Immense ugly griefing eyesores, a risk land-owning for residents?

You need to remember that owning land is like owning a canvas. You can't tell people what and what not to paint just because you can see it.

If it starts, where will it end? Who is the arbiter of good taste? I have my house on a hill. It's been there since early beta. Some people moved in, and told me to lower my land. I said no. They started to complain to the Lindens, who asked me if I'd reconsider. I said no. I had no intent of manipulating the sim, or any of the rest of it, though I was accused of doing so. In the end, from what I can tell, the Lindens told these people to leave me alone because I wasn't doing anything wrong.

All this just because they though having a hill in Natoma was ugly.

In Varney, where I keep the Vorago, a rather beat up looking warehouse/fort sort of thing for PvP, people complained to me it wasn't in keeping with the waterways and general community atmosphere. I told 'em I'm sorry but the land was available. Simple as that.

Sooner or later, somebody will come around that doesn't like your build, and will complain about it. Should you keep moving? And nowadays, if you refuse, people will say you are trying to empty out the sim or lower land prices, even if you're not. I personally would be very angry at such a public accusation and would report it.

People say, "they should be considerate". That's a two way street. How about being considerate of the fact they pay RL money and may just have fun building big flashing towers? Funny how people get angry when you bring that up.

This is what Shiryu said:



This is what Tcoz said:



This isn't about art or aesthetics. It's about the power of an fuck-you hedonistic individual to wreck his neighbor's game, devalue his land, and extort him. It's "a matter of simple, plain damage to the neighbors."

As Shiryu aptly pointed out, the owner of this glowing monstrosity didn't deny that he was attempting to force a land sale and be obnoxious. All those rushing to his defense are just being contrarians to support their own "right" to fuck-you hedonism.

When an action gets to the point where it utterly destroys a neighbor's game enjoyment and land value, there has to be a fight back. That fight back can range from polite attempts to get the neighbor to back done, and find out his motivations, to discussion in forums, to negrating and asking others to negrate. It shouldn't stand. End the powerlessness of land owners in the face of fuck-you heedless hedonism and extortion.

Your sinking into profanity is uncalled for. Your anger is entirely about your inability to do anything about it other than complain on the forums.

Take it to the Lindens, who will tell you he is doing nothing wrong. He should be defended because he is paying RL money and is playing according to the rights of the game. And you don't think you are ruining this individuals game experience by trying to make him look like a cruel insensitive bastard on the boards and setting the community against him? I'd say you have played right into his hands and given him the ammo and reason he needs to fight back.

"One does not avoid conflict by grasping the halberd". - Tsun Tzu.

Nobody ever believes it, I've seen it a million times. But the best way by far to combat this is ignore it and go about your business.

Living in Natoma, I've seen it all. Never, ever have I officially complained about any building effort, I entirely practice what I preach. In the end, they eventually just go away.

who? this is the first i've heard about it.

That is my point, but applied to another concept, and this is the true point of this post (and of course it has been completely ignored even if i stressed it quite a lot), if there is no way to fight back such things, it can become a common and safe way for land speculators to lucrate at the expense of people whose only fault is to have a desirable piece of land.
You want a parcel of land and the owner doesnt want to sell it (or he sells it at a price superior of you want to offer)? You place a nice flashing tower right in front of his door and wait for him to move, if someone complains you tell that it fits your tastes and that he has no right to judge what is ugly or not.
To quote you again: If it starts, where will it end?

I'm hardly the first to "sink into" profanity on this forum, and it's not directed at you, but is a reference to terms from other threads.

I'm not at all feeling angry and helpless? Why? Because by discussing this problem of the ugly, obstructionist build, and negrating in the game judiciously when all other avenues were exhausted, I have accomplished the following:

-- A land baron has explained his ugly build as temporary, and promised to remove it.
-- A person obstructing land I had for sale, preventing entry from it, bought the land, and I reversed a negrate installed because the person refused to consider any other options, even payments and land swaps.
-- A builder who had a bland tower soaring up and dominating the neighborhood added some features to it to make it more appealing.
-- A land baron with an ugly glowing square on his land came and took it away and I bought land from him.
--A neighbor with unsightly builds, at least in the eyes of the neighbours, removed them.
--A person who was never online, or at least never on that alt account holding a property, who had other properties, and who had left out an experimental building that the entire neighborhood felt devalued ALL their land came and put it back in inventory and put their land up for sale.

Far from feeling helpless, angry, and frustrated, I feel like I'm accomplishing something. A negrate isn't permanent; it can be reversed. When conflicts arise, people can buy land, or sell land. They can find out if they need to move. They can ask for change, and sometimes get it so that both parties are left happy.

This paralysis induced by the "anything goes" gang who want to install the tyranny of the endlessly subjective prevents anything from getting done. I am not sitting in a puddle of tears on a single one of my properties. I either made compromises, or worked out arrangements, or got some improvements. Some of the conflicts led either to me selling land or buying land, but it was not under duress. Negrates were reversed in every single case involving an obstructive building.

