"Turn off your TVs for a start"

Featuring a healthy dose of pepper spray - which sources on the UC Davis campus recently learned is basically a food product - the latest Rap News release from TheJuiceNews continues Robert Foster's grand tradition of "turning bollocks-news into socio-poetic/comedic analyses which everyone can relate to and understand".

TheJuiceNews regulars Terrence Moonseed and General Baxter are interviewed early in the coverage followed by an unforgettable Anonymous human megaphone mic check. But the highlight of the coverage is likely to provide a near religious experience for linguistic students as we learn that Noam Chomsky is capable of a doing a very good Chomsky impression. Who could have guessed?

The first indication I would be playing another round of Second Life as a real life alternative reality game came a few hours before the SLCC 2011 panel discussion on Avatar Identity: Privacy and Transparency in Social Media.

I was eating lunch, sitting next to Brent Baum and comparing notes on the SLCC experience. I'll have much more to say about Brent's surprising adventures soon - his impressive background in the entertainment business and abruptly terminated one year tenure in SL provide a fascinating perspective on Second Life. Our conversation was interrupted by news that there was a change in plans for the Avatar Identity panel discussion. Apparently the conference organizers had yielded to pressure by a party who they would not name. The panel discussion would not be streamed into Second Life as originally planned and there were issues with my biography, although it had been published at the SLCC site weeks ago.

Oh noes! More bad luck for the long-suffering SL players!!! Maybe Second Life isn't very good for attending meetings after all. Is this why Rod Humble can't seem to significantly improve player concurrency?

The bearer of bad tidings consoled me with the promise that the session would be taped and posted sometime after the conference. Last week, the discussion deemed potentially too controversial to air live in SL was made available here. 

Before I go on, I'd like to thank the conference organizers for running an interesting event overall. I'd like to think that despite the slightly surreal drama, the panel discussion is an example of how to make the SLCC a bit more than a fanboy convention. At the same time, I sincerely hope the SLCC leadership will take steps to insulate themselves from the pressure to produce a hopelessly gimped pablum program unable to discuss the real issues and concerns of the SL community for fear of controversy or offending the game gods. For starters, perhaps a blanket disclaimer stating any opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the organizers is in order. 

Last minute revisions to the SLCC program

While the panel discussion spanned everything from google-bombing internet kooks, the notorious Evangeline from TSO, avatar identities, pseudonyms, brands, and business opportunities for enhanced online privacy, I didn't think to mention the need for secrecy for those filing complaints about speaker biographies during the discussion. I'll know better next time.

Despite publishing verbatim the biography I sent on the SLCC web site weeks earlier, by the day of the conference panel, a badly nerfed version was on display at the site. It also seemed that pages 25 and 26 had been cut out of the printed conference programs by hand, and an unbound page with a revised version of the nerfed pages inserted. How much did that cost?

What sort of horrific typo - or threat - could have led to the bowdlerization re-working of the conference program at the last minute? Here is my bio as originally posted:

Pixeleen Mistral is the managing editor of the Alphaville Herald (http://alphavilleherald.com/), where she covers online culture and governance, griefing, vigilantes, and hactivism. Ms. Mistral began writing for the Herald sports desk in 2006 and became managing editor late that year.

Pixeleen's real life typist has been involved in developing Internet technologies for over 20 years, including early e-mail clients, Internet Gopher - one of the first popular Internet information systems, the IETF standard for URLs, and Croquet - an open-source peer-to-peer virtual world. In February of 2010, Mark McCahill sacrificed his Pixeleen Mistral pseudonym to fight an outrageous takedown notice filed by 'Justice League Unlimited' vigilante Kalel Venkman - a move that thwarted Venkman's abuse of the DMCA process to remove Herald coverage of his gang's massive Second Life player surveillance database.

and here is the last-minute revision to my bio:

Pixeleen Mistral is the managing editor of the Alphaville Herald (http://alphavilleherald.com/), where she covers online culture and governance, griefing, vigilantes, and hactivism. Ms. Mistral began writing for the Herald sports desk in 2006 and became managing editor late that year.

