09-04-2003 14:08
It’s nice to see Summer in Second Life go out with a bang. Not literally, mind you – there was no sudden rash of vicious lag-bombs or other paraphernalia that some Residents might consider ‘festive’. The Blotter is instead thinking of the outpouring of creativity that exploded before our very eyes at the Burning Life Festival. This is precisely the kind of event that one might think would be a magnet for wrong-doers and miscreants, but Second Life’s law enforcers received just two complaints during the entire Burning Life run. The most common comment heard regarding the festival is the disappointment that it only lasted a week. The PB would like to remind Residents that Burning Life is not a place, but a state of mind. If we all keep Burning Life in our hearts we can….OK, schmaltz isn’t the Blotters bag so let’s leave it at this: What’s keeping you from displaying this kind of constructive exuberance every day?

Burning Life may not, in the end, be the wildest memory most hold of Second Life between the bookends of Memorial and Labor Days. Whether you were amused, outraged, or terrified, the influx of credit card-less trial users may have been the defining element of Second Life’s Summer season. Their unpredictable and occasionally incomprehensible behavior certainly kept the Blotter on his toes, and the return to a card-required trial system brings with it both relief and lament. For every incorrigible troublemaker and twelve-year-old gun nut there was a gem of a new resident with wide-eyed awe at the possibilities of a world he had entered expecting only to cause grief. New users entering with bona-fide credit cards to their name will be free of past trial user restrictions and thus will have a much better chance to find out what Second Life really has to offer. This, in turn, suggests that they’ll spend less time hacking around the Welcome Area with newly acquired swords – and it means that the Blotter might never again hear the sweet words that summed up our Summer in Second Life: “Are U a computer?”

Statistics: Eleven complaints of harassment, intimidation, or vandalism, six complaints about assorted rule violations, eight instances of inappropriate content on a PG sim, and just one complaint of an undisclosed nature. As a result of these complaints and our subsequent investigations, ten residents were suspended, nine warnings were issued and one more resident was checked out of paradise forever.