Woodbury University Island Destroyed
by Pixeleen Mistral on 01/07/07 at 2:28 pm
LL’s extreme smackdown – Woodbury University’s island deleted for TOS violations!
“a fascist company-controlled cookie-cutter world” – Tizzers Foxchase
by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk
not even a smoking crater was left…
Sometime Saturday, Woodbury University’s Second Life island dropped off the map of the virtual world. Second Life players have grown accustomed to intermittent outages from their metaverse service provider, sometimes spinning fanciful stories about tsunami and seismic activity as part of in-world roleplay. A virtual catastrophe does not appear to have been the cause of Woodbury’s demise, however.
It appears the complete disappearance of an entire virtual university was a disciplinary move on the part of Linden Lab – for Terms of Service (TOS) violations. Tizzers Foxchase, an administrator of the virtual land group for Woodbury University, provided the Herald with a copy of the virtual eviction notice:
Tizzers Foxchase: (Saved Sun Jul 1 12:19:36 2007) Linden Lab has continued to find inappropriate uses of the Second Life region “Woodbury University” under your control. On the 16th of April, you were informed of problems with the activities taking place in the region. Many members of the Woodbury University group (which controls the region) have been detected before and after that date causing severe problems in Second Life, in violation of the terms of service. These problems include incidents of grid attacks, racism and intolerance, persistent harassment of other residents, and crashing the Woodbury University region itself while testing their abusive scripts. Due to the ongoing problems, Linden Lab has no option but to immediately close the Woodbury University region. If you believe that this notice has been sent in error, or that the details of this incident have not been adequately examined, please address your concerns in an e-mail to abuse-manager@lindenlab.com Sincerely yours, Customer Support Linden Lab 945 Battery Street San Francisco, CA
Earlier this afternoon, I contacted Ms. Foxchase to learn if the Lindens have refunded Woodbury’s money, what the plans the displaced residents have, and how the Linden ban on Wodbury’s sim might affect educational uses of the metaverse.
Pixeleen Mistral: so in other words, Linden Lab pwned Woodbury
Tizzers Foxchase: Right, which was totally the wrong thing for them to do.
Pixeleen Mistral: how so?
Tizzers Foxchase: It’s as if LL took Friedman offline because we decided to hang out in the WTC basement or something, Intlibber can’t be held responsible for the actions of every person that comes to his sim, and especially things they do outside of it. That’s what they expected of me.
Pixeleen Mistral: what does this do for Woodbury University’s commitment to Second Life as an educational platform?
Tizzers Foxchase: Pixeleen, education and educational institutions are dangerous, people they are a place where people can think freely. They start asking questions and doubting authority. If WU is going to exist in SL, we’re not just going to be a static virtual mock-up of a RL campus, we’re going to be an active, living, breathing entity. Linden labs is like the catholic church, and we at WU are the modern Luthers.
Pixeleen Mistral: I wonder who the modern martin luther is in that analogy?
Tizzers Foxchase: We are. In fact WU is going to be writing a book about it. Second Life is not the peachy euphoria that it’s advertised to be, it’s a facist company-controlled cookie-cutter world where all the citizens are expected to comply and conform to the model of life that the Lindens have outlined.
Pixeleen Mistral: btw – who was paying for the Woodbury University sim? Did they get a refund?
Tizzers Foxchase: The University was, it was coming out of the communications advertising budget. I’m not sure if they did, but there’s hell to pay if they don’t. We have people working on the inside to get it back. And by on the inside, I mean people who have developed a personal friendship with Philip Rosedale.
Pixeleen Mistral: I ask because a lot of the institutional “purchases” are pre-paid for a year or 6 months
Tizzers Foxchase: I’m not sure of the financial details, all I know is, there was quite a large financial investment made.
Pixeleen Mistral: this all happened over the weekend – so I don’t imagine that the office staff know anything yet
Tizzers Foxchase: But do you see where I’m coming from? 99% of the RL schools in SL are nothing but boring models of a RL university. WU dared to be different.
Pixeleen Mistral: WU was certainly different
Tizzers Foxchase: The WU sim was purchased as a place to study virtual culture. /b/ and 4chan personify virtual culture. What better guinea pig or test subject, than to bring culture to us.
Pixeleen Mistral: I wonder if I should run this story now – or wait and talk to some RL people at Woodbury tomorrow?
Tizzers Foxchase: I can give you the direct phone number to MC Fizgig (Dr. Edward Clift). He is the chair of the school and is really the driving force behind the campus. I’m sure he’d be happy to answer any questions.
Pixeleen Mistral: so what is the next step – besides trying to get the sim back? if the Lindens won’t give it back, then what?
Tizzers Foxchase: We are going to begin writing a book. And waging a barrage of media, exposing the truth about the metaverse.
Pixeleen Mistral: so you would not recommend SL for education? or its only good for some sorts of things?
Tizzers Foxchase: It depends on your goal. If you essentially want a virtual museum, by all means SL is a great place. But active involvement comes with a bit of risk, the risk that Linden Labs may disagree with your viewpoints and the way you operate.
Pixeleen Mistral: any other messages for the Herald readers?
Tizzers Foxchase: Second Life has not seen the last of Woodbury. You may be able to kill the physical establishment but you can never kill a mindset. Ideas are bulletproof.
Pixeleen Mistral: so you will still be around
Tizzers Foxchase: Indeed we will.
Pixeleen Mistral: I suspected as much
As the displaced residents of Woodbury University consider their options, I was struck by the irony of a group that helped displace the Alliance Navy from half their Emit Time sim base being displaced by a higher power – the Linden game gods.