Pixeleen's real life typist has been involved in developing Internet technologies for over 20 years, including early e-mail clients, Internet Gopher - one of the first popular Internet information systems, the IETF standard for URLs, and Croquet - an open-source peer-to-peer virtual world.
   

snip snip snip - someone had to cut page 25/26 out of each copy of the printed program

an unbound replacement page was inserted into the program for the missing pages 25 and 26

Has the JLU's game leveled up to more RL harassment?

Normally, I'd let this sort Internet ankle-biter harassment slide, but after the latest series of leaks from Kalel Venkman's JLU wiki, I'm starting to think the role-play super hero group is having an increasingly difficult time restraining their child-like excitement and are unable to keep the gameplay - or is it harassment? - inside Second Life. 

If we can believe the leaks the have emerged from the Justice League Unlimited's wiki over the last few weeks, it seems Kalel and the gang have been trolling Linden Lab's PR honcho Pete Linden with off-the-record chats, hoping to build a case that the Herald is a menace to Second Life society. To date, my attempts to solicit comment from Pete Linden on the matter have been met with silence - even after I sweetened the pot and offered Pete the opportunity to pose for the Herald's Post-6 feature. I assume Pete is still skin shopping and will let me know when he is ready.

Is JLU grooming Linden Lab public relations lead Pete Linden?

Second Life - where self-described "psychotic superhero bullies" ponder stalking your real life

Even stranger is news that Venkman's online militia was discussing contacting my workplace back in April with claims that I violated copyright laws in the Herald coverage of the JLU activities. As far as I know, the role play superheros never followed up on that discussion, or if they did the claims were greeted with a swift and well-deserved trip to the trash bin. 

This is just as well. The cognitive dissonance in the JLU players faux-copyright complaints are overwhelming. Last year - apparently ignorant of the copyright law fair use doctrine - JLU leader Kalel Venkman launched a Digital Millenium Copyright Act takedown against the Herald, but then failed to followup and file an actual copyright infringement complaint after he was given my real life contact information. In light of this I'm a bit surprised that Kalel's group wants to even discuss playing the copyright card again. Kalel Venkman has refused to respond to repeated attempts to contact him for an on-the-record conversation about these matters. The un-censored copy of the alleged leak I was provided with is a real eye-opener.

[17:35] Samantha Lowell: I can have a draft of a polite, oh so sweet letter of
concern to Duke as soon as possible
[17:36] GreenLantern Excelsior: Duke?
[17:36] Melanippe Karas: I thought we'd settled the idea of writing to Duke weeks
ago.
[17:36] Samantha Lowell: I thought we could write the adjunct in question,
explain that Alphavillle Hertald is using his name and asking if this is true
[17:36] Samantha Lowell: "Thank you so much for your time," etc etc
[17:36] Samantha Lowell: Very poite, brief and genteel
[17:37] Jeremiah Pintens: TD here is lower than I am used to
[17:37] Kalel Venkman: It would settle the issue - or give us ammunition, one of
the two.
[17:37] Samantha Lowell: Amen
[17:37] Kara Timtam: Or he could lie through his teeth
[17:37] Samantha Lowell: And , if it's NOT true, it would set him against Ludlow
[17:37] Kalel Venkman: If he lies, then we can take that letter and post it.
[17:37] BilliAnn Bravin: Either way sounds useful, though there is that.
[17:37] Samantha Lowell: Believe me, nobody does childish cat fighting like
academics
[17:37] Jeremiah Pintens: *laughs*
[17:37] Kalel Venkman: If it's the truth, then we can escalate to his employers.
[17:37] BilliAnn Bravin: Hee hee
[17:37] BilliAnn Bravin: They are terrible.
[17:38] Samantha Lowell: Amen, billi
[17:38] Kara Timtam: But busting a whopper like that could be important,
certainly if that guy has indeed been spoofed
[17:38] Kalel Venkman: One way or the other, it's ammunition.
[17:38] Melanippe Karas: Yes.
[17:38] Kalel Venkman: And we can use it.
[17:38] Kalel Venkman: No matter what he says.
[17:38] Samantha Lowell: I finished the textures for the poster vendor. I'd like
to set up my mini photo studio on the top floor of the adventurer's club, if it's
okay
[17:38] Kalel Venkman: And telling us nothing is nearly as useful, especially if
we send it registered mail.
[17:39] Samantha Lowell: Return receipt
[17:39] Kalel Venkman: Exactly.
[17:39] Melanippe Karas: Good idea.
[17:39] Kalel Venkman: We could actually get some mileage out of this.
[17:39] BilliAnn Bravin: Yes.
[17:39] Samantha Lowell: I need you to email me the full name, I believe I have
the correct address
[17:39] Jeremiah Pintens: I've a question actually - not related to the
discussion at hand
[17:39] Samantha Lowell: Send a copy to his dean , mayhap?
[17:40] Kalel Venkman: Michael P. McCahill. It should be send to the IT
department at Duke, which is where he works as a contracting consultant.
[17:40] Kalel Venkman: Sorry - that's Mark P. McCahill.
[17:40] Kalel Venkman: Sending a copy to the head of Duke University IT would
probably be a good idea too.
[17:40] Samantha Lowell: Yes indeed
[17:41] BilliAnn Bravin: Oh yes.
[17:41] Kara Timtam: Include full documentation of the URL's where the claim of
identity is made.
[17:41] Kalel Venkman: He's left a thread dangling in easy reach. Let's pull on
it and see what unravels.
[17:41] Kara Timtam: Herald and Wikipeda
[17:41] Samantha Lowell: "I thought you should be apprised of this, given the
fact that the staff and contributors of the Herald have violated the DMCA and
copyright laws of the US on several occasions, etc etc..."
[17:41] Melanippe Karas: Psychotic superhero bullies for the win!
[17:41] Melanippe KarasMelanippe Karas grins ironically
 