So the moral of the story is, try to brave the gauntlet of all the SL Harpies, raise issues that trouble you, as Shiryu has done, use your negrate, and try to prevent others from ruining your game through some defense and offensive action using the perfectly legal elements of the game in the TOS, namely free expression on the forums and your negrate button.

speculation about my goals says more about the author's thought processes than about my motives.

i might have motives you haven't thought of.

Even if i don't always agree with your views, i have to say that here i agree completely. The focus of my post (as the topic itself stated), was to discuss about a potential exploit of annoying builds aimed to damage others and acquire land/money with a blackmail, while the "anything goes gang" as you called it, totally ignored that point, trying to shift the discussion on the usual moot point of the aesthetic value of that single build or of the freedom of expression.

We are all SO eager to hear them, or are you waiting until you can actually figure what excuse you can try to feed to the audience ?

You feel that having absolute freedom paralyzes and having strict rules to control aesthetics is freeing? That seems completely ass backwards to me. The people who tend to have the most problems in SL are thoses who have the most unrealistic expectations... that the world should be somehow remade in an image that suits them and that our individual right to force a particular aesthetic or play style extends beyond the borders of our own land. It's far simpler, and in the context of SL far more productive, to accept that you can't control what other people do and accept that as long as they're not in violation of the TOS you don't really have a leg to stand on. You can let it annoy you. You can bang your head against the wall. Or you can get on with living your second life the way you like within the borders of your land. No one will ever convince me that having to look at something you find objectionable equates to somehow being abused. That reeks of a sense of entitlement that you're simply, er... not entitled to. Live and let live is not a difficult mindset to live by. You just have to accept that the freedom SL affords extends to everyone else and their ideas about aesthetics might be completely different than yours. C'est la vie.

you filed abuse without ever talking to me about it? isn't that like ringing the police because a neighbor's tree hangs over your property?

knowledge is power. why should I share anything with a hostile interrogator?

This post is not about having strict rules to control aesthetics, it's about the risk of aesthetics being EXPLOITED to acquire what one wants at the expense of others.



This smartass attitude and your refusal to state your reasons does nothing else than prove my point.

By giving into the behavior instead of just ignoring it, you become part of the problem. If the tactic did not work, it would not be used. Does it make the tactic right? Certainly not, but unfortunately, there is a lot you an do within the letter of the law that violates the spirit of the law, and nothing can be done about it. If it is so blatantly obvious that someone is putting up a build just to try to get money, why reward that? If you just ignore it and go on with your SL, you generally outlast their short attentions spans and they move on. By giving in and buying up land, or moving, you are giving them power they would not otherwise have, which makes you part of the problem instead of standing up to it. If more people did so, the technique would become ineffective, and would not be used.

Yes Cristiano, but the problem stands, if the owner of the offending building (or buildings) is just a little patiente, one will have two choices:
1: Ignoring it, but having his building and land owning experience ruined by it, when i used the term "eyesore" i wasn't using it in a figurative way, but in a literal way, one can't look at it for more than a minute without having his eyes hurting. Sure you can try and avoid to look at it, but it gets difficult for instance when it occupies a whole side of your property, and what stops qa speulator that is rich enough to completely surround your property with such builds? that would make it a bit difficult to ignore even for the most patient person.
2: sucking it and pay the offender, or give up your property to it, thus encouraging such tactic to be used regularly

Proves a point yes. I can grant that much.

I'm sorry that I am compelled to add to this thread, but here it goes:

I find it curious that Shiryu Musashi is a memeber of Centre Ville Merchants, and All things Asian. Anshe is an Officer of both of these groups. I hate to make a "guilty by association" argument, but Dreamland (Anshe) is trying to sell land all around this particular build.

My assumption is that if Anshe was not selling land around this build, there would be no thread about it.

I don't mean to imply that anyone is doing anything wrong, but I do find the whole thing a bit self-serving. And that is fine by me. I noticed that no one else has made this connection yet.

Champie

LOL
I am a merchant, and i am member of a LOT of groups associated with malls (and centre ville is one of the best and most realistic looking malls around SL, so i hurried to get a stall there as soon as it opened the new place), if you don't know, in many malls you have to set the group that malls belongs to, otherwise your items will be sent back to your inventory when the owner does a wipe to get rid of littering.
About All Things Asian, a big part of my producion is asian styled and i have been invited in the group, it's not the only asian themed group i have too (other being Minoru Studio Design).
Maybe no one made this connection because there is no connection?

And yes, i like anshe as a person (from the limited exprience i had dealing with her), is this bad?

Shiryu, no it is not bad. As I stated, I just think that this thread is self-serving.

Champie

Yes it's self serving, because I don't want such a thing to be done to me or to my neightbors (thing that would end up affecting me too) if some shark decides our land is desirable for him.

