Jonathan Fanton Takes Flight
by prokofy on 22/06/07 at 9:12 pm
By Prokofy Neva, Community Affairs Dept.
In his real life as the President of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Jonathan Fanton probably has to fly thousands of miles to check out his many philanthropic projects and branch offices in other countries like Russia. Today was probably the first time he took flight in Second Life. So as the philanthropist lifted up a bit hesitantly over the laggy, crashy 4-corner crowd on the new private islands of Philanthropy 1-4, I sent him a Carbon X-Flight Rod to boost his elevation. I figured it might come in handy, trying to keep above the hype and undertows of Second Life…
The appearance of a RL foundation in SL — and MacArthur has set up an office with staff — is even more intriguing than the onset of big corporate presence in SL because it means that some serious intellectuals like Fanton, who was chairman of the board of Human Rights Watch for many years, feel they might actually use this wacky platform for making the Better World that Philip Linden always talks about.
As an event, the occasion was less than stellar, packing 200 avatars on to a very annoying bowl-like ampitheater that ensured that your view was full of green prim any time you tried to move. Still, even between crashes when your game monetarizing platform froze to a standstill, the audio was good, and they also had a blogtv.com back-up to watch. Still, the event was quite the historical one, as I see it, because I feel it was among the first times — if not the first time — that a figure representing “the humanities” dialogued within Second Life (the premier manifestation of the 3D Metaverse) in a very public and intensive way with a figure representing “the sciences” — to recall C.P. Snow’s “The Two Cultures” for our time.
Fanton lost no time in asking Philip the money question: how do you make the transition from virtuality to reality? Philip replied rather literally that people meet on SL and even get married sometimes, and they meet and plan businesses and it takes off even in real life (like, say, The Electric Sheep). That wasn’t quite what Fanton likely wanted to hear, as he said later he felt strongly that people in virtual worlds should be exposed to serious ideas — and here he echoed a mainstream concern, discounted by all the “serious games” gang, that virtual worlds are frivolous entertainment, or even degenerate, leading to obscenity, fraud, and other crimes.
Philip could have mentioned American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life, but didn’t at that juncture; perhaps it’s just as well that he answered rather awkwardly — precisely because it forces all of us here to think. What can you do *differently* or *better* in a virtual world, given that you can have your ACS Relay for Life in a barbershop in Nebraska? What’s *enhanced* or improved in SL?
Philip’s claim there is that virtual worlds offer more transparency — and I would add, more accountability. Of course, that claim is seriously offset by the anonymous avatar and the alt, and he didn’t sufficiently grapple with that problem in this meeting. He meant, more likely, not so much the individual, as the corporate entity.
Someone asked about non-profits or NGOs in SL. Philip didn’t quite seem to get what “NGOs” were (non-governmental organizations) — and began to talk about how most of the 8,000 sims are in fact owned by individuals, not corporations, who pursue social lives or businesses or projects on them.
I was trying to type into the chat then — but froze. In fact, there are several dozen leading NGOs already in SL, not just ACS or Global Kids but groups like International Rescue Committee, World Vision, Save the Children, Rapporteurs san frontieres, and others, even a special non-profit compound set up by Tech Soup on an island. Other than internal meetings and some promotional work and fund-raising, it’s not clear what they *can* use SL for — yet.
Philip turned around the question then to Fanton. What did he think a foundation like MacArthur could accomplish here? What sorts of projects? Fanton responded that he thought a campaign on the ICC (International Criminal Court) might work given that a new administration in the U.S. might be persuaded to sign and ratify it (the U.S. reversed its support given in the Clinton era under Bush). He also felt virtual worlds were the perfect place to have the urgently-needed conversation about the sad state of affairs of public education in the U.S.
I stepped up and asked a question I wanted to go to Philip, but instead went to Fanton. What are the first three things to do, using a virtual world, about the ongoing crisis in Iraq, that has led to so many civilian deaths, murders of the leaders of civil society, our own soldiers from the Coalition, and the displacement of over 4 million people?
Fanton said he simply felt Iraq was too complex and too dangerous to travel to and didn’t see a virtual world as a help there, and said earnestly that it really made more sense to work on some more “doable” (by contrast) issues like raising awareness about the attacks on civilians in Northern Uganda, or Darfur, where he felt support of organizations that worked in the field as well as individual involvement in volunteering for those organizations would be more effective, and could be transferred to virtuality as well.
