Hi, there Eboni, I'm that landlord
And since you are happy to expose yourself, I'm happy you're exposed. Nobody has to keep blacklists when YOU do your own exposure?
You couldn't be more idiotic on that score.
Why don't you tell the missing bits from your story? I have no clue about any relationships, since you never built any house or came there with any other person that I could see but hey, that's your business and it's not pertinent. But let's go over the story of what REALLY happened:
1) Part of the land Eboni owned was originally a "first-land" parcel of 512 on which a person lived for many months, since day 1 of the sim's birth and did not wish to sell, evidently, because even when I moved in on neighbouring parcels with 2 builds, he just hugged his 512 with his newb cabin and his ban-all on the lot and I never even talked to him. All that time, I never even contacted that person and asked him to sell because I had a parcel I bought on the waterfront from a land baron getting out of the game when he dumped all his land for a song, I had the neighbouring parcels in Winnipeg, and who needs one more 512 to pay tier on? I had other land in these neighbouring sims and had no reason to acquire any more land so I never even sought it -- Eboni's feverish self-induced notion that I was an ebil landlord lusting after this silly 512 is ludicruous.
If that 512 owner put that land up for sale at some insane price hoping I'd be pressured to buy because he was right underneath me and a kind of jigsaw puzzle piece out of that lot, well his tiny-minded hopes were dashed because I never even noticed him, never noticed it was for sale, even going out there nearly every day, and whoops, I missed that one, and Eboni was fool enough to pay his price for his 512, I guess.
2. Next to that 512 was another waterfront parcel, I forget the amount, perhaps 1024, that someone built a dock on and charged $10,000 or more for. Before Eboni, this land was previously owned by someone who somehow connected to yet another person who was also intensely trying to get me to sell part of my water for various reasons, but I did not want to sell. I had a parcel there that I really l liked, I got some more that were sale nearby to rent out, and I saw absolutely no reason to move from that area. At one point, the owner of that $10,000 overpriced chip of waterfront next to my land offered to swap me that land for the bit of water I had. But I had no desire to do that so it didn't happen. That $10,000 chip of land sat there for ages, because no one would buy it for more than $10/L per meter, but I guess Eboni finally did -- and Eboni seems to take great umbrage at this, but hey, nobody was twisting her arm to pay high prices for waterfront in a water sim, this one is very pretty but geez, there are loads more out there with even prettier waterlines.
3. Apparently, Eboni then buys the 512, because I don't even notice it is for sale, that's how much I care. Not sure how that happened, but there it is. I might have bought, and might not have, I never focused on it, it was not waterfront, just a kind of natural piece of that slice because it took the lot out to the sim line.
4. Not long after, I get an IM from Eboni Khan -- after I first notice her endlessly flying around some other land I own in another sim, who knows what for, and also notice her bidding on the auctions. She asks *me* if I want to sell my land. Heheheh, she left that part out, eh? She, the owner of a 512 she's gotten her hands on right next to mine, is trying to get me to sell something like 4500 or more meters so she can have passage down to the waterfront. Huh? I say no, and she asks in somewhat more imperious tone and I simply say no, I don't want to sell my land. Um, silly me, but I don't want to sell my land, not to a 512 owner especially lol. Why should I do that when I own thousands of meters on the sim, most of which are rented out to other tenants?? As it happens, and Eboni may not have realized this, the parcel she coveted actually had a strange configuration where part of it was on one bank of the river, part of it was in the water, and part of it was on the opposite bank of the river. You don't get that every day! So that was toward the prim count, of course, and I wanted to have a house built.
5. I don't know the sequence because I honestly didn't watch it, but apparently Eboni also gets the $10,000 overpriced bit, so now she has a bit more. Then she IMMEDIATELY puts it for sale, at the rate of $18L/meter. That's very steep --- double what even very high-end mature waterfront would go for. It's more than telehub land. It is just clearly a very high price meant to say: "Oh, you wouldn't sell to me? So fuck you, you want this bit that matches your parcel, then pay through the nose for it."
6. Hmm...story sounding quite different now, eh, everybody LOL. People are SO selective when they tell stories of extortion! When I saw Eboni's ridiculously priced land, I thought, hmm, a budding extortionist, thinking she can shake down old Prokofy. So to see if she really was a budding extortionist, I IM'd her and said, um, would you be interested in selling that land for $7 or $8 per meter? That would be market prices.
