There’s an unwillingness of extreme sandbox types to understand that even builders and scripters who love SL because it’s open don’t want to live in a world where it’s not only possible to be bashed over the head with flying penises, that sort of rampant griefing is celebrated as art, and copied everywhere triumphantly and gleefully as some kind of bold protest against conformity. That’s bullshit.

I know you aren’t saying that in your post. I’m trying to get across to you that this idea that some people have a bead on SL’s openness and “deserve it” and others don’t is crap. Everybody on SL is an artist. And having it open doesn’t mean it has to be ungovernable and that some tiny percentage of fucktards get to endlessly suppress the freedom of others by filling the public domain with their own freedom — or else force them to quit or go into There if they don’t like getting the tubgirl particle rain on their customers.

I’m sorry, but I don’t like the all or nothing of this discussion. I don’t see why I have to sit and accept tubgirl rain or else be driven to There. I’m creative, too. I think that even in this open-ended world the Lindens are right to have the Big 6. I wish they were as laissez-faire about their forums as they were about the 16 m2 parcel issues. That’s the problem. I’m all for freedom. But Lindens and tekkies are hugely selective about what *is* free. They only want freedom *for what they want to do* which isn’t really freedom.

I’m not free to criticize libsecondlife or Cory Linden’s support of it, am I? I’m banned from the Lindens’ blog for persisting in my LEGITIMATE criticism of this very IFFY proposition and support.

Now does that make sense? To ban me for criticizing the thing that is supposed to be free, the open source movement in SL and its gross excesses? Hello???? WTF???

That’s wrong, and intelligent people know it’s wrong.

What geeky tekkie types often mean by freedom is just freedom for their little gangstas to be free, and step on others. I’m supposed to genuflect to somebody’s superior coding skills and overlook the fact that they are lying griefing fucktards behaving badly in world.

It’s really quite the new horror to have creativity and scientific ability be what can excuse crime.

I truly do see SL as a range or a sliding scale. I think we don’t have to have this absolutist approach — over here, only hugely edgy and wierd products, like some punk record company or something , with insult-happy griefing fucktard scripters, and over there, popping in a Pop-Tart ad for 14-year-old girls in a sanitized PG world.

>Is this how grownups talk? I’ll have to remember that when I graduate with honors… *rolls eyes*

Hell, yeah. I think Reuben Steiger needs to here from members of the public when his little fucktard fanboy hired help behave like assholes. He may believe that the “insult culture that has gone off the rails” as Mark Wallace very aptly described it is ok, and that it’s fine to maintain an atmosphere of “edgy” and “cool” by having asstards like you around, but it’s pretty old, it’s just about adolescent boys behaving like assholes. I don’t see why it’s acceptable.

>Once, you paid me for services rendered. Does this mean everyone should hold you responsible for what I say? What awesome logic.

If you continued to work for me and appear all over my rentals — hell, yeah. Reputations matter. I wouldn’t hire someone and keep them hired if they ran around being gratuitously insulting on forums — especially if I were a development company. To take the public position, as a development company, that all other platforms are shit, that all other forms of virtual worlds are shit except the little niche edgy one where you get to be a big deal, is really dangerously short-sighted. I should think these companies would want to project an image of professionalism and neutrality about not only platforms, but features in worlds. If a world is PG-13 and doesn’t have open-ended user content, it may not be your company’s dream environment but it will be someone else’s and you need to respect that.

>Seriously. We’re all entitled to opinions. You obviously are, with your “snivelling jackass forums fucktard” vocabulary swaying the audiences here.

Yes, I think it’s important that when people use the insult culture on you, you stuff it right back in their face. Others may find some other method works for them, being nice, ignoring, saying something devastating but suble. My method is to get right back atcha. And so I do. Somebody says “Going to There, princess?” they get a slap in the face. Somebody goes out of their way to come swaggering into a thread about a story that they haven’t been mentioned in, that isn’t about them, and behave like an asstard? Pushback, always. I specialize in some pushbacks.

>Your gigantic whinescraper railing against me is insane. Why hold Reuben responsible? I’m a CONTRACTOR, not an EMPLOYEE. I’m asked to build things, I build them. I don’t run the company, I have no say in the company, I just make stuff. That’s fine by me.