I have my own answer. I’ve always said that while politics is the art of the possible, human rights is the art of the impossible. And virtual worlds are precisely what you use to tackle some seemingly complex and intractable problems like Iraq.
So my 3 things would include 1) setting up a tip jar to collect for International Rescue Committee or any of the other groups on the ground helping the displaced and educating the general public on the U.S. resistance to the issue; 2) picking some small microproject to support with even a very simple virtual build, perhaps the heroic little art gallery that has stayed open in Baghdad, perhaps only by putting a picture on one’s virtual walls or setting up a display in a cafe — and trying to get in touch with the gallery’s owner, somehow, or perhaps at least the journalists’ corps in Baghdad that has covered his struggle, reminiscent of the cello player of Sarajevo; 3) convening what amount to “committees of correspondence” (the Internet of the American Revolutionary period) and discussing and arguing and working out some of the basic things to do, not only among those who disagree about it in the U.S., but bringing in Europeans and even those who are managing increasingly to access SL from the Middle East. None of these activities requires a grant; they require attention and presence which can be made very low cost in virtual worlds.
Naturally, Fanton asked about the downside of Second Life, the corporations pulling out for “security” reasons and the pornography. He may not have realized that corporations suffering “griefing” or what we might understand as “security reasons” haven’t pulled out for those reasons, but more because they didn’t get the ROI or eyeballs or massive attention they thought they would with their expensive silo builds on islands no one could see. In fact, Philip helped that concept along in this meeting by explaining helpfully that if you’re a corporation in SL, nobody can see you! You’re on one of 8,000 islands! So nobody *has* to see you. (However, as my newly-coined phrase has it, “In the Metaverse, everybody knows you’re a dog.”)
Philip explained that there was nothing that the makers of LL should be doing about the pornography — something that probably drew more than one gasp from those of us all made newly and acutely aware of the Broadly Offensive According to Daniel Linden. He said that all the makers could do is enable people to chose what they wish to see and not see — the sort of More Science High or Better Living Through Chemistry approach that says tools fix everything, you don’t try to make people moral or better, you just limit their damage. Philip must have said a dozen times that he thought SL “empowered people” — but you fill in the blanks. Empowers them to do…what?
With more and better tools, these porn things will be less of a problem, he said, and anyway, the Internet has lots of porn, and you can just “not go there”. I was so relieved that nobody landed on Fanton’s head with their X-cite parts talking, the way they land on Philip’s head during town meetings sometimes. Remember that time when he said “Watch it with that thing!”
I’ll post a link to any video that will surely result from this meeting, and there will be more to come. The USC Center on Public Diplomacy has been given a generous grant by MacArthur to host discussions and activities around the question of how philanthropy can be used in virtual worlds and you contact the owners of the group MacArthur Foundation SL Events for more information.
Hazim Gazov
Jun 22nd, 2007
that was terrible.
rikomatic
Jun 22nd, 2007
Here’s my brief video snapshot of the event, and my own notes and pics here: http://www.rikomatic.com/blog/2007/06/lowering-barrie.html
The Click Heard Round the World
Jun 22nd, 2007
Video, pics and notes from MacArthur Foundation event today
Jonathan Fanton, President of the MacArthur Foundation, and Philip Rosendale, CEO of Linden Labs, appeared in-world this morning in a packed-to-the-gills sim to talk about the future role of philanthropy in virtual worlds. Truthfully, I didn’t learn mu…
Pirate Cotton
Jun 22nd, 2007
“and here he echoed a mainstream concern, discounted by all the “serious games” gang, that virtual worlds are frivolous entertainment, or even degenerate, leading to obscenity, fraud, and other crimes.”
First story after this one: Obscenity
Second story after this one: Fraud
Third story after this one: Other crimes.
I LOLed
Lewis Nerd
Jun 23rd, 2007
I give ‘em 3 months.
Lewis
Leilui
Jun 23rd, 2007
“you don’t try to make people moral or better”
That is your problem in a nutshell Prokofy. You think you can and should “make people better” who may happen to espouse a different slant on morality and or no interest in adopting your personal set of mores and values. Even if it were possible to “make people better” through words, you’re definitely not the one who should be spearheading it because you’re as abrasive as they come. You never get through to people by insulting them and “exposing” their “evil”. All that does it put them immediately on the defensive, and then the vicious circle continues.
