What’s in a name?

In the real world there is of course more than one Catherine Fitzpatrick - in fact, the first hit of my Google search for that name points to someone of Greenpeace Australia - and I really don’t think it’s the same person who is behind the famous Second Life persona Prokofy Neva. And that’s without expressing any preconceived notions about Neva’s political views. In Second Life there is only one Prokofy Neva - each and every one of our names is unique, even though we do have a Gwyneth Llewelyn and a Gwyneth Llewellyn these days.

Not so on Facebook, of course. Facebook doesn’t rely on the uniqueness of names, simply because names are not unique in the real world. Anyone can open a Facebook account with any name - in fact there’s more than a handful of Catherine Fitzpatricks on this community site. But, again, there’s only one Prokofy Neva. And I don’t think it’s too much of a guess to say that the Prokofy Neva on Facebook is not the Prokofy Neva we all know:

Oh yes, we are sometimes made to believe that griefing in SL is a very interesting phenomenon worth five pages in a magazine once famous and respected (and nerdy) enough to be featured in The Simpsons as one of Lisa’s reads (Homer - with typical acciddental aptness - misreads the name as ‘Weird’). So tell me what’s interesting about taking the whole business of ‘attacking the seriousness of Second Life’ off the world and into the Internet at large? That’s not griefing - that’s stalking, that’s harassment, and that’s sick. That kind of behaviour deserves that feared ride in the FBI party van. Or at least the party van of any of a host of mental institutions.

You can argue that Neva is partly responsible for such pranks - it doesn’t help to shout ‘terrorism’ at the first sight of a lolcube - but isn’t that argument dangerously close to saying that a rape victim ‘asked for it’ by the way she dressed or by being in the place she was in? Neva has the right to call it terrorism, or Communism (another favoured label of his), or Catholicism for all I care. Opinions, however overstated they are, are not invitations to stalking or griefing.

And it raises another question - who has the rights to our Second Life names? I do think that someone who’s been using the name Prokofy Neva for such a long time should have at least some rights to the name, when used in connection with Second Life. I dare say that even I have some rights to the name Laetizia Coronet, being that I have been using it since November of ‘06. But is the use of my name protected in-world? I think not - only the name Linden is, and misusing it makes one a target for disciplinary action.

Maybe the ToS can be read in such a way as to prohibit misuse of names, but I am not sure that if I come across a Prokofy Neva Porn Shop, the Lab would take action. It wouldn’t hurt to have it written in plain English somewhere in the ToS: use of the unique name of other Residents without their consent is prohibited.

Come on, Lindens. After all the protection you’ve granted yourselves it’s time you grant us some.

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

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.)

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.

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.

Sing Along With Tish

Here’s a song dedicated to my fellow mentors, especially those who have chosen to admit that they are totally and utterly mental. With thanks to my homie Coolio, here’s Griefers’ Paradise. Let’s make some noooooise!!!!

[instrumental version here]
[normal version here]

As I walk through the sandbox with the cages of death
I take a look at my life and realize there’s nothing left
Cause I’ve been sendin ARs for so long that
Even the Lindens think that my mind is gone

But I ain’t never crossed a griefer that didn’t deserve it
We be treated like a punk, you know that’s unheard of
You better watch how you talkin and where you walkin
Or you and your homies might be off the grid

I really hate to trip, but I gotta loc
As they croak I see myself in the particle smoke, fool
I’m the kinda mentor little noobies wanna be like
On patrol in the night
Spoilin’ fo’ a little street fight

been spending most our lives
Living in a Griefers’ Paradise
been spending most our lives
Living in a Griefers’ Paradise
keep spending most our lives
Living in a Griefers’ Paradise
keep spending most our lives
Living in a Griefers’ Paradise

Look at the situation they got me facin
I can’t live a normal life, I was rezzed like a box
So I gotta be down with the V-team
Too much mental mentor talkin’ got me chasin dreams

I’m a educated fool, with griefers on my mind
Got my Glock in my hand and a gleam in my eye
I’m a loced-out mentor, grief-bustin banger
And my homies is down, so don’t arouse my anger, fool

Crashin ain’t nothing but a heartbeat away
I’m livin life do-or-die, what can I say?
I got ‘em down now but will they come back fo’ mo’?
The way things is goin I don’t know

Tell me why are we so blind to see
That noone gives a shit ‘bout you or me

been spending most their lives…

PN and the /b/tards, /b/tards and the PN
Goatse or those turtles, Ya don’t know what ya seein’
Everybody’s running, but half of them ain’t lookin
What’s goin on in the kitchen, but we all know what’s cookin

They say they back me up but nobody’s got the power
They went open source and now there’s griefin ev’ry hour
So back me up? I guess they can’t
I guess they front that’s why I know my life is out of luck, fool

been spending most their lives…

Tell me why are we so blind to see
That noone gives a shit ‘bout you or me

Good Grief!

When you’ve filled out your umpteenth Abuse Report and you know that help for those stricken by particle, noise, and/or object spam is not going to come very fast - especially on the Mainland - you can’t help but feel utterly powerless in the face of a single malignant other. You know the perp will be kicked from the grid and you know he or she will come back. And you know the crap that he’s rezzed is going to stay where it is for a long time before any Linden has time to clean up.

There is talk of restricting the use of LSL - Linden Scripting Language - to avatars of a certain age, like a week or a month. That won’t work as a stand-alone measure, because griefers can easily set up one account to create scripted objects and countless others to spread these across the grid. But when combined with an analysis of the transaction history of a griefer alt, it could prove a powerful weapon indeed. That’s going after the ‘dealers’, so to speak, the creators and spreaders of griefer tools.

A second measure would be to give the SL Mentors as a group certain rights of removal on Linden owned sims. It sounds scary and there is ample opportunity for misuse of powers, but what if Mentors were forced to fill out a form like an Abuse Report, each time they remove objects from the Mainland? Let’s just call it a Removal Report, with a snapshot of the object included as per default, and not a lot of detailed explaining. A fast drop down with key words is enough - location, time etc. can be included automatically. With self-replicating boxes all around you, you need to work fast. Such a measure would save Linden Lab valuable time in cleaning up and as a bonus it would give the community a renewed sense of safety when they see that help - real help - is just around the corner.

Finally I would like to see an analysis of LSL commands used by griefers, and a reappraisal of their usefulness for the building and scripting community at large. Those commands used only rarely for benevolent purposes - I would guess that self-replication is such a function - could then be scrapped. Of course that impinges on our freedoms, but isn’t griefing much more of an attack on our freedoms? Do I have to sustain self-replicating prim attacks all the time because two or three people may want to make scripted popcorn?

In an interview in 1961, Nelson Mandela hinted at the change of course the then non-violent ANC was taking: I think the time has come for us to consider, in the light of our experiences at this day at home, whether the methods which we have applied so far are adequate. Indeed.