Certainly Woodbury University has attracted a rough crowd at times, but with the Bragg lawsuit hanging over the Linden Lab, the question of “ownership” of virtual land is brought into stark focus here. Will Woodbury write off its investment in virtual real estate? Will the Lindens refund all or part of their payments? Is it possible that the Lab may rehabilitate Woodbury and turn it into an example of compassion in action? This seems unlikely to those who remember the destruction of Satyr sim. While we wait for others from Woodbury to respond to Herald inquiries, perhaps the only clear lesson is that rolling with griefers may start with lulz but end in tears.
Yaranaika
Jul 1st, 2007
;_;
Yaranaika
Jul 1st, 2007
Woodbury will be missed ;_;.
Nobody Fugazi
Jul 1st, 2007
Good catch, Pixeleen, good catch. In Robin Linden’s office hours a few weeks back, she pointedly ignored the question as to whether ‘land owners’ are responsible for what people do within their 3 dimensional web hosting space, and this was in the context of the ‘broadly offensive’ hijinx – which is, of course, broadly offensive.
The appropriate thing to do, one would think, would be to ban the appropriate individuals. This poses a problem because of the NICs involved, especially at a University. Of course, more transparency of the abuse report system would be USEFUL in judging what actually happened or what is, in fact, going on.
Your pointed questions are dead on, and are representative of the community who I know of. The same questions are being asked with increased frequency and candor. One would think that Linden Lab would not bite the hand that feeds it.
Prokofy Neva
Jul 1st, 2007
I think Linden Lab did the right thing. They were gridcrashing, abusing other residents, and violating the TOS all over hell.
I actually stopped abuse reporting this gang of thugs months ago as part of my overall end to abuse reports, and also to illustrate that it isn’t “me getting voter 5 banned” — it’s their own activities, that many other residents will abuse reports, and which *Linden Lab itself will detect*.
Tizzers was repeatedly invading Ravenglass properties and setting up the shooting and harassing of innocent tenants, people she didn’t know, and had no direct beef with, merely as a means of retaliating against me. These gangs of thugs — wave after wave of alts — kept joining the ill-named and fake “anti-voter 5″ or “Woodbury Security” and doing in fact the opposite of their faux-opposite groups: behaving like voter 5 and causing insecurity.
People I don’t even know have been writing the RL Woodbury University administration about this, and since they wouldn’t take action, LL itself had to.
Wordsalading, Haskeling — it’s all there in Pixeleen’s interview. But unfortunately for them, the server records don’t lie.
I don’t think there’s anything “extreme” about this, Pixeleen, or “Bragg-like”. A group of soi-disant anime lovers who either started out as b/tards or gravitated to them somehow either overthrow Woodbury University or were easily able to co-opt some of the Marxist pro-griefing contingent there as being like minded. And they proceeded not only to deliberately crash their own region, sometimes trying to make it look like it was somebody else’s fault, but harassed other people who pointed out how fake they were.
They co-opted Intlibber in their subversive struggle, and I hope perhaps he has finally come to his senses about this.
>You can never kill a mindset. Ideas are bulletproof.
No they aren’t. They can be exposed and discredited over and over again as the lies and falsehoods they are.
We’ve never heard a definitive read-out from MC Fizgig and his real-life typist who refused to answer questions from a Herald reporter as “biased” but who hasn’t spoken for the RL media, either, in the form of an op-ed or in an interview.
I love how these post-modern destructivists make it seem like LL is some sort of stultifying oppressive Masskultur force stifling the creativity of young people on its grid — when they are distinguished from the destructivists by only an X or Y chromosome at best.
It’s funny that this post appeared with its claim of Lindens as Catholics and griefers as Luther — just when I was thinking of the answer to Urizenus about his hackened and Catholic dogmatic “don’t feed the trolls”.
99 theses have to be posted on the wall, Uri — long ones, deep ones, even like Chomsky said! And that’s because long theses — 99 of them! — have to be posted — on the very church door! — because the Catholic Church is indeed not only Linden Lab, but these merely defrocked priests in v-5 who are part of the same initiated priestly caste of coders.
>Intlibber can’t be held responsible for the actions of every person that comes to his sim,
You know, I wish my RL landlord would take that attitude when my kids wreck the flower bed, but you know, I don’t have a legal leg to stand on — they do, however. I’m responsible for all actions of all persons in my household while renting from them.
“a facist company-controlled cookie-cutter world where all the citizens are expected to comply and conform to the model of life that the Lindens have outlined.”
This may or may not be Linden Lab, although as a proprietary company, I think they insure value and creativity at a far higher level than anything else out there in the metaverse.
I’ll tell you who the facists and cookie-cutters are, however, and that’s Tizzers and her confreres. Why?
o they say there is no God, and no one can believe in God
o they say code is law, and there is no higher law above the affairs of men, nor manmade law to which coders must be answerable
o they dispense with organized religions and scorn God, but bow to paganism, ritualistic cults like BDSM and Gor, and other zealously-held belief systems
o they believe that no one can take the grid or the virtual world seriously, that they have the right to enforce this viewpoint by violence and destructiveness if anyone differs
o they are no respecters of private property and believe everything made should be their personal sandbox
o they have no sense of personal responsibility and accountability for their actions
o they are willing to make attacks on innocent bystanders like terrorists in order to get back at someone they don’t like
o they are willing to impose racist, sexist, tekkie-wikinistas views on people through violent griefing actions like obscene texts and avatars and pretend this is ‘creativity’ and removing it is ‘censorhip’
These are some of the views that make them not free, not liberating, not interesting, not like Luther, not like iconoclastic social movements, but like the deepest, most fascistic, most oppressive elements of the Catholic Church in the middle ages, like the Spanish Inquisition, or worse, religions that do not even believe in man’s free will but believe the priestly class should interpret the truth and force others to obey it.
Far from being creative and new and different, v/5, b/tards, and Woodbury University is the oldest story of oppression in the book — the worst kind of oppression, that hides its true nature in revolutionary guise like Bolsheviks.