Morality is subjective and most people don’t want Kravitz noses poking in and telling them how to live their lives, RL or SL. Thank heavens the people who administer this platform don’t think like you.
Inigo Chamerberlin
Jun 23rd, 2007
Obscenity, fraud, ‘other’ crimes in Second Life? Frivolty? Degeneracy?
Can you believe that?
And if he does, what’s he here for? To ‘clean up’ Second Life? If so, no wonder Pjilip’s all over him.
Tenshi Vielle
Jun 23rd, 2007
With such a prestigious organization entering SL, I hope they hang around for a while. I’m glad it was important news that you gave him a Carbon X-Flight Assistant, though – I mean, second line in! Who’da thunk?
Prokofy Neva
Jun 23rd, 2007
That is your problem in a nutshell Prokofy. You think you can and should “make people better” who may happen to espouse a different slant on morality and or no interest in adopting your personal set of mores and values.
No, it’s not “my problem,” it’s humanity’s problem, it’s every community’s problem. It’s not about making someone adopt my “personal morality” — whatever THAT is. That’s where you reveal your problem — you believe that morality is merely some slideable set of functions that you toggle up and down like appearance mode. You can’t concede of any morality higher than yourself, morality that may be a community’s morality, morality that may contain some eternal truths.
Can you not concede, for example, that murder is wrong? Or do you feel there are circumstances in which murder is justified? You imagine morality to be merely about restricting or not restricting your particular set of personal hedonisms, and can’t zoom out beyond yourself. It’s profoundly selfish. You’re the one with a notion of a endlessly self-referentiality — not me. If I have any set of moral values, it comes from a larger community than myself, and those people and institutions mean something.
>Even if it were possible to “make people better” through words, you’re definitely not the one who should be spearheading it because you’re as abrasive as they come.
It doesn’t matter if I’m abrasive. Perhaps that will make you think. Someone else is welcome to do a better job. The task of “making people better” is one that every society in every age takes up. You can conclude it’s impossible, that people are merely a set of conditioned behavioural reflexes and inherent genetic traits, and minimize and reduce the human being and his problems merely to damage control and setting up “tools,” or you can conclude that people have free will and can make choices, and good and bad choices, and find ways to encourage the making of the better ones.
If humans have no free will — as you are suggesting by suggesting that they cannot make themselvse better or aspire through a community to betterness, then humans have no free will, then what you are advocating is that every machine that has this or that set of reactions and reflections should be allowed to run amok as it pleases even as it damages others.
Oh, you were implying that human beings *do* have free will, by which you mean your right to do whatever the fuck you want? Ok, but then that right becomes to obliterate your neighbour’s right to do the same thing, pretty fast, and why do you get to do that? That’s where the question of morality comes in.
>You never get through to people by insulting them and “exposing” their “evil”. All that does it put them immediately on the defensive, and then the vicious circle continues.
That’s ok. The problem of their reaction is their problem, and I’m not here to cushion a soft landing for them.
>Morality is subjective and most people don’t want Kravitz noses poking in and telling them how to live their lives, RL or SL. Thank heavens the people who administer this platform don’t think like you.
I don’t think morality is subjective at all. YOU think that, but why do you get to be in charge, inflicting even the most destructive and heedless subjectivities on the public commons? There are objective truths that people not only can agree on; they *have* agreed on them already. That’s what communities and laws are about. Or did you think you got to be in a playpen and endlessly indulge in infantilism?
Clearly you have moral imperatives of your own. One of them says, with harsh universal objectivity, “all morality is subjective” ROFL.
Mark
Jun 24th, 2007
I didn’t bother to read past the first paragraph of your response. It’s just the same regurgitated pap.
It should be OBVIOUS I didn’t mean morals that are STANDARD issue, like murder. God you’re thick, or playacting for the sake of argument.
I meant things like your vague “fuck you hedonism” and so forth – getting all apoplectic and labeling people as immoral over King Fucking Kong statues and the like.
And don’t even try to deny that you don’t try to push your personal morale set on others (how many note cards and emails have you sent to various LL employees in just that past six months?) – you do it all the time, and I am very sure nothing would make you happier than if LL told you to that they wanted YOU to oversee the drafting an SL “bill of rights”.