Who could have imagined that Second Life would morph into a long-running real life augmented reality game so easily? How large is the market for cartoon stalkers playing dirty tricks on those they dislike in the name of justice unlimited? Linden Lab might want to carefully consider what sort of picture this paints to the general public if they hope to grow their online community.

When I approached Peter Ludlow at the Society of Cinema and Media Studies in May 2010, I never would have guessed that my research would cause so much concern among anti-griefing organizations, and by that, I mean specifically Kalel Venkman.  Here’s why I am writing this post now, even though I have been conducting my research on griefers since 2006. Apparently, warning notices were sent out to the "Proactive Security" group about me today:

A Reminder - do not interview with Defne Demar

She claims to have only weak ties to the Alphaville Herald, the griefer apologia tabloid run by Pixeleen Mistral, but the truth is that she's in so deep with them she's almost out the other side.  She's working on a book for Peter Ludlow, whose only aim is to glorify griefers.  Anything you give her will not be used for good.

Best advice is to refuse to talk to her, or mute her if you'd rather not be bothered by this person. You all know me well enough that I never say something like this lightly.

Kal

Let’s back up a bit. When I started my research on Second Life, I was a graduate student writing my dissertation on cross-media storytelling. I thought it would be neat to include the disruptive narratives that griefers in Second Life generate as an example of vernacular creativity. At the time, Voted5 had just got banned and all the usual suspects were hanging out at the #SL IRC. So I hung out at the IRC, but also went to SLCC 2006 to establish some contacts and meet the community at large. All were welcoming and friendly.  I am grateful to have them as my friends. I started hanging around in Baku and try to connect with the W-Hat - with mixed success. No surprise there.

Some acted like horses ass, pretended that they were giving me “false” information, while others (like Masakazu Kojima and Decomposing Monstre) were genuinely interested in giving me information about how they build/create/generate stories in this virtual environment such as Second Life. 

I went back to SLCC in 2007 and 2008 and gave papers on the griefing subculture. Right around the time when I was ending my field work, I was able to establish contact with the PN and talked to their leader, Frizzlefry, who again was (and still is) genuinely interested in answering my questions about their organization and their raids. He introduced me to a bunch of their members in their IRC so I can talk to all of them.

