I get on my high horse about all towers the appear in a residential neighbourhood and menace the smaller neighbours, especially in a prime beachfront area which is really meant for residential and really shouldn't be turned over to a megatower without some kind of fight, but so often there is no one to care.
There is no intent to texture this glaring tower because it is the clone of an existing tower.
I don't take on every single tower in SL, and I've seen some real hideous ones, but this one I chose to because the builder harassed me and my customers with false and vicious claims. The falseness of the claims is easily proved and anyone is welcome to contact me regarding them. The viciousness of the attacks is unlikely to stop, given the motives but I've been assured by this particular business that their construction sites will no longer be used as a platform to harass me or my customers or to make false claims. I can only hope they will abide by that pledge. Obviously, they have bigger problems now than me with the terror-menace chasing them around SL. While many will harass me further now thinking I opened up the way for this menace, I will remind me that I was menaced with destructive claims about my business first. And this kind of terror-building occurs because of the lack of channels for dispute resolution and sim management in SL, a problem that I fight, and do not contribute to but seek to alleviate.
From: someone
Prokofy... I really am astonished that you'd lump people into a group like that. Giving away freebies is to make up for world domination? Are you f*cking kidding?
Last time I checked, everyone that I knew making freebies was doing it becuase they thought it was a benefit for the community, especially if you're new to SL. It wasn't because they needed to repent for amasing some empire.
Yes, I realize that is a really astonishing concept and really annoying and I'm very glad I've gotten you to think about this because I can think of little other way to get people to think about these things, given their default of smug superiority, than challenging all their sacred cows in the sharpest way possible.
Everyone thinks that someone who gives away freebies (especially those who infest newbie areas and hand out things like women's lingerie packages) is a noble, selfless creature. But most of the time, they just want to spread their name around, get landmarks out there, and get people to their store. I know what that's like because I do that myself. Everybody provides loss leaders, it's normal in business.
But here's where it gets sticky. When you begin to argue with these people who have put giant builds, wacky builds, intrusive builds, annoying builds in the way of the entire horizon and view corridor and SL experience, who have infested all of SL territory with their free prefabs that they think are wonderful, sooner of later here is what they say:
"But I help newbies and I work for the good of the community and I'm not here to make a buck and I even give away my prefabs/furniture/cothing/vehicles."
It's a very manipulative and insidious argument. Each and every one who is engaging in this kind of mega-appearance in SL is absolutely convinced that they, and only they, are the selfless, self-sacrificying, public-interest-minded entity of the universe. They flatter themselves that everyone is thrilled that they provide freebies. It's one of the keystones to their very flattering and inflated self-image. They believe they *already* compensate the SL community and *already* work for the good of the SL community by putting out their prefabs or other free stuff and therefore it is *ok* to dominate the landscape then. They also flatter themselvse often that their "community service" time put in answering newbie questions qualifies them for hero status and gives them a pass on disrupting the skyline with megatowers. It's like the way Chevron and Shell Oil goes into places like Kazakhstan and drills up all the wilderness and then says they've opened up a center for indigenous women's health and therefore we should all be grateful at their public-mindedness and charitable good works. Meanwhile, they've drilled up and scarred the wilderness.
There's no end to this very deep-seated and widespread opinion "I work for the community, I'm not here to make a buck, I don't care about the money, you're shit, you're a bottom-feeder, you scam newbies."
It's awfully pernicious, and it is death for SL. It is the tekkie wiki mentality writ large -- I'm special, I give it for free, I don't need to make money, you are a fuck who tries to make a buck, you don't have a life, blah blah blah. It's death. Please try to examine it closely.
BTW, not to single you out at all, because I love you and your stuff, but let me gently point out that your own freebies are what enable you to get a presence in the world. And they are wonderful freebies and I have benefited from them as they enhance the landscape most of the time. But you know you think that no one can ever consider you of "costing too much" or "not working for the community" precisely because you have two very popular prefabs that every single newbie territory in 512-hell has, and thank God for it. But you know that the foundation for your own belief that you work for the community is precisely in your ability to argue "but I give away prefabs and lose money".
What I am challenging is this attitude. It is not to be mean to you personally. It is not to be appreciative of the freebie as a loss leader. It is to challenge a mentality that cripples economic growth in a game aspiring to grow and be the WWW of games.
You are making it too exaggerated (even for my hyperbole) when you say that people motivated to give freebies are "bent on world domination". I didn't say they are "bent on world domination". I said *they have a sense of eminent domain* and a sense of their *own right to determine what the public interest is* and this needs to be challenged. What they have is a sense that they dominate the community at the top of a hierarchy that puts a premium on architecture and buildings precisely because they are visible in the world and very hard to make compared to the average thing in life or SL. And those who are in this hierarchy feel they are being magnanimous by offering freebies -- they think that makes up for either the cost of the public having to endure looking at their giant builds, or the cost to the public for having to pay for their more expensive items, or the cost to the public of them believing that they are arbiters of taste and aesthetics. And there is a cost!
And that cost is indeed ceding them world domination!
You have created amazing public spaces such as your mall and showcase houses, and I have told you so in the game. I am not questioning your visible contribution or you personally. I'm questioning a system that creates a special corporatist nearly fascistic space in its society for builders, who believe that then their towers, their builds, their notions of what is right, can dominate the public space with no one having any recourse.
That's not just, and it is a recipe to turn SL into an empire that creates world landmarks, like the Roman Empire or the Soviet Empire or the Ottoman Empire, that has some interesting big gigantist architecture, but which died and got overthrown because it imposed taste on the public.
Every single "best architect" in SL is rooting for the white tower here against the forces of black evil -- the bottom-feeding real-estate agent who "steals from newbies" and the top-feeding ebil tower of death that just follows it around like a stalker using building for griefing rather than beauty. Every single one thinks good architecture reigns supreme merely because it is good architecture. Every single one thinks no one ever has to ask what the neighbours think or accommmodate to the specifics of the site of the sim because everyone thinks that anyone can build what they want on their property, and any one who then builds very well on their property reigns supreme. Every single one thinks it is ok to hate land barons and their scrappier cousins realtors of smaller parcels even though ever single one of them has to build on land that cost somebody something. t is these notions of eminent domain for fabulous architecture -- because it's big, because it's fabulous, because no one can question its largeness or art -- that I am raising these issues.
And it is not about "repenting" but it is about "compenation" and a cornerstone of the belief that "I do something for the good of the community".
We need to have less people deciding that what they do is for the good of the community, and less uber-architects deciding that their communities, their structures, their ideas, are ok and can reign supreme just because they're who they are at the top of the heap. The community is not empowered here to give voice. The community can never comment if they really like these prefabs or find them useful, especially if "lock" and "non mod" is clicked off on the objects. The community has no structures for making its voice heard. The community can't articulate what is good for it. The community then responds with a variety of tactics, ranging from giant griefo towers like the black tower of death next to the white one, and in rages on the forums like this one. That these rages on the forums and these terrors in the game occur for a reason -- because a fascist world is created that has not evolved the proper structures to make people feel comfortable and involved about the way public structures and large structures appear in their world.
