Are we not the police?

We are not the police. I do not exaggerate if I say that I hear that at least once every day, coming from various sources, but always a repeat of Linden Lab policy regarding Second Life Mentors. I even repeat it myself, in group IMs, on our SLVEC island, everywhere. We are not the police. But what are we then? Why are so many of us lured into the role of virtual police, standing around populated public places and sending out ARs, sometimes seemingly for nothing more than sneezing in the wrong direction?

A while ago, Mentors at Waterhead were greeted with custom made gestures: a stressed-out voice going I’ll report you! in a tone reminiscent of the teacher on Pink Floyd’s The Wall album. Hey! You! Yes… you! Stand still laddie! Now of course you can react to that with an AR - for gesture spamming, which apparently is a reason to ban people - but it’s good to ask yourself why people go through the trouble of making such gestures in the first place. Or group titles such as Second Life Mentard. And seeing some colleagues in action I know what’s going on - they come to Waterhead or any other fairly unruly area and try to lay down the law. They do not allow any swearing, they issue warnings and threats, and they write ARs like there’s no tomorrow. I know. I was once like that, in the very beginning. And that’s what makes us Mentors such ‘beloved’ figures in the community.

Now it’s easy for me to say that with examples like our own Mia Linden of the Volunteer program it’s no wonder Mentors behave like coppers on Monday mornings. But seriously, any Mentor who wants to help new people in some places (and that’s, shall we say, our core business) is faced with a huge problem - some of the regulars in those places. In order to serve the newbies who get kicked into the infamous Welcome Area by the exit signs on Orientation and Help Islands, we need to protect them from people of ill will - be that people who deliberately give out false information or people whose “funny” racism, homophobia and foulmouthed attitude is enough to turn any but the most fanatic neonazi skinhead away from SL.

To serve and protect - surely the good folk at Linden Lab must have read that somewhere on the streets of San Francisco. Leave out one of the two and you’re left with a defunct system. What good is my serving the newbies going to do when, ten meters on, they walk into the corrupted world of fratboy pranksters like the man calling himself Ringleader (his alts go by many names - the group title is the same), whose whole existence evolves around continuously spouting horrificly vicious racist tripe in a fake British aristocrats’ accent? I serve the new Resident as best I can with the purpose of keeping him in-world and interested, only to see him enter hell two minutes later. One can only hope that he’ll TP out to a better place. I wonder how many just switch off, never to return.

On the other hand, if I am only there to protect, I am a security guard. A silent, unapproachable figure of authority - not the person to come to with your first questions. Imagine that: an empty Waterhead with five silent security guards, and the first visitor who dares say shit (before even knowing the difference between PG and Mature, mind you) gets it. I wonder how many would switch off then.

Therefore, we serve and we protect. Of course I can use other words to make it sound less like the motto of police departments all over the US, but that doesn’t diminish it’s meaning. So are we not the police?

In an ideal world, we shouldn’t be. But in places like Waterhead we are. We stand around, sometimes outnumbering the new people, and watch, and listen. And yes, we report as well - I hope we don’t all report like it’s our favourite pastime, but from me you can count on a report for racism, for violence, and for threatening or otherwise unpleasant behaviour towards others. In voice, in text chat or otherwise, I don’t care.

The regulars at Waterhead (some of them are really nice people when you talk to them, /me greets 13 Jun, Crunk Munster and Gnu Curry) tell me that the solution is to stop sending newbies to Waterhead. But are they the ones to tell Linden Lab what to do with their areas, on their turf? Should the Lab just beat a retreat and give up on a Welcome Area in one of the oldest and most pleasant areas of the Mainland, right in the middle of Linden Village? Even if - how many more areas are going to be taken over by these groups? Ahern is shaky at best, Hanja is scarcely visited by Mentors at all and I have seen some of the more notorious figures in Miramare, too. Retreating is an open ended option, of which the open end points towards Berlin itself, pardon the historical parallel.

I think the option is to stand firm and to stare down the pranksters until they beat a retreat. There are thousands of places in SL which are Mature (Waterhead isn’t), open to everyone, not frequented by freshly minted newbies (or by Mentors for that matter), with building and/or scripting enabled. For all I care they can go there and be idiots all day long. I’d happily build them some infrastructure, too, if that’s what it takes. But the Lab, and by extention it’s volunteers, should draw the line at Welcome Areas and Infohubs. They are intended for everyone and especially for new Residents, and should never be relinquished for reasons of lack of manageability.