Around that time (June 10, 2008 to be exact), I e-mailed Kalel Venkman to ask for an interview and he told me to e-mail him my questions and he’d be happy to answer them. I sent him my human subjects consent form (as required by the IRB-the human subject’s bureau) and waited for him. He sent me the following e-mail the very next day explaining the goal of his organization and some comments about the PN, but failing to give me an interview. I am posting this very first e-mail with some of my comments:

“You have a considerably long paper trail behind you, and that is something quite difficult to forge.  While I may not have any great trust of you at the moment, I do not have any great DIStrust of you either, and your approach to the subject matter appears quite scholarly. I do have over-arching concerns for the safety of the people with whom I relate on a daily basis, so you'll forgive my caution, I hope.”

So, I thought, great! He acknowledges that I have a valid research agenda and that I am *not* pretending to be someone else that I am not, but he is a bit careful. That is to be expected. The e-mail continued:

“I would be willing to share information so as to assist you in building a more balanced picture of events, but may have to omit details on occasion where safety or security would be compromised in the telling.  If we approach such information in our discussions, I will let you know rather than simply fabricate information.  In return, I hope that you will respect my need to keep some things in reserve.  The PN do not operate in the virtual world alone.”

I thought, perfect, as I do want to take a more balanced approach and I don’t need the security details anyway. I want to hear about how the PN is related to the Internet at large. Of course, he is going to withhold some sensitive information. The e-mail continued to explain his organization and how the griefer collective re-imagines/reinvents the history of Second Life:

“Also, I have been running a fairly successful organization within this virtual environment for over two years now, and have acquired what I believe may be some interesting insights into the social dynamic of the metaverse within which we function.  I believe that the principles involve essentially transcend the specific platform and may be applicable to other MMO environments as well.  You may find some of my observations useful in your dissertation.

One thing I have noticed in particular about griefer groups, and the PN in particular, is that they have a very patchy, distorted perception of their own history - often rewriting the parts they find distasteful or unpleasant to suit their egos, and sometimes confusing the disinformation they disseminate with the actual events.  They are frequently unable to communicate with one another except through the use of common memes, and this has a tendency to obfuscate communication to the point where critical information is either not conveyed, reimagined or forgotten.  In particular, they seem to be able to clearly remember events going back only about four to five months at most, living almost completely in the moment.
- Kalel” 

But he never responded to any of my e-mails after that. Realizing that he wasn’t interested in an interview, I stopped trying to contact him.

I graduated from my program in 2009 and it is around that time that I met Peter Ludlow.

When I approached him at the aforementioned conference, we had the idea to write a book that covered the phenomenon of griefing across the Internet. Peter said that it would be best for me to also “work” for the Herald and post some blogs. That I did. I posted some news reports on hackers in general but mainly focused on the book.

My goal with the book, at least in the Second Life section, was to tell the “untold” history of Second Life before it was too late - before the key players disappeared into thin air - before the history was forgotten. By that, I don’t mean the PG13 history of Second Life, the one sanctioned by Linden Lab. I wanted this to be the community’s story. Here’s a brief description of the book’s scope:

“Griefer Wars will begin by examining the early instances of the disruptive activities that took place in online communities such as LambdaMOO and Sims Online and investigate how Internet message boards (Something Awful Forums and 4chan) helped organize these solitary incidents into various movements that extend beyond these boards. In particular, the book will be discussing the presence of such movements in virtual worlds such as EvE Online and Second Life.”

With this goal in mind, I dusted off my previous interview scripts and re-started my field work. I reached out for old contacts and established new ones. I met a bunch of people from the Woodbury crowd (whom I never met before), met more from V5 and PN. I was able to reach out to some of the previous leaders of these groups (Verbana and ^ban^, for instance) and their officers who used to be in the inner circle of these groups. For the PN, that meant the Ghost Shirt Society (GSS) who really knew the ins and outs of their organizations and the psyops that had been conducted in the past.

