Thoughts of a Fool: Community and Commerce, or why I'm worried...

To answer your question, Here is a perfect example:

/108/31/95952/1.html

Sooooooo...

If you ignore something long enough, it goes away? Not mentioning the hippo in the kitchen means it's not there?

Sooooooo....... bringing knives to a "knife fight" is expected to settle things amicably?

Tell me about it. Has no-one here heard of the rule of thumb that one should wait 24 hours before writing a forum post in anger? (Not that I'm a perfect example of following that rule of thumb, mind you...)

/me takes foolish's knife away

/me takes foolish's knife away

* takes Stoneself's knives away *



Oh my god! I got knives!! HELP!!! Somebody take these knives off me! Quick!!

*takes Starax's knife away*

OMFG, they've gone and armed Starax!

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!

*runs away*

(edit) *comes back* Thank god, Weedy!

Yay! More funny less Angry!

I'll take it! I'll have the silly with a side order of happy, hold the sarcasm!

Text is not the easiest medium to work with, especially in a forums format.

Ever tried having a relationship with someone in SL? One of the biggest hurdles you will face is the text issue. Many times, one simply cannot decipher tone from text all the time.

I'll also note that the only one yelling in caps here, is you, while ranting about anger. You also used an example in your OP who is one of the most outwardly angry people in SL.

I've said my part here, and I've already stayed one post too long. I hope you find some peace of mind, I mean that sincerely, because this is stressing you out, and I don't wish that on anyone.

I would suggest that these two phenomena are causally connected and that insofar as it is LL's self-proclaimed mission to foster community - and because it is their "world" - the burden is first incumbent upon them. And they've really not been doing very well at it.

Looking at the forums alone, which the original post focused on, there has been a fair amount of peevishness coming from LL. If you want to lead people in decorum, the best way is by example. Yep, Lindens are people too, but being uncommunicative or snippy does not typically lead to hug-fests. Neither does arbitrary moderation help; I'm not making a claim of favoritism, but I think it would be hard to assert that all forum pissing contests are treated with equal alacrity; this can be explained away simply as lack of requisite labor-hours, but regardless of the cause, it does tend to send a very mixed message.

Add to that the technical frustrations of the last year, which indeed have been greater over the last year than in any prior year and you have a customer base that starts with simmering animosity and will likely only procede down from there. This year has (not coincidentally) been the nadir of communication between LL and its customers which only adds fuel to the fire.

My associates may well be an unrepresentative sample, but almost everyone I know continues to play SL despite its technical limitations and gaffes. These frustrations certainly add heat to the situation.

Finally, we are all - to a first approximation - a community of geeks where the "economy of ego boost" is a very significant factor, perhaps the dominant one. Compare, for example, slashdot.com to metafiler.com to see that there really is an inherent difference in the one-upmanship in the populations. I've worked amongst (and have been) engineering and creative types for far to long to consider this an insult rather than simply a observation. This phenomenon shows up everywhere the primary currency is ideas; as one academician put it to me, "the stakes are so small, the politics have to be vicious".

I don't think you are seeing anything here that the prior years haven't shown, if anything, you've stepped in at a time when only the degree has intensified.

OMFG Foolish and a few other are right, Foolish, a lot of what you said I think is correct. What the hell have we come to these days?? I mean look now, this whole thread (well except the few end posts) has turned into exactly what Foolish said this forum was turning into, a god-dam bloody knife fight. And that statement is true, these forums have become evil, we used to use knives but now we use f@&$ing machine guns, sniper rifles, and A- bombs. I think it is good to know that we have people like Foolish around that are still "pretty" good at heart (no ones' perfect), I am no saint, infact I enjoy the linden bashing (grr, they have done things that piss me off), and sometimes the points people try to make in these forums but other then the linden bashing ( ) it is just like Foolish said... lighten up people, I mean come on.

I find with these forums that how I'd define their character on any given day depends a lot on my own mood and disposition. I think all in all they've been really good of late compared to times past. It seems to go in cycles and the drama level has been relatively low the past few months. Sure there are people who go at each other pretty often, but they're mostly people with some kind of history between them and they go out their way to smack around their pilosophical opposites... even that, compared to the same sort of thing in other forums, is generally substantive debate even when the ad hominem quotient is high.

Really about the only thing that's gotten on my nerves lately is the amount of complaining, especially from long time residents. People just get jaded after a while and lose sight of why they loved SL to begin with... that it wasn't dependent on "what if's" or "future feature X."

All in all though I think the forums have gotten a lot better and more civil over the past year. Aside from that, every forum regular has their bad days now and then.

ya'll suck. now play nice.

Ah, so the moment after they took the snapshot of people together at events, or building something, or hanging out together, or whatever else, RIGHT THEN they went back to fighting like some kind of cartoon characters, complete with the cloud of angry dust effect courtesy of Starax's Magic Wand (AVAILABLE NOW FOR ONLY THE COST OF A MERCEDES E CLASS). They aren't taking pictures of just static art, they are taking pictures of themselves and others doing the things they do in SL, moment by moment, day after day.My point was that these forums, angry as they might be, do not represent the reality of what is going on in SL. People aren't getting into gangland fights in SL daily. I am glad these forums help affirm your lack of faith in SL users, though.

I am not sure why you are professing ignorance to the sheer amount of hatred and loathing that Prokofy engenders. You seem well aware of what a mention will do, in an almost calculated way - I suppose it works well for you using this as your personal blog, but the surprise seems intellectually false. The whole gloom and doom thing is incredibly cynical and self-fulfilling.

