Merwan Sells Out SLExchange.com

I have sold my 40% ownership interest in SLEx to Anshe Chung and to Apo. Silverman.


I no longer have any financial involvement, investment or interest in SLExchange.


Over the past 23 days I have received much support from many people - thank you! Special thanks to those of you who have worked with me behind the scenes - I really do appreciate your help, encouragement and trust.

On to the next venture!

Merwan,

I applaud your attitude and hope this all gets put behind you. Hopefully everyone involved can come out of this stronger.

Best of luck, my friend.

-Flip

Well I am glad this is settled. Considering the events I simply say. Beware who you give your money to. I also consider who is running it now, I have no desire to use this service. I will seek alternatives.

Well I am now relisting *some* items on slexchange - having removed them all previously.

Im going to pull out totally.

Isn't that the guy version of "the check is in the mail"?

Cool Merwan...

Hey AdamZ, I need help setting up on secondserver

Congratulations Merwan I am glad you were able to leave SLExchange with something to show for it, instead of just going down like the Titanic What an interesting pairing

"I don't want you, but I have somebody who wants to buy you out, will help it look amicable and maybe it will sort out the absolutely shite PR mess"

PR mess is an understatement. I think the name sl exchange will be forever tarnished especially because they brough there dirty laundry out on the forums to be aired over and over.

If memory serves me correctly, there were two individuals that played National Enquirer with the SLEX situation, and their names weren't Apotheus and Merwan. I'll just call 'em Hekyll and Jekyll, two crows on a wire cawwing loudly in faux representation of other SLer's best interests, when in fact it was self-interest motivating them.

What he said.

I happy to hear of this resolve, after some tense weeks, and wish you a positive future.

While I agree with you Nolan, I do think that Apotheus brought all of this out into the open with a post describing blackmail, lack of a formal partnership, etc... Before that, none of this was for public consumption, even though it was ongoing. Drama was definitely made out of it - but no ones post was more self serving than Apotheus' bizarre apology/PR attempt - everything after that was just an aftershock of that initial action - to say that Apotheus was not one of the self-interest motivated posters is false.

I have to agree with Mr. Midnight. You can bash self serving scapegoats all you wish but look to who started this public mess.

You may have misread me, I never stated anything about Apotheus not posting out of self-interest. I think he did so as well. I am simply stating that my belief is that the people who took the ball and ran with it for days and days were not acting in the best interest of SL as they claimed.

The aftershock didn't need to be as such, but a couple of folks decided to post over and over about it, one even after they had said they would drop it. The other just did the old policeman/town-crier act followed by the flip-flop yet again.

I don't know about you, but if I had a falling out with someone I am involved in a business with, I wouldn't want SL Edition splattering it all over the place for days on end even if my business partner did something detrimental to the business in the public eye. Afterall, what good did all that do? It simply hurt a business more than it had already hurt itself. We already knew about it. It wasn't news anymore, therefore I had to wonder what the motivation was. Was it some inability to supress urges to be a klaxon? Was it an attempt to damage further an already damaged business reputation? Whatever the reasons were, and I can think of more, none of them are positive, which strikes me as being a bit ironic when said posters claimed to being doing something positive for SL.

Lions do go after the lame zebra I suppose.

Edit to add: I was responding to Billy's assertion that it had been aired out over and over. Indeed it was. But how many times did Apotheus post? I realize that his first post was in and of itself damaging, but I did not see him airing over and over. Same goes for Merwan. Yet they both had to endure character attacks because a couple folks just couldn't let go and let Merwan and Apotheus deal with it.

Actually Merwan did, both on here and on the SLExchange forums. But he did it in a secret squirrel, quite cryptic way that he does. He brought it up a few times on here of his own volition, same on the SLExchange forums.

Nolan,

Agreed - I would not want a private business matter aired in the forums - and yes, several people did run off with the topic and keep it going. There were some valid reasons for questioning what was going on - unlike SecondServer.net, this was a site that had an account filled with money from players - so there were implications if fraud was going on. Again, however, this entire matter was brought forth into the public forums by Apotheus - once you do that, you can expect that it will become a matter of public discussion. Right or wrong, all that happened was a result of one of the two people involved airing their dirty laundry publicly in what seemed simply a PR move to do damage control.

Anyway, at this point, it is all moot, as Merwan has thankfully been able to wash his hands of this and move on, and Walmart can move in. Hopefully this whole debacle will be a lesson to anyone to keep business matters out of the forums - no good can come of it.

Whats a debacle?

Anything involving you.

I guess for me, it boils down to the old "two wrongs" addage. I do realize that because Apotheus aired it, especially in such a convoluted, semi-apologetic manner, that it was a situation ripe for the picking. I imagine that because it usually seems to be the same cast of characters involved in these types of boycott/smear/klaxon actions I am beginning find the "latch on and ride it for all it's worth game" tiresome and patterned.
Agreed. In the end, I am certainly not excusing Apotheus' actions. Not in the least. However, throwing gasoline on a fire is not an admirable thing either. I think it's important to recognize that sometimes people do irrational things in stressful situations, especially when they may have just had a fight with a business partner and there maybe money involved. The posters who harped on the issue had the luxury of not being overtly emotionally charged when posting, yet they still fixated on it as if it was a direct personal issue of their own.

Merwan- I am glad you have agreed upon a solution. Good luck to you in your future endeavors, whatever they may be.

Glad to hear you're out from under this finally, Merwan. I hope Frau Quixote's crusade didn't lower it's worth enough to screw you.

Guess I can delete those Magic Boxes out of my inventory now.

Well said. And lets face it - this thread was just yet another squirelly attempt. And Nolan, don't kid yourself. If you study the timing of everything you'll realise that it was just awkward attempts at manipulation.

Obviously I don't know anymore than anyone else, but I suspect everyone got what they had coming to them or is coming to them.

You don't know more than everyone else but you suspect that everyone got what they had coming to them?

Do you see the contradiction there? How can you suspect that everyone got what they deserved after you confess to not knowing any more than anyone else? It's apparently not as evident as you are assuming simply by virtue of the fact that your feeling on this issue are not prevalent.

As for the part about Merwan manipulating things, I think that the timing of everything indicates a concerted effort to smear people, and not on Merwan's part. There's the real manipulation. I don't know that I would have been as nice as Merwan was when dealing with libelous accusations.

What can one say? Some folks come to SL for recreation, some socialization, some to exercise creative skills, some to make money and there are even those who come to SL to chase ambulances. C'est la vie, I suppose.

Knowing absolutely nothing of the internals of SLexchange, but knowing how much data you and other vendors have put into your item descriptions, I'd suggest refraining from deleting that box until you have copied off your item descriptions whose copyright originated and remains with you. I don't *think* deleting your last magic box kills the website data, but better safe than suffer hemorrhagic fever...