Plastic Duck Returns To Second Life!!!
by Pixeleen Mistral on 23/02/11 at 1:48 pm
Linden Lab reinstates iconic grid crasher’s account
“Plastic Duck hasn’t returned, Plastic Duck never dissapeared
I just got my vanity plates back 
” – Plastic Duck
Could an era of universal peace and understanding in Second Life be dawning? Did Linden Lab actually reverse a perma-ban on one the most colorful residents of the metaverse? I will admit to a certain scepticism when Urizenus Sklar forwarded a tip from Allen Parks – but when I logged in over the weekend it was true. Plastic Duck was back in the people list.
Allen Parks: here is probably one of the biggest stories you will ever publish , Yesterday Feb 18, 2011 , Sl reinstaated the account of Sl,s biggest griefer , Plastic duck
Allen Parks: we know he has always been around but now with the original account
Plastic Duck is back and online in Second Life
Over the years Mr. Duck has enhanced his reputation under a number of names, pushing the envelope of the metaverse with a variety of high visibility exploits and a series of account bans, and even winning third place in the 2005 Avatar of the Year awards – so an account reinstatement seemed out of the question. Why had Linden Lab reversed it’s position? What would the other players think?
Plastic Duck: I am Astar, a robot from the planet danger. I can put my arm back on. You can’t. So play safe!
It was time to consult with the oldbies of Second Life for their reaction to the news. Masakasu Kojima of W-Hat explained the surprising developments as the natural result of Linden Lab’s tremendous staff churn, saying “I’d assume there’s just nobody left who knows why he was banned”.
Hiro Pendragon wondered who was driving the account, "Is it the original owner? I thought he had long moved on to being a professional programmer."
I assured Hiro that it was in fact the real Plastic Duck – I had tracked Mr. Duck down over the weekend and conducted an extensive interview before inevitable vigilante abuse report parties started.
By Monday evening, Plastic was off the people list again – but he seemed confident he would be back soon.
Pixeleen Mistral: you are off the people list in SL again – that didn’t take long
Plastic Duck: oh yeah?
Pixeleen Mistral: yeah
Plastic Duck: hehe I guess I’ll call them in the morning
maybe there was too much of a ruckus
I’m sure the JLU had a little AR party
bless those people
When I contacted Allen Parks for reaction he seemed ambivalent about Plastic Duck’s return, perhaps because of some history between the two:
Allen Parks: well pixeleen, back in 2004 it cost me over l$40,000 because i had to move away from his land at least 3 times, I also feel that a permaban has no teeth , although we all know the person behind the plastic duck account never has really left second life
Allen Parks: I however have no ill feelings towards him , (i think it will be fun if he ever meets up with me to remind him it cost me l$40,000 )every time i see him lol
Allen Parks: linden lab reinstating a ban on a plyyer causing THAT much trouble dosent say much about their ethics (although we all know Plastic duck will always be around ) in 1 form or another.
Moo Money had also heard the news, and was hoping for the return of one of Plastic’s many alt accounts.
Moo Money: I’d have rather had the kinder, gentler more pubbie-friendly Gene Replacement back.
Pixeleen Mistral: well that makes some sense, because Gene Replacement gave us megaprims
Moo Money: Patrick had two sides to him. Plastic Duck came at a time when I was on break from Second Life, but his name was synonymous with terrorism and griefing. Gene Replacement came along and wormed his way into our hearts. He showed up out of nowhere, mapstalked frequently, and got to know my whole fashionista-crowd friend list. He brought us megaprims, much of the code that inspired Mystitool, etc. Gene was the start of a more mature Patrick, who would go on to do significant work with OpenSim for Pleiades.
As for Plastic Duck himself, he was able to take some time away from his work at pleiades.ca for an interview:
Pixeleen Mistral: I see that the Plastic Duck account is back in the people list in SL
Plastic Duck: yeah
Pixeleen Mistral: how did that happen?
