Neva Wants Linden SWAT
“…and this is the season
to let the real muthaphuckkin G’s in” (Eazy E, Real Muthaphuckkin G’s)
In the drab suburb of Rotterdam I grew up in we played soccer (’football’ if you must) on the dog doo infested grass between some appartment blocks. One of the balconies adjacent to our playground belonged to an old woman and if your ball - the sporty kids always tried to outdo each other with expensive new soccer balls - landed there, it was said, she’d stab it with a kitchen knife before giving it back. I’ve never seen it happen, but you know the kind of old woman I am talking about. Tired of the world, vengeful, hateful, ever complaining about ‘the youth of today’.
Enter Prokofy Neva’s long rant about what he calls infohub infestations, or “The idiots who loiter around the Infohubs or Welcome Areas, Behaving Badly.” Ah, we are talking straight griefing, Prokofy? I’m with you then. But no, “These hags stand around in little knots, cracking dumb jokes, acting faux-polite and faux-helpful in that really annoying hubber way to newbies, pretending to be good citizens, [...and...] play sound clips — they’ve got the usual annoying repertoire, from tag lines like that idiot saying ‘Oh yiissss’ in WoW or various movie tag lines ‘Houston, we have a problem‘…“
The corner of the curtain behind the geraniums moves and Prok peeks out. “There’s a certain type — we’ve all seen them. A clear marker is having a deliberately ugly avatar. An avatar deliberately made very fat or very thin, misshapen, as if to say ‘Fuck you, I won’t do what everybody else is doing.’” And the problem is… what exactly? Ugliness? No, it’s far worse: “The deliberately ugly avatar statement annoys or confounds or confuses newcomers — they head swiftly away, sometimes never to return to SL ever again.“
Now really. I wonder what type of person would run away from SL because of ugly avatars. Maybe some delicate little empty-headed Barbiedoll, “we’ve all seen them“, stamping her little foot and asking hubby-dear who those ugly people are across the fence in her new suburbian garden. Or maybe indeed that old soccer ball stabbing sociopath.
Surely some Welcome Areas and Infohubs are a problem. Bumping people off, misleading newbies, shooting, what have you. Pity the newbie who comes from Orientation Island straight to Waterhead - but Prokofy’s threshold is already breached in peaceful Ross and she wants not a sheriff but a Linden Lab goonsquad to come to the rescue: “And yes, the Lindens need to swoop down like a SWAT team [...] everywhere, and with surprise, and strategically…“
Whoa. Linden Lab needs to pay people (Prokofy makes clear he doesn’t mean Residents of volunteers, but paid employees of LL) to come in and stop people from hanging around public areas. Everywhere, and with surprise, and strategically. I wonder what picture he has formed in his mind. Is it perhaps that of the Russian OMON beating up homosexual protesters? After all, their protest is a way “to say ‘Fuck you, I won’t do what everybody else is doing.’” Or is it that of the South African Police of the pre-Mandela era, firing shotguns at kaffers? That makes sense - after all, the South African Boere were just as fond as Prokofy of calling everyone a ‘terrorist’.
Yes, I am grossly exaggerating, I know it. But it’s Prokofy, the man who is calling people leninist, terrorist, communist, racist or antisemitic all the time, so I have a right to overstate my case as grossly as he does. The whole thing eventually boils down to this: if your way of enjoying Second Life does not comply with Prokofy Neva’s standards, you should be muscled out of your favourite hangout. And if Linden lab is ‘communist’, then that is ‘fascist’.
Really, I’d rather see Linden Lab crack down on the real problems of Second Life, and by that I don’t mean the youth hanging around Waterhead or the frat boy pranksters of Woodbury, but the real griefers, the sim crashers, the Nightmare Dench types. And not with a SWAT team, because that is useless against throwaway alts, but with technology. But Prokofy hates technology because he doesn’t grasp an inch of it - that’s strictly for tekkie-wikis, who I’m sure are the next group Prokofy wants the Linden SWAT to go after.
February 21, 2008 at 7:22 am
Gosh, you’re dumb Laetizia. What the Lindens need to do is prosecute griefing, not people hanging out. But they do need to tell the people who keep congregating in big groups and preventing others from even flying on the sim to move along, to break it up, and move along. Furthermore, when they see these people griefing “under the radar,” taunting, annoying, behaving badly without some sort of definitive TOS violation, that they need to stop it, because it’s creating a climate that is unwelcoming to others. Pure and simple.
If you need to keep word-salading, parsing, rebutting this, you’re just revealing your own stake in being an infestation yourself. That’s why I don’t like resident groups running gatekeeping. They join the infestation they pretend to fight.