Gordon Wendt
Jul 1st, 2007
Unfortunately there’s no way to get the other side other than their most probably automated note to the Woodbury people but I think the interview says a lot about Woodbury’s stance towards griefers, I think the comparison to Intlibber Brautigun and his BNT sims doesn’t really carry since even though int rents them land he doesn’t actively aid and abet griefers and that pained me to say since I have serious issues with how Int runs his sims. I am more than open to talking to the Woodbury people about their relationship to /b/ chan and other “griefer” groups but unless I am seriously mistaken in what I have seen and heard they were actively aiding these groups and deserve to be region stripped albeit with a full refund or prepaid time that hasn’t yet been fulfilled.
Hairy Kissingher
Jul 1st, 2007
These kids represent a “University (?)” – punking on Barbie Doll Land, annoying people who are just having fun shopping and playing dress up.
Yeah – you guys are L33T alright. Haha. Really hardcore haha. I wonder what your parents will think about their tuition money being wasted on you guys bullying around a bunch of innocent little girls that want nothing more than to look pretty and have a nice place to play house in.
If you REALLY want to make a statement (or whatever you hoped to accomplish), try the REAL WORLD. But no. You guys wouldn’t last a minute in a high school band’s mosh pit, much less a REAL political protest/movement/riot.
Read a book – that’s what your folks are paying you to do in school. Maybe then you can participate in world-changing events. But I don’t think kids now-a-days have the balls to subvert REAL authority.
By the time you guys “graduate” in a few years, the computers you’re punking will be thought of as no more technologically advanced than a child’s “Speak-n-Say” toy, so this episode will really look juvenile on your CV.
Prokofy Neva
Jul 1st, 2007
Nobody, I asked the same question of Robin directly in email: am I responsible for the adult behaviour that wasn’t flagged as M on my rental properties if I didn’t know it was there and didn’t control it or was informed about it? I only got an answer that she had to check with lawyers.
But the answer is generally understood to be “yes”. One could hope that as in RL, the responsibility comes in the form of first a warning letter from a lawyer or a system that urges you to remove the content rather than bans you for content you didn’t control.
It will severely affect the rentals business if the Lindens wield a heavy axe with this — but that would likely only make you happy, as you loathe capitalism and land ownership as a bulwark against the tekkie class. You believe content is king and land is merely shelf space for it. If you *don’t* believe that, I see nothing in your writings indicating otherwise.
Gordon, Intlibber in fact began to aid and abet griefers under this falacious idea that he could buy them out. He allowed Tizzers into all his groups. He though if she made money from Hope Capital stuff, that would convince her to turn from her evil griefing ways. He invoked his groups as being “open” and therefore unable to be closed. He talked about teaching classes to /btards to get them to move from being destructive to making avatars to sell for ‘spacebux’ or whatever. It was naive, credulous, and silly. They are consummate liars and deceivers.
The problem with Woodbury isn’t that they just “fell in with the wrong crowd,” it’s that they are ACTIVELY in on it and ACTIVELY part of the conspiracy of pretending that b/tards are merely part of an anime-lovers group.
So, Nobody, you’re willing to accept this Big Lie that is served up over and over and over again in SL: to the effect that w-hat, b/tards, v-5 — you name it – -isn’t responsible as a group or a business owning a sim, but it’s only “a few bad eggs” and we “can’t let the group be tarred with the same brush”.
Of course we can, once a compelling body of evidence of conspiracy to commit crime is gathered by significant members of the group. Then they can’t be allowed to keep running a sim when they crash it, and other sims, and annoy and harass everybody else into the bargain.
humanoid
Jul 1st, 2007
I see no problem with it, so long as their money is refunded.
Prokofy Neva
Jul 1st, 2007
And this isn’t to say that we ALL don’t have to worry EACH TIME Lindens seize land. They don’t use due process, there is no publication of the accusers or the prosecuting Lindens, no appeals process.
But…in this rough and ready world, let’s point out that Linden Lab spoke in greater detail and more directly on this discliplinary action than it ever does.
When they say: “These problems include incidents of grid attacks, racism and intolerance, persistent harassment of other residents, and crashing the Woodbury University region itself while testing their abusive scripts. ”
I believe them because I witnessed with with my own eyes, racism, attacks, intolerance, harassment, gridcrashing.
If the Woodbury gang’s tactic of defense would include denying these realities we all saw, then they’ll lose. LL has the facts.
if their defense is “the few bad eggs,” we know they lied there, too, because Tizzers was caught time and again directing, aiding, and abetting the people she herself had in a group called “Woodbury Security”.
If their defense is “we should have just a ban until we can sort this out and not lose our entire purchase price” then perhaps there’s a case, but not a good one, given their track record after their first closure and warning, and after Satyr.
If their defense is, “we should get our money back because even though we griefed and annoyed and destroyed property value for other people and even ourselves, we should still get a refund” – ummmm ok, I suppose they should.
popoffsky neuterotenomy
Jul 1st, 2007
Prok – don’t play them up like some martyred historical group. Call them what they are – a bunch of kids trying to annoy the people around them while hiding behind a liberal arts tuition.
Ordinal Malaprop
Jul 1st, 2007
I would have thought that, if one chooses to “study virtual culture” by actively participating in certain aspects of it, one would absolutely relish the opportunity to experience the response first-hand. Isn’t it all educational?
Myrrh Massiel
Jul 1st, 2007
…second life is presently a high-risk platform akin to socialist regimes of the early twentieth century – something in which i’m not comfortable investing my own efforts until independent hosting opens up…
Jim Schack
Jul 1st, 2007
Prokafy, why don’t you grow a dick? Metaphorically speaking. Yea they had a /b/ase there and sure that would attract some unsavory /b/tards but you can’t toss out the baby with the bathwater. Just like you can’t say all democrats are socialists, all republicans are homophobic or all skinheads are racist; you can’t say all /b/tards are griefers. Nor can you say anyone who disagrees with you is a griefer.