Plastic Duck: I was let in on good behavior last year
Pixeleen Mistral: wow
Plastic Duck: they told me not to cause a big deal about it
Pixeleen Mistral: well – but someone (not me) just noticed
Plastic Duck: took a while!
Pixeleen Mistral: and told Urizenus
Plastic Duck: who noticed?
Pixeleen Mistral: let me check. so good behavior is enough to get back in? who would have thought?
Plastic Duck: eh, that’s just an excuse I’m sure
it probably has something to do with the fact that anyone who has ever banned me has gotten fired
Pixeleen Mistral: that seems more likely
Plastic Duck: and I had some friendly conversations with the new support staff at the last SLCC
Pixeleen Mistral: ok – sounds like the tip was from Allen Parks
Plastic Duck: that’s great
I figured one day people would cause a fuss and try to get me in trouble again
it’s great that this dork has come after me again 5 years later
he would AR me daily back in the day
Pixeleen Mistral: sounds like he should join the JLU. but as long as you behave you are OK, Linden Justice is well known for its fair and balanced quality except when certain staff have a bad day
Plastic Duck: yeah I hear Linden is a bit more sane now
the people in SL haven’t changed at all
I was building stuff on public land last night, and some dude drove his vehicle into my building, flipped out and ARed me for being in his way with piles of wood
Pixeleen Mistral: this Alan Parks guy is a real oldbie – his account is from 2004
Plastic Duck: he is the most awful person I met in SL
Pixeleen Mistral: so why don’t you guys get along?
Plastic Duck: oh he would just visit me constantly and threaten with ARs because people with wacky avatars were present and this upset his freebie reselling business
I lived next to him
I highly recommend you chat with him personally his ability to make your brain slowly melt is quite interesting
Pixeleen Mistral: I have long maintained that the shared land model in SL is the source of most of the drama – colliding virtual narratives create conflict. anyway – my advice is stay out of the sandboxes – the JLU terrorize them with ARs
Plastic Duck: it is definitely a source of drama, and a limitation of the technology
the SL platform barely scales, they can turn a sim into 4 homesteads
but someone on a 512m plot shouldn’t have to put up with neighbors if they don’t want to
I want neighbors who are willing to collaborate with me and want a neighbor in return, not some douche who sits around in his boarded up parcel waiting for someone to encroach on their personal space so he can have a good excuse to get mad
this touches a little bit on where we’ve been taking the opensim technology recently
Pixeleen Mistral: what you end up with is people who like conflict hanging out and arguing in the shared spaces – the poster child being Prokofy Neva
Plastic Duck: we’ve focused on scaling individual servers so we can create sims from 16m^2 up to 4096m^2
and we’re introducing a model where users pay for script + avatar usage, the two factors that add the most to server load
lindens business model is interesting, they sell land and prims, neither of which really affect server load alone
and you’re right about Prok, I would put Allen Parks in that same category
without the drama they don’t have a reason to log in
it’s not like they’re making any substantial amount of money from their petty business
Pixeleen Mistral: so who are you working with on the virtual world service business?
Plastic Duck: still www.pleiades.ca
Pixeleen Mistral: is Hazim still there too?
Plastic Duck: yeah he does our security audits
Pixeleen Mistral: good choice. is there anything you’d like to tell the Herald readers?
Plastic Duck: I am Astar, a robot from the planet danger. I can put my arm back on. You can’t. So play safe!
Pixeleen Mistral: sounds good
Plastic Duck: I say "good behavior" but the main reason I was let back in is because of hard work, I didn’t just dissapear for 5 years and ask to be let back in
I’ve been heavily involved in SL projects on alt accounts, and have done a lot for virtual worlds that individuals at Linden have recognized over the years as good things
heck, we personally asked Philip at the last SLCC if he’d let us back in and we got the OK
Plastic Duck hasn’t returned, Plastic Duck never dissapeared
I just got my vanity plates back
Pixeleen Mistral: maybe there is hope for Tizzers too then
Plastic Duck: I lead the projects you see on http://pleiades.ca/showroom/, and without tugging my own chain too hard I want to say I’m the reason they turned out amazing
Pixeleen Mistral: cool. anyway – glad to see you are back with your main account – I’ll send you a friend request when I get on – maybe you can model for a post 6 robot feature. we have a really hard time finding sexy robots
Plastic Duck: hehe I wish, my stuff is all gone
Imnotgoing Sideways
Feb 23rd, 2011
Linden Lab would have far less problems with abuse reports and governance if they got rid of JLU, Green Lanterns, and the like. AR-raiders are a far bigger problem than the grid hax who actually build, create, dissect, and test. (^_^)y
So… When ~are~ we getting Tiz back? =^-^=
Emperor Norton hears a who?
