, aka Philip Rosedale, the founder and CEO of Linden Lab. The show isn’t quite as free-wheeling as usual, in part because we had to run our questions by SL’s PR machinery before we could ask them. Philip, however, sounded like he enjoyed himself, and threatened to come back for a more open conversation, perhaps on a semi-regular basis — and perhaps even before a “live” Second Life audience. Stay tuned.
Quote of the episode: “I think that I could make more money in Second Life today, I betcha, than I get as a salary working for Linden Lab.”
– Philip Rosedale
Prokofy Neva
Apr 2nd, 2006
Jesus H. Christ. I can’t believe you, Walker, as a respectable journalist, would get into a harness and a muzzle like that one. Pre-vetting the questions through the PR machine?! That’s like having to clear the questions with Brezhnev’s apparatchiks before they are asked. Journalists only agree to that sort of thing when they are dealing with either hugely important people who refuse to give the interview without this clearance (oh, say, the President of the United States) or those kind of ridiculously oppressive tyrants or terrorists who are in the news, and you’re forced to cover them, but they throw up these kinds of roadblocks. So you’re forced to craft questions like, “Turkmenbashi, are the People of Turkmenistan enjoying an ever more happy and prosperous way of life?” “Yes, the people of Turkmenistan, under my wise stewardship, have grown ever more prosperous” –etc. even as all the tob cabinet ministers defect, the people are starving, and Turkmenbashi is using Russian oil money to run drugs and girls.
But…Philip Rosedale, head of a GAME company gets this soft touch???!!!! I’m absolutely appalled — appalled at him and appalled at you all. What, Johnny Ming collects the most obnoxiously obsequious fanboyz like this, and THEY have to have their questions cleared? What’s the virtual world coming to? This is just *awful*.
I can’t believe Philip could make a statement like that, either, about the money-making capacities of SL. He’s totally sloshing over from drinking the Kool-Aid. It makes you wonder for one what kind of collective-farm salaries they have there at the Lab. For another, it makes you realize that maybe the people of Second Life should have gotten together a long time ago and outsourced their gaming technology needs to an independent contractor — lure Phlip away from the competition which isn’t doing such a good job. Perhaps a consortium made up of Anshe Chung, Adam Zaius, the Electric Sheep and other big hitters should offer Philip Rosedale a decent living wage so he can come and program this game right. Free him up from all that time-suck stuff he has to do in his day job giving fatuous interviews to fanboyz who pre-clear questions.
Prokofy Neva
Apr 2nd, 2006
Having finished listening to this, I have that common SL-feelilng of having gone through the looking glass. There’s all the rabid fanboyz assembled — Maxx, Cristiano, Torrid — and they’re lobbing over the fluffballs like “gosh, what’s your vision for the future” and “gosh, golly, is there anything that really excites you about new technology?” and then Philip proceeds to say really important stuff. I’m still parsing it but I mourn a kingdom where the king must be very lonely without any intellectual interlocutors to actually discuss these very big ideas with him. He rambles on excitedly about this important stuff, and they sit there, mute.
In fact, one of the wierdnesses of the whole SL podcast thinger is the feeling that none of the people are talking to each other. It’s like, they’ve put on their best NPR-type We Know Best radio chat show voices, lowering them a few timbers, and put on their best jazzy intro music but then…they don’t have a conversation. They just deliver these little set pieces.
Johnny Ming
Apr 2nd, 2006
I’m sorry you are dissapointed with SecondCast and, based on all of the positive feedback we’ve received so far, I am hopefull that no one else shares your sentiments.
Submitting questions in advance of an interview is common when the person being interviewed retains PR services or is unfamiliar with program format.
The actual scrutiny of questions varies and in this case, Philip had no prepared answers and had not even read through them.
Most importantly, none of our listeners’ questions were singled out and questioned by Linden Lab.
Prokofy Neva
Apr 2nd, 2006
Oh, go one, Johnny, it *is not common* at all for real journalists to engage in this kind of toadyism. Perhaps it’s MMORPEG fanboyz game behaviour, but it has no place in our world. It’s not like Linden Lab is the frigging Kremlin or White House — and if they are pretending that they’ve risen to that stature, then they need to have a hole poked in their balloon.
There is no reason on God’s green earth that you should be vetting and sanitizing questions to Philip Linden. Is this to be the norm now, like Jeska just conveniently “loss in a crash” all the player base questions off the forum in the last really disappointing town hall?
If he can’t come on a show with *already sanitized and vetted and pre-screened people* like Cristiano and Walker, then what good is he???
That he had interesting things to say was almost a byproduct of this approach. If you got good feedback (I have no idea how you measure this or what your metrics are other than little fanboyz clicking on a pre-digested streamed site) that’s no indication that the journalistic methodology here was justified. It’s not.
As for your idea that I’m the only one that has a problem with this, wait until Uri shows up. And read secondcitizens. People don’t enjoy this kind of push media and they resent it. It’s not credible.
I’m simply ashamed that the ruler of our world can’t take spontaneous questioning even from his most loyal subjects, and that those most loyal subjects can’t even find it in themselves to understand what’s wrong about pre-cleared questions.
I guess in your world, the press releases that Google serves up as “news,” or the various breathless and biased blogs out there are “news sources”. These aren’t credible in my world.
Prokofy Neva
Apr 2nd, 2006
“Most importantly, none of our listeners’ questions were singled out and questioned by Linden Lab.”
Well, Johnny, that’s known as “self-censorship” — I’m sure that you, being a new broadcaster trying to get your show a “brand identity” want to have as cautious and careful an entree to LL’s PR department as you can — after all, all you wanted to do was just get Philip on the show, and you were willing to take any conditions.
That’s not necessarily in the public interest.
Self-censorship can be almost instinctive in accommodating the powers that be — you may feel indignantly that you had every freedom to say what you want, and yet…you didn’t give him anything but fluffballs.