Estimate the Size of the FIC

tiara i am responding to u and not this thread. i stopped reading or responding to these threads some time ago, i only looked at this one when i saw u had posted to it.

some people find the assumption very funny, and continue to respond to these threads because they have an opportunity to display wit and humor. some people achingly hope they are counted in the accusers list and truly are part of some inner cabal, and by continuing to act as tho they are someone will let them in on whatever the secret is.

the entire discussion is bankrupt of any meaning at all and has been for a very long time.
let this pass from you.

marilyn

FIC is both a social class and a state of mind. It's possible, though extremely rare, for someone to be excluded to the point that they no longer belong to the social fabric of FIC. However, regular ritual attendance and project participation are open to anyone who cares to join the fray. Worming one's way into a social order is as easy as being there and not being kicked out.

FIC is more importantly a state of mind. Somedays I'm very ficish and some days I'm not. That may work for me, and not for everyone, because I don't really care. Management and other leadership positions come and go. They're either filled by happy people willing to do the work and knowing that, if the job disipates, there are plenty of other things to do, or by people who are absolutely dead paniced that they may loose it all tomorrow.

I think I shall be FIC today.

*disclaimer: I am making all this up of course. There is no FIC other than the highly secret comradery of the Friends In Commerce.

It's bigger than most secret societies compared to size of the population they control. 20K SL players a month... About 50 of them are FIC. They make a dumb feature request and KA-BOOM it's in the release notes. They hang out mostly on the forums and in IRC. Something that might shock you : Phillip's not FIC.

Artemis is the only one who got it exactly right so far! WTG

Pecan Pie and Hiro are awesome!!

Nuff said

Huggerz,
MJ

Sure it's chum, but remember:
1. The poll had a humorous tone but did allow for the gamut of feelings on the matter.
2. Your name was not mentioned.
3. You can respond to a humorous thread and refrain from taking it personally.
4. You can respond to a thread that is personal and refrain from ranting about it.
5. You can respond to a thread, rant, and still refrain from being a jerk about it. I didn't "lambast" you as Coco said. All I did was point out highlights without even making any comments, and then ask you a legit question devoid of any inflammatory language.

I don't speak for Shadow or Artemis or anyone else, so if we're "not acting in collusion" as you said, then you grouping me with them to prove your point is simply invalid; you have to deem me to be "FIC" or whatnot on my own attitude, and I have been extremely fair with you.

Once again, your arguments fail.

Ghod Prokofy you just don't get it, it was a joke even elaborately noted as such with the final statement of "Laugh you goof".
It was done to try to prod some humor and light heartedness.
Instead you turn it into a woe is Prokofy simplex.

I give up Prokofy.
Lately, I have tried to instill in others to look at the possibility that maybe we are misunderstanding you.
Maybe this "hedonistic" attitude that you detect was due to us not communicating on the same level as you whether it beneath or above us.

This retort alone from you leads me to think one thing and one thing only.
That is you only read what you want to read into things.
My recent prodding’s to others of "misunderstanding" have been in vain due to apparently people actually do have you pegged from the look of it.

I apologize for attempting to induce humor especially after your post as to your explanation of how the FIC was started.
I thought it was a humorous attempt to make you laugh.
But, again I apologize and will not reply further to you directly or indirectly if at all possible.

Sincerely, Shadow Weaver

Perhaps, this could be turned around. LL is using FIC to trial baloon new features. I am saying this from a developer's perspective. There is a certain amount of time between a request, gathering requirements for it, developing, testing and then the release of that feature into production. If that timeframe is too short, then some steps are being skipped. I have heard of that being done where I work. Someone works on a feature that was needed in their opinion, gets it ready for release, encourages someone in the user community to ask for it and then presto, it's ready.

How, many dumb FIC requests were turned into features?

Is there really an FIC?? You bet! It's natural and almost assured that in any society there will arise a group of influencial people that will sway the direction of that society.

There's nothing mystical about it. Alot of old timers know alot of Lindens and their voices are easily recognized and picked out from the masses. A good percentage are even Linden alts.

