Languages develope, and Dialects develope for a huge number of Social, Political, Economic, Technical, or Religious Reasons. By far the vast Majority of those New languages develope to Express Concepts, and Ideas That the central language simply cannot Express.

In the 1960′s one would hear young people talking about “My Thing” (Still in use today) and “My Bag” and to the Outside Listener they appeared to represent the same Concept, But the Subtle Difference was once explained by a Hippie Florist (I forget the exact place where i heard/Read the explanation) The Florist explained “Flowers are my Thing, SELLING Flowers is my Bag”. We have different ways of Expressing that idea now, But Illustrating the activity associated with the Interest as a Burden (Light or heavy based on the persons attitudes) was something Not Easy for the Young people of the 60′s to ennunciate in the language of their parents. They weren’t TRYING to Obfuscate, On the contrary they were Attempting to Express an idea that perhaps (At least as far as they Understood) their parents never thought of before.

Parlance among the Intelligence Community Often Hides Sinister intent with more palatable Euphamisms. “Sanction” looks so much better in print than “Assassinate”. The criminal Element has developed an ever changing Slang Language that allows them to communicate criminal intent among conspirators while being almost incomprehensible to the casual listener.

I would venture that the Stratification of language and custom in the polish prison system probably Reflects a similar Stratification among the criminal Element on the Streets. That there is an Upper Eschelon, and the More Thuggish and Uncouth “Foot Soldiers” The Upper level Criminal Elements may make use of the foot Soldiers, But they also Disassociate themselves from the Nastier aspects of crime by treating them as an Untouchable Class.
In More familiar terms, a Mafia Don won’t want to have as a Guest in his home some Punk he’s Hired to Extort money at Street level. The high ranking Mafioso, (Made men i believe the term is) Form a Society all their own, with customs, and Traditions, and It’s a Very unfortunate end waiting for anyone NOT in that circle to represent themselves by word or Deed as belonging to that “Brotherhood”. This Stratification Does Carry over into the prison system when members of either Strata find themselves Incarcerated.

Already in Second life we ALL use a Number of words and Phrases that, If spoken in the real world, Will serve to identify us as belonging to this Alternate Reality. It’s New, it’s different and those NOT in SL won’t Understand what we are talking about, But out intent (Well, Most of us anyway) isn’t Insidious. We are just Expressing new ideas in the language DESIGNED to express them.

Maria.

This is total, unadulterated bullshit, Tateru. As any cursory reader of the JIRA knows, the tekkies use language to confuse, conceal, and obfuscate. One has only to study their use of the word RESOLVED to see what a farce it is.

“My question is this: could Second Life and the interwebs be the ideal enabling mechanism for the creation and establishment of elite classes? — Digeratti or FIC or whatever we wish to call them?”

Absolutely. Of course they are, that’s the horror. And that’s what I’m doing here, fighting that, duh. You would be, too, if you cared more, but instead, you think it will pass you by and you can just poke fun at it.

I’ve long noted the other similarities between prison life and Second Life (I happen to have absorbed an awful lot about prison life from my years of study of the Soviet Union and my ex who was in the Gulag for 9 years).

o arbitrary rule and punishment
o BDSM culture — that’s an easy analogy
o culture of altruism and loyalty among thieves (vor v zakone)
o use of trusties or trusted inmates who suck up to the wardens who savage the other prisoners brutally, gives the wardens plausible deniability
o spiteful and malicious griefing
o KGB informers’ networks
o system of special favours for those who are loyal
o difficult, pointless, meaningless work for which you are paid kopecks, or not even that
o formation by prisoners of “families,” sometimes very elaborate, with hiearchies, privileges etc
o self-cutting and self-mutiliation, histrionics to gain sympathy, time in the dispensary
o unwillingness to leave the closed walls of the safe prison when time is up (“Bird Man of Alcatraz Syndrome”)
o intensive, elaborate creations of sometimes amazing beauty, made out of ridiculously hard-to-work with things, like little threads pulled from mattresses
o executions at dawn, burial in unmarked graves

Second Life, with its external promises of freedom and creativity, is in many places a confined, closed space that incentivizes people to make sub-cultures acting out these dysfunctions.

It is simple; I’m here because it’s a fun game and I get to play and socialize with friends, old and new alike. No, I don’t have the inner code to the servers or what not. But I don’t have the code to my DVD player, Windows, coffee pot or the engine controller of my Civic either. That doesn’t make me a thrall to these companies and I still enjoy the benefits their products provide. SL is no different. This is probably the case for most of people – we don’t care about our not having the firmware to the thermostat so long as the heat turns on properly.

This is why we fight. Besides, if you really want to stop the “elitist superstructure derp derp derp”, start by destroying the furfags.

I think this is a situation where classes or castes or whatever we want to call them come into existence because certain people say they’re there and say it loud enough and repeatedly to where we look for it or see it whether it’s there or not. This goes for almost all aspects of life, though.

There wouldn’t be racism if we had the perception of bats!

And c’mon Canada isn’t that bad. You best not be dissing my igloo.

Or you’d have to kill someone the elite really hated or something like that.

In Second Life, anyone can learn the programming skills of the e-lite, and once you know how a computer works, you’re already in. don’t have to kill anyone for that.
Even Prok can learn to become a tekkie, it’s not something bad, scary or like the KGB, it’s simple how-does-a-computer-work.

I’m far from a tekkie, in the way that my field is electronics, which doesnt help an awful lot with LSL. But, I’m learning. Soon, I’ll be a member of the e-lite.

SO CAN YOU! JOIN UP TODAY!