Did anyone see this guy?

I was reading about 2006 person of the year when Time.com magazine linked to a Second Life article.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1570708,00.html

Did anyone encounter this guy besides Cristal? He sounds like a jerk to be honest and very narrow minded (he thought SL was screamingly heterosexual). Was he rude to people?

If you have encountered a journalist in SL, have they been pretty open to it, or have more been noticeably single minded? How would you handle a rude journalist, when all you want to do is tell them off, but know your name could and would be published?

ok read the article, and may i be the first to say: if thsi guys attitude was anything like his article, then he was prolly banned from a lot of places.

it amazes me how as soon as he logs in, after whining about how hard it is to make a decent ava(funny, all he had to do was umm ask?) he zooms right over to the sex area and bases his entire article there.

ok, i know im not a big cheerleader for SL, but to base an entire article on one area of the site is, narrow minded, bigoted, and sound slike he is trying to build a career out of putting down something he had no time for. as for him or any reporter being up front, how can you get a biased one sided sensatiional artical if you are honest and open?

Reporters: if you are gonna lurk in the SL world, try not to hang in the sex related areas, there is a larger facet to the SL world out here. oh and your words for the day are: research & explore.

Seola, what would you do in real life when you met up with a rude journalist? Walk away and call it a day..he's not worth your time or trouble, let alone your efforts. Online experiences aren't any different - don't hide behind the computer thinking you are anonymous.

There's also a difference, in the RW, a journalist can't use your name in a story without your permission, here... as long as LL has okayed a journalist to write an article (and sometimes not even), our av and names are properties of SL to determine, regardless of what we do.

If you even walk away from that journalist, he could write up how rude 'Seola Sassoon' was. Even if you techincally did nothing wrong.

It was never intended as a serious article it seems. The column he writes is sarcastic, self-serving humour.

a typical article for a rookie journalist. I give him extra points for grammar, punctuation and spelling names properly.

He was unforgivably rude to the guy in the Predator AV, and probably shouldn't try talking to straight guys in sex clubs (kinda like striking up a conversation while using a urinal in RL), but he'll learn.

Probably hasn't been laid in a while, as evidenced by his immediate bent to masturbate to pixelated representations of women, so that would explain his freudian desire to rule haphazardly over a group of people that blindly follow his misguided whims.

I give it a 3 out of 10 - nice tune, easy to dance to, but not enough cowbell for my iPod playlist.

At least we know he enjoys his free penis.

I think CNN should have him cover things more to his speed... like Hooters and Beer.

Still trippin on "agressively heterosexual"... he don' know SL very well, Do he? Its fairly obvious that he based that giant conclusion on a few encouters with newbies.

CNN? If you are reading this... Limit this author to things like Hooters. Please.

Seola, that's absolutely false. Do you think every article ever written in every newspaper or magazine was printed with the permission of their subjects? Of course not. It's called freedom of the press, and it's absolutely vital to the health of an open society.

Woodward & Bernstein certainly didn't have the permission of any of the Watergate conspirators, for example. They didn't need it. They uncovered the truth, wrote it down, and printed it. That's precisely what their job was, nothing more, nothing less.

In the US, there are certain things journalists can't do lest they risk civil penalty, such as unlawfully invade your privacy or print slanderous lies about you, but they can certainly use your name. They can print anything they want about your public life as long as it's true.

The question then becomes how in SL do we separate our private lives from our public ones? There's no easy answer to that, which is one reason journalists and researchers in SL are supposed to identify themselves. Some rightly argue that that in turn invalidates some observations, as in order to truly be a neutral observer, one should not be a participant, but it's kind of the lesser of two evils.

In any case, just walking away from a journalist in SL or in RL shouldn't prompt him to print "Seola Sassoon was rude". A journalist with any integrity whatsoever would simply write "Seola Sassoon declined to comment", which is fine. Journalists are not supposed to make outright judgments like that, and when they do, the readers usually can tell they're full of crap.

If a journalist were actually to call you a name, even one as minor as "rude", and you feel that that's defamatory towards you, you can sue the reporter and the journal in civil court. You may or may not win, but there is a process, so you don't have to feel like you're completely without recourse.

I rather liked the article.

-peekay

You are comparing 1960's to current. There are privacy laws in effect in the US at least that do not allow publication or use of your name without expressed oral or written consent. I can look up the names of the laws if you wish. One had something to do with 'right to privacy', though I doubt that's the name of the law.

