I think this describes most of the posters on the Herald too, they’re powerless, so they want to believe God will deliver the vengeance that they themselves cannot either muster or afford. Just have a look at how many of the regular posters happen to be permanently banned from Second Life as proof of this.

Because the Herald caters to people who usually end up being banned for bad behavior, it’s becoming increasingly less relevant and populated more and more by people commenting on a virtual world in which they have no way to legitimately participate. The Krypton Radio site is more relevant at this point, and they only post an article every week or so, and that’s a pretty pathetic thing to have to say about the Herald, seeing how weak KR still is.

Regarding OpenSim, while there was an initial surge toward other platforms when Linden Lab pulled that bait and switch with the Homestead sims and people were so unhappy with that, that exodus has tapered off. It didn’t all go to OpenSim, though, there are about a dozen or so alternate grids to choose from (each very small) and they each received little bit. None of them has the huge market share that Second Life does, and it will probably stay that way for a long time to come. Most of the people on these alternate grids are still on Second Life, by the way, few trust them well enough yet to make them their sole grid experience.

Blue Mars is floundering, by the way, and they’re having rather severe financial troubles. It’s a glorified chatroom, with little or no interactivity possible for the players, and a huge technical bar one has to reach in order to create anything. You can’t grief there, except maybe verbally trolling people, so there’s little there for the likes of the Woodbury crew, only a tiny handful of whom can function there beyond just being able to log in.

MarkByrn is right, here, the Herald has been publishing a lot of the SL is dying diatribe over the years. You can go back to 2005 and find Herald articles or comments that say that.

Say it with me: “That was half a decade ago.”

It’s funny how the Herald is predicting or wishing for SL’s demise but when the dead on arrival “Metaplace” came on the scene, the Herald was shilling for the literal flash in the pan.

Hence the title of the article, “The Hall of Mirrors…” What makes the Herald interesting – and 40+ responses to an article suggest that at least some people feel irritated enough to get involved – is that it provokes action. Whether a story is true or trivial, about cheating or chickens, folks continue to engage the discussion, whether by supporting, flaming, trolling, ridiculing, complaining, or just plain going off at a tangent, my guess is that is you measured the column inches of responses to Herald articles, they’d be longer that Stroker Serpentine’s entire inventory of virtual penises laid end to end – and he sells an awful lot of penises.

Provocation and engagement. Just keep saying those words over and over and you’ll find the Herald does this very well.

The problem with intrigue is you never know who the players are or who they really worked for until your end.

I ended up giving the $10,000L to Arabella to deliver it. She said that you could claim it today. The only caveat is that you will need to connect to SL with the Emerald viewer to collect the lindens from her.

.that might be a problem…