It is around that time, I figured, contacting Kalel may be a good idea because in the e-mail that he had sent me in 2008, he told me that “[he] would be willing to share information so as to assist [me] in building a more balanced picture of events…” Despite many people’s warnings, who told me that this was a bad idea, I took the man for his word. After all, I wanted to relate a “balanced account” of the events that had occurred. Little did I know that he was not all together there after the infamous Wiki leak.  Here’s my e-mail dated May 17, 2011:

“Greetings Kalel,
I had contacted you several years ago in the hopes that we could chat about JLU while I was writing my dissertation. Let me remind of you what I was doing at the time: I wrote on transmedia storytelling for my dissertation but looked at the development of spatial stories that emerged as a result of the activities of griefers. I graduated in 2009 but I am in the process of writing a book with Peter Ludlow on the phenomenon of griefers, but we are taking a broader approach to the topic. In other words, not only will we be looking at Second Life, but also other virtual worlds, various message boards, and other social networking sites. I am in the process of writing the Second Life section. I personally would like to take a well-rounded approach to the topic. So far I have spoken with some people from the PN,Woodbury, and I am in the process of scheduling interviews with some of the Linden Lab employees. In the hopes of hearing the JLU side of the story, I decided to send you another e-mail. As I see it, this project is an ethnographic research on Second Life as we are documenting some of the happenings that will be lost forever once the platform dies or evolves into something else. So I deem this project to be very valuable. But I would rather not tell a sided story, hence my e-mail to you. I am not affiliated with anyone or anything other than my research and I think JLU may have been short-changed in the process. Will you help me write your story? Or know of someone else who would be willing to chat with me?
Let me know.”

Response was a series of frantic, threatening e-mails. I am not going to quote them word for word, but rather, give you the gist of the madness that was coming through his e-mails. He told me that any material from the BrainiacWiki is copyrighted and that if I included any of that information in the book he’d be filing a DMCA challenge - and that they will wait until the book is in print and released before doing so. He told me that we may not quote him, anything from the Krypton Radio web site, or any web site he personally owned or edited. 

He also spoke on behalf of other people: That he will also be notifying as many people as he could that Ludlow is doing this (For the record: I am not working for Ludlow; I am working with Ludlow), and that I would be receiving a number of other written notifications not to quote or include the writings of others in this work. Of course, none of these things happened. People were fairly open and understanding and I was respectful of my boundaries.

He also vengefully claimed that not only would he not be imparting any information to me, but that I was forbidden from using any information that he owned in my work. 

Here is when it really got interesting: He was telling me that I may not reprint articles from the Herald that contained his intellectual property.  

He also told me that I was dishonest with him in the first time when I e-mailed him in 2008 because I hadn’t told him that I was working with Ludlow. Then he proceeded to accuse Ludlow of being an IP thief because moved his servers to Canada after Kalel filed the DMCA. None of which, of course, was even remotely true. I didn’t start working with Ludlow before 2009; Ludlow didn’t mastermind the leaking operations, nor did he move his servers to Canada to avoid lawsuits, and he is not a thief of any sorts. I wish he was, really, for my sake, for the sake of the book, for the sake of my career. If we were to tell the story of the Philosophy professor going rogue, engaging in leaking operations, stealing intellectual property, putting babies on stakes, I would get my tenure - like now! But no, unfortunately, we have to deal with the boring story we have.

After the series of e-mails Kalel sent me (which were mostly gibberish and had no value to me whatsoever), I realized that he wasn’t going to assist me in writing a “balanced” story of the events after all. 

Baffled, I responded by telling him never to threaten me or any other researcher this way again and that “I was merely extending my courtesy to [him] to allow me to write a better account of what JLU was and what its mission [was].” He sent another gibberish e-mail talking about copyright/DMCA etc., at which point I was getting tired of his e-mails and openly asked him: 

 “Kalel, I am not sure who you think you are interacting with right now. Clearly you have made a lot of assumptions about me and you don't even know me yet. I am not the alt of anyone, nor am I the spokesperson of anyone. I am not doing anyone else's work either… My question to you is simple: Would you be interested in interviewing with me and give me information about your organization and its role in Second Life? This would be your chance to tell me your side of the story as well. This is important to me because I strongly believe that Second Life is about to die as a platform and someone needs to document its history.”

And I stopped contacting him afterwards. But I thought that there maybe, just maybe, are some rational people among the ranks of JLU. I wasn’t mistaken: Greenlantern was kind enough to talk to me but was too scared to tell me anything BUT the press release.  I kindly thanked him for his time and logged off. 

Just to set the record straight since Kalel has accused me of this in his note to the Proactive Security folks: I don’t harass people over e-mail, IM, or in-world. If the Proactive Security people think that I am logging onto Second Life and repeatedly soliciting interviews from a list of people and harassing them, they are sorely mistaken. And they will wait for a long time for this to happen. I don’t beg for a date, I get asked on a date.