Prok, I think your a griefer. You grief me all most every day. Anytime I read any of your posts or articles I wanna gouge my eyes out with a rusty spoon.
Alyx Stoklitsky
Jul 1st, 2007
Activities outside the Woodbury Sim are entirely out of the control of Woodbury’s mods (ie: me). The idea that we test our sim crashing scripts in Woodbury is utterly absurd, and anyone caught intentionally crashing our sim will get banned and ejected from the group – which has occured on several occasions.
Promotion of malicious activity in group IM is also prohibited and I have, on multiple occasions instructed people to take such discussions elsewhere if they must be discussed atall.
However, neither Tizzers, nor I, nor any of the other Woodbury moderators are able to control people or babysit the sim and group IM’s 24/7.
Tizzers has led members to places such as Emit time, however, the only crime committed there was the ‘broadly offensive’ content, otherwise known as LL acting like fascists to cover their asses for things that they aren’t even responsible for.
If we get the sim back, I would like to discuss things with Tizzers and LL together – if LL are going to act like this, then we need CLEAR guidelines on what is and what is not acceptable, and what we should be doing in various situations.
The 158-strong WU group has once again suffered due to, quite literally, about 10 sim-crashing alts.
About Time
Jul 1st, 2007
About time that Woodbury became digital dust. Tizzers has been warned repeated about the activities at Woodbury even so far as to getting a phone call from Robin about it. Tizzers did nothing to stop the tide and Woodbury ate it because of her support of the PN and the /b/tards. It’s a wonder her account hasn’t been banned completely yet, but it will happens sooner or later. Little do people know is that the Lindens kept a very very close eye on Woodbury ever since Tizzers allowed the PN to gather and stage grid attacks from there. They test their weapons there, they crash the sim on purpose to deflect.
The straw that broke the camels back was when a post was made on 7chan /i/(invasion board) about gathering Channers for a pre-raid party/get together at the Woodbury University sim. From there they were supposed to go on and raid randomly before a big raid that was coming up. Some did, some had no clue how to function in SL. But many of these Channers gathered at Woodbury, spouting their vile and plotting, all recorded, all on the server and chat logs.
In my opinion they don’t deserve their money back since various warnings were issued and NONE of those warnings were heeded by ANYONE involved in Woodbury’s RL staff. If you use your money in real life to fund something illegal, do you get a full refund? No.
(Hypothetical example that pretty much fits) If a university were to create a hate web site or one that promoted illegal activities, or violent acts, and the university spent money either buying/renting the servers and the authorities seize those said servers, the domain hosting pulls their paid hosting. Does the university get a full refund for their illegal activities and support thereof? No. Same case here.
This does not compare to Bragg. Bragg lost EVERYTHING, including the sims he didn’t procure by cheating. If he just lost the sims he got by cheating and the money he spent, fine, he gambled and got bit in the ass. That didn’t happen and the Linden steam roller decided to squash every asset he had. This Woodbury incident doesn’t compare in anyway.
Tizzers knew what she was doing. She probably allowed all this to go down so she can write her thesis on it and get a good grade. She did this to get name recognition and fame. As she already pointed out she’s writing, or involved in writing, a book. Plain dollar signs really. She’s good at playing the victim, I can tell you she is not one at all. She is a well documented “e-terrorest” on the level of mootykips/Mudkips Acronym.
This whole deal about not all /b/tards are griefers, PN doesn’t equal /b/tard and /b/tard doesn’t equal PN. Sorry to tell you this but they both go hand in hand as long as the majority of /b/tards support the PN and as long as the PN continue to use Chan memes and derive many of their members from the chans, albeit they recruit from elsewhere too, majority are Chan. Let’s not go into how horrid the xchan/*chan culture can be especially the /b/ image boards throughout the various chans.
Either way this was a long time brewing and coming. Don’t blame the Lindens, don’t blame the JLU, don’t blame Jim Schack, Intlibber, the GLC, WitnessX, Applemilk, etc, any of the usual /b/tard scapegoats and targets. Tizzers, the PN, and the /b/tards did this all to themselves.
This is just a small example of what is eventually going to happen to all the Chans, and no one is going to be able to blamed except the Channers themselves for demented/twisted society and all the illegal things they support for their “lulz”
Lilly
Jul 1st, 2007
Thank GOD they are gone; they put to shame every LEGITIMATE college in SL!
Artemis Fate
Jul 1st, 2007
“No they aren’t. They can be exposed and discredited over and over again as the lies and falsehoods they are.”
Can’t say I agree. Your ideas have been exposed and discredited over and over again as lies and falsehoods, and yet still here you are screaming and shouting them as if they were true.
I hope they at least get their money back
Jessica Holyoke
Jul 1st, 2007
No one is concerned that an educational sim was seized due to the actions of individuals? That the true sim owner wasn’t engaging in the activity, but only that they tolerated the noxious activity?
And Prok, as a landlord in RL, how would you be responsible for the illegal activities of your tenants if you had no knowledge of the actions taking place? The answer should be that you are not responsible for the activities of your tenants. Of course, you should be able to terminate their leases in RL and SL if they have continued illegal activities.