Because it’s a story that is an entire larger conversation about how the Big Six need to get over the SL forums and feting and celebrating these little fucktards like you who held sway on them being assholes, and who developed only into worse assholes in response when I challenged them. They need to understand that their employees don’t *get* to go on being assholes to other people in SL the way they did on the forums. IT’s a bigger and more professional forums now.

Reuben is maintaining a stable of forums fucktards here and keeping you all in beer money if not full employment and I think Reuben needs to hear that his decision to sustain forums fucktards means he is going to be called on it. Reputation is important. If Aimee Weber uses her huge megaphone of the AOL Insider to claim I’m responsible for the griefing fucktards of W-hat calling me *at home*; if you can’t maintain a civil tongue in your mouth about the facts of a conference that don’t benefit YOU or your employers if they only chose SL as a platform, then those who employ you need to hear about this, big-time. They need to own it. They can’t pretend that they have nothing to do with it.

>But you seem to take it as a personal affront to Jesus that someone enjoys my work and my standing in the community, and continue to attack me in the most vile ways possible. Every time. Incessently. I’d post examples, but your post is full of them.

You’re welcome to post examples, and I’m welcome to pull out miles of your nasty posts on the LL forums going way back, bullying, harassing, and reviling people whose opinions or culture you didn’t like. Hell yeah. You came into a thread and attacked ME FIRST, asshole. I FIGHT BACK.

>Get a grip. Your absolutely obscene lashing out against me shows how out of touch you are with reality.

No, it shows that little college fanboyz do not get away with behaving like shits on comments after my articles, that’s all.

>Uri picked a winner with your staff writing. I think I’ll hold him personally responsible for your personal attacks against me. Maybe I should go punch him in the mouth, so he can send it along to you? He works like, 5 minutes away from me.

Good! Go for it, tough guy. I’m sure Uri can handle it.
BTW, when are we getting coffee, Uri?

>PS I’m not really going to punch anyone in the mouth. Especially not Uri, because he has nothing to do with your insanity. Own up to your actions.

Uri is welcome to comment. He can disclaim any responsibility for me *fighting back* against your *assanine juvenile asstard comments*. So can your boss Reuben. There’s a big difference between the Herald and Millions of Us, however. Very big. MOU needs to understand that hiring and sustaining fucktards is going to earn them public challenges.

Um, the Lindens were unable to rein in the precious little pets they created on the forums. Let’s see if the metaversal development company honchos can do it.

>Is this how grownups talk? I’ll have to remember that when I graduate with honors… *rolls eyes*

Hell, yeah. I think Reuben Steiger needs to here from members of the public when his little fucktard fanboy hired help behave like assholes. He may believe that the “insult culture that has gone off the rails” as Mark Wallace very aptly described it is ok, and that it’s fine to maintain an atmosphere of “edgy” and “cool” by having asstards like you around, but it’s pretty old, it’s just about adolescent boys behaving like assholes. I don’t see why it’s acceptable.

>Once, you paid me for services rendered. Does this mean everyone should hold you responsible for what I say? What awesome logic.

If you continued to work for me and appear all over my rentals — hell, yeah. Reputations matter. I wouldn’t hire someone and keep them hired if they ran around being gratuitously insulting on forums — especially if I were a development company. To take the public position, as a development company, that all other platforms are shit, that all other forms of virtual worlds are shit except the little niche edgy one where you get to be a big deal, is really dangerously short-sighted. I should think these companies would want to project an image of professionalism and neutrality about not only platforms, but features in worlds. If a world is PG-13 and doesn’t have open-ended user content, it may not be your company’s dream environment but it will be someone else’s and you need to respect that.

>Seriously. We’re all entitled to opinions. You obviously are, with your “snivelling jackass forums fucktard” vocabulary swaying the audiences here.

Yes, I think it’s important that when people use the insult culture on you, you stuff it right back in their face. Others may find some other method works for them, being nice, ignoring, saying something devastating but suble. My method is to get right back atcha. And so I do. Somebody says “Going to There, princess?” they get a slap in the face. Somebody goes out of their way to come swaggering into a thread about a story that they haven’t been mentioned in, that isn’t about them, and behave like an asstard? Pushback, always. I specialize in some pushbacks.

>Your gigantic whinescraper railing against me is insane. Why hold Reuben responsible? I’m a CONTRACTOR, not an EMPLOYEE. I’m asked to build things, I build them. I don’t run the company, I have no say in the company, I just make stuff. That’s fine by me.

