THe FIC

The notion that older or accomplished content makers are somehow to blame for whatever ails you really bothers me. When I started 7 months ago, the things that I saw that were made by these people, whether it was towers, clothing, scripted items... those are the things that made me want to dish out 10 bucks a month for Second Life. They were/are examples of amazing, user made creations that are possible in SL.

I have never perceived their creations as any sort of threat to my own capabilities, but more like benchmarks. Something to strive towards. If they get preferential treatment from the Lindens, I really could care less. More power to them! It doesn't affect my game at all.

Truly I have no idea who is or isn't FIC.

I really haven't seen anyone 'strutting around' and 'looking down their nose' at people... If I have, I don't assume they're FIC, I assume they're assholes.

Sometimes I feel like I've been accused of being part of it (If so, I have no idea where they meet.) simply because i'm "from 2003". Yet in the same breath, "charter members" look down on me because i'm -only- a 2003 "newbie".

Some people who are considered FIC are newer than I am, so what does that mean for age? Probably nothing. Some will consider a person "FIC" just based on age, some will consider them "FIC" because they saw them hanging out with a Liaison.

Is everyone who has a good amount of L$, FIC? To some, sure. To them, probably not.

Then, there are some who have taken this 'shadow group' idea and run with it, feeling that they are part of it.

Honestly, I wish someone would name names, because I may be completely off base as to who this group of people is.

Agreed. Could someone compile a list of FICers with a few words about why they are FIC?


"Well, we did do the nose. And the hat, but she is a witch!"

1. Anyone with the last name of Midnight - just cause
2. Aimee Weber - She's so feted she floats
4. Anyone in-world before Dec, 2003 - so I can still be a midbie
5. Anyone that has been seen chatting with a Linden or dancing with a Linden or involved in a sexual act with a Linden.
6. Anyone that is really successful with an SL-based business.
7. Everyone named Torley.
8. Everyone with the last name Nash.
9. Anyone that owns their own sim.
10. People that say they don't like AV sex.
11. Anyone that complains about clubs.
12. People that never go to events, unless they are private parties or they are the host.

That should cover most of them.

Who is FIC? I take it everyone who is not squalid outer core.

omg you know too much, we must now kill you.

Sing with me everyone. . . .. . .

Here come the FIC
They will let you remember
Na na na

The good guys dress in black remember that
Just in case we ever face to face and make contact
The title held by me F.I.C.
Means what you think you saw, you did not see
So don't blink be what was there
Is now gone, black suit with the black Ray Ban's on
Walk in shadow move in silence
Guard against extra-noobie violence
But yo we ain't on no LL list
We straight don't exist, no names and no fingerprints
Saw somethin strange watch your back
Cause you never quite know where the F.I.C.'s is at
Uh and

FIC is not cool. And it does exist.

Mainly the reason it should not exist is because projects should be driven from a business model. Being reactive to user complaints is a big time suck.

Jack Digeridoo is FIC!

The FIC is the ancient concept of class warfare, unimaginatively updated for SL. The idea of class warfare is often used by demagogues to gain personal power over a constituency of the unhappy and uninformed.

Or as H.L. Mencken put it: "Demagogue: One who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots."

In the case of certain people who have made the FIC a cause celebre in these forums, here's Franklin Roosevelt's advice: "Be sincere, be brief, be seated."

Yay! Does that mean I'm a Demagogue?? I'm trying..really hard..

Pathfinder says the FIC doesn't exist. We have it quoted here in his posts. I goggle my eyes when I read that. Pathfinder is new. He will come to this awareness in time. I hope the awareness is not accompanied by any harsh experiences. But come it will.

People say the FIC is Prokofy's fevered imagination. I didn't invent it, I described it. The debate is not over whether it exists, and not over whether it hobbles the game, but whether I have described it accurately, and whether it does in fact hobble the game in the way I say. I have not changed from my initial impresses of three or six months ago in this regard, and I have only amassed numerous anecdotal experiences reinforcing this perception, notwithstanding my special hugzy teddy bear from that Linden. (This special hugzy bear will be displayed in Tibet soon so anybody can come and see him and negrate me or scream that I am feted LOL).

Ingrid, you saw all that eye candy and shiny stuff, you wanted to make it yourself, and spent more money looking at it and making it, understood. So your instinct was to join the FIC. From where I sit, my instinct was to chronicle the horrors of the FIC, not join it. And it is not just because I'm a hopeless dweeb who can't fly straight or link prims even already put together for him by other people -- even if that is true. It's because my sense of justice is keen, and my experiences of injustice ample, and so I will go on crying out about this.