Jim Schack
Jul 1st, 2007
Prokofy, you are arrogant, misguided, pompous and ignorant. You are whiny and bitchy and always want free rides and to be included in the imaginary FIC that only exists in your own mind. You create fantasy scenarios in your head and try to apply them in the real and virtual worlds. You are callous and rude to anyone who might be critical of your La La Land and label them as griefers and clog LL’s what would be useful AR system with “Ewwwwah! They won’t let me in their club and are making fun of me, ewwah!” bullshit. OK, so you can write a long article, big deal. Wanna fucking cookie? Or better yet, why not write something happens for real that isn’t tinged with a everyone hates me paranoia. Yes, people hate you but its because you assumed people hated you and decided to be an asshole about it and made everyone really hate you. BTW, clean your litter boxes, I can smell them from here.
Prokofy Neva
Jul 1st, 2007
No one is concerned that an educational sim was seized due to the actions of individuals? That the true sim owner wasn’t engaging in the activity, but only that they tolerated the noxious activity?
Um, there wasn’t any educational activity, Jessica, don’t be absurd. It was a post-modernist scam. There were no classes, just a lot of screwing around, griefing, making builds, and then destroying them. That may be um “learning” but it isn’t “education”.
The sim owner was contacted, and he sounded as bad as the rest of them, frankly. He hasn’t stepped up to explain what he was up to at all. He was confronted a number of times — and he’s just some kind of post-modernist deconstructivist Marxist freak, or uninvolved and no longer there, or callously indifferent, or all three. It’s not about education — it’s about some students hijacking the wackiness of a digital arts department to wreck havoc.
You can stretch and pull that into “education” if you like, but seriously, don’t “go there”.
And we do have one person who posted here who said in his response to his complaint, the real administrators of Woodbury University in RL said they were investigating removing the objectionable material from the SL website — as if they didn’t get that it was a virtual world with peopel in it.
>And Prok, as a landlord in RL, how would you be responsible for the illegal activities of your tenants if you had no knowledge of the actions taking place? The answer should be that you are not responsible for the activities of your tenants. Of course, you should be able to terminate their leases in RL and SL if they have continued illegal activities.
These aren’t “tenants,” Jessica. They are kids in a Woodbury Security group — AKA griefers hiding under yet another fake group — organized by a student who has only the most untethered relationship to this digital arts department, from all accounts.
The fact that you can’t have knowledge of everything and rely on complaints or notices from LL means that they would likely have to follow a regimen of warnings, not bannings, but we can’t count on them to do that.
The only solution to this is to have rules on your lease — as I do — and in fact to patrol your sims — which I do. One of the reasons I don’t grow and grow like all these rental companies do (if they don’t collapse) is I don’t want something that tiers more than my RL apartment and expenses costs, and takes the RL time of a 40-hour week. Hiring people is very difficult, as it requires not only trusting them but arranging they have access to your objects, builds, doors, etc. — a nuisance. The group thing has made it a bit easier and I can now get in help now and then especially from builders, landscapers, event organizers but still, it’s something you really have no choice but to run yourself if you don’t want to be griefed or scammed.
I do terminate leases for people who grossly or systematically violate my rules or the TOS.
Now, Jessica, I can’t wait for you to get a job or an internship or SOMETHING. You really need to get some practical experience so that you get over this constant overweening and aggressive read-outs of the law, as if you have experience *applying it*. You don’t. And one of the first things you’d learn about actual application of tenant/landlord law, as I’m afraid I know intimately, is that the tenant is indeed, under his lease and under the law, responsible for those actions of persons on his leased property that violate the landlord’s rules, even if he wasn’t present or informed.
Prokofy Neva
Jul 1st, 2007
>Prokofy, you are arrogant, misguided, pompous and ignorant. You are whiny and bitchy and always want free rides and to be included in the imaginary FIC that only exists in your own mind. You create fantasy scenarios in your head and try to apply them in the real and virtual worlds. You are callous and rude to anyone who might be critical of your La La Land and label them as griefers and clog LL’s what would be useful AR system with “Ewwwwah! They won’t let me in their club and are making fun of me, ewwah!” bullshit. OK, so you can write a long article, big deal. Wanna fucking cookie? Or better yet, why not write something happens for real that isn’t tinged with a everyone hates me paranoia. Yes, people hate you but its because you assumed people hated you and decided to be an asshole about it and made everyone really hate you. BTW, clean your litter boxes, I can smell them from here.
*Points*. See, Uri, this is a troll. This is the kind of thing you do NOT answer. It’s so patently hateful, stupid, and vindictive you just don’t answer it. Or you answer it with something flippant and witty like, “Ok, I’ll take the cookie, here, YOU take the litter boxes!” you know, like that.
See the difference between this ordinary garden-variety troll you do NOT feed, and the sort of really bad-faith libelous argumentations you DO need to rebut?
Prokofy Neva
Jul 1st, 2007
>Prok – don’t play them up like some martyred historical group.
I don’t? What martyred historical group. The Bolsheviks lol? But they martyred other people, they aren’t martyrs.
These b/tards, as I discovered, contain a number of young Asian males who are obsessed and racist about American blacks and apparently nervous about the discrimination they themselves can experience in some settings, I guess. They evidently were raised in traditional homes with “Asian values” and now are rebelling against them by becomming safe, anonymoust Internet nihilists.
Prokofy Neva
Jul 1st, 2007
>If we get the sim back, I would like to discuss things with Tizzers and LL together – if LL are going to act like this, then we need CLEAR guidelines on what is and what is not acceptable, and what we should be doing in various situations.
They had them. They’re called “The TOS and the CS”. You were given a chance already. Now suck it up, be a man, and realize you had to take consequences for your actions and complicity in the actions of others.
The 158-strong WU group has once again suffered due to, quite literally, about 10 sim-crashing alts.
You harass me countless times in SL, join my groups with intent to harass, and I could have abuse reported you handily any number of times.
This is the usual Haskel sandwich. LL was able to DETECT your falsehoods.
You create an enabling environment for this kind of griefing, and you are complicit in it, and always have been.