I wasn’t initially going to post this. Kalel getting bend out of shape over me is no-news, really. He should have better things to do with his time, like fighting crime, right? But several days ago, Angel Fluffy responded to a message that I had sent him four months ago. It was apparent to me that he was no longer in Second Life nor was he on Skype. He probably logged onto Skype after many months and saw my message and replied to me in the affirmative, saying that he would talk to me. But then he suddenly backed out. I can only assume that, from the notices that went out to the Proactive Security, that he believed Kalel’s mad fabrications. Fair enough -- again, not an important incident in my life. 

I am almost done with the Second Life chapters. And I must confess, the section does not paint a very flattering picture of the anti-griefing organizations in Second Life. But, let this be noted: this is not because I didn’t try to include their side of the story, but rather, they refused to talk to me on account of their insecurities. 

Let’s be clear: I never misrepresented myself to anyone. I never “falsely” claimed to be a researcher. Peter Ludlow is not an IP thief. He wasn’t even around when the Wrong Hands leaked the Wiki, his paper was merely reporting on the news story. In fact, Brainiac, from what I gather, had been leaked many times by various other groups (not just the Wrong Hands) prior to the last incident. More important, Kalel should thank his stars that Pixeleen isn’t taking him to court for filing frivolous DMCA complaints. But this may, of course, change in the long run. Who knows? Time will tell.

But, I do believe that we have to look what’s really at issue here as we’re building this brave new world in cyberspace.

There is one rather minor conclusion and another, a larger one, that relates to digital culture in general. Both of these should be addressed here: 

The most immediate conclusion is regarding the griefer pathology. I’ve been doing research on griefing since 2006. But never, prior to my interaction with Kalel, did I understands the damaging effects that griefing could have on a person’s psyche. After the series of paranoid e-mails I received from him, it was clear to me that the Wrong Hand didn’t just breach the JLU’s security (which was a joke to begin with), but also, effectively turned the JLU into a paranoid collective. It used to be a group that fought for peace, order, and society, that’s for sure. But now, it cloaked itself in secrecy, painfully trying to hide its scars by flinging false accusations to where they don’t belong. Perhaps it was in this respect that the Wrong Hands was most successful. 

The other issue to be noted here is a larger one that pertains to society as a whole.

The frivolous use of DMCA/intellectual property claims to stifle creativity, but in this case, to avoid accountability, silence freedom of speech, and jam open discussion. The copyright war that is being waged today (not just in the case of Kalel, who lost his battle with the Alphaville Herald) is a war of prohibition. Characterizing the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) as “Orwellian,” Lawrence Lessig (2004), a law professor, openly claims that this law is frequently invoked to control the spread of information. “The DMCA was enacted as a response to copyright owners’ first fear about cyberspace. The fear that copyright effectively was dead” (Free Culture, 157). It is a way to stifle creativity, valid research, and dissenting opinions. And it criminalizes the society. I would argue that the issues that are taking place in Second Life are merely the mirror image of this problem. Make no mistake, popcorn farts or not: this is the Wikileaks generation. The US government couldn’t stop it; I doubt a group wearing spandex will.

Second Life's well known sex-bed entrepreneur Stroker Serpentine, his Second Life virtual family, and his real-life family are to be featured Monday May 2 on the "Fantasy Lives" episode of National Geographic Channel's Taboo series.

Stroker Serpentine and his real life typist

In addition to a Stroker's online and offline work in the cybersex industry, the episode will also look into the life of a California man who role-plays an adult baby, with diaper, pacifier and customized baby furniture, and a Japanese champion kick boxer who dresses up as female animation characters while boxing.

Could this sort of coverage explain the failure of the Second Life as an enterprise platform for serious business?

Taboo to compare and contrast real life roleplay with Second Life?

The National Geographic Taboo site's facts page tells us "the population of Second Life is growing by 36 percent per month", so it appears that one of Rodvik Linden's fantasies may also be mentioned in this episode.

Look for a spike in Second Life signups following the episode and strong in-world demand for virtual diapers and pacifiers.