Because it’s a story that is an entire larger conversation about how the Big Six need to get over the SL forums and feting and celebrating these little fucktards like you who held sway on them being assholes, and who developed only into worse assholes in response when I challenged them. They need to understand that their employees don’t *get* to go on being assholes to other people in SL the way they did on the forums. IT’s a bigger and more professional forums now.

Reuben is maintaining a stable of forums fucktards here and keeping you all in beer money if not full employment and I think Reuben needs to hear that his decision to sustain forums fucktards means he is going to be called on it. Reputation is important. If Aimee Weber uses her huge megaphone of the AOL Insider to claim I’m responsible for the griefing fucktards of W-hat calling me *at home*; if you can’t maintain a civil tongue in your mouth about the facts of a conference that don’t benefit YOU or your employers if they only chose SL as a platform, then those who employ you need to hear about this, big-time. They need to own it. They can’t pretend that they have nothing to do with it.

>But you seem to take it as a personal affront to Jesus that someone enjoys my work and my standing in the community, and continue to attack me in the most vile ways possible. Every time. Incessently. I’d post examples, but your post is full of them.

You’re welcome to post examples, and I’m welcome to pull out miles of your nasty posts on the LL forums going way back, bullying, harassing, and reviling people whose opinions or culture you didn’t like. Hell yeah. You came into a thread and attacked ME FIRST, asshole. I FIGHT BACK.

>Get a grip. Your absolutely obscene lashing out against me shows how out of touch you are with reality.

No, it shows that little college fanboyz do not get away with behaving like shits on comments after my articles, that’s all.

>Uri picked a winner with your staff writing. I think I’ll hold him personally responsible for your personal attacks against me. Maybe I should go punch him in the mouth, so he can send it along to you? He works like, 5 minutes away from me.

Good! Go for it, tough guy. I’m sure Uri can handle it.
BTW, when are we getting coffee, Uri?

PS I’m not really going to punch anyone in the mouth. Especially not Uri, because he has nothing to do with your insanity. Own up to your actions.

thank you for your answer. I guess to understand your point, and it makes a lot of sense.

I do agree with you I do not represent nobody than myself, and I was not showing contempt for somebody with different taste and ideas, or at least it was not my intention.

In this specific case it’s not matter of contempt, it’s matter of marketing segments.

For what I have seen till now, the SL structure (with all his damned tech problems, with all the possible stupid mistakes of LL) it’s one of the most open to empower the basic user.

To make him part of the creation of the virtual world. That’s the basic difference.

That’s, linked with wide freedom…(ehhrr let’s call it chaotic anarchy if u prefer), it’s attracting a lot of geeky, strange, perverse and sometimes creative people, that have in their mind a use for this freedom or this chance to create something.

Someway they are not simple end user of pre-build product.

And please that’s not a feeling of superiority or contempt… for the simple reason that everybody of us, myself first, sometimes have the will and the interest to be an active part of something, and sometimes, maybe more often prefer to lie exhausted on a couch watching passively the evening show on TV.

In my personal opinion other platform have choosen a different approach limiting this freedom of expression (from a tech point that a huge smeplification) focusing themselves to fournish pleasant content and a more easy to grasp user experience.

An easier platform it’s an excellent idea for a lot of user and situation, and (I guess we agree on that) for companies wanting a channel for their products and promotions.

They have less problems, more support form the owner of the platform, a easier way in managing the enviroment, and much more visibility ’cause their unique imported content it’s not in competition with the content created by the basic users.

We could discuss about the dimensions of the market segment that could be attracted by SL or by There, we can discuss if the LL strategy is wise or not, you could be easily right.

Maybe SL will be only a niche (actually it is), but maybe could even be possible that LL knows perfectly that, and they choose a niche not to rich to be of interest to some megahuge competitor but enough to have a good life…

In any case I found SL interesting also for it’s wide chance of creating my own experience… I like it (that’s it, simply).

I do agree that maybe that’s could be not the easier enviroment for a consumer brand, and I could be sorry LL big boss will have problems to become filthy rich signing multi-million partnership for an exclusive contract with MTV, but that’s not my problem.

With the limit of all the stupid crash rollback and updates I am quite happy of being able to create my little ubergeek spot, choosing the music I wanna listen.

