Virtual Nightmare

Absolutely! Before the grid closed down, I had just spent a lovely half hour in world listening to a friend from Japan play live music with another from Sweden and others. They were playing their own original composition - where else can people get together so easily from all over the world to make music together?

I wished I could have dragged John Humphries there and into the 21st century!

(Actually, to be fair, the Daily Mail does have something of a reputation for responsible journalism, although very right wing at times. That same edition had an article about the "games China does not want people to see" - I'm not getting at the Chinese here, because I know many will totally disapprove, but that is something that needs to be publicised.)

Velda, there have been much bigger press blowups about child porn etc. that have resulted in SL taking legal evasive action (i.e. identity verification). This evasive action is quite obviously at the cost of invasion of privacy and concerns over identity theft for the ENTIRE population of SL, so obviously LL feels threateened by such press.

That said, this article is pretty toothless. He does, however, show some consciousness that his whine is doomed to be lost under the roar of the wheels of the 3D juggernaut. It's not a revolution like the internet was, but it's too vital for such a vague concern to have any impact. For knowing that, I credit him.

Exactly. And I'm sorry to say that is what tries to pass for journalism these days. For those of us who supposedly live in democracies it's disturbing to realize how poorly the electorate are served by the agencies that should be keeping us informed.

But on a cheerier note, here in San Diego a local Fox (Fox!) news personality did an on-air segment about San Diegans in SL. She told people I know that the angle her producers gave her to pursue was "SL ruins lives" but she actually found out some facts and produced a nice little piece.
http://diegoland.com/11-26-2007.html

We already *had* that a while ago...there was a lot of disgusting so-called "journalism" about that. Compared to the fuss about Sl being a pedo haven, this article really is tame. Although I also find it insulting. I'm 35, so I'm supposed to have grown out of being creative? Bah.
And to have the gall to compare SL to the ghastly Habbo Hotel....

And yeah, the Daily Mail...I wouldn't take it too seriously.

Btw, about how to get your links "hyper" without having to use coffee: If you use Firefox (which is highly recommendable):
/327/b2/188445/1.html
(the normal code for forums is switched off here)

The Daily Mail is a right wing tabloid newspaper, and like all such of whatever political hue, needs to be taken with a huge pinch of salt. I guess the readership is largely older middle class people with right wing tendencies, and it tells them what they want to hear. John Humpreys is a respected BBC journalist and political interviewer, but, in his mid sixties he has recently remarried after an office romance, and has a very young child. so he is living out his fantasies in RL and therefore has no ned of SL!!

It's only someone's opinion guys, full of ignorance and a lifetime's baggage, and not important at all in the great scheme of things.

Tomorrow in the Daily Mail: "The Internet is a series of tubes."

Dear Fellow Residents

28 December 1871 — Antonio Meucci files a patent caveat (n.3335) in the U.S. Patent Office titled "Sound Telegraph", describing communication of voice between two people by wire. Imagine, this bizarre invention should make it possible that two human beings have voice communication whilst being in a different geographical location.

Unbelievable isn't it?

Who wants to place a bet that some ultra-conservative old reporter from an even older and even more conservative newspaper wrote about it like this:

There is a guy out there who claims to have invented a way to talk to someone without seeing the other person. If this is true, and I dought it is, the world will stop to be a place where humans see and meet each other. All our usual traditions, where we meet people we love, will die, including Christmas.

06. January 2008 - I have a mobil phone. My son has and he is only 13. My husband has - almost everyone has. I still had a nice peaceful christmas ....and had lots of friends ringing me on my "Mobil Sound Telegraph" - I was happy to hear their voice, some of them living thousands of miles away.

Just my two cents, and a happy new virtual and real 2008

Maggie

(formerly known as Candelaria Singh)

5.3 hours a month.

5.3 hours. A month.

Did he say month or day?

Month?

That's a lot of people NOT playing SL to balance out the amount of time everyone I know playing then.

If he'd said 5.3 hours a day I'd have just said yeah ... some people are lightweights ...

BAN THIS SICK TUBULAR FILTH!!!!!

(Or perhaps they might be honest and say "We liked it better when we could support that nice Mr Hitler"

hi my wife who cant see why i bother with sl showed me latest bad press from yesterdays news,i shrugged and said the writer had turned into a grumpy old sod anyway.I was rezzing something last night when an ave showed up on my plot (mature, not for any reason) he was newbie looking and asked in bad chat if i was voice enabled,told him hold a moment and enabled.to my absolute HORROR a childs voice boomed out of my speakers demanding jack daniels.Shocked i asked in chat how old he was and was told 11 with a volley of abuse.I told him to leave and that i would report him.I turned off voice and dont feel like using it again and i must admit it has soured me .my son said probably half the numbers on sl are kids anyway and who cares. I bloody do

Its owned by Associated Newspapers (Lord Rothermere and his gang).
The Daily Mail tends to be read by the Little Britain type who hankers for the good old days when Britian was a great empire and you only saw Johnny Foreigner when you went to Gibratar for a weeks holiday.

