Slashdot Joins Backlash Against Linden Kool-Aid
by Urizenus Sklar on 22/10/06 at 9:55 am
While the Mainstream Meadia (MSM) continues to uncritically slurp down the Linden Kool-Aid, people with some experience in online games and virtual communities continue to say Whoa Nellie! We’ve reported the reservations by Zero Grace and Matt Mihaley, but there is also a tough tough comment thread over on Terra Nova in which luminaries like Raph Koster and Randy Farmer weigh in. Now Slashdot joins the chorus, asking the question of the week: Is Second Life the Paris Hilton of Virtual Worlds? But guys guys guys, if we told you once we told you a hundred times. SL isn’t the Paris Hilton of Virtual Worlds… It’s the Tyra Banks of Virtual Worlds.
dildo baggins
Oct 22nd, 2006
I have to laugh at all the so-called critical analysis of SL…it’s almost as silly as the MSM linden fluffing crowd. A bunch of “virtual world experts” and ubergeek webmonkeys who, by the descriptions of their extensive cross world 3d SNS (sl, there, etc) “experience” (usually about 5 minutes to a day total)…well, imo, they just don’t get “it”. All that writing on terranova, blogs, all those considered opinions on…what? None of them have done any thing substantive in sl in project terms, made any money, run a successfull business, made any new cool friends [excluding linden fluffers and cocoNuts] or anything of the sort that I can see.
All they can debate is “will 3d be the future of TeH internut” or not. Who the fuck cares?
We know exactly where we are on the tech adoption and development curve, why waste all that breathe on pointing out the obvious?
Those of us who do get “it” know that the sl hype is BS, we know the platform is pile of cobbled together shit from the twisted mind of cory “Captain double degree” linden and his band of love fest tech interns, we know their QOS sucks, we know Korporates are just doing it for the PR [100K spend for a korporate on a minor PR campaign is zilch] etc etc etc.
Do we care? Yes…and no.
Those of us who get “it” are using it…not talking about it.
Makeing money with it…not talking about it.
Doing interesting rl/sl projects…not talking about.
Having fun in at sl…not talking about it.
In short – doing things connecting sl and rl,and either having some early adopter fun and /ormaking money at it…not talking about it.
Sure Multiverse, or the next tech cab along, will kick their arse. Who cares? It’s not the technology per se [yes yes we can on and on and on about standards, interop, etc] …it’s about how you use it ultimately that will determine it’s uptake.
Tomas Hausdorff
Oct 22nd, 2006
A bit raw, but well said, Mr. Baggins (calling someone “Dildo” doesn’t seem friendly
).
Second Life has a lot of warts. The media flurry around the environment currently is overly breathless with excitement and is largely ignoring the shortcomings. But the anti-crowd (which, by the way, is nothing new: just because Uri woke up and noticed it today…Slashdot has been ripping on Second Life for months) is shrill as well.
Between the “it’s glorious!” and “it’s crap!” babbling and juvenile name calling lies reality. Second Life provides a great shared Meccano/Tinkertoy/Lego environment for the digital age. It can also be a fantastic community/socializing environment. Will it “change” the world and become Web 3.0? Doubtful, but it has some characteristics that show different and oft-fantasized methods of interaction. It might point the direction, and possibly even grow into that role.
Some folks will get into Second Life and become part of it, some won’t. Maybe it has what it takes to draw a world-changing audience: I don’t know. I’m “on the grid”, building a few things and learning about scripting, and that’s worth a few bucks a month for me. For me, it’s an entertainment with some intriguing possibilities beyond mere entertainment: something beyond or at least outside traditional online games like EQ2 and World of Warcraft.
People who don’t get involved should just shut up and go back to WoW or browsing the web or reading a book- whatever stirs their fancy.
dildo baggins
Oct 22nd, 2006
>>calling someone “Dildo” doesn’t seem friendly
ooo….I don’t about that. Last I heard they were a womans best friend, not man;-)
re: yay/nay sayers
But yes, why don’t they all just shut the fuck up and go back to their orc killing or car racing or Great Expectations e-book reader.
What they fail to see is by not partcipating and adding to the nascent vibe in a positive manner they are missing out on that most valuable of skills that is, to some degree independant of technology – EXPERIENCE!
Instant success is not guarenteed, which is why it’s called the learning curve.
All the hail SLHerald anyway….it seems be the only haven left where you can be senssible about the whole emerging meteaverse paradigm with a sense of humour to boot.
Urizenus
Oct 22nd, 2006
I home there is room to love SL but hate the hype. I agree that a lot of the slashdot comments are being generated by haters with little idea of what it is they are criticizing. On the other end, there is the supreme idiocy of the MSMs uncritical swooning over SL. This praise is generated by people with little idea of what they are praising, and one suspects they have fallen under Philip’s spell and are just recycling Linden PR. It makes me wonder about the business press more generally and how much of business reporting amounts to merely recycling press releases.
dildo baggins
Oct 22nd, 2006
>>It makes me wonder about the business press more generally and how much of business eporting amounts to merely recycling press releases
It’s actually much worse than that. Read any serious investment/trading book by a real investor/trader [ie not academic (no offense) or press columunist] and they have some interesting things to say about the business press.
In general, because there is always the odd truthseeking wildcard, business/financial journalists take no risk with their stories. They don’t want to be seen to be wrong, so they tend to wait until the wave has rolled and people surfing on it, then jump on and start spinning it up quickly. It’s a fine line, but then if it goes sour they can claim everyone was fooled and they are no worse than everybody else. Interesting editorial risk managment.
The interesting thing about the sl case is it exposes them for the fools they are. Because a few fortune 500 companies spend pennies [literally in their normal marketing/pr budget terms] and dump a few press releases out they take it at face values without even analysing what the reality is. You read the same tired lines in all the same articles. More like recycling the articles of a couple of journos.
Basically you believe NOTHING in the MSM business/financial press, unless you have extensive experience with particular journalists and you know their information networks and spin preferences.
The most sensible post from the naysayers was Ralph K, I think, when he points out the subscription bases of highly successfull 2.5 worlds such as neopets, habbo hotel, cyworld etc. They don’t need hype…too busy making money.