If I want to play There I always can, but I likes also the chance I have here.

Is this how grownups talk? I’ll have to remember that when I graduate with honors… *rolls eyes*

Once, you paid me for services rendered. Does this mean everyone should hold you responsible for what I say? What awesome logic.

Seriously. We’re all entitled to opinions. You obviously are, with your “snivelling jackass forums fucktard” vocabulary swaying the audiences here.

Your gigantic whinescraper railing against me is insane. Why hold Reuben responsible? I’m a CONTRACTOR, not an EMPLOYEE. I’m asked to build things, I build them. I don’t run the company, I have no say in the company, I just make stuff. That’s fine by me.

But you seem to take it as a personal affront to Jesus that someone enjoys my work and my standing in the community, and continue to attack me in the most vile ways possible. Every time. Incessently. I’d post examples, but your post is full of them.

Get a grip. Your absolutely obscene lashing out against me shows how out of touch you are with reality.

Uri picked a winner with your staff writing. I think I’ll hold him personally responsible for your personal attacks against me. Maybe I should go punch him in the mouth, so he can send it along to you? He works like, 5 minutes away from me.

BTW, when are we getting coffee, Uri?

PS I’m not really going to punch anyone in the mouth. Especially not Uri, because he has nothing to do with your insanity. Own up to your actions.

Um, nobody said anything about anyone being opposed to anybody else. I merely pointed out the fact that 50000 people with free accounts sitting in chairs all day will generate 0$US in revenue to LL. The argument that people sitting in chairs drives people into said business and increase sales is false in that people searching for Y items are already interested in buying or close to it. Chairs don’t create sales — they make the store look more attractive to searchers is all. Campers are, in that view, no different than a nice sign and a coat of paint on a RL building.

I’m not suggesting they be banned; how would you even do that. But don’t equate people who do nothing all day with any of the “niche” groups who pour US$ into the game. Funny thing about RL — they don’t let you pay for servers or electricity with Lindens. Everyone outside of SL expects legal tender for their services.

Furries are an important demographic for SL’s early formation and formation to date. It isn’t proven as a source of mass demographics. Most people in the masses want to be humans, and not furries. People don’t understand that virtual worlds have to be for everybody, not just your niche.

>I don’t know how much real US money the average campchair sitter brings into SL. But I bet it’s far less than my monthly premium, the 10$ a month I pay in rent right now for a portion of a land tier, or the 20$ a month I’ll be putting in for my portion of the island we are about to acquire — after paying the thousands for the island itself, of course. That’s not counting the additional “Play around” moneys I spend for furniture and clothing.

You wish the Lindens thought like that, but they don’t. They need numbers, and sign-ups, and that’s what those people do for them. They don’t move against camp-chairs, because that would violate their zealous religious beliefs about the freedom of scripters uber-alles, stopping creativity, and stopping even the most slash-and-burn business. It’s all good, they let it all alone. And so they have nothing to say.

Camp chairs are the temporary phenomenon of a Metaverse in its early stages which is dependent on individuals and small groups to populate it. It will be more and more taken over by big businesses with big pocketbooks and they won’t need to have camp chairs to hold people, they will have a different model.

>Furries supported LL from almost the very beginning with real cash and real programming knowhow. They were active and building the instant their paws hit the virtual ground. I don’t disdain the campsitters — life is too short to be negative. But I can’t call them active and productive people who help SL to grow through their works or their moneys, either

I don’t get this false apposition between furries and campchair sitters. However, it’s partly on target because campchair sitters are 15 year old girls or 25-35 year old women. They don’t tend to be the furries in the masses.
They tend to need money to shop for dresses. IT’s that demographic that There can make happier most likely, I’m not sure.

All the communities that sprang up in SL with RP, whether furries or BDSM or elves or whatever are important to SL’s development and SL owes a lot to them, but they aren’t the masses.

I don’t know how else to put it to get SOMEBODY to take OWNERSHIP of these FUCKTARDS created on the platform of Second Life since the Lindens who created these monsters refuse to do so.

Perhaps companies with real bottom lines might take this in hand?

In fact, I’m going to hold Reuben Steiger RESPONSIBLE for your behaviour from now on so that you GET A CLUE to how to behave in the GROWN-UP WORLD which you are NOT PART OF YET, being a juvenile snivelling jackass forums fucktard.