And so, for now, we need to be police. Call it what you want to, but policing is what we do in places like Waterhead. Showing up in numbers, sporting our group titles, just to make enough of an impression to take the sharpest edges off of the irritating behaviour. I tried to make do with other comparisons, like for example emergency medical services, but after all is said and done, that’s just not the whole truth. In places like Waterhead, sometimes when the ‘right’ people are all there, we are an imperfect and virtually powerless police. Why? Because behind our backs the newbies keep dropping in, straight from Orientation. And without any people overseeing what’s going on there, they’d leave in droves.

(Second Life, SL and Linden Lab are trademarks of Linden Research, Inc. This blog was written with the intention of not infringing upon any trademark.)

M.I.A.

I discovered it too late, because Yahoo decided to drop the message from Linden Lab into the bulk folder, but there it was – disciplinary action has been taken against me. I’ll tell you what happened.

Last Saturday was one of the rare moments in the weekend that I am on Second Life. I was happily building away when someone on an IM channel said she was being flooded at Pooley. Out of couriousity I TP’d over and found myself knee deep (and more) in griefer cubes. Fine then – send an AR and get out. However, Doc Gascoigne called me at that moment for an urgent delivery of T-shirts for the new Mentors – the ones they had available read “Security” which is exactly what Mentors are not supposed to be. So I went off-world, forgot about building, and managed to make some hopefully acceptable shirts for the newly minted Mentors. Mind you, the grad party was already under way.

Back to the grid I went. I delivered the shirts to Mia Linden and got no reply. I IM’d Doc and got no reply. Thinking I had better go there myself I went over to the SL Volunteer Island complex, in the middle of which the party was in full swing. These are Mature rated islands that are furthermore off bounds to non-volunteers.

At the four sim crossing where the party was held, lag was terrible. I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t see properly, I couldn’t do anything. Four times or so I got close to Mia, but when I tried to get closer I ended up half a sim away. A very frustrating experience if you have an urgent message to deliver. And so, in my anger, I typed “Fuck this place” – or words to that effect, it had the word Fuck in it anyway – and clicked Shout. Remember, I was in a complex of Mature and furthermore private sims.

Then Mia got to me, thanking me for the shirts, and in the same breath berating me for what I just shouted across the party. That’s just typical, I thought, and I first told her that I was in a Mature sim (and I added a smiley) after which she told me she knew the guidelines very well. “You know what, Mia?” I said next. “AR me.” I knew it could cost me my Mentorship but at that time I really didn’t care anymore. She said she would, and apparently she did. Being that I am hardly ever in Second Life on weekends, I never noticed until I found that mail. I am still a Mentor – apparently one can be disciplined and maintain Mentorship.

A stressful hour, beginning with griefer cubes, a request I happily (and at the cost of 20 of my own Linden dollars for uploading) and swiftly obliged to, the insane lagginess of that party I only went to because of those damn shirts, and the non-responsiveness of people you just finished an urgent assignment for, was reason for me to say ‘fuck’.

Mia Linden does not understand this. Mia Linden never says ‘fuck’ even though she has a New York accent broader than that of Fran bloody Drescher. Mia Linden is an absolutely saintly person – and therefore hasn’t the slightest idea of how real people react to things. She would have reacted with a hearty ‘Golly!’ or an honest ‘Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat!’ and that would be all – because nothing is going to knock her train of happy, positive thoughts off the rails, don’t you know.

I am still a Mentor. But I am wondering why I would be volunteering for Mia, or doing anything for her at all, for that matter. If she is so fucking saintly I am sure she can conjure up happy T-shirts for all to wear while being immersed in griefer cubes, loudmouth newbies demanding help and Waterhead regulars calling her a nigger bitch. And so she really doesn’t need me to do all that for her. Because that’s what I fucking do out there - taking shit for the Lindens. Every goddamn day.

So Mia, next time you need anything at all for your happy band of volunteers sending positive rays all over the grid, don’t come asking. You know the reply, girl. It starts with F.

(Second Life and Linden Lab are trademarks of Linden Research, Inc.)

Meanwhile, back in the real world…

From Holland comes the news that Microsoft has asked Dutch dictionary maker Van Dale, the most influential dictionary publisher in the Dutch language, to remove the verb “msn’en” ["to be on MSN or a similar chat program"] from the next edition of their dictionary.

The news came during a court case during which Microsoft sought a preliminary injunction from the judge in The Hague against the msnlock domain name, used by Unicaresoft, which markets an anti-chat program by that name.