NobodyImportant
Jul 1st, 2007
Dear “About Time”:
I’m 99% positive that everyone in WU (aside from newbies from /i/) know all about Frontier Linden lurking the WU sim in invisible mode constantly, as if Frontier had no semblance of a life.
(Thinly veiled insult or offhand comment? You decide! Prokofy Neva not eligible for decision.)
As for the /i/ thread, I’m not really sure what to say – I’m no WU mod, but I get the feeling that they probably weren’t too happy when random Anonymous newbies tried to use a constantly monitored sim as a base of operations simply because it had a /b/-tard slant.
Anonymous may be Legion, but that doesn’t mean Anonymous can’t be a dumbass.
Prokofy Neva
Jul 1st, 2007
>Your ideas have been exposed and discredited over and over again as lies and falsehoods, and yet still here you are screaming and shouting them as if they were true.
Are you male or female in RL?
NobodyImportant
Jul 1st, 2007
Prokofy:
“You harass me countless times in SL, join my groups with intent to harass, and I could have abuse reported you handily any number of times.”
People only join your groups because it’s an easy way to get a reaction out of you. Otherwise, you’re nigh-impossible to get to respond, because you just plug your ears and make noises, pretending you can’t hear them because they’re evil Leninist assholes.
In fact, I believe it’s becoming a tradition to join all of your groups whenever an alt is made.
hahahahaha pwned
Jul 1st, 2007
They had a chance to ban them from the land when this whole thing started, and the university stood shoulder to shoulder with the griefing lamers and supported them. They can’t come crying now that they lost their sim. Duh. No shit you lost your sim. now someone else gets to have some lulz
Sure sure they’ll still be here, but maybe it’ll make sim owners think twice about turning their sims into griefer paradise like whatserbutt did.
And jessica, if you’re trying to say that the university had “no knowledge of the actions taking place” then well, lol yeah sure
Csven Concord
Jul 1st, 2007
“These b/tards, as I discovered, contain a number of young Asian males who are obsessed and racist about American blacks and apparently nervous about the discrimination they themselves can experience in some settings, I guess. They evidently were raised in traditional homes with “Asian values” and now are rebelling against them by becomming safe, anonymoust Internet nihilists.”
Wow.
So this group contains some “young Asian males”.
Those “young Asian males” _are_ racists.
And these racists are _evidently_ the result of upbringing in traditional Asian homes.
Wow.
One question. If they’re anonymous, how do you *know* they’re “young Asian males”?
Anon
Jul 1st, 2007
>Anonymous may be Legion, but that doesn’t mean Anonymous can’t be a dumbass.
This needs to be made into a bumper sticker or just plain sigged
NobodyImportant
Jul 1st, 2007
Anon: Please keep in mind that I say this, being a part of Legion myself.
I know that we have occasional dumbasses, people who try to use Legion as their personal army, etc. In any online community, even a community that knows it’s the armpit of the internet, there will be dumbasses.
It’s an inevitability, like Godwin’s Law.
Prokofy Neva
Jul 1st, 2007
>Wow.
So this group contains some “young Asian males”.
Those “young Asian males” _are_ racists.
And these racists are _evidently_ the result of upbringing in traditional Asian homes.
Wow.
One question. If they’re anonymous, how do you *know* they’re “young Asian males”?
I found out by quite by accident, unmistakeably. They *are* racists, carrying out all manner of ugly anti-black antics, propaganda, griefing, and obscenity.
And they ARE anonymous because they don’t use their RL names or even recognizable SL names.
But see if you can troll this up into *me* being racist about young Asian males now, why don’t you, Csven? I’m sure you can manage something!
Owned
Jul 1st, 2007
Heh. They deserved it.
Good riddance.
Alyx Stoklitsky
Jul 1st, 2007
O Lawd, some people in these comments here are so incredibly misinformed about WU, /b/, and the PN. Let’s clear a couple of things up:
Prokofy: We are not Asian males. The vast, vast majority of us are white males. We aren’t racist either – it’s called satire.
Liking modern Japanese arts and finding the idea of a bunch of Samuel L. Jackson lookalikes amusing does not make us racist Asians. I happen to be British, thank you very much, and I don’t know of a single non-white in the PN, though if there are, so fucking what?
Now, the PN: The PN don’t really give a shit about Woodbury. Losing this sim means absolutely nothing to them as it has no effect whatsoever on their ability to raid furnation as and when they please. The only people who this effects are people like me. You know? The people who don’t go through five alts a week.
Alyx Stoklitsky
Jul 1st, 2007
All of these people laughing and posting “Owned” and “Good Riddance” … Don’t seem to realise that this doesn’t affect the griefers atall.
Prokofy, where the hell are these Asian males you’re talking about? I don’t know ANY.
Well DUH
Jul 1st, 2007
Seriously, Woodbury University had it coming. This isn’t about them being too unique, this is about them crashing the grid. SCREW THEM and their artsy rationale for doing it… STOP CRASHING SL!!!!!!! I’m trying to get shit done here!
Prokofy Neva
Jul 1st, 2007
>alyx,
The ones I discovered were unmistakeably Asian males, so whether or not that’s the “majority” it’s ones who were griefing me, indisputably. How did I find this out? I’m not saying, because that will compromise my ability to gather more information : )
Your pleas of disassociation with b/tards and PN and v-5 who use racist symbols, avatars, objects um — well, they’re just not persuasive because you’re in all the groups and Haskeling up a storm here.
mootykips
Jul 1st, 2007
<3 <3 <3 the constant illusion we hang out at Woodbury. do you guys think we'd be so stupid as to sit in one place for long? the whole "no base" thing was instituted months ago, and why would WE hang out in a place constantly frequented by furfags, JLU, and the Lindens?