>Prokofy Neva said:
(lots of ad nauseum attacks and look at me I’m so edgy because lordfly’s in college and i’m old lulz where’s the free beer lulz RAPEOCIDE)

Hell, yeah. I’m so glad I finished college more than 25 years ago and no longer require free beer.

You know what’s wrong with you boys? You were undoubtedly not nursed by your mothers, and that all-important ingredient in breast milk responsible for male maturity was MISSING from your early brain formation.

>Oh fer Chrissakes, get off your crusading bandwagon, wench.

This is like, oh, so cool, to harass somebody on a forums by calling them the opposite of the gender they chose in SL. Woot!

>I’m a contractor, not their employee. I don’t get paid to write tripe, unlike you and your petty squabbles on the SLH. They are my own opinions.

Well, let a company be known BY THEIR FUCKTARD JACKASS CONTRACTORS. Here’s a company that can hire some of the worst assholes from the SL forums, people like Aimee Weber and Lordfly Digeridoo, who would say shit like “Prok is a lunch lady with a dent in her head” on the old forums. Fuck you.

>Sorry, I forgot that anything that doesn’t agree lockstep with your Gestapo-like worldview is fascist and tikki-wikki-rapeocide.

No, it’s just my point of you, and your point of view is uninformed, and you manner of expressing it is infantile, so you’re called on it.

>More people listen to me than listen to your insane babblings. And I don’t have to drink their beer and invade their house to do it.

I’m not aware that I’ve drunk anybody’s beer or invaded their house uninvited — but that would be something you’d know about?

>And why does your opinion matter but mine doesn’t? Owning more cats doesn’t mean you have a wider audience.

Um, does owning more motherboards give you a wider audience then or something?

Why does a DISAGREEMENT over someone’s opinion and a note that it is UNINFORMED and SECTARIAN constitute a claim that “their opinion doesn’t matter”. It matters to that little niche branding group that loves um…cars is it? Remind me again. Boys for toys. Whatever. But…there’s no awareness on your part that you’re just a geeky stupid male infantile branding niche that just doesn’t cut if for most media planners.

Perhaps when you replicate yourself and have more money from your life as a metaversal minion, they might be forced to take notice. Not now.

I was amazed at this conference when a very important person with Metaversal street cred of the highest order — and you know who you are! — answered the query of another RL important person about why there were so many Dutch people in SL with a smart-ass, typically SL-cultured fucktarded flippant reply: “Well, maybe because all those pot-smokers in Holland find SL is a lot like smoking pot, I dunno.”.

Um…that’s just not cool. What will it take to make people like that realize it’s JUST NOT COOL. It isn’t cool to ANYONE.

The answer to that legitimate question isn’t about stereotyping the Dutch, who have legalized marijuana in their country. I have quite a few Dutch colleagues who never come near pot. Why would they? They don’t wish to get high and get stupid. They’ve got work to do. The Dutch people came in SL because it was IN THE DUTCH MEDIA. There were some key conferences that took place there, whatever. That’s what you tell people. You don’t describe SL, which you are supposedly trying to sell broadly, as a pot haven. Unless…you think you are appealing to this broad demographic of pot-smokers. Ok, well, um, ok, you do that.

The arrogance of the people talking like this from their lame-assed faux youth culture crap is really breath-taking. I do hope they get the most severest awakening.

>lulz. If I got paid for blog posts and comments, I’d probably be writing at least as much as you do.

Um, I guess I’ll have to assume you’re “between jobs” then fat-boy because your hat graphic is positively clogging Second Citizen these days. Do you have a life?

>BTW, I think you can do better than “asstard fanboyz”. Xbox Live called, they want their 13 year old demographics’ insults back.

Um, “lulz” lets me know I’m dealing with 13-year-old mentality, so asstard fanboy is actually PERFECT for the occasion.

>This is why you’re a running joke within the community. While I’m a minor player, I’m still respected and occasionally admired for my tenacity and opinions. This is why people pay me, they enjoy my work and my worldview. You couldn’t get a job working in SL if your life depended on it.

Um, why would I need to get a job in SL? That’s silly. You’re the running joke. There are a lot more people in Second Life who react to your nasty juvenile postings in the way I do, than you can count on among your old beta buddies, trust me on this.