There's nothing evil in their plans. Just the simple "I want" creed.

I could name off a large portion of them if I chose to do so. Most mind their own business, while some are social and others are very cliquish. Some that could be FIC, aren't. And others that want to be, will never attain that status.

While Prok went overboard in the paranoia factor of the FIC, he was right that it does exist. Not only in SL, but in every society on our little planet.

They are out there....and always will be....

You sound extremely rational and clear headed to me

I think the only thing dumber than the FIC are people who make fun of other people for being pissed off that it exists. Lowest of the low.

I voted 12-48, because I like the label "technowikiscriptocontentcrat Barons". It describes me *exactly*, which makes me eligible for the FIC. All I need to do is to lure some Lindens into my inner circle somehow.

Hmmm. What to use for bait.

Av sex ...works every time..trust me..

Shadow

Yeah, Willow, thanks for that great "insight." Be pissed all you like, if you don't have an hourly infusion of indignation, can you get by in this virtual world?

Coco knows me, and knows I'm not being snotty, but just truthful. There is a difference.
Coco knows all too well that her public contortions about this kind of bear being "OK" and that kind of bear being "too far" can only make me pity someone who has to go through that process to get initiated -- but then, she has a genuine affinity most likely for the types like Aimee, and that's fine, she's free to do and be whatever she wants on the "blank canvas"

Because before her bearz suck-ups, or during, she was IM'ng me quite a bit trying to explain why she was doing the bearz, and struggling to explain why it wasn't really going along with the crowd or ganging up on me or anything of the kind.

But it was, and she knows that, and she's a grown-up, and she does what she has to do. It's hard coming in new, and also struggling to master the arcane tools of the tekkie shtick, and then positioning yourself in the marketplace with the right combo of freebs and low-and high-priced stuff to compete, or at least get visible. She's doing a great job of it. It means engaging in that endless 6th grade stuff of IMing all kinds of girls endlessly and saying "Hi, hon...wow, is that ever cute...I love your jeans...I love your bug decal...wow...that's sweet...buh-bye" and stuff like that endlessly all day long. It's a job, you have to have grim determination to do it, but I know Coco possesses the right amount of gritty determination, pluck, and elan to get jobs like that done and advance to the next game square.

Sometimes though, friends have trouble crossing that Rubicon of leaving you behind, and stepping into the radiant future. Then you have to help them make that transition. I've found that with most TSO friends, including a certain formerly very close high-end TSO friend who just couldn't let go for months but needed me to stay gripped in some kind of apologetic, subserviant, ever-in-the-wrong role in order to highlight himself in the Helpful Hannah role to impress oldbies who set great story by that kind of fake altruism.

Sometimes as you step your way up to the new world, you don't have anybody to step on to get ahead, and you need to use your formerly-equal friend to do that stepping. I'm quite aware of that, and it's fine, I don't mind feet on my head in a virtual world, I've even gotten over my aversion to it happening at telehubs.

When Coco faces that Rubicon of deciding what is "too much" and what is "OK' on the Prok-lampooning scale, she's in trouble. She's pausing, when she needs to make the leap. Either you leap over the entire bear thing and make, I dunno, antelopes, or those kind of really freaky half-giraffe, half-Pegasus, half-I dunno creatures that Satu Moreau makes, or you stay with the bears as long as you need to collect the points for that level.

To dither over whether "a bear with an inflated head but not named Prok but named Angry Bear is OK" or "a bear with a stickpin that has a name sorta sounding like Prok but isn't goes too far" -- well, when you find that sort of thing happening, you need to grit your teeth, and make the right choice. And the choice for Coco in this situation is to hold the cloak and wait for the road to Damascas to come later -- let them stone away. Join in teh bearz frenzy, if it means dumping on me, dump away, the point is, collect as many bears as you need to beat this level and *keep on playing the game*.