Feb 23rd, 2011
Imnotgoing Sideways @”Linden Lab would have far less problems with abuse reports and governance if they got rid of JLU, Green Lanterns, and the like. AR-raiders are a far bigger problem than the grid hax who actually build, create, dissect, and test. (^_^)y”
It’s only the internet so it doesn’t mater.
IntLibber
Feb 24th, 2011
Congrats to Plastic Duck on his return (and yeah, I knew about it quite a while ago too). I agree it was likely a JLU AR-party that got him out of search again, hopefully LL will show some nads this time and actually punish the JLU for filing false abuse reports.
Allan emailed me a few days ago about it and was sorta bent out of shape about it. I tried to calm him down, after all, I’ve dealt with far more monetary damages from griefers than probably anybody else on the grid except for furnation (tho furries seem to like to get griefed, so who knows), and I’ve learned to chill out. After all, blame for damages really belongs with Linden Lab for their utter incompetence and negligence over the years in creating such an unstable, insecure platform, failing to give sim and land owners the ability to protect themselves and their businesses effectively against griefing, as well as for their corrupt collusion with vigilantes and trolls like JLU, Angel Fluffy, and Prok. SL is fail cause LL is fail.
Protip for Plastic: Allan’s business is in fireworks and other custom scripted stuff, or it was as long as I knew him. Dunno what biz he was in in 2004. He’s a decent guy.
General Drama
Feb 24th, 2011
So, IntLibber.
How does a ‘false abuse report’ work. I mean, exactly. How does it work? I think we all want to know. Is there some special thing you can do to make the Lindens not go through their database and look things up to verify an abuse report? You make it sound like it’s a machine and not people.
At0m0 Beerbaum
Feb 24th, 2011
The biggest push factor about SL would be the AR happy fucks who are overly sensitive and find reasons to get other people in trouble because they have to have some sort of control over someone else, whether it be through abusing moderation or finding tiny reasons for doing so.
I do like plastic’s approach because it isolates these peckerheads from interacting with those who wish to socialize.
then again, the big flaw is, these people would just come out of their hidey holes and report people for dubious reasons anyway.
General Drama
Feb 24th, 2011
So. Intlibber.
How does a ‘false abuse report’ work, anyway? I mean really? Is there some magic thing you can do to make a Linden go all woggly and slackjawed and ban somebody without checking the Linden Lab database first?
I see a lot of people saying “I got caught, and I don’t like it, so therefore it’s wrong and evil!”
Yeah. Good luck with that.
I think it’s a lot more probable that Linden Lab is just reading the Herald to see who exposes themselves so they can ban them. I’d be afraid of posting my real avatar name here because I could be banned in a day.
That’s obviously what happened to Plastic. Use your brains.
poolsopen
Feb 24th, 2011
Is this the same Plastic Duck who also was Gene Replacement and found a glitch in the sl system to make megaprims and instead of telling the Lindens about the glitch he exploited it?
hobo kelly
Feb 24th, 2011
I think that a Whiner Confetti rocket, new for 2011, must have accidentally flown up Allen Park’s ass and then exploded…. pfffttt BOOM..baaaw baaaw,. ah there he goes… anyway,
Hey Plastic Duck, do you have a copy of the Crazy Cat Lady Talking Hand Puppet by any chance?