>Your little rentamaphone dog and pony real estate newbie fleecing show is out the window once the servers are open sourced; you don’t have the slightest idea how to host a server, so you’re done.

I’m glad Reuben Steiger hires people who says things like this to people, and it lets me know the Lindens real opinion of those of us who hold land, too. Trust me, it is not news. I know they think that; I know they are utterly cynical about fleecing us. I know the fancy-assed metaversal developers are cynical and hateful about people like me. It doesn’t matter. Let’s see who laughs last on this one.

I don’t fleece newbies, I help them. I’m smart enough to help them *not* by putting out my copy of your house, however.

I don’t believe that hosting a server can be really all that complicated. I’m sure there will be wholesaler hosting services that will emerge to re-rent to people like me for small niches of customers, or the Lindens themselves may go on renting them, who knows. If I need to buy and host a server and it seems reasonable, I may do that and learn how to do it, it doesn’t phase me.

The Metaverse can’t grow with fucked up superior, assasine attitudes like yours. It won’t grow. At least the parts of it you dominate won’t, they will collapse in on themselves. The growing parts of it will succeed to the degree to which they don’t behave like Web 1.0, and empower a generation of asshole serial-processing HTML “webmasters” and “network administrators” to rule over everybody and bottleneck them into a queue, but to the extent that they empower everybody to parallel process and learn how to host their own, post their own, whatever. That’s been the direction of Web 2.0 and you’re failing to see it. I hope you choke on it : )

>You’ve poisoned your own well so many times that anybody making any sort of financial decision in SL automatically avoids you like the plague. You don’t have a single nice thing to say about anybody ever, and you cry wolf every time someone calls you on it. People have memories, they aren’t goldfish.

I don’t see why anyone making a financial decision in SL would want to ignore the sorts of things I’ve posted very loudly on my blog: that buying land on the Linden servers is going to be a fool’s errand once they open-source the back-end, so plan accordingly. I say lots of nice things about people when they deserve it. And why would people making financial decisions be consulting me, anyway. I’m just an owner of an inworld small business. What has that got to do with something like a Sony? What would that have to do with them?

I think what you mean to say is that I don’t have a single nice thing to say about the Toxic Twenty, the feted FIC, the people the Lindens groomed, the people who BECAME the fucking Lindens, even, and people who went on to become big-time metaversal developer dickheads. Uh…No, I don’t. And…more and more people will simply walk around you.

I’m running a business and holding forth my opinions on the conceptual issues around the Metaverse and have some hearing, even if I’m controversial. You’re just a snotty fanboy who has picked up a gig here and there with a nasty attitude that works in a record store. The levels are very different. You don’t have a future with that attitude. My controversy largely consists of contesting the attitude of people like you and fighting it. That’s all. It will become more and more visible. If it turns out that this kind of nihilist, hedonist fuck-you attitude IS the prevailing attitude of the Snowcrash-like Metaverse, it isn’t a world I and a lot of people will want to live in ANYWAY.

>TV runs on this mass-produced, shove it down your throat model. TV has been declining in revenue for 10 years. Reason? Internet. It’s interactive, it’s fun, it’s dynamic, it’s everything TV isn’t. Your idea is turning virtual worlds into TV. That’s ridiculous. It’s an outmoded worldlook on things. People no longer want to consume, they want to create.

It’s not my idea, asshole. I’m REPORTING ON THE IDEA THAT IS WORKING FOR OTHERS LIKE THERE, BECAUSE SECOND LIFE ISN’T WORKING. I don’t have a TV, I don’t watch it, and I don’t sit still for ads, like a lot of people. But most people do watch TV and do watch ads.

The guy from There summed it up very well: the dirty little secret of virtual worlds is that nothing’s happening in them. Lordfly and his precious little friends may have a “build-off” but if you blinked and missed it and just landed and don’t know them, it may seem like nothing’s happening. So content has to be laid out.

The skillful and mature managers of SL and other platforms who care about customers will find the right mix of professional content creation and amateur content generation that builds communities. They will not accept staid formulas from idiot fanboyz.

The idea that maximum open-ended interactive professional-level content generation is everybody’s wet dream is just stupid. It’s not.

Randy Moss may think he’s being groovy and cutting edge by having griefers like W-hat raise money against cancer, Reuben Steiger may feel like he’s being groovy and cutting edge by having assholes like you around, but it’s a limited demographic, trust me.