24 hours after Tizzers Foxchase placed a single post on Twitter – a little birdie told me that Microsoft may have silently offered tp buy Linden Lab this week – the outstanding quality of reporting in the internet age is all too apparent.

Tizzers Foxchase Trolls Twitter

While successful trolling of a few minor blogs is to be expected, this rumor had legs – much to the dismay of long-time Linden Lab sock puppets and favored sources for quasi-official Lab leaks.

For instance, just imagine Tateru Nino’s dismay at being upstaged by the notorious Tizzers Foxchase – a player repeatedly banned from Second Life and member of The Wrong Hands faction. While Tateru has always played the Lab’s good girl, Tizzers has chosen a more colorful approach to her gameplay and  should not be underestimated. The Wrong Hands exposed both Linden Lab staff collusion with the Justice League Unlimited vigilantes and the disgraced Emerald viewer developers.

What else could Tateru do but grit her teeth and point out that it could be true – even if the source might be suspect. And so we witness a perfect meta-gaming storm as frantic-to-post bloggers and minimal research create a no-lose situation for Ms. Foxchase. The evidence? Mary-Jo Foley of ZDnet took the bait along with Kevin Parrish of Tom’s Hardware.

Is Tizzers Foxchase the ultimate industry insider – or the author of one of the most successful Second Life trolls ever?

Since the Alphaville Herald’s inception in 2003, we have covered the news of online worlds and societies like no one else. You’ve enjoyed tales of griefers, scammers, virtual mafias, virtual paramilitary organizations, epic trolls, perverts, furries, babyfurs, baby unicorns, goreans, elves, online Nazis, anti-Nazis, virtual communists, dirty dealing virtual politicians, tales of favoritism, corruption, betrayal,  lots of Post Six Grrrls, and a few Post Six Guys. Through it all, one principle has remained constant: in the hall of mirrors that is the Interwebs we may never know the truth. That, and don’t drink that Moet crap.

We have watched several virtual worlds grow and then die over the last seven years, including The Sims Online, Lively, and Metaplace. We are now watching Second Life’s death spasms. We have come to realize the story was never about branded virtual real estate, but rather about the people who move like nomadic tribes, migrating across virtual worlds, the broader Net, and even the so-called real world.

Accordingly, we have not stayed confined to a branded space and have followed our subjects and audience – even into the real world – and reported accordingly. Crucially, in reporting those real world events like WikiLeaks and hacktivist actions, we have discovered we never left the hall of mirrors we navigated over the last seven years with the Herald.

Sometime we ask why traditional reporting suxxors soooo bad. Perhaps the answer is they simply can’t operate in a world of smoke and mirrors, where everyone is acting “in avatar” and true agendas are unknown. We may have not mastered the hall of mirrors, but we have lived here and find our calling is to extend the Herald’s charge beyond branded worlds to also encompass the world writ large. We like navigating in the shadowy world of hackers and spooks and Anonymous. This is where we are at home reporting. Who knows, perhaps we can even save civilization in the process.

A pair of rogue domain name servers have been stripped of their authoritative status and permanently banished from the Herald DNS registration after putting the alphavilleherald.com site through a nightmarish ordeal of DNS lies and deception that rendered the newspaper inaccessible to growing numbers of readers as the misinformation spread across the entire interwebs.

With both the Herald editrix and technical staff in transit to the Metaverse Meetup, the crazed DNS servers’ sneak attack could not have come at a more unfortunate time.

Distraught readers wailed in frustration at being denied access to the most authoritative, incisive, vital and virtual newspaper in the metaverse. Some wondered how they would wrap their pixelated fish. Fears mounted as widespread reports circulated that virtual bird cages were being left unlined. Others noted that several puppies are still not totally housebroken – all due to the shocking silence by a pair of formerly well-behaved DNS servers.

Could this have been part of a bizzare Second Life Gorean cult’s BDSM-inspired DNS dominance game? Did Linden Lab finally decide enough is enough on the eve of Philip Linden’s faux town hall meeting? Or is a shadowy conspiracy of anti-technocomunists,  black hats, 4chan, and the illuminati to blame? Perhaps Audrey from typesetting has been moonlighting and ‘cleaning up’ certain zone files?