General Drama
Feb 25th, 2011
RE previous alleged “General Drama” posts: any idiot knows that when you LIE on an abuse report, or file an abuse report based on your crazy cat lady toxo plasmosis voices you hear in your head, that its a ‘false abuse report’.
The real General Drama knows what a false abuse report is. Basically any abuse report filed by the JLU or Prokofy, these days.
Ajax Manatiso
Feb 25th, 2011
The Lindens dont even shift in their seats unless they think they will get some bucks out of it. My guess is that Plastic found a good way to maximize land usage in his opensim and the Lindens let him back in to test it out in SL.
Sandy Money
Feb 25th, 2011
I was in sl back in 2003-2005 , I closed that account ages ago. I remember this Plastic Duck guy, He used to play awful sounds and grief neighbors on all 4 sides of him, One of the neighbors tried to go higher, so he just went higher too, I remember Allen Parks, he started with some kind of free store then started making fireworks. When I left , sl was still full of griefers! I also knew he was a lot of different people as he kept getting banned on account after account. Soon all the griefing stopped, I guess thats when he got smart.
Imnotgoing Sideways
Feb 26th, 2011
@General Drama “How does a ‘false abuse report’ work. I mean, exactly. How does it work? I think we all want to know. Is there some special thing you can do to make the Lindens not go through their database and look things up to verify an abuse report? You make it sound like it’s a machine and not people.”
Quite frankly, that’s how it works sometimes. Depending on the gravity of the AR and how legit it sounds, the Labbies have been prone to summary bannings. (>_<)
Take… Well… ME~~ For example. (^_^)
I faced a ban for "Sexual Ageplay" while I was in a PG sim, participating in a PG event, in a PG dressed adult shaped avatar. I fought the heck out of it, requesting a description of my dress, behaviour, environment, conversation, or overall appearance that could have been interpreted as "Sexual Ageplay". (=_=)
Considering they couldn't produce an answer which supported their actions… I got this:
http://img830.imageshack.us/img830/4616/friggnnehehehe.png
If that's not an admission of summary discipline, I don't know what is. (^_^)y
General Drama
Feb 26th, 2011
@the fake General Drama – sounds like your logic train left the station a loooong time ago. Angel Fluffy left SL three years ago and you’re STILL butthurt about that one, huh?
Tell me – are the Russians injecting poison gas into your furniture when you leave the house too? You must be losing sleep over that one.
Ava
Feb 28th, 2011
Content notwithstanding, when you’re talking possessive, it’s “its,” not “it’s.”
Who the hell is the editor around here? Helen Keller?
Jumpman Lane
Mar 13th, 2011
shit we always loved the legend of plastic duck. hopefully them pesky lindens WILL let tizzy and Veronica2vixen Devoix (former avastar reporter) come back. in the mean time we will crush them turds who banned em or pillar them at least hehehehe
Gwyneth Llewelyn
Jun 20th, 2012
Aw, this was written a year ago… I missed all the fun and excitement! Was there a “Welcome Back Plastic Duck!” party? I missed that as well!
More seriously, I just met Plastic Duck once or twice on some sandboxes, and I have this rather strange idea that the first time I didn’t really know who he was — and perhaps because of that, I was very positively impressed with the things he was experimenting with and the way he talked — a mix of excitement but also of a certain detached calm — which fascinated me. I have always loved geeks who know what they’re doing and who have crazy amounts of creativity up their sleeves
A bit later than that I was told who Plastic Duck was — by then already a mythical character of SL’s history. Wow! I had met a celebrity! I keep stumbling upon celebrities but only know about their celeb status much later haha…
I can imagine that some people might have very strong feelings against Plastic Duck — it’s impossible to please everybody. But by reading the above interview, it crossed my mind that Plastic is quite right. It’s the way LL “forced” people to live surrounded by neighbours on the mainland, without clear rules, without a way to select your neighbours, that caused all that drama long ago. If they had given up the Mainland years ago this would never have happened: residents would simple have gravitated towards a community they were more aligned with. So, mmh, there is some food for thought there. Plastic Duck always gave me food for thought, and it’s great to know that he still does!