If you don’t understand the problem of the deliberately ugly and grotesque avatar, which usually is accompanied by bad behaviour, you’re willfully blind. You’ve been hanging around WAs too long. Do you suffer from agorophobia?
The problem with your totally erroneous analysis is that you don’t realize that the Woodburies and the hangers on *are* the people crashing the sims. It’s a small pond, Second Life.
To compare the need to have Lindens break up asshole groups to the Russian OMON is ridiculous. The Lindens don’t need to use force. They can use reason. They can call these people on their bullshit. We all can. And we can do it by calling *you* on your bullshit.
How many Muslim refugees did the Netherlands let in this last year?
February 21, 2008 at 8:10 am
The problem with your analysis is that for you every neighbourhood kid is a griefer, and every griefer is a terrorist. You called it a SWAT team, not me. You did not say ‘negotiating team’. Don’t try to crawl out from under your words like a worm - I think that’s too low even for you. The second problem with you is that, although you’re done with the Lindens, you keep begging them to solve your petty little problem. When you’re done, you’re done.
Hell yes I’ve been hanging around WAs for a long time, trying to help newbies and keep some sense of ‘normalcy’ in the face of stiff opposition from people who have seen too many mentors come in just to send ARs for saying ’shit’ in text chat. And I have learned a thing or two about how these groups behave. You, on the other hand, see a fat girl like Maria30 Klaar and think she is “deliberately ugly”, and start sending petty little ARs (and then complain about how they end up in the sea of pointless ARs you help create). You would not last an hour in Waterhead, seriously.
Imagine for a second that I am a griefer - I know that isn’t hard for you. My goal for the day is to get Prokofy Neva angry. How easy do you make it for me to reach my target? And how often would I come back to wherever you hang out if I don’t get a response out of you? That’s what I mean when I say ‘roll with the punches’. You are calling it off over yourself. I am not saying that the heckling is somehow good or just, but that’s how some peoples’ minds work.
My comparison to OMON is deliberately overstated, I already said that, in the same way you overstate your case when you call griefers ‘terrorists’. You live in NYC, I would have thought you’d have learned a thing or two - no pun intended - about terrorism.
I’ll leave the question about the Netherlands unanswered. I have no idea and frankly I am not responsible for what the Dutch government does. Just as you are not responsible for the tens of thousands of innocent civilians slaughtered for the sake of domination of the Middle East by your government. And I see no reason to bring RL politics into SL just for the sake of slamming people. It only works with nationalists anyway, since I care fuck-all about what you or anyone else thinks of Holland.
February 21, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Indeed. In stead of swapping those ‘highly irritating and ugly’ persons in containers and bringing them the the garbage belts, they could give them clothes, knowledge, … . /me votes against the SWAT team.
February 24, 2008 at 3:30 am
Um, no, griefers are people who stalk you and sit on your head or send scripted objects around after you to bother you, and who constantly insult and swear at you. They aren’t just kids hanging around, anyone can tell the difference. Oh, except you can’t.
The fat man maria30klaar is deliberately making her avatar ugly to shock and annoy (lately, she’s gotten into a Haskellian routine where she makes it look better, but still fat, and puts on nice clothes, to try to pretend that this is just a Large is Beautiful issue, but it’s more about hatred of women, starting with her own mother, than anything else, I guess.)
Your big friend maria30 orbits me, sends scripted crap to follow me, and congregates hags around to insult and taunt and harass me. That’s not being normal; that’s being an infohub infestation.
I was in Waterhead before you were born, dollface. Don’t tell me about Waterhead. I used to have to go there daily back in the days before there was p2p and it was a telehub.
Griefers *are* terrorists. Your softness on griefers is flushed out along with your softness on terrorists (they had bad childhoods or they are right to attack the US that supports Israel or whatever your shtick is). and that’s why the analogy is useful, it flushes out stuff like that which people tend to lie about in portraying their position.
How many Muslim refugees did the Netherlands let in last year?
I’ve always been opposed to the war in Iraq. One thing that common sense tells me about Iraq, however — along with Palestine — is that the tens of thousands are being slaughtered…not by my government, but by terrorists. My government then finds an easy excuse to get in there. And that’s the problem. You and your ideas don’t offer an alternative to get them out. RL is SL. SL is RL.
February 24, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Dollface, eh? Thank you for the compliment on my avatar making skills, but I thought I already told you that you are the dollface, not me. Your girlyman avatar may even serve to make newbies to “head swiftly away, sometimes never to return to SL ever again.“
But all joking aside, I don’t see what you want with your muslim refugees question. It is against the Dutch Constitution to refuse people on the basis of their religion (article 1*) and I have never and would not ever vote for a party calling for a stop on muslim immigration. However, in a country roughly twice the size of new Jersey (large bodies of water included) but with more inhabitants than Florida, you can’t leave the door open for all the world to come in. There, realism triumphs over my leftist idealism.