Go ahead and deny that you would like to decide for the rest of us what is and isn’t moral in virtuality, I’ll just laugh at you more. Your boatloads of psychotic Gladys Kravitz posts and non stop stream of ranty communicaes to LL show you to be nothing more than the Jerry Falwell of SL.
That’s the end of the trip for me jack. I’m so tired of arguing with all the puff chests in SL (WHAT IS IT about SL that attracts so many self righteous, self adulating busy bodies?) who think that their shit doesn’t stink and that they possess the key to all that is “good and righteous”.
See you at SLCC blowhard.
Prokofy Neva
Jun 24th, 2007
>It should be OBVIOUS I didn’t mean morals that are STANDARD issue, like murder. God you’re thick, or playacting for the sake of argument.
Oh, there’s such a thing as “STANDARD issue” morals? Oh? And…who sets those? And…why do they include some thing and not others? Who decides? You’re the one who is thick, that you can arbitrarily carve out some morals YOU believe to be “standard issue” and others not.
>I meant things like your vague “fuck you hedonism” and so forth – getting all apoplectic and labeling people as immoral over King Fucking Kong statues and the like.
Fuck-you hedonism is indeed the bane of our existence. When I bought some land today the girl next door nervously IM’d me. “Please consider me when you’re building there.” Many people would tell her to fuck off, it’s my property, get stuffed. I IM’d her back that I had a rentals business with rules, and if they’re not obeyed, i.e. no viewblocking builds over two-storeys, etc. then the tenant would be asked to change it. She was visible relieved. Now why isn’t that the NORM? Why isn’t THAT the STANDARD ISSUE? A LITTLE CONSIDERATION FOR ONE’S NEIGHBOURS. She went on to discuss this atrocious practice of the Lindens, lining up sims where the expensive waterfront of the last auction sale suddenly becomes “waterbehind” to the water of the next sim over which fills up with junk automatically as it is set to sale cheaper. And how inconsiderate, too, that land dealers play into this in various nasty ways. Lack of consideration. I don’t see any reason why consideration can’t be “standard issue” in SL.
King Kong doesn’t belong in the water in beautiful lake sims that people buy for their views. It devalues their property. King Kong belongs on somebody’s island they’ve made in a nature preserve, or a zoo.
>And don’t even try to deny that you don’t try to push your personal morale set on others (how many note cards and emails have you sent to various LL employees in just that past six months?) – you do it all the time, and I am very sure nothing would make you happier than if LL told you to that they wanted YOU to oversee the drafting an SL “bill of rights”.
I’m happy to push morals. So little of that is done, as people nervously tip-toe around and don’t dare upset anybody’s preciously politically-correct sensibilities that are far more harsh and zealous than any moral I might dream up. Why would sending abuse reports or protests to LL be about pushing morals? And if it does involve pushing morals — so what? Morals are fine to push. We need MORE moral-pushing, not less, and let there be a debate about what morals are suitable.
I wouldn’t wish to “oversee” the drafting of a bill of rights. Bills of rights don’t get “overseen” by one person. They are the result of a legislative process.
>Go ahead and deny that you would like to decide for the rest of us what is and isn’t moral in virtuality, I’ll just laugh at you more. Your boatloads of psychotic Gladys Kravitz posts and non stop stream of ranty communicaes to LL show you to be nothing more than the Jerry Falwell of SL.
Laugh away. I think it’s good to affirm moral values. Gladys Kravitz doesn’t affirm moral values, she fills the vacuum of her own life with prurient interest in her neighbours.
SL could probably use a Jerry Falwell, come to think of it, it’s such a den of iniquity. But I’m not suited for that role, not being a born-again fundamentalist. I don’t care what people do on their own land. When they invade my view, I begin to care.
>That’s the end of the trip for me jack. I’m so tired of arguing with all the puff chests in SL (WHAT IS IT about SL that attracts so many self righteous, self adulating busy bodies?) who think that their shit doesn’t stink and that they possess the key to all that is “good and righteous”.
>See you at SLCC blowhard.
I’ll be preparing my “L” sign to be able to flash LOSER to you, lametard.
Mark
Jun 24th, 2007
Thanks Prokofy, for bolstering several of my points.
You ARE a virtual busybody. You ARE the virtual Falwell. We saw how impotent he really was in the end (RIAA), so I can’t think of a more analogous character.