I figured there was always the possibility that she wasn't a budding extortionist, and was just clueless about the land market. If she was interested in really selling her land, she would set a more "normal" price than $18/meter on it. Who did she think was going to pay that price? A passing butterfly? A land baron would never pay $18/meter for it, never -- they never do. Their policy is not to deal with extortionists, generally, and they don't need to have beautiful land, they can buy other beautiful land, they don't care. There's only one person who is going to pay $18/meter on a sim -- the person who lives next door to it, or perhaps just behind it. No one is going to come into an older area from outside to buy at that price, they can buy fresh new sims just made. That's why we call it "ex-tor-tion," children LOL.
7. When I offer her $7-8 and urge her to sell it for a more reasonable price, which is utterly normal, Eboni said "If it never sells, I don't care." Um, yeah. Right. Hehehehehe. Look who is being snide hahahah? So she isn't really interested in selling the land, supposedly, yet it has nothing but trees on it, no build, nothing. She never did have a house on it. Well, hey, you can do what you want with land in SL. Build a pot and piss in it if you're clever with animations. So I simply closed the message window and thought about it. Did I want to buy land at $18/L? Of course not. Friends told me it was nuts. HOWEVER, I looked at my records and saw that I had gotten some of the land there for a really cheap price when a sim wholesaler was dumping and leaving the game, in the neighbouring sim right adjacent to that land I got some other lots cheaply and even Anshe sold it very reasonably when some of it got publicked or liquidated or something. I thought about how it would be good to have that parcel extend out. I generally don't believe in feeding extortionists or even people who just believe they are selling boutique land as Eboni feels she's doing, but someone who asks to buy your land, believes you should sell it to her because she wants waterfront access, doesn't get it, doesn't get her way in general, pouts, then sets their land to $18L/meter, well.....
There's no "secret" about an alt, another member of my group with the tier, buying the land. Duh, he has the same groups, duh. And he writes a simple message, "Get a life." Why? Because she obviously thought she could taunt me forever with too-expensive land filled with trees next to my lot -- anyone could go and see how it was laid out, it's hilarious, somebody owning a 512 trying to position themselves in this way, and even adding less than 1024, and then setting their land to double even what the most expensive SL land normally sells for. But...I don't care either if sometimes I have to pay double for nice land, especially if I already paid less than half for nice land lol.
If you paid all that money for land, why not live on it? Visit it? Something? Um...just let it sit there and not care if it ever sells? Er...if you don't care if it sells, why put a price on it?
One of the most hilarious things about SL is the way in which kids put numbers like $150000 and $200000 on their silly ugly uber griefing club lots of 2048 meters with revolving crap all over them and atrocious textures, or they simply price up land next to you, and then they say: "Griefing? I wasn't griefing. I just put that price on it so it wouldn't sell. I didn't really intend to sell it for that. I didn't actually care if it sold." It's like a semi-unconscious form of griefing that is so subtle the practitioner can have plausible deniability. But it's still pretty transparent. People who do that with land are irresponsible, and it's right to include them in the extortion list.
Um, somebody who puts $18/L on a land that once cost $10/L is bold and um innovative, but somebody who says, um, would you like to sell it for a more reasonable $7 or $8 is not "snide" but just not interested in paying an extortionist. Well, the reader can decide who is an extortionist. But like I said, I don't have to keep lists. The real idiots just expose themselves on the forums without my help
A friend of mine suggested making a chamber of commerce and circulating lists of extortionists. Part of that activity would be to discuss what is meant by extortionists, whether they should ever be paid or never paid, should they have a means to plead their case against being put on the list, what should be done about them. After all, you can submit complaints to the Better Business Bureau and they collect reports, do investigations, and then put up judgements and statements about charlatans who try to bilk people. SL needs this. What would such a blacklist be used for? As a handy guide for who NOT to sell or rent to, and never to include in a land group. It wouldn't get involved in club ownership obviously.
But basically, the game tools allow you to set any price you want on your land, and for anybody who wants to, to buy it. It's free. And I wouldn't change anything about that freedom. But I am for making in-game discussions of public charges against those who behave in this extortionist manner, and finding ways to deal with the TOS restrictions on naming names.
Either that, or my hyperbole meter is broken -- it was registering "ridiculous", at the least. I just didn't expect my suggestions to be considered anything short of retarded -- I was counting on readers to know that an insult could only be detrimental, as a fundamental aspect of humour (IMO) is the suggestion of the absurd, with the obvious implication that it's something that cannot be done.