If Maria orbits you, then AR her - it’s what the system is for. You have in the past, and she has been banned for three days at least once. But having talked to Maria I can’t help wondering where it started. I guess it is your attitude towards ‘loiterers’. You really are like that old woman I started my blog with. That ’scripted object’ - her teddybear - has followed me too, and bothered me for exactly 2 minutes. Then I talked to her and we added each other to our friends lists. After all we’re both from Holland.
I dare anyone to pull the profile of Maria30 Klaar and see if it is the typical empty griefer profile, with membership of at the most 3 groups, all of them troublemakers. It’s not. I dare anyone to go over and look at her. So she is fat, but she made a sweet face for herself, and the purple mesh hair… well some people just don’t want to spend money for prim hair, or spend time to hunt freebie hair.
Get serious about griefing, Prokofy. We sure can use someone with your drive and dedication to put his weight behind finding solutions. Right now you’re clogging the system with all that petty stuff.
(*Constitution of the Netherlands, Article 1: Allen die zich in Nederland bevinden, worden in gelijke gevallen gelijk behandeld. Discriminatie wegens godsdienst, levensovertuiging, politieke gezindheid, ras, geslacht of op welke grond dan ook, is niet toegestaan.
“Every person in the Netherlands shall be treated equally in equal situations. Discrimination on the basis of religion, beliefs, political views, race, sex or on any other grounds, is not allowed.”
February 25, 2008 at 2:28 am
Manginas always have this problem with f2m transgenders, where they feel they need to bully and harass them on their appearance, their TG status and “authenticity,” everything about them, merely because manginas think that only males can have power and that’s all there is to it. This is getting to be a pretty obvious and old routine.
We get all that about northern NJ. Would you say that the Dutch do their fair share to take in the world’s refugees, particularly Muslims fleeing persecution?
I wrote to you about “where it started,” cupcake. Maria30’s little griefer buddies in her little infohub infestation began flying all over the sim and shooting people. They were banned from my parcels. This is how 2 of them began their career, bombing, shooting, flying, playing “let’s hit the mall manager” as sport as male newbie asswipes.
They then settled down and varied their menu to caging and harassing newbies and orbiting people they didn’t like.
So this “starting of it” is done by these infestations, hon, not by me. I never paid any attention to them until they first struck or orbited me, and until tenants and newbies began to IM me in alarm at what was happening. So I went to the sim, told them off, put up signs against vigilantes, told newbies to AR them, and AR’d them myself.
That merely led them, after their little vacation courtesy of the Lindens, to do “below the radar” crap like use scripted objects to follow me. Now, if scripts are turned off there, how do they do it. They have a gimmick they use which has been reported, repeatedly. The Lindens need to shut off “object entry” and they need to convince Anshe to shut everything off in this grief-strip that she’s kept in the middle of the hub that these grief-kiddies use for the antics. Well, some of them are no longer children, they’re rather advanced middleaged losers, I imagine lol.
Here’s the kind of thing you might find:
Post-It Note: Note 14 from Laetizia Coronet
: They put up obscenities on my bulletin board, though it is PG — but since it isn’t in chat in any way that a Linden could check it, it’s hard to AR. I routinely erase it.
Post-It Note: Maria, I have already replied. Need to speak to you.
http://laetizia.wordpress.com
Post-It Note: Note 4 from maria30 Klaar
Post-It Note: from “infohub infestations” by Prokofy Neva (second thoughts feb. 1
Post-It Note: Note 7 from maria30 Klaar
Post-It Note: At last I know where my obsceneties go , Prok ! You need them for your private collection! If you want my signature on them, feel free to ask.
Rather than simply refraining from obscenities on this bulletin board, and spamming it, and keeping it available for people to actually use, the Infestation keeps spamming and swearing on it. And they reply to my condemnation of that — which is a completeyl normal thing to do — by saying something even more crude and stupid.
This is all obvious to the untrained eye, Laetizia darling, if you would look.
Let me emphasize that you are not an arbiter of this situation, nor an unbiased judge, and incapable of even reporting it right. You’re an infestation yourself.
Again, it’s not about “loiterers” because nobody could care about them, they harm no one, and they bring traffic, and occasionally help newbies even if they fill their days with inane chat.
This is about GRIEFING and actively interfering in use and development of the infohub. The person who does this the most, maria30, doesn’t have any inner life, no sense of herself and her mission in life, she is at loose ends, knocking around, looking to give herself a sense of feeling and meaning by tormenting another human being.