Coco has always come to my defense, on "the Professor's" website and here, just because she has a lot of common sense and isn't part of that whole tekkie wiki culture. I have a lot of respect for what she's accomplished. I'm going to keep on giving her all I can in the game -- free land to build on, any little money-making jobs I can come up with, posrates, game help -- whatever, as I do with all my TSO friends and acquaintances. And I'm definitely going to respect her more if she does the suck-up here at this crucial juncture, and leaves me behind, because for her to go on defending me will only cripple her in the game and I don't wish that on her. I don't need her to come on all angry at me or all angry at you and indignant that you subjected her to such hazing like claiming she's my alt. The best thing for Coco to do right now is to not reply to this post and keep making and bears and stick in the pins in the right places.

I do want her to know that she is absolutely free to laugh at the bear with the big head called Prok, and even stick a pin in it if that's what it takes (can't wait to see the scripting genius at work making *that* animation, just hope it doesn't lag the sim). Get a screenshot even.

It was my opinion, deal with it, we are allowed them, and they ARE allowed to differ to yours, but where the hell do you get off being so god damn rude to everyone? really?

I haven't ever slated you, or whatever you go on about, be it FIC or land or whatnot, can you not reply to someones post without making a derogatory remark?

You can believe in whatever you wish, as we all can, but honestly, do you have to be this defensive and brash all the time?

Oh and thankyou for the go ahead on being pissed, fortunately I got over that about 10 seconds after I posted

Everyone: We are the FIC! You will be assimilated!

Isn't it obvious yet?

...

God damn. I have so many responses to this post, but none of them are really appropriate. In the end, I think it can be stated pretty simply: you are a repugnant little sociopath.

Jack, I'm pondering what you said, and while I don't know Philip Linden and have only heard a few of his town halls, read a few of his blogs, talked him at the oil rig that time, I suspect you may have a point. I think I read on their liner notes on the web site that he first built a computer in the fourth grade. I'm thinking that meant a lot of lonely hours in his room being a wonky geek, while other kids were out playing baseball or pulling girls' pigtails or something, and that probably he had a socially-challenged geeky sort of life, which mitigates against being FIC. I think the tekkiewikinistas who get into Geek World, fueled by those early childhood hurts and slights of being a geek, created and sustain Geek World as a bastion of influence and privilege precisely to right that sense of wrong they must have experienced as kids. Nowadays of course, with subsequent generations, the geek would be the one who got off the Internet to play baseball, not the shlubby chubby 4th grader who was in the A-V Club and helped Mr. Rogers with the slide projector in science class.

Geek is now a badge of pride, and if anything, that old sense of being a dissident against the world is now completely conservatized, like all revolutionary forces, into a horribly stuffy society or privilege and protection, and horribly touchy lack of self-awareness and unable to take the slightest criticism -- like most "noveau riches".

So I'm thinking about this, and I'm willing to bet that Philip is not FIC. However, the jury is out yet. Because that could just be the Theory of the Good Tsar With Bad Advisors school of organizational analysis and I am not quite willing to "go there" yet. This is really more of a polysci discussion, but I think you may be on to something -- Philip isn't FIC, and probably keeps the FIC off balance as part of his uber-strategy to take over the world of worlds LOL.

Now...do Lindens make alts and come and hang out and stir up trouble and try to re-direct things in the world, like little imps and devils that have fallen from Philip's Heaven? I wonder about that. Seems like the easiest thing to do in the world. I remember occasionally I'd stumble on those kind of Maxis alts in TSO, somebody who seemed remarkably alert and witty at a peak time period which could only coincide with PST in California LOL, saving stuff about 3 steps ahead of the latest patch, as you'd see it play out weeks later, etc. It makes me somewhat uneasy to think those people are floating around manipulating and churning in the game -- but I suppose the temptation is so great, and each one is so confident that he is Doing Good, that you have to expect it.



I think that's well said. Let me clarify that I am not "pissed" that it exists. I simply think it's fascinating and fun to watch. It doesn't bother me in the slightest. They don't get in my way. I do my thing, whether moth-swarming or building "mall stalls", with or without them, it honestly doesn't matter. If I talk about wailing and gnashing my teeth outside the gates of FIC-dom, it's just as part of the shtick.

wha?

Que?

ROFL PANDA!

I'm triple neg rating you for overuse of Emoticons MJ!