Like the company owner and inventer of msnlock, chief editor Ton van Boon at Van Dale argues that use of the term msn’en has become widespread and it’s meaning isn’t limited to using Microsoft’s chat program. They will probably add TM behind the name in the dictionary, but will not change the definition. TM, according to the editor, has no legal value [that is, in the Netherlands]. Earlier, Google requested similar action from Van Dale over the verb “googlen” (”using an internet search engine”) and the company duly added TM. Van Boon ads that companies do not expect to win these cases, but they fight them anyway to show that they are willing to fight for their registered trademarks.

Unicaresoft, meanwhile, presented a whole list of domain names, including pornographic sites, with MSN in them, against which Microsoft has not taken action. They suspect that the company is taking action now because the program msnlock limits the use of MSN. Microsoft denies that - a spokesperson said that they have nothing against the product, and that they try to go after every misuse of their trademarks.

Anorexia in the Virtual World

Bear with me. I am not a doctor or a psychologist, and yet I want to talk anorexia nervosa - and on top of that I am about to explain things most Residents of Second Life® will already know. This can get boring…

With what we call the Appearance sliders, any Second Life user can completely shape his or her appearance in the virtual world. Large breasts, muscular arms, a big nose - anything goes and one doesn’t really need a lot of skills to be able to whip up a good looking shape.

Now I was always convinced that anorexia patients have a distorted view of how they look. They do not want to look the way they do - they look the way they do because they have a false image of themselves. The Wikipedia article linked to above confirms this: one of the symptoms mentioned is [d]isturbance in the way in which one’s body weight or shape is experienced.

Wouldn’t it be a good idea to have a patient create her own ideal female body shape in Second Life? Give her the time to make a shape which for her represents how she would like to look. Then take that shape and directly compare it to how they look in real life. Perhaps seeing pictures of the real and the virtual body side by side can help them see the truth.

As I said - I am not a doctor or a psychologist. But this thought struck me and it’s perhaps too valuable to just let linger in my brain.

Strike?

Gwyn initiated it and Rheta is keeping a list of bloggers on strike against the new copyright regulations. But although I support the cause, I choose not to strike along with the rest of them.

The Lab has infuriated me in the past. We’ve had ‘broadly offensive’ and we’ve had ‘Lolita’, we’ve had the removal of a work of art because it had nipples, and we still have age verification. All that has passed by on this blog, and none of it has been enough to make me consider a strike. Hell I’ve been lied to by Robin Linden herself and yet I am still volunteering for the same Lab she’s representing. This copyright question however amazes rather than infuriates me and so striking is not an option.

But you may have noticed that I no longer use the Hallowed Words and Abbreviations. And that won’t change unless there’s any movement in the good direction from the Lab. It may cost me readers, but that’s their loss as well as mine.

The World Is Run By Lawyers

…and lawyers are, by nature, a bunch of pussies. I’m sure they would rather call themselves ‘careful’, but then they’re lawyers. They like to play with words, it’s their thing.

Just now I heard of the first victim of age verification - a woman who cannot access her own store because the landowner has flagged the parcel as mature, or adult, or whatever the extra-mature terminology is they dreamed up for our virtual world. Now hear this, all you Lindens out there:

THIS IS INSANE.

Open Google. Click Preferences. Check ‘Do not filter my search results’. Save preferences.

On the main page, click Images. Fill in a girl’s name - any girl’s name - or the name of a young, attractive female celebrity. And I guarantee you that you will see real life full nudity and possibly hardcore pornographic material, on the first page of the image search results.

Here’s one example I found with Google after a search using the first name of my mother (sorry, mom). I cleaned it up for this blog - actually it is one of the most modest pictures from that page. And it took under five seconds to find it.

And that’s exactly how hard it is for kids. And that’s why as a parent you need to monitor your kid’s internet behaviour. Yes, it takes time away from your precious career but hey, it’s a kid, not the damn DVD player. It needs looking after. And I am not going to do that for you.

Google does not demand age verification. The sites with these pictures do not demand age verification. My ISP never asked me for age verification. The government of this or any other democratic country hasn’t set a minimum age to web access. And therefore the good people that run our virtual world have no obligation whatsoever to introduce age verification.

I don’t know what is wrong with the lawyer folk in San Francisco. Maybe they are hardcore Christian fundamentalists with an agenda to clean the Internet of all the ‘filth’ that’s to be seen. Maybe they are just not ready for the 21st century yet, and still think you can somehow shield people off from mature content. But most likely they are just a bunch of pussies.

While you’re at it, go and see what Google turns up when you search for ‘pussies’ as described above… and don’t for a minute fool yourself into believing that your kids wouldn’t ever try.

Disclaimer: if you think you own the rights to the picture above, shame on you. It’s not even a good photoshop.