I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard that story about the realtor (or the house-buyer or the hotel guest, it changes) who comes to the village and brings his problems and perceptions with him. I'd have LOTS of dollars! This story is always told by Ol' Tex, in his most earnest tone of voice, with a twanging guitar string or two accompanying it, round the campfire, home, home on the range, where the deer and the buffalo roam, where never is heard a discouraging word. It speaks to an ardent belief in homespin quaint wisdom and reworked villagey versions of the old Biblical adage about taking the log out of your own eye so you can see the mote (speck) in your neighbour's.

But...what if there was a different story? What if the visitor comes to the small village, and find that they are smug, insular, self-referential, besotted, feted, sitting on forever-subsidized 4096 acre plots of land, making state-socialist clone builds, getting state waivors on tier or purchase price, getting state developer awards, etc. etc. etc. What if the village you came to was not the homespun American village on the prairie with a free press, a village dissident (doubling as the town drunk some nights), a whore with a heart of gold, a noble native, the handsome stranger who brings justice, a crooked sherriff who has a moment of conscience, or whatever other cliches you can fetch up that become the voice of the people to correct evil? What if instead, the village was a tightly knit circle celebrating big builds by top architects, top designer jewerly, Linden subsidies, right-of-way for the scripterati -- well, everything we see in SL? What if it was just a very, very VERY different kind of village where it wasn't that you brought your nasty perceptions with you (from RL, from TSO) but that they *really exist* because they *really are a problem*!!! Huh, what if THAT were the case!

Everyone wants to say to me that I go about this all wrong, that I shouldn't be so pointed or sharp, that I shouldn't mix metaphors or causes, that I should pick my battles, that I should stop writing such long posts, that I should stop shooting myself in the foot -- believe me, I've heard it all, and taken a lot of condescending and paternalistic crap from a lot of people. But by God, even if I didn't do it in a fashion you find comfortable, I got you to think about the central core of trouble in this game: people who refuse to give up the idea, like this Linden clone mall developer, that he should pick the content and the people who showcase, not the free open market, that he should use his Linden subsidies for a perch, that people who enable the company to have flashy things on the website get to dictate the game's technology and direction. Why? You can't say you want to be the WWW of virtual worlds and create a virtual conservative, closeknit, self-perpetuating village suspicious of outsiders!

When I first began these debates, the expression of disbelief I would most often hear would be like this "You can't attack my friend because she's my friend, even if she's wrong" or "You can't attack that person, they make jewelry and you don't make jewelry so you are shit". They couldn't see that this very issue is the problem.

People don't understand why I don't want to be celebratory of a little village where little craftsmen get to make and trade their little bling, oohing and ahing and taking pictures of each other in their bling all the while. It's because I want SL to become something much bigger than that, and it can't if it is merely a nation of craftsmen. It's just not enough. It's just not enough if it is a nation of shopkeepers. Not in the modern world. It has to be a nation of craftsmen, shopkeepers, shoppers, and many other kinds of people in between, all with equality, and all with respect.

Yeah. You said that in SO much less space than I ever take to say it LOL. Well done!

You're a "nicely wicked" demagogue. Now be seated!

:: Hands Prokofy the bong ::

I FIC'n wish.

You said what I was thinking. Thanks Ms. Ingersoll.

If "Feted" means "Big-Boobed" then you're right. I am indeed quite buoyant.

LOL!!!

Sour grapes make the best whine.

Am I the only person who really doesn't care if there's an FIC or not?

I don't care who has the social ear of the Lindens. I don't care who gets more attention from the Lindens or the 'Oldbies.' I don't care if someone has been here longer than me simply because they have been.

There are content creators (and others) who have been around since well before my time that I admire for their creations, for their willingness to help out new residents, or that I simply enjoy because they're fun to hang out with. There are probably an equal number I pay little to no attention to because they either don't impress me or I don't like their attitudes.

I just don't get the whole FIC fascination. Were people so unpopular in High School that that bitterness toward the A-Group still rears it's ugly head? Get over it. We're adults now, supposedly.

You're not alone Jonquille. I really don't care either, except to make the occasional joke about it.

Well yeah, that's a given Marcos. It's too funny and inane not to joke about! (I have my Fetid Inner Core shirt, I admit.)

I only care about the FIC because certain people here seem to care so much that i'm afraid they'll have an aneurism.