The idea that people don’t want to consume any more and want to create is about the biggest form of head-up-ass there is in the Metaverse these days. Yes, there is a niche for SOME developers who reach professional level to create. Perhaps some Medicis will be found to constantly fund these egotistical and skittish prima donna Michaelangelos and pay their bar and rehab bills. Like Hollywood and the starlet machine.

But most media companies can’t get people to stay around for long periods without stickyness. World of Warcraft has a real 8 million in it. Second Life has a fake 4 million in it. It has a real 250,000 in it. Everything in WoW is prefabricated for people to come in and do. They can make content in ways that are non-inventoriable like guilds, names, chat. But the company lays out enough content to make it worthwhile.

>Any company coming into the virtual worlds market expecting to make a ton of money by restricting creativity within the community and forcing brands at people are going to get burned. Badly.

No, just the opposite. Companies that think that they can appeal to mass audiences by having a drugged out vulgar character like Gideon Television sell their car to cynical jaded tekkie assholes, and make a living, are wrong. They will have *a certain demographic niche*. They’ll appeal to people like YOU. Um…did you buy a car yet? Oh? Which brand? That used Ford from your neighbour?

Oh, and if they use this kind of crap to influence the culture? It’s not a world we’ll want to live in ANYWAY. And if the answer is “You’re old so you’ll be dead?” (I love how people like Maxx Monde actually take bets on forums about whether I will die soon) my answer can be: so will you, brain surgeon. And probably a lot sooner for taking all the drugs and alcohol and cigarettes.

I don’t see anybody buying into There getting burned badly.
What’s especially juvenile about your swaggering around with this is your inability to see that it will be a MIXTURE of platforms, styles, demographics with a slider. For some products/demographics/budgets this world or that world will work, the other won’t. This slash-and-burn fanboyz shit of SECOND LIFE UBER ALLES is just plain fucked. Not gonna happen.

>Because your scared newbie fiefdom is the end-all, be-all of internet communities. Get a grip, lady.

I’ve done a lot for newbies and get branded as a newbies-only rentals but I have tenants who have been with me nearly the two years I’ve been in business, and many long-term tenants and older tenants and tenants who pay large amounts for their rentals. You have no actual familiarity with my business.

And these people represent a huge variety of tastes and demographics, it’s interesting. Again, you have no fucking clue, because you wouldn’t know a customer in SL if they bit you on the ass.

>Let’s make a bet. $L1000 says my creative content business survives longer than your newbie fiefdom barony business.

Bet away. I don’t see my involvement in the Metaverse in terms of whether my own personal business succeeds or fails. I will try to keep it going until it becomes too costly in time or money, but then do something else. There’s always something to be done there. Meanwhile, your content creation will face an absolute surge of competition from non-Americans and you will be unable to cope. With that juvenile and arrogant attitude you impose on the public, you will fail.

Normally, an older person doesn’t wish a younger person to suffer the hard knocks in life that teach them the realities of life on this planet. In your case, I can only hope that reality bites hardly and deeply.

1,000 L$? Try aimming a little higher, cause that’s only like… 5 bucks?

(oh right… prok is poor, I guess?)

Prokofy, one of the very first sims to exist, long before even most Ubergeeks first heard of SL, was Luskwood, a furry-based sim. Big money was spent to pay for it and money continues to flow into LL coffers because of it. Its success brought in others who then went off and created their own sims, again spending thousands of dollars at a crack. Which brought in lots and lots more people who wanted to see what all the excitement was about. (I have to admit I’m in the latter group, but I’ve been building and learning like a fiend in my short time inworld.)

I don’t know how much real US money the average campchair sitter brings into SL. But I bet it’s far less than my monthly premium, the 10$ a month I pay in rent right now for a portion of a land tier, or the 20$ a month I’ll be putting in for my portion of the island we are about to acquire — after paying the thousands for the island itself, of course. That’s not counting the additional “Play around” moneys I spend for furniture and clothing.

Furries supported LL from almost the very beginning with real cash and real programming knowhow. They were active and building the instant their paws hit the virtual ground. I don’t disdain the campsitters — life is too short to be negative. But I can’t call them active and productive people who help SL to grow through their works or their moneys, either.