I was AGREEING with you, on the law, and murder. That is what I meant by “standard”. You ARE thick, because you are so blinded by self righteousness and rage that you cannot even detect something as un-nuanced as my agreement that there are mores we all must live by, or face the consequences. Instead, you get caught up in the pedantry of semantics. Tekkie wikki literalist!
See, we have enforced morals and then a secondary set that are left up to the individual (within the realm of lawfulness). You would love arbitrarily to encroach on that sort of individual freedom. That is my point, and that has got nothing to do with political correctness and everything to do with a personal agenda driven by self righteous control issues.
I once lived next to one of your rentals – it blocked my view of the water AND I was there first. Shrug. Who was the hedonist? Or is hedonism in the name of profit ok? Two legs bad four legs good? If its a king kong or a big building, is there a difference? I don’t think so, I still couldn’t see the sunset across the water. The point is, you cannot legislate taste, and people with poor taste are not criminals, they are simply people with a poor sense of aestheticism, which is wholly subjective AND THAT is what I meant by morality being subjective, when we speak of self determined morals OUSTIDE THE BOUNDARIES OF THE ACCEPTED STANDARD SET OF MORALS, such as murder, rape, theft and so on.. Do you understand now?
You go right ahead and flash the loser hand gesture at me, if you see me. You will have achieved nothing more than to have made yourself look like MORE of an ass, and you will edge yourself closer to the complete irrelevancy of The Village Idiot.
Serious now, good bye and good luck in your crusade to force SL and its makers and inhabitants to adopt your personal value system. And yeah, tell me again how it’s not YOUR value ssytems you’re fighting for. I’ll laugh again (without the disingenous and juvenile “ROFL” you’re so fond of).
mootykips
Jun 24th, 2007
Blocking view of blue pixels = serious business.
You’re not missing out on much anyway, you’re looking at 85% concentrated AIDS in that water.
“I’ll be preparing my “L” sign to be able to flash LOSER to you, lametard.”
Oh zing!
Jessica Holyoke
Jun 24th, 2007
Prokofy, thanks for writing this article. I was wondering about some of the other charitable options in SL and this gave me a good starting point.
I see the arguments in the comments though going oddly back and forth over your statements relating to crime in SL and degeneracy. The land crimes and the money crimes are a problem in SL. The ad farms, the residents blocking your views, are things that are RW illegal with limited opportunity for correction in SL. Fraud is also something that you can’t correct in SL. You can possibly make sure it doesn’t happen again, but there’s no way to rectify that. Added to this list is the fact that the Lindens would never involve themselves in an in-world legal system and what results you could get from a court system in RL you can’t do in SL.
Obscenity is a legal definition that is against the law in RL. However, pornography not featuring children, and subject to obscenity restrictions, is not illegal. Instead of arguing “sexual morality”, and this goes to *everyone* who is posting back and forth in the comment area, how about just accepting that everyone has different sexual beliefs, and so long as you don’t impose your beliefs on others or try to stop someone else from following there own beliefs, then everything will be peaceful, outside of the contention of the comments.
Prokofy Neva
Jun 24th, 2007
Mark, you’re an obvious reason why people like me have to keep coming back, and have to keep swinging. I’m no Jerry Falwell; I don’t oppose card-playing, drinking liquor, dancing, and enabling people to play BDSM on their SL parcels (this last thing would have sent Jerry over the top).
I do believe in being considerate of one’s neighbour. It’s hard work. Often that neighbour asking you to be considerate is fussy and intrusive and out of line. It’s a fine line. But it’s worth trying to harmonize. And that can be done by a few basic items in a code of decency.
Morality is a good thing. It’s not a bad thing. People might disagree on where lines should be drawn. But there’s no question that you should *try* to draw them. That means people will have to advocate different platforms strenuously and make their case. And that’s what I do.
All you can do is sputter and fume and whine that somebody is restraining your fuck-you hedonism. That’s not very attractive, and not very supportable.
I haven’t done any tekkie-wiki literalism here — but you have. I think any intelligent person can see how hilarious your position is. On the one hand, you can affirm “standard morals” like “thou shalt not kill” but just like people who argue whether abortion is murder or not, you immediately began arguing against the concept of universal values and wish to seek some sliding scale of your own.
I have no idea of which rental you lived in that could have possibly blocked the view of the water even if you were “there first”. Sounds bogus to me. Since people can pretty much chose their own house on any parcel, it’s hard to picture how “my rental” and not “your house” blocked the view.