All your blogs are belong to us

Feel free to upload and use as a texture. The picture of uncle Phil is one I made myself, so there can’t be many ‘issues’ there. Of course, if you use it on a blog, linking to the source is a nice gesture.

King Day

I know, Martin Luther King day is on his birthday (January 15th) and not on the day he died. But yesterday it was 40 years ago that he was shot in the city of that other King.

Early morning, April 4

Shot rings out in the Memphis sky

Free at last, they took your life

They could not take your pride

U2, Pride (In the Name of Love)

Because of Bono’s stirring song I got my facts mixed up and I was staring into the sun to see his face appear, like it did last year on January 15th. It didn’t, of course. Some other things however did occur.

I witnessed a talk between some people in Waterhead - one of them as black in real life as his avatar in virtual reality. Some others were ganging up on him, trying to make him lose his cool, teasing him with questions like ‘Why is the hair of black people so dirty?’ or ‘Do you have a Jheri curl?’

I am not sure what they were trying to do, but part of it is probably because it is pointless to send abuse reports about things said in voice. There is no proof, there is no record, and so all of a sudden it is safe again to play such silly games. To say stuff to a black guy that you don’t dare say to him in public, face to face. Or typed out in text chat with your avatar’s name attached to it. And so I can only conclude that it is the cheapest form of cowardice - a comparison to gangs of men in white hoods is a gross exaggeration, but the basics are there. You pick a nigger and you go after him, hiding behind a mask or an avatar.

I know the excuse that they will have. The eternal frat boy excuse that it is ‘just for the LULZ’. As if that makes it all right then. It’s a joke, no harm done. Or maybe it’s ‘just roleplay’.

Well, fuck that.

I’ll tell you what it is. It’s sick, it’s twisted, and I want nothing of it. It doesn’t make you a better person, it doesn’t get you brownie points, it is not funny, not new, not original, not intelligent. It is putting the nigger down, and nothing more. Reminding him that after all is said and done, he’s one of them.

I think the people I heard talking didn’t really believe all that crap they were spouting. And if they are smart enough to know that none of that rubbish is true, then I expect them to be smart enough not to go there.

There are no LULZ in racism. Just losers.

• For those who don’t know me - I am a white guy in real life, not a black girl.
• If you want to quote from this piece, I recommend you quote it with the strong language included. I do not mince words on this issue.

Clarity there is… movement there is not.

A day late, but wahey! We have a reply - a further clarification of the stated position, and not an inch of movement on the issue. So we are going to have to talk about the Second Life® world. I guess I can live with the ®, although I still don’t know where on my keyboard it hides. But to urge us not to talk about Second Life proper is insane. I quote:

Always follow a Linden Lab[®] brand name with an appropriate generic noun for at least your first reference to the brand name. A “generic noun” is a common noun and not a proper noun, trademark, or brand name.

Okay… common noun, proper noun, what is this? I quote again - from Wikipedia this time:

Proper nouns (also called proper names) are nouns representing unique entities (such as London, Universe or John), as distinguished from common nouns which describe a class of entities (such as city, well or person).

I don’t see the point in this and I don’t see any other company at all doing this. I don’t drink a Coca-Cola softdrink, I drink Coca-Cola. I don’t go to the supermarkt in a Fiat car, I go in my Fiat. And see how I used it in a possessive form - that’s another no-no. [N]ever use it in the plural or possessive form (source). So it’s not my Second Life but my life in the Second Life world. As a linguist I’d say they are trying to change common everyday speech, and that won’t work at all. The only good news is that they allow you to talk like a normal human being, as long as you first go through the prescribed motions. [A]t least your first reference… after that you’re home free.

Of course, people who do not speak English on an advanced level are not going to be able to make any of this at all. Translating from English is my RL job, yet I had to look up proper noun in Wikipedia. But then, people who do not speak English on an advanced level are usually left in the dark about lots of things - last year an angry group of Italians demonstrated at the Main Landing Point in Kirkby about inventory loss, totally unaware of the blog post adressing the issue that same day.

I guess the main focus of the good people who run this virtual world will not be on blogs like this, but on the websites of commercial enterprises and of social communities. But I do think it is a mistake to try to regulate all that free publicity that hundreds of bloggers are generating.

Disclaimers

Fiat is a registered trademark of Fiat S.p.A., Turin (TO), Italy.

Coca-Cola is a registered trademark of The Coca-Cola Company, Atlanta (GA), USA

Second Life and Linden Lab are trademarks of Linden Research, Inc., San Francisco (CA), USA.

However, SL is a trademark of Sherrill-Lubinski Corporation, Corte Madera (CA), USA. Visit sl.com!

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