Jessie

It seems that whenever people here start talking about fighting and wars between subcultures on SL, etc, someone (usually a few someones) start reminiscing about certain things - often, it's a place called "Jessie", and something that happened there some time ago - something I've come to start referring to as "The Jessie Event".

Guys, the cryptic nudge-nudge inside-joke references are really getting on my nerves. Could somebody kindly explain just what the heck that business was/is all about? I'm genuinely curious.

The Jesse War was an early, early SL event. Well before my time, in 2003. I'd suggest...

http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2003/07/war_of_the_jess.html

http://secondlife.wikia.com/wiki/Jessie

Thanks Mari, for sharing those links.

That was an interesting read and quite a SL history lesson.

Yer welcome!

There's a bunch on it in "The Making Of Second Life" book by Wagner James Au.

Amazing. I didn't think about Jessie as having 'history,' only to not go there unless I want to be dead and back home a short time later.

But this was actually a fairly interesting read. Thank you

Yer welcome. A lot of the old mainland has a history, really. After five years, how couldn't it?

Thanks Mari. That was a bit fascinating, but I gotta confess I'm a little underwhelmed. Ugly sign fights and people shooting each other on combat-enabled sims just doesn't strike me as the kind of epic legendary grandiose fantasticalness that deserves the sort of reverence I've heard people refer to it with. Ah, well.

SL was a very different place back then. The Jessie War was a little before I arrived, but I was able to read the old forum posts from the weeks before I arrived. In those days, SL was only open 12 hours a day, noon to midnight PST. When SL was closed, we would spend our time in the forums, so a good deal of the bickering carried over outside the grid. I think the posts from beta may be lost forever, which is a pity. Those old Jessie posts could get quite epic at times.

Welcome to SL - where pointless bickering becomes legend.

The old War in Jessie: Is it upon us? thread is still available to do battle in in the old New World Notes group forum here: /18/1.html .

You have to realize that this was a very different (and closer to real) time in SL. It was a smaller community, the Lindens were ever present, and land was hard to come by. Turned out that land was worth fighting for.

That was a fascinating read.

No ... errr ... kidding.

Was it? Maybe it seemed so at the time, but now in retrospect? Aside from nostalgic references, nobody seems to care about the place anymore.

And certainly, a plot of land can't be meaningfully "fought over" in SL, where there's no possibility of physically forcing out your enemies and occupying the space they once stood on unless they choose to leave (in which case, you've really forced nothing). You might harass a person in to TPing somewhere else, but land rights don't change.

A revolutionary war battlefield is just a plot of land. Or is it?

One could prob'ly make good arguments about why Charles Lindberg's flight, the driving of the Golden Spike, and the invention of the telegraph are unimportant. It wouyld take a much, much bigger event to equal now what Jesse was then.

I wasn't there, but I've read the history. In the world SL was then, it seems like some very, very big doins'.

The people that live there probably care about the place (Notice that no land is for sale). And of course it seemed worth fighting for at the time. There was also a bit of dash and so on to being in the first virtual war.

The war was perpetrated by a band of refugees from another web site. They conducted a well organized invasion of SL with a clear strategy in mind. The invader's tactic in the war was to harass the enemy (original residents) until they could take it no more. Then they leave the parcel and the land is up for grabs for you or your allies. Kind of like ethnic cleansing.

Ad farmers do sort of the same thing these days. Grief you until you sell out.

BTW, standard way to grief was to kill your enemy, causing them to be TP'd home. Of course if your army was at the home, you keep killing until the victim logs off. With enough troops, you could deny access to a parcel indefinately by killing 'em when they log on.

As a one month old resident, I've seen political posters around. They don't bother me, but I can see how they may flame others. I always avoid political discussion among aquaintences. There's no elections in SL so why risk rubs and confrontations.

This is the first time I heard of Jesse. Had no idea.

Almost makes me want to put on my flaming red jammies and my scooby slippers and do a search on Jesse tonight.

I don't really think it's posible for poeple who weren't around at the time to appreciate what went down in Jessie. SL is a hugely different place now and can barely be compared to the pioneering early days. Back then the community was miniscule. pretty much every one knew everyone else and the Jessie Land War wes probably the most newsworthy event that had happened up until that point, at least on a social level. Reading old forum posts doesn't really help you fully appreciate the world in which these events took place, as that world no longer exists.

So I guess the old addage "you had to have been there" is applicable.

I went to Jessie with my partner tonight, we were disappointed not to have been shot. However, also pleased we hadn't died we started to walk over to another sim, and my partner went over to a fence to read a sign, she was immediately killed, the sign said 'Electric Fence' and she got a message saying she was a dumbass and a dipshit, one of the funniest things to happen all week.

I wish I was. Sounds like my kind of fun. I'm going to visit there tonight, just like General Patton vistied ancient battlefields.

OK, I guess I'll have to accept that.

Fascinating read. Thanks, Mari!

I have been intrigued by the history of the Jesse story. My question is this. Does it still exist? Not the sim, but rather the rivalry or militany attitude that will get you killed in an instant? Or is it just sort of SL folklore these days?

I don't think it does. I just spent around 45 minutes walking around the place and didn't get a scratch. Of course there was nobody else on the sim the entire time; but the story Mari linked to made it sound as if there was a time when people had auto-gun turrets set to shoot at everybody who entered the sim and stuff. Guess things really have changed.

There aren't many who live in Jesse, but usually if someone is home they will kill you one way or another. I managed to get killed there 3 times this week TPing in to an old land mark I have. Sometimes visiting killers hang out there around the factory and go after new green dots as they appear on the map.

If you get too close to the house that is near the sim's center, I think there is a turret that is still alive.