I think this is a lesson to all involved that if you're not running a sex club or a RL business you're gonna get b&. I like Tizzers but she still needs to learn that taking SL as srs bsns and investing a shitload of time into it to save WU is a futile struggle.
Hazim Gazov
Jul 1st, 2007
I’m a young asian male! I’m Vietnamese! Look at me! LOOK AT MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
Verbena pennyfeather
Jul 1st, 2007
Wow, flashbacks to Satyr and my li’l incident. Interesting LL picked a private island for this one though, over our mainland sim.
Csven Concord
Jul 1st, 2007
I basically know nothing about Woodbury University. So when I read comments, I’m learning about people involved in WU and forming an opinion about the organization.
If you say that Woodbury University openly tolerates a group of young Asian males who are “anonymous” and undoubtedly racist, and are racist *because* of a traditional Asian upbringing, then I’ll assume in this case – because, again, I don’t know anything about WU – that you’re telling us the *real* facts. After all, you’re the “journalist”.
Carry on.
Oh, one thing still: how can it be unmistakable if they’re absolutely anonymous? That part confuses me.
JTG
Jul 1st, 2007
Prokofy, What do you have against marxists. None of us ever insulted your beliefs. Why are you classifying us with those sort of people.
Gistya Eusebio
Jul 1st, 2007
First of all, Tizzers is a sweetheart, and an intelligent girl. In all my dealings with her she has been a straight-shooter and has not seemed in any way to be a griefer. I role-played with her in the Star Wars areas and she never caused a single problem for any of our sims.
Secondly, everyone here that is accusing Tizzers of being a “griefer” has not said anything specifically that she has done. The only accusations have been that she associates with groups that “grief,” but as to specific examples of things that have been done — nothing.
Thirdly, Woodbury was not an offensive place. Tizzers made a sim in which there were various prims with textures which contained images of the various 4chan memes (minus the illegal and gory ones). When I was there, I did not see anything that was patently offensive, by SL standards. I did not see any griefing, and in fact, I witnessed Tizzers actively getting rid of someone from the area because they were running illegal scripts there.
By SL standards, Woodbury was quite tame! It was very creative and humorous, and did appear (at least to this academic) to be a valid and interesting transplanting of “active digital culture” from a 2D HTML BBS into a 3D VR experience. The reason I say that it was valid, is because at first I did not think that such a transplanting could be possible. The reason I say it was interesting, was because this is a new medium, and exploring it in such a way as taking the most active BBS on the internet and making a 3D version seems to be a cool approach to testing the capabilities of that medium.
Further, I did not see anything like the extremely disturbing simulated rape areas or sex slavery of other sims (which to me is utterly disgusting and sexist in the worst way, but I don’t like it so I don’t go to those sims). There was no Nazi imagery, nothing demeaning to any particular race, etc., unless you think that a guy with an afro is somehow a racist image. (It’s not.)
Rather, the Woodbury sim seemed only to contain virtual versions of the various “memes” off of the “random” board of 4chan.org. For those who don’t know, these are generally images that bear some connection to an inside joke of some kind. (Longcat, “chargin mah lazer”, desu, etc. were prevalent. Look them up in the lurk more.)
And to those who keep poo-pooing this approach and belittling it as “destructivist” or “post-modern”, it really seemed to me to be neither deconstructionist, destrucvitist, NOR post-modern — and Tizzers made no attempt to pass it off as such that I’m aware of. Rather, I think these are academic buzz-words that have acquired significant negative cache, especially in conservative circles, and are just being thrown around as ad-hominem attacks here.
I was frankly SHOCKED to hear that the sim had been taken down, and I find it utterly abhorrent. I understand that freedom of speech may not be high on the priorities of a company that exists to make a profit, but Linden Labs needs to re-evaluate their approach to eliminating the problem of griefers if THIS is what they think is the solution. I will admit, I don’t know much about griefers (as I am not one), but I can definitely say that the majority of people I met and talked to in and around Woodbury in my time there, and observed in the group chat, had nothing to do with griefing.
I think the real problem is that there HAPPEN to be several griefer groups that are connected to the 4chan “random” board (/b/), and therefore, since Woodbury was also connected to /b/, then the griefers were attracted to it. I mean, probably BECAUSE it is the most active board on the internet, affords anonymity to its posters, and does not censor, it is a convenient place also for those of bad intent to plot activities that may be considered griefing. I don’t know anything about any of that, beyond that it is known to occur. I am simply theorizing that ANYONE who made a /b/-related sim, would be hard-pressed to keep griefers from collecting there!
Why are griefers attracted to /b/? With over 31 million posts, it’s the most active BBS on the internet. Also, with its no censorship policy, it’s a bastion of free speech on the internet. And while sometimes very questionable content may arise, nothing is stored permanently there, and any thread will fade after a matter of minutes. Users themselves have the prerogative to “sage” (i.e. kill) a thread that is lame, or to openly criticize it and deem it as offensive or wrong, and they often do.
One major problem with making a /b/ sim in SL, is that one of the major /b/ memes is EXTREMELY anti-furry, and as we know, there are a lot of “furries” in SL. From what I have been told, and correct me if I am wrong, but the major anti-griefer organization of SL, called the Justice League, is run by furries. And there are furries within Linden Labs, as well. Anyway I don’t know anything about this, and I have many furry friends, but I’m just wondering if that could have anything to do with what happened here? Anyone care to comment?
Also what kinds of activities that could be directly traced to Woodbury’s sim have happened that were so offensive and wrong? Maybe I’m just ignorant of it all, but I did not see anything that seemed offensive or wrong being done at that sim, the few times I was there. And anyone who DID do offensive or TOS-violating things ought to be banned from SL, not have the sim they hang out in get deleted!!
