SL on Rollingstone

Haven't read the article, won't bother to. Is this another one of those overhyped, bait and switch blurbs that are gonna cause another influx of people who will not understand what SL is all about, look to get rich, cause grief, and then disappear, pissing of a few real members enough to make them quit as well.Or is it another dog and pony show for the latest big fish corporation?

Of course, some of it is boilerplate media-I-have-read-so-often-I-could-write-it-myself but there is the less than shiny side, as mentioned by Prok and a few others.

Definitely not a puff piece for LL.

I read it and it is actually pretty good, not all about how great SL is but also about how they banned from the forums Prok for being critical of them.

Nice to see an article that isnt all one sided.

I would call it semi-puff. It is actually a decent article, probably the most decent I have read. Its not exactly accurate but I dont think any magazine has the space to be totally accurate about SL.

I rather enjoyed this part


and Phillips response

"Uhm Mr Rosedale, Sir. You can slow or stop the growth rate at your pleasure. You do know that, don't you? Or is that Greed thing in the way again?"

I agree. Although maybe airing the laundry for LL and some of thier practices and problems will get someone else thinking about making some valid competition to get LL working smarter.

I would prefer LL to prevail, but too much of this is on their terms so they have no real need to see it from any other perspective or rethink anything.

I also find it funny that people are so upset in SL that they would complain and grief and call themselves "activists".

SL is the antithesis of activism...or even action!

Gimme gimme!!

I feel like I am taking crazy pills.

Just read it, Very good article. thanks.

Interesting piece. A few comments.

"The only thing I say to people who yearn for an earlier time," says Rosedale, "is that you're not going to have an opportunity to hide from this phenomenon."

I think he might be surprised.

"God is in the machine," as he now likes to say. "The Code is law. The Code is God."

That accounts for most of our problems in SL. Code should never be law, else justice goes to the best coder only. People should always be law, not code. People should be above code. (I won't even get into the God part.)

On the banning of Prok:

"I do think it is reasonable," he says, "just like running a kindergarten."

Well, at least we know where we stand.

coco

Reminds me of an old Tv Movie I remeber growing up: Colossus: The Forbin Project.

Basically The US and Russia build supercomputers for defense purposes. But the machines start thinking for themselves, link up and wind up dictating to the the Humans. Kinda like "Wargames", without Cute Matthew Broderiick.

bet that was the basis for The Terminator

It paints Philip Rosedale as an eccentric weirdo with a God complex.

Honestly with the "I drank the koolaid" quote it makes him sound like Jim Jones for the 21st century. Very unflattering IMO. Where is the LL spin machine? Public Relations?

Maybe they are using some backwards way to make it seem like LL would be a good company to buy for a bargain price?

QUOTE: The result is a place to wander, socialize, build, shop and screw.:UNQUOTE

Dang doing those all together must keep you busy at the keyboard LOL

QUOTE: Over the past year, the total amount of time that Second Life residents spent in the world has gone from about 2.6 million to more than 15 million hours per month.:UNQUOTE

Dang, someone is being really busy LOL

QUOTE: "It's an interesting aspect of Philip," Wagenaar adds. "Not to sound negative, but he believes his own bullshit.":UNQUOTE

pfft, thats interviewing strategy....

QUOTE: He started by soldering together a Lawnmower Man-like contraption he called the Rig. The Rig now occupies a cluttered backroom at Linden Lab, and Rosedale eagerly showed it to me during my visit.:UNQUOTE

So thats where they keep the asset server....

QUOTE: "We all ride motorcycles and hang out in North Beach," one bearded Linden tells me during my visit. :UNQUOTE

This is where they relocated the 'Help Desk'?

QUOTE: Do you mind keeping your voice down, ma'am?" a surly cafe owner tells Catherine Fitzpatrick. It's a miserably cold New York City day in reality. Fitzpatrick is a heavyset fifty-year-old mom with glasses, frizzy gray hair and a faded jean jacket. She studied at the University of Leningrad and now works as a Russian translator and as a human rights activist. She says she's working on Second Life "the same way I work on any country that's oppressed." For her efforts, she claims, she has been stalked, and received death threats.:UNQUOTE

A former LL Client liason officer??

For sure.......then what else is new with LLABS and their Joke Of a PR department!!

I already knew about the Burning Man connection but I had a weird insight after reading this article. Phillip says that the harshness of the physical environment at Burning Man brings the people together and creates a bond. Is the steep learning curve in SL a deliberate set-up of a harsh environment intended to bring us together? And does it backfire by turning the community against LL?

An intersting article, showing some of the darker sides of SL. And the report of Phillip's religious upbringing and god complex is fascinating.

I found the article intersting and objective. I agree that 'contrarians' are a destructive force in any set-up and they are different from those who make constructive criticism (feedback) that helps the Lindens and others to make SL a continually improving experience - which is surely what we all want. Like, I mean mostly steps forward, perhaps with the occasional step backwards!

We can apply this scenario to our own activities in SL. Mostly the things I have done have improved my lifestyle here, but I have made mistakes - like I deleted something I'd just built instead of saving it, or I bought the wrong piece of land or sent an IM to the wrong person. This happens up the scale in organisations and so it is not really surprising that we get a few technical glitches from time to time.

Better to say the code is physics. In SL, we live in a very peculiar universe. For example, matter-energy is not conserved. There seems to be more created daily without any obvious source. An I hypothesize that it could just as easily go away.

Then, there is the apparently infinite supply of raw building material, and the sudden appearance of a new kind hitherto unkown which some people are calling a "sculpty".

As an atheist, it amuses me to listen to people hypothesize about some pantheon of supernatural beings and their motivations. "The Lindens move is mysterious ways." "The sudden disappearance of the ratings system was an act of Linden."

Compared to real life, SL is still only a few instants after the Big Bang. It will be a long time before we find out if it will collapse back down on itself or continue to expand, and our understanding of the laws of this universe will continue to evolve as well, perhaps faster than the laws change, perhaps not.

zOMG! Ageplay!

(I couldn't resist. I tried, but I couldn't.)

Mari

At least it doesn't paint SL as a pervy wonderland for gamblers like the GQ article in which the reporter admittedly just mostly hung out at Rueters and tried to get laid. No mention of great places like Svarga or the Ivory Tower. Or of benificial charity events that have been s successful in world. Only the seedy underbelly and the fact the that we really need a real life instead of spending hours in the persuit of "nerd sex". It honestly read more like Maxim. Nor did I mention the RL pic of a foxsuited man sexually accosting a chickensuited partner used as the lead pic for the article. ~Classy~
Guess I won't be having the deviled eggs at lunchtime after all.

wow.. i like it

How can you dictate what is in the article when you say you wont even read it? have you made some kind of "reading between the lines" script? maybe a pyschic script?
Funny pyschic and sidekick sound alot alike... cowinkiedinks? I dont think so!

anyone who eats tuna sashimi is redeemed in my eyes

*rolls eyes* Prok wasn't banned for being critical of LL. He was banned for being a giant ____ to absolutely everyone who ever disagreed with him. It was a behavior thing, not a point of view thing.