I can’t picture a house that would block water, but — whatever. It’s a rule and one that I enforce. And I don’t believe that SL tastes are so wildly subjective and so wildly different that we can’t have a few basic good neighbour rules. The minute people can make covenants and rules, they make the same ones. No spinning signs. No building SMACK on the property line — they’re pretty basic, and MOST PEOPLE abide by them and understand their value.
King Kong is a novelty item that should not be left out in the water permanently. It offsets the value of all the land around it. There’d be no reason, again, to put this statue out on the EDGE of CONSIDERABLE land holdings of some half a sim, when it could have gone IN THE MIDDLE of the holdings and not bother everyone on the periphery. But like that kitsch statue in the water, the owners themselves didn’t want to have to look at the stuff all day, they wanted their special little waterfront view and suburban house at the center of their property with no blocked view *just like anybody else* and just put the junk out on the periphery to look at some times, making everyone else look at it all the time. Nice work!
No, this isn’t “legislating taste” to ask that people be considerate, in a world where most people are trying to make the beautiful versimilitude of real life waterfront scenes, and not crap it up for them. Buy and island and put out a zoo if you must, Go on some cheap crappy flat land and put out spinning junk. Don’t invade everybody’s high-priced waterfront with crap that you yourself can’t bear to look at 24/7. Consideration is an act of empathy and care. It’s not about legislating morality. It’s about building into a moral code basic common sense and consideration.
I disagree that simple good-neighbour policies like “don’t use orbs that teleport people home” or “no spinning signs” are matters of such wildly subjective taste, and such impossible-to-agree-on issues that they can’t be affirmed, and begin to spread as norms.
One thing I care least about is looking like an ass, as I can’t possibly look like more of an ass than somebody typing hysterically in all-caps “when we speak of self determined morals OUSTIDE THE BOUNDARIES OF THE ACCEPTED STANDARD SET OF MORALS,” completely heedless of his own internal contradictions!
I don’t see anything “personal” and “uber-subjective” in a statement like “spinning signs are ugly and stupid, they annoy neighbours and don’t bring sales”. Millions of SL subscribers likely agree with me.
Mark
Jun 25th, 2007
All you have are straw men. You’re arguing against positions I have not taken. I have no internal conflicts. (WOW PROK! armchair psychology! Uri will be angry – oh wait, not he won’t because he’s a major league hyprokrite too!) I simply recognize that there are morals we all have to and should abide by, and then some that are left up to the individual. I’ve clarified this more than once now, but you keep putting words in my mouth about “a sliding scale” No. Fuck off with that shit. Cheap tactics lady. I’m not even talking about King Kong anymore per se, though I do think moving into a neighborhood and then contacting a person with an existing build and chewing their ear off over it is the wrong approach. But hey, that’s you – all hydrochloric acid and no tact.
Your building blocked my view. How? Because it was between the water and my house. AMAZING!
Funny thing is, it was not leased and I considered renting it – but one of your “friends” (he identified himself thus) who is also in the rental business talked me out of it. He said you were just way to abrasive, so I moved to a private island rental. I didn’t go to IMs or some forums and start screaming at people. And don’t try to play off what he said as acting in his own self interest, he never even tried to get me to rent from him.
And yeah, it’s all too obvious you don’t care about looking like an ass. Otherwise you wouldn’t be using playground devices like flashing the L and crosses at people.
Grow the fuck up and maybe people will heed some of what you say. After 5 decades on this planet, you’d think you would have outgrown playground bully tactics. That sort of thing makes only the person who does such childish things the LAMER LOSER. How any grown adult could go to a public event and flash the finger cross and the L at people is just mind boggling and so far beyond pathetic that it leaves me baffled.
Prokofy Neva
Jun 25th, 2007
>You’re arguing against positions I I do think moving into a neighborhood and then contacting a person with an existing build and chewing their ear off over it is the wrong approach. But hey, that’s you – all hydrochloric acid and no tact.
Um, guess what, Einstein. I moved into the neighbourhood first by buying an entire sim? My houses and purchasers were already in place? And then Pahoa Jade moved into an entire half sim next door AFTERWARDS, and out of the entire mainland island and miles of water she possessed, she picked an odd square right smack in front of the viewline of my buyer’s waterfront to place a kitschy statue. Not King Kong, which was on the other side of her island, and not even visible to my sim — and not at issue, except as an indication of the character of this group of people, that they could inflict a thing like that on everyone for miles around.