That’s always worth fighting, and its triviality isn’t worth overlooking, because it only escalates.
February 27, 2008 at 4:55 am
It’s not really my habit to comment your contributions, prokofy; after all, what chance could a mere deliberately ugly, dumb terrorist make to even get a a basic comprehension of your sophisticated words? Even though you tend to repeat every paragraph at least 4 times? (What a patience you have with your retarded pupils!)
I have to make an exception, though. I will not try to defend myself against each of your attacks, but lately you tend to direct all your arrows onto me, my friends, even my family, culminating in your “infohub infestations” blog, and in the series of comments above.
I’ll restrict myself to just a few points:
1. Yes, I orbited you. Only once, but ok, I did do it. I am not proud of it, and it will give you satisfaction that my foot still hurts. But now that you use this against me some 9 months after, let me at least remind you of the circumstances. Actually , this was the first time I met you. When I came online I saw you yelling at a friend of mine in a real intimidating way. I saw my friend losing his control, you (I didnt know you yet) apparently had lost it already, so I decided to separate the two of you. I could have orbited my friend as well, but you were the one who could use a cooling down best. This was the start of your vendetta.
2. Yes I do hang out at Ross with my friends. Griefer buddies in your view. “Guilty by association” , I suppose, as I don’t know anybody who ever even teased you. We like to discuss RL issues, or our scripting projects, we help newbies ( your famous infohub info doesnt do the trick for them all, some of them prefer real information to a “what is a sim” notecard), and just make fun. I have a busy RL job as a musician, do you really suppose I would even have the energy to disturb the peace?
3.”but it is more about hatred of women, starting with her own mother”. It is this phrase that made me decide to write this comment in the first place. These are no longer the words of a human balloon, this is business. What on earth made you refer to my mother? Maybe you made this all up; I hope you did; the only other possibility is that you overheared a discussion with a friend about her illness, and found it appropriate to use it against me.
4. My appearance. Sigh. Oh well, next point.
5.What the hell do you have against Laetizia? She disagrees with you and points out the weaknesses of your arguments in a clear and short way, and in the most gentle words. Try to learn from her writing style , instead of calling her an infestation.
6. “The person who does this the most, maria30, doesn’t have any inner life, no sense of herself and her mission in life, she is at loose ends, knocking around, looking to give herself a sense of feeling and meaning by tormenting another human being.”
May I quote this prok? Still looking for a good last line in my profile.
February 27, 2008 at 7:53 am
Well spoken, Maria. Like a true lover of everything communist, Prokofy hates to be contradicted - and that’s why he hates me.
March 11, 2008 at 5:36 am
What has gone on at the Ross sim is hard to follow if you read the twisted words of Prokofy Neva. And I should clarify she has absolutely no right to condemn anyone else’s avatar in Second Life. She often comes on as a 15 year old boy(which I think might even be a violation of the age-play rules) and otherwise as a male with five o’clock shadow; crazed looking half male half female and other sordid emanations of the Hell that must be her mind.
I find it extremely offensive for her to use the words she does against my friends. She has claimed we infest the info-hub. What we have done is chat, as beautiful Maria says, about all kinds of interesting issues.
Quite to the contrary, the info-hub has been infested by Prokofy Neva who acts as if she owns it. No she does not own it, not in any way shape or form. It is wholly owned by the Lindens and they have failed in their duties to remove her powers over editing objects.
What Prok does is use this Linden property as if it were her own for her own financial gain which is a blatant violation of TOS. She has somehow succeeded at making the default landing place for the area one of her rental properties (If you type in Ross as your destination either at start-up or during teleportation you will see what I mean.)
Prok constantly deletes the bulletin board we have fun chatting back and forth on. She constantly brings her sociopathic hate-filled personality down to Ross– strutting around as either a young teen-aged boy or a middle-aged man. And now she actually dares submit the notion that it should be an offense merely to gather together and chat. That is, afterall, one of the primary purposes of SL to create a place for people to gather together and chat similar to real life– in groups.
This woman is nothing less than a monster. This is the very reason the Lindens have banned her from the forums and the blogs. She is an SL terrorist of the very worst sort. Constant and persistently trying to terrorize and suck any happiness from life and out of our SL experience. She has no right to inflict her psychosis on us and we should not just sit back while she does so.
SL is a well run system that by and large does very very well. I praise the Lindens for their constant efforts to improve the software and keep all of our experiences as pleasant as possible.
But these self styled Nazi terroristic thugs, of which Prokofy Neva is by far the worst, leave us with no choice but to say no to her extremist malodorous, asinine and deeply offensive and obsessive misconduct. Let’s all congregate and be happy. Don’t fuel the beast by responding to her unending idiotic rantings.
Love,
Sean