We may never know the whole truth, but this query result may provide a clue

————
QUESTIONS:
alphavilleherald.com, type = A, class = IN
ANSWERS:
AUTHORITY RECORDS:
ADDITIONAL RECORDS:
————
** server can’t find alphavilleherald.com: SERVFAIL
 

Once alerted to the problem, the Herald’s Mysterio Sinister said, "I’ll show you a SERVFAIL, sucker" and immediately updated the Herald’s DNS name registration to use more reliable servers — a heroic rescue of the paper from a horrific ordeal.

This news may come as a surprise to some Linden fanboys and certain comment section sock puppets – but is a common enough reason to depart from the virtual realm. Before closing the door and turning out the lights, Vanmoer thanked the newspaper’s staff, then sucker punched Linden Lab by saying,

"One thing I would hope for the future of SL is that the Lindens go back and realise what they are destroying with their policies. The sheer creativity, communication and international impact somewhere like Secondlife can be is being eaten away by the Lindens stupidly ignoring the content creators with their ill thought out policies which help no-one except their own pockets."

Indeed.

SL-newspaper’s farewell gift to M Linden

In a press release today, Pixeleen Mistral and Urizenus Sklar announced Defne Demar has joined the Herald staff. Ms. Demar ended minutes of speculation by admitting her real life typist is none other than Burcu S. Bakioglu – a noted new media scholar who authored Spectacular Interventions of Second Life: Goon Culture, Griefing, and Disruption in Virtual Spaces. Ms. Demar will be covering the griefer and mafia beat for the Herald, providing the sort of immersed, informed, and engaged meta-game analysis that can only be found on these pages.

Defne Demar joins Pixeleen Mistral at Herald HQ in Jessie sim

Ms. Demar was initially recruited by Herald founder Urizenus Sklar, who recently has taken up involuntary semi-permanent residence in Amsterdam. When reached for comment, Urizenus said "none of that Moët crap was involved in the negotiations – that’s not how the Herald rolls – now wtf is up with all this volcanic ash, anyway?" 

Meanwhile, Herald managing editrix Pixeleen Mistral took a break from a secretive round of sea trials with the new Herald yacht to meet with Demar at the Herald offices in Jessie sim and welcome her to the paper. The pair were later seen sipping sake somewhere near downtown Durham discussing how to explain the real story behind tuesday’s mass ban of the Woodbury faction.

Burcu at her first Herald staff meeting

tools of the trade: Herald reporter’s laptop with SL sticker

Posting the piece while the Herald yacht put in to port to stock up on blood oranges and Cristal – none of that Moët crap here at the Herald – Urizenus chose to use his real life identity (Peter Ludlow of Northwestern University) to discuss similar patterns of emergent behavior across game worlds including The Sims Online, Habbo Hotel, and Second Life.

JLU vigilantes start seeing griefers everywhere

Particularly interesting are the parallels between the Sims Shadow Government paramilitary of TSO Second Life’s Justice League Unlimited. Both groups maintained close contacts with employees of the game company, and utilized those relationships in filing abuse reports against other players. But as Ludlow points out, the game soon turned ugly as the would-be cops go unchecked.

"What perhaps began as a fun exercise in roleplay soon began to go awry. Overzealous Justice League members began abuse reporting heavily, and also began picking fights with unlikely groups within Second Life. For example, the Justice League was banned from Furnation (an area inside Second Life dedicated to players that like to don anthropomorphized animal costumes), because of their excessive vigilantism".

In time, the vigilantes become paranoid and nearly everyone appears to be a griefer.

"It wasn’t just their competitors that were marked as griefers; the Alphaville Herald, which had been reporting on griefers in virtual worlds since 2003, was a griefer media organ in Kalels eyes. The Herald’s editor, an avatar Pixeleen Mistral was therefore also a griefer. Kalel came to falsely believe that Pixeleen was identical with me, and so I must be a griefer too. There were griefers everywhere, it seemed".

Look for this must-read series to continue soon – Cristal and blood oranges never last long on the Herald yacht and the catering staff is already preparing to replenish the galley while Uri uploads part 2 of the series.