She was contacted and asked to *sell the little square* and she took a fit over *the mere request to sell a small square*. That’s what it’s all about.
>Your building blocked my view. How? Because it was between the water and my house. AMAZING!
Um, if you are leasing waterfront, how can MY build be in your view? hello? WTF is this about? Name the sim, and the build. There wouldn’t be a build between your house and the water. I can think of some sims where there are houses up on a hill, and a boardwalk or stores underneath them but that doesn’t block their view of the water.
>Funny thing is, it was not leased and I considered renting it – but one of your “friends” (he identified himself thus) who is also in the rental business talked me out of it. He said you were just way to abrasive, so I moved to a private island rental. I didn’t go to IMs or some forums and start screaming at people.
Um, that would be retarded to do about a *rental* when you can just click refund and move to another of the gadzillion rentals out there. This sounds completely trumped up.
>And don’t try to play off what he said as acting in his own self interest, he never even tried to get me to rent from him.
I could care less. People in SL are out for themselves. It’s not surprising. It’s how they survive. What’s peculiar is why you would rent a house that you felt had a “blocked view” in the first place.
>And yeah, it’s all too obvious you don’t care about looking like an ass. Otherwise you wouldn’t be using playground devices like flashing the L and crosses at people.
I think flashing an L at someone who is incapable of grasping the basics of the stories here and is just venting his spleen is quite in order.
>Grow the fuck up and maybe people will heed some of what you say. After 5 decades on this planet, you’d think you would have outgrown playground bully tactics. That sort of thing makes only the person who does such childish things the LAMER LOSER.
The only person engaging in playground bully tactics is you, dredging up some fake cockamamie story that is designed to make my business look bad, to portray people who you imagine are “my friends” appear to be in fact enemies, and many other nasty undermining tactics.
Apparently you are unhappy in your own SL, and need to vent and project in this fashion.
>How any grown adult could go to a public event and flash the finger cross and the L at people is just mind boggling and so far beyond pathetic that it leaves me baffled.
It’s fitting. The alternative would be to get into some kind of long polemics with them, which they’d only tendentiously misrepresent. A cross or an L is a very clear and unambigious sign : )
Mark
Jun 25th, 2007
You are an idiot with childlike comprehension.
I told you already, you came to the sim after me, YOU BOUGHT the waterfront. I did not have waterfront “EINSTEIN”. You blocked my view with a big house. Lee or Leo? (not Linden and his last name escapes me at the moment, it’s been almost a year since I last spoke to him) is the person who told me to not rent from you after I expressed a little concern over seeing how you behave when interacting with others. It isn’t “trumped up” at all. God, I have to hold your hand and step you through this just like I had to when you claimed I have some sort of morality slider. As far as you building there blocking the view, shrug, it didn’t bother me to be honest. You don’t need help to make yourself look bad, and that wasn’t my intent at all, I was just trying to make a point that it’s nearly impossible to build to please everyone. I just moved along rather than make a stink. Shrug.
Walking up to people at a public gathering and making them uncomfortable and indeed possibly a bit freaked out by employing school yard gestures is asinine and and so fucking childish I can’t even wrap my brain around it.
You are a child. Have fun saving the world, clown.
Honk Honk!
Gorean Furry
Jun 25th, 2007
Prokofy: Blah blah blah rant whine WHIIINEEEE *bully* *hypocisy* FIC *barf*
Rest of us: ZOMG, AGEPLAY! Take her away!!
This is truth.
Reality
Jun 30th, 2007
Hmm, something else I missed here which needs to be said.
Prokofy dearie?
“In the Metaverse, everybody knows you’re a dog.”
Hmmm …. what is wrong with this statement?
Shall we list them and see how long it may be?
1. This ‘Metaverse’ you mention does not exist – second Life and all similar programs are just that, programs.
2. Your Avatar is not the real you – therefore everybody with a single shred of sanity knows that you are not a dog: Dogs cannot use a computer.
3. The statement alone shows a rather alarming mixture of fantasy and reality of the sort which can lead one to actually believe that the fantasy world on their screen – be it text or image – is in fact the real world.
Gundel Gaukelei
Jan 21st, 2010
Radio: “Warning, there is someone driving the wrong way down the highway!”
Prokofy: “Only one? Its everyone but me!”