Nothing Divine about it

After several short exchanges with the Divine Enterprises leader, I have decided to write this message to the forum.

I do not, can not understand the purpose of tiny little lots set for sale at 6,000, 10,000, 50,000 price tags containing several revolving anti-war, anti-Bush propaganda.

If you want to see an example visit Uzume where you will find tens of these lots and more seem to come along every day.

The owner in all fairness claims that he is protesting the war. When asked about the prices on the lots, he says he priced them so high so that they will not sell. If so, why not make them not avail for sale?

Second Life community has always been big on free speech and I think that's actually the right way to go but this is one instance where free speech kind of bites the residents in the ass.

If you ask me, these billboards have nothing to do with honest political views or sincere protest of anything. These billboards are intentional marring of landscape, ruination of views, and intentional damage to the property values of everyone who owns land around these properties.

Many of these lots by being placed on sale at astronomical prices give the sim residents two choices:
1- fess up the big change and get rid of the intruder by buying these lots
2- be forced to sell your large lot for nothing and abandon the sim.

I am sorry to be so blatant about it but this is for lack of a better term real estate terrorism dressed as free speech.

Fair Lindens, I plea to you, please buy all these plots from this individual and end this misery. Rescue Uzume, and recue the other hijacked sims.

Thanks for listening,

Troy Vogel.

PS. Who would have thunk that the rotation script in SL would be the equivalent of BLINK tag in HTML.

Lindens paying users 6,000, 10,000, 50,000 bucks for putting up ugly signs will put an END to it?

Probably not, I am thinking out loud here. I was not going to suggest any form of restriction nor penalty and risk this thread turning into "who's after our freedom in SL".

So no, don't buy these plots but think of what can be done other than wait a year for the individual to give up and pick up another hobby for their personal time.



ES

Hehe But your point is well taken.

Well reparations worked for the land owners, maybe buybacks are the new thing?

Great point!

Lindens could pay Divine by creating new money! The effective decrease in Linden Dollar value would be small enough where the decision wouldn't be immoral!

This is the sign I will be placing everywhere I can find a spot:

They should hire him as the new arbiter on griefing through builds and signage, ABS.

Oh one more thing, the group I mentioned before, has one member and owns 65810 sq. meters of land.

The average price of per sq. meter is: L$625 soooooo, the Lindens would have to create:
65810 * L$625 = L$41,131,250 to buy it all back from him. Not gonna happen.

The question to be asked is, how did this get out of control so fast? Where is all this money coming from to acquire all this land and pay the usage fees. This whole operation is quite dubious if you ask me. Almost sabotaging whole of SL and not just individual sims by warping the entire value system by engaging in such an aggressive acquisition of land and such invasive use of it.

Troy

No, you're just a hard-ass design snob who thinks he can dictate SL aesthetics to a bunch of 20-year old blingtards!

</sarcasm - you knows I loves ya>

I can but try. ;-P

Seriously, revolving things are bad for you. Take my word for it.

All that needs to happen for this jerk to go away is for people to stop falling for his con and buying the overpriced land to get rid of the signs. Ignore them. Ignore him. He's just going to go on buying more and more land as long as people are foolish enough to keep buying it.

It's sort of funny to me that after all this fuss about those signs, all the complaining (goddamnit it IS wrong for esthetical/economical/everykinds of reasons, everyone knows that!) and the clear need to DO something, nothing will happen anyway.... This is the Lindens stand about it /invalid_link.html as Robin said in the Second Life Answers. And that's it. We'll just live with it. End of story?

Ooooo! I like it, Nolan!

coco

It got out of control because they Lindens let it get out of control. And continue to let it grow further out of control.

They don't need to buy back the land. They don't need to ban the guy, either, or take away his land.

They just need to say to him: "Take your signs down or we'll take them down for you."

coco

Well I suppose that is the end of it all. I understand where they're coming from but ultimately I don't think this is the answer.

Either way, some control is going to take place; Be it originating from Lindens or from residents.

Thanks for pointing me in the direction of the thread. I guessed that this discussion must have taken place before but I was not sure.

Troy.

Noone's figured out how to hurt this person. When someone figures out how to hurt him, the residency will have a weapon. Until then, he'll continue to terrorize the world with the Lindens' blessing.

Well hell, he can have a 1024 for $250 Linden a Square meter and he could put up a Huge Impeach Bush sign. I just have a minumum lot size of 1024 at that price.

We already have a weapon. Don't buy his bloody land. This isn't rocket science, people.

How does that help sims like Uzume that are riddled with this stuff?

What a dog.

At least it's not as bad as a sign with the words George Bush on it.

I love you baby, but you are repeating one of the oldest failures in solving a problem ever. Seriously, this pattern is repeated non-stop in every facet of our lives and has never ever ever been successful.

I'm talking generally here, when a solution to a problem rests on the separate individual actions of EVERYBODY. Here are some examples:

We can stop litter if everybody does their part to put garbage in it the trash.
We can stop telemarketers/spam/junkmail if nobody purchases what they have to offer.
We can stop trolls by not responding to them or by just putting them on ignore.

Maybe you are just venting, so that's fine . But as an actual solution, history is not on your side with this.

I would start by finding out more about the Divine Enterprises group.

And check the groups that Lazarus is in, and check out the avatars in those groups, and the groups they are in, and so on.

Also the owners of the property adjacent to the sign might also be worthy of investigating.

Try to track the people and the money.

Does anyone have the group membership for the Divine Enterprises group mention in the original post, or know of any property owned by it as distinct from being owned by LD?

Too bad you can't search by owner's name in the Land for Sale dialog.

The area mentioned here:
/130/9e/79932/1.html
is right next to a large continuous area of land owned by his group.

That may be true, but all I hear are people complaining and suggesting that someone else should do something about it. How about organizing and starting an awareness campaign? Take out ads everywhere SL related you can think of. See if you (the figurative you) can get all the SL related publications to write editorials about it. Take up a collection and fill the top ten classifieds with ads urging people not to buy land from this guy. Go around and talk to the landowners who live in sims with these signs and urge them not to cave. I understand people's frustrations but I don't understand just throwing our hands up without trying to do something about it ourselves. If people have tried all of those things, then I'll be more sympathetic to the constant complaining about the issue.