OK, I did some field research.

I went out there to visit Biff's tower, and boy, I'm glad I don't suffer from epilepsy. Warning: if you suffer from epilepsy, do not visit that tower. The neon colors blinking on and off will make you physically ill anyway.

I saw it was set to like $8000 something, about double what Anshe-land cost next to it.

It was on a (formerly) beautiful sim. Biff was flying nearby. After talking with him, I felt he wasn't Blue Burke's alt, though the style is similar but he is SOMEBODY's alt lol that's for sure, he was like born yesterday or something.

I asked him if he was trying to extort a sale of the land. I offered to buy it and put it out of its misery, although it was overpriced and near a road. I wanted to see what he said. He said that he wasn't doing that and didn't care about the money -- then he clarified that he didn't care about the 'profit'. I said he ought to set it to "0" then LOL. Or at least $4000.

I asked him what he was up to. He claimed he wasn't trying to force a sale, but was engaged in an experiment. It was secret, and he couldn't tell me. If he told me, it would take away the point of the experiment. AND he told me that he hoped I wouldn't buy the property because that would ruin the experiment.

It's not clear how long his experiment will last, but he said that when it's done it will all make sense. I don't buy it. I think it's an experiment in seeing how Anshe will lower prices or others will lower prices or move or buy him out. The fact is, his land is set to sale at twice or more the going rate for that area.

I told him I'd negrate him, and that when he revealed the secret of his "experiment" I'd un-negrate him.

Blue Burke told me his glowing yellow neon obnoxious box was an 'experiment' too which is why I suspected this guy could be Blue. He claims not. And talking to him, he didn't seem as bright as Blue. Well, let us see.

I think it's worth negrating him, because then people will see his pile of negrates when dealing with him. I take Anshe's point that negrating doesn't really accomplish anything when someone already has like 6 and they are a day old, as this guy does, but frankly, if he had 600, that might make a dent.

Quite frankly if I could remove anything offensive. I would raze that hiddeous telehub Mall Miss Chung has hanging over my and Lukas's house. I recall one day the sim it is in was gone and Lukas sent me pics labeled O what a glorius day. The point of my post? Just because you find it offensive doesn't mean they should remove it unless it violates some rule or the mature/ pg guidlines. Simply put beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Chip, when you go on retorting to my posts, you illustrate in spades YOUR OWN desire to try to make me conform to YOUR unrealistic expectations, to make me speak or behave in a way YOU WANT. Why should I do that? SL is free. I'm happy to keep it free. I'm not advocating any introduction of strict rules of esthetics at all LOL, and I'd challenge you to find a scrap of a word of mine that advocates this. In fact, I'm advocating taking action using existing game tools like the forum or the negate to push back against those selfish creatures who have no consideration of their neighbors, and who also extort. This is right and just. It's not making rules, it's using existing rules to the hilt to fight back against this terrorism.

I call for voluntary action. I don't ask the Lindens to interfere. I don't ask for complicated building commissions to be formed enforcing building codes and behaving like Stalinists. I just ask for voluntary action. I think the positive can push out the negative. When enough people establish an area as residential, they can set a tone. When they face the few griefers who try to extort and annoy, they can respond through negrating and discussing the issue on the forums. It's something that will end their sense of powerlessness. I have found that far from being a feel-good exercise, it's something that WORKS. People pay attention, and often change things and think about what they are doing. Those that are uber-griefers are put on notice, and sometimes even THEY change.

What reeks of a sense of entitlement is YOUR idea that somebody can just be as obnoxious and ugly as they want to on their land and never CONSIDER their neighbors. What we are working towards here is more CONSIDERATION, to end the sense of impunity that the fuck-you hedonists have in this game space. By discussing them in public and negrating them, we can exert some social pressure on their fuck-you hedonism. This isn't about esthetics. There are plenty of ugly or so-so or lame builds, not built by newbies but by people with no sense of themselves and the environment, but there's not an awful lot you can do about them. In another category, there are builds that are deliberately obstructive and obnoxious, if not extortionist, that people should take action about. There is a difference. Many people SEE the difference. They understand that challenging Biff to explain his "experiment" is the right thing to do given his extortionist power. IT's not about chilling the innovation of the experimental or about harming newbie learning efforts. Everybody can tell the difference. The "anything goes" crowd is clinging fiercely to THEIR sense of entitlement that THEY can decide that "anything goes" and that nobody ELSE can decide that no, it doesn't fly and people want to push back.

I just want point out that the tower in Ontario is not the only one that was setup using this account "Biff Pendragon". There is more of same, I found at least one more setup in middle of another realtors for-sale land in one otherwise empty sim.

If make money through extortion is not purpose of this alt, then it is griefing realtors. One way or the other it is hurting Second Life.

I won't answer to any posts made by alt accounts. Whoever is "Biff Pendragon" should log on main account if he wants to make serious discussion.