Nobody Fugazi
Jul 1st, 2007
Prok – just one paragraph. First, you repeating what Robin Linden said in an email really isn’t worth the pixels on my screen. Linden Lab needs an official position. Further, Linden Lab needs to allow transparency into the abuse report system. While I’m sure someone out there believes you, and others may have similar experiences, it still is not good enough. ‘Prok said so’, frankly, is not worth spit in these issues. Neither is anything anyone else really says – there need to be examples of what the alleged griefing was, as well as what steps were taken. This is an accepted and time tested manner of validating any form of punishment. While you say I’m swallowing a Big Lie, I’m actually trying to stop having to have these subjective discussions as they are full of Big Lies. It is good to be passionate, it is unconscionable to attack people personally when expressing ideas and so on, and it is important to have Facts before running around at the keyboard like a chicken recently detached from its head.
Anonymous
Jul 1st, 2007
Hey, ban Csven. I hear he likes it.
Alyx Stoklitsky
Jul 1st, 2007
>>Prokofy
Ok, so there’s Hazim, whom I have yet to see doing anything more than trolling you and ageplayers. Oh my. What’s your source that you’re scared to quote? The picture that he himself posted on his own site? EEK!
PN doesn’t do anything inherantly racist – it’s all open to interpretation. Just because they’re throwing water melons around wearing ‘nigrasaurus’ avatars, doesn’t make them racist. How often do you see the PN attacking black people?
PS. Voter 5 doesn’t exist.
PPS. Why did you remove me from your group when I’d been there for 3 months and done no harm?
NobodyImportant
Jul 1st, 2007
Be careful Gistya Eusebio, or Prok will assume you’re one of the horrible, evil Leninist griefers! Oh my!
Nobody Fugazi: I like the name. But I think it should be stated, before anyone thinks it, that I (NobodyImportant) am not you (Nobody Fugazi).
Also, you sound very much like a voice of reason. Good job you.
Pauleh Kamachi
Jul 1st, 2007
Someone got owned hard.
They deserved it
Aetuneo Novi
Jul 1st, 2007
Pixeleen Mistral: I wonder who the modern martin luther is in that analogy?
Tizzers Foxchase: We are. In fact WU is going to be writing a book about it. Second Life is not the peachy euphoria that it’s advertised to be, it’s a facist company-controlled cookie-cutter world where all the citizens are expected to comply and conform to the model of life that the Lindens have outlined.
Pixeleen Mistral: so what is the next step – besides trying to get the sim back? if the Lindens won’t give it back, then what?
Tizzers Foxchase: We are going to begin writing a book. And waging a barrage of media, exposing the truth about the metaverse.
Hmm …
And you’ll stop (sorry, not start) writing this book if LL give you the sim back, and allows you to continue as before? Sounds a lot like blackmail to me.
I might be more symapthetic if you took all of the reasons LL gave for taking the sim away, and carefully explained how LL came up with that reason, and why it is wrong. You’re supposed to be a university campus, so why can’t you do that? Perhaps because you don’t have any support for your point of view, and know it.
Prokofy Neva
Jul 1st, 2007
Nobody, that isn’t just an email from Robin Linden, it’s the official communication from LL taking away their sim.
Csven’s distorting the facts again. I said that the v-5/b-tards have young, racist, Asian males among them. They do! These appear to be some of the same people in Woodbury U. Woodbury U/b-tards/Patriotic Niggahs/voter-5 — these are overlapping groups that have relentlessly harassed me for over a year, so accidently, I’ve come to find out a great deal about them.
Perhaps if someone were to line up all these people and check all their RL data, gosh, it might turn out that they are all white European Americans. So what? I’m talking about some I have come to find out about, and learned the possible motivations for their racism, and their hatreds.
>I basically know nothing about Woodbury University. So when I read comments, I’m learning about people involved in WU and forming an opinion about the organization.
>If you say that Woodbury University openly tolerates a group of young Asian males who are “anonymous” and undoubtedly racist, and are racist *because* of a traditional Asian upbringing, then I’ll assume in this case – because, again, I don’t know anything about WU – that you’re telling us the *real* facts. After all, you’re the “journalist”.
Yes, Woodbury University has indeed been openly tolerating a group of young males — and apparently females — some of them Asian, some European Americans, it’s not so important, and yes, because of their upbringing — or rebellion against their upbringing — or due to their LACK of upbringing, they are racist, act out racist activities, avatars, props, and sayings in SL. This is AMPLY documented.
Yes, I’m the journalist, and you’re the 40-something former long-time Navy guy and evidently non-recovering Catholic who is “between jobs right now,” and lashing out at people for sport.
>Carry on.
From now on, I think just one remark might make sense in response to any of your postings, you loser: “Did you get a job? And have you been to Confession?” I think that should about sum up the whole thing.
>Oh, one thing still: how can it be unmistakable if they’re absolutely anonymous? That part confuses me.
It will have to remain one of those mysteries of the Internet, but it is easy to determine, and unmistakeable even if anonymous.
Jim Schack
Jul 1st, 2007
>This is the kind of thing you do NOT answer
I dunno if I’m trolling per se, rather responding to a troll named Prokofy. Mind you you were the first on this comment board to troll. And If I was trolling you and you don’t respond to troll, don’t you dind it rather… hypocritical to say… i dunno..
RESPOND?!
You know I heard about this cat/female craziness ratio for women with more than 2 cats. The more cats women own above 2, the multiplier of crazy increases exponentially: 3 cats = 27x crazy. 4 cats = 256x crazy 28 cats = Profofy.
Prokofy. I would have an intellectual debate with you, but I have no clue were to begin. It’s like picking the first turd in your cat’s litter box to explain why it has to be disposed of.
But I guess I disagree with you therefore I MUST be on my way to greif some furries or something after posting this right?
> “Ok, I’ll take the cookie, here, YOU take the litter boxes!”
NO U!