The article quotes 5.3 hours per month, Cherry - no kid! LOL - I was creased up! It's a really weak piece of journalism.

I think they were looking for sensationalism and John Humphries was doing his best to provide - but was restricted by an injunction not to write anything that the newspaper would have to publish an apology for next week.

(For non UK residents... The pity is that this is in a newspaper that has a circulation in the millions and generally is bought by ordinary - "middle class" if you like - families. These are the sort of families that do take responsibility for their kids and what they get up to, and may well be concerned. If it was in The Guardian, for example, with a circulation of about 10,000, it would hardly be noticed - but this paper carries some weight in the UK - not quite like the BBC, but tending towards that level. I'll keep an eye on the "Letters to the Editor" next week, because I would expect comments.)

Most mainstream commercial media outlets are being very negative about anything that relates to the current user created content movement.

"Uh oh, I may be out of a job soon if the population at large stops taking my spoon fed 'entertainment' and starts making it's own."

"What we provide is clean, sanitized, and safe. Don't trust that amateur over there! They may hurt your children and bring on the end of the world!"

I'm not saying that all media professionals are just thinking of themselves, but it's definitely seems to be the party line coming out of the big media companies. I've seen it with blogging, podcasting, music on myspace, and now virtual worlds. There's big bucks on the line here if we all walk away from 'professionally' made entertainment. So I'm not surprised when another one of these negative articles comes out.

Is it something to worry about? Nah. How many people read mainstream newspapers these days anyway?

Hi Min

I havn't seen it from that angle yet, but it makes perfect sense. Travel agents talk bad about timeshare, web designers talk bad about SEO, graphic designers talk bad about texters and newspapers talk bad about virtual worlds. Yes its all about conflicting interests.

Thanks for that one

Maggie

I liked some of his other articles, like Why do we waste, and How texting is wrecking our language. But I have to agree with Kaimi wholeheartedly.

Well, I think that SHOULD have had press coverage, and should be stopped.

About the article, though, I think the guy worries too much.

Also, his child is still little. My girls are now 18 (today!), and 20 and moved out.

Neither one of them - nor any of their friends - was unduly seduced by the online world.

I'm sure there are some young people (and adults) who do develop a sick attachments to online worlds, but judging from my kids and their friends, I think it is an exception rather than the rule.

What this guy needs to worry about more is the possibility that he will present the whole thing to his child as sort of intellectually forbidden fruit, and thus make it more attractive.

My experience is, it's really not that big a deal. Most kids WANT to be in the real world, most of the time, for their social interactions, their sports, etc.

And this idea that seeing material things in the online world makes you get a sense of entitlement about having them in real life - I don't think so. The two are quite separated. If anything, it's actually therapeutic, as people CAN have those things in the online world much more easily.

coco

Good points and don't forget "We give you the mindset that our advertisers want you to have."



Thanks. It's really been bothering me for a long time that fewer and fewer people take the time to read the newspaper and find out whats going on. Now I feel a bit better about that. Sort of.

Good points

The more I think about it, the more this article reminds me of this:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.04/war.html

Mari

"The struggling young father desperately trying to make ends meet is a powerful international financier with his own tropical island and a private jet to get there."

Hardly "struggling" if he owns a tropical island

I've often wondered what kind of Utopian paradise the world would be today if only the waltz had never been invented.




Really. is this guy totally clueless or what?

Wow! Awesome amount of replies to my original post, way too many for me to thank you all individually... So, a large THANK YOU to everyone who posted!!

Your input has helped me define and resolve a problem I had with a RL (1st life) relative (Thankfully not a member of SL! Sadly, one that does read the Daily Mail)


Ex forum lurker... Velda.

Those damned smutty dances. They've ruined society as we know it. Funny article, Mari!

"imagination is for kids"?

poor guy. such a dull life he must have. a big gray mass with scientific facts walking on top. lmao %)

Well he sure didn't waste any imagination writing this article, in fact he might have had one of his kids write it for him.

For non-UK residents: The Daily Mail's sole purpose appears to be to wind up the not_so_well_educated and easily lead people on political matters - immigration, government/execs wages, government FUps are among the favourites - basically they tug on the 'it's not fair' strings. I've come to the conclusion that the stories are written to incite the readers to shout at the TV every time the news comes on, sometimes reciting 'opinions' 'written' in that rag, but more often than not it's simply an explosion of the word 'bullshit' every time a interviewee (usually government official) on a news programme finishes a sentence.

The Daily Mail. What a waste of paper. If the fact that so many read it wasn't so scary, it would be funny.