The fact is, anyone who has a kind word to say about Prok gets instantly drowned out by people determined that any "mention" of Prok - unless it is derogatory, of course - will result in TONS of horrible things then being said about him, along with the implication that anyone who doesn't agree has something wrong with them, too. Well, you know, that's dumb.

And anyone who doesn't agree generally comes in for a lot of unpleasant characterizations of himself, as well. Well, it ain't gonna work on me, cause I'm not gonna shut up!

Foolish, I almost said this on your other thread - the one about your first SL birthday. I was thinking you were lots older than I am, SL-wise. So when I saw that thread, I thought that surely couldn't be, because you always seem so knowledgable and wise. I thought you had to have been in SL longer than I have! I just never looked at your birthdate.

coco

You know what I think is dumb? Lamenting about the supposed divide between business and community, and then holding up the very person who has done more than anyone else to perpetuate the division of people. No one else marginalizes people the way Prokofy does. So using that as some kind of an example of someone working to try to go against the divide is laughable, since he thrives on that divide in the first place. Content barons, socialist hippie dope smoking Calfornia utopianists, anti-land, anti-capitalist techi-wikkis. It's all about dividing people, and perpetuating an us vs. them mentality. There are all kinds of people doing philanthropic things for the community without bashing people left and right, something that very angry and endlessly critical Prokofy could never begin to grasp since he thinks he is fighting some important fight (at least in his own mind). Does Prokofy deserve a cookie?

Ok, the point here is a differance in POV. I was talking about the forums specificly, you were talking about the SL community in general. What I'm saying is your area is based on more fun things that people are doing, while this area seems to be more negative. As to SL itself (in world) I have seen a lot less of the anger there than I see on the forums.



I never advised I was ignorant of the way Neva is seen, I just was surprised that it's still so strong! Prok has angered just about everybody at some point or another, but so have several other people, and they don't have the same impact. Call me stupid, but I have a tendency to let things slide after time has passed. I guess I kind of feel that the continued intensity of Prok hate might be partially symptomatic of something more deep-seated, but that's a wild guess.

Regardless, when I mentioned him at the beginning, it was because I thought of the grove, and he chose to buy and be custodian of it. My point was about the commerce half, but if I had known the reaction was that strong, I would have just said 'someone'. Still, that would be a cop-out in some ways too, wouldn't it?

I dunno. I wrote this to comment on what seemed like a lot of negativity in the forums. Funny thing is, people I've gotten into fights with on the Forums have been more than civil in SL. I guess I just had trouble figuring out why the forums were so hard-core.

Introvert Petunia's thoughts were interesting and well thought-out. Now that I think of it, many 'creative people' (in general, not just artists) seem to get testy when placed in large groups. Strange, but large numbers of tech types never occured to me being like that, but when I think about the IT team in some places...

And here, we get a lot of creatives and tech types together. Perhaps it's a matter of critical mass?

How about this: I don't bloody care about Prok and his hate-club? I don't keep track of his every word. I know something he did, and mentioned it because aside from the MJW instance, I never paid attention. All I knew is he got banned because a bunch of people had a problem with him. I figure he dug his own pit and got it filled in over his head. Case closed.

Now bloody well get off my back for not knowing OR caring how many reasons their are to hate the almighty Prok Neva, the banished Dark lord of the SL Forums...

Wow, look at that anger. See, self-fulfilling prophecy. You are the one freaking out, not me. Your use of him as an example may have been perfectly innocent, but you are getting the reaction you are getting for the very reason I outlined in that post.

Prokofy is a friend of mine, and I'm honoured by such.

Someone I met in Second Life about a year ago, without preconception or prejudgement.

Who was more than decent, when nobody else gave a damn about that noob Desmond Shang in the freebie leather jacket and default jeans.





Times have changed... oh have they changed.

It would be a 'smart' financial and social move perhaps, to distance myself from a controversial friend. But in my view, that is a cheapass, gutless road.

If there is guilt by association with Prokofy, nail me up to the cross on the left.

<Suddenly has flash-backs to sesame-street and Bert and Ernie skits where Bert is incited into a fury by Ernie over an extended frustration-fest>

Noooooooooo! <Runs away>

There is no guilt by association with Prokofy. I was once friends in world with Prokofy as well. I don't think unless you have been in the crosshairs of his relentless criticism and circular arguments that you can really understand it all. I wish that there was no animosity between us, I have even tried to bridge that gap many times. Most recently, after having a decent conversation with Prokofy about TSO, it was no less than a week later I found myself being bashed unprovoked yet again by Prokofy in a forum post.

You can be friends with whomever you want. You are certainly right that it is a gutless thing to just distance yourself. I understand that from my friendship with Billy Madison. The difference is, I don't excuse or explain away Billy's actions - they are his own, and at times have been very fucked up. The problem comes in when Prokofy is held up by some as some kind of misunderstood martyr who is just fighting back and has never done anything to anyone. That is simply false - I would venture to say at this point hundreds of thousands of words have been written week after week in Prokofy's blog constantly bashing one person or another. Not ideas, people. Public figure or not, we are individuals. Prokofy seems to have no capacity to turn the page and just move on, and when others try, he just drags them right back with the constant, endless negative attention and anger.

See now there is a great way to diffuse a situation - which is why I always keep humor at my disposal at well. I am not picking a fight with you, just pointing out why Prokofy is such a flashpoint subject even to this day - it's nothing against you.