Either way, I was putting it mildly when I said rude, there's tons of other options to be written that wouldn't be as flattering. And no, I cannot sue on behalf of defamation on Seola Sassoon, because I do not own that avatar within SL. LL does. The ToS clearly states that and using SL allows my avatar name and pictures however they want to, which given that they were to allow a publication to go ahead with a project, means LL's blessing is on it.

But most realize there's a grain of truth behind satire. Satire is more or less a cynical and humorous spin on the truth.

Either way, he's presenting it as a homophobic sex pool.

While I think the article is narrowly focused, Joel Stein is a very well known journalist in the US - and a darned funny one most of the time. I don't mind the article much, though knowing what he is capable of, it's rather disappointing for him IMHO. He's far from a "rookie journalist." If you want to see one of those, there are more than a handful of rookies mascarading as "investigative reporters" around SL. To read some of their "stories" makes me feel embarassed for them

Sounds like the writer is already addicted to SL.

Well, putting aside this guys sarcastic view of secondlife, you'd have to agree with some of the stuff he said, except he said it in a way of making fun of it.

One thing he said is very true. That was about a female calling him "Hun" a lot. Don't know if you've noticed but most females use this word in just about every sentence they utter.
It's "hun" this and "hun" that, it really gets annoying especially if they don't even know you. Sort of makes them look like their vocabulary is very limited when all they do is say "hun" all the time.

SL being a sex den is also true to a certain extend, not that I see anything wrong with it. Long as you're a consenting couple it's fine.

I do think he himself as a person (not as a journalist) couldn't handle secondlife and all the stuff it offers and all the things people do here. It was probably passed his limits as a person and he couldn't see himself doing certain things here.

Guess not everyone can, no matter where they work or who they are.

I'm a female and I don't. Frankly, I see just as many guys saying hun as I do girls. Occasionally I say darlin, but that's how I talk in RL. (I was born in Missouri and also lived in Georgia.)

SL really isn't a sex den. If you actively go out and look, there are just as many places that are non-sexual as there are sexual ones. But as we all know sex sells, so all you ever hear about or see in pop. places is sex driven markets. There are some really cool places, one that starts with an N that is a sim of puzzle, there's slingo, Tringo, Greedy Greedy, sweet and soft places, awesome builds, learning centers, hangouts, jazz clubs, alehouses/taverns, fashion shows, moral authority meetings, religious gatherings, political forums, etc. People just don't really look most of the time. And it's a shame for some of the other content creators out there.

I actually don't agree with anything he wrote (and anyone who knows me, knows I'm the Captain Obvious Smart Mouth), no matter how he presented it.

A limited 4 hour experience, especially with a tour guide only showing off places *she* knew about (not to impune her, she sounds really sweet, but may not have known about the puzzle sim or such), isn't exactly enough to write an article about that tries to sum up SL.

His article made me laff out loud, i think its an honest look at SL for the first time, what ppl must think when they first come in, i found myself snickering over the penis purchase..hahahaaa its such a male point of view

I actually think that depends on whether you know how to use search or start popping into pop. places.

I started off in a movie theater, from there ended up shopping for a skin and opened up a whole world... it wasn't til I was in a club a couple of months after that I was given my first whip and it went downhill from there!

Anyone willing to help a dude stay employed in the "real" world?

I'm actually about to write a few articles about Second Life for three different magazines - specifically about real estate/land sales - and am looking for 2-4 ppl. who are willing to talk/go on record about their selling/buying experiences.

Please contact me if you are interested - either in SL or email.

- PJ, uh, I meant, Groovie Bamboo

Seola LOL I fell off of Help Island completely naked wearing a box. I then walked around with noob hair for a week and visited all the popular places...which scared me. However, when I finally found someone who wanted to help a noob out, I don't think I have been back to Archan since Kinda like a bad car wreck....you just have to look

It irritates me when someone gets an assignment, goes in somewhere, does one thing, and then comes out and writes the piece as if his research is done.

coco

Five bucks says he's got the penis by now.

Oh darlin, I had newb hair for 4 months!!! It took me forever to realize that the 'hair' people were wearing was bought!

(Not many people vendor hair in strip malls. )

I'll drop five on it!

I've never felt comfortable calling anyone "hun". Makes me feel like I should be working in some truckstop diner someplace in the middle of no where.

And all I have to say is the guy is a know nothing jerk. His lack of knowledge and his prejudiced viewpoint was screaming from every sentence he wrote.

Oh and it is possible to be smart, interesting and female. After reading his article I'm not too sure if you can be smart, interesting and male.

... tis guy just wan to write something so tat we can critises him?... or maybe he trying to get some attention so tat he can be famous out of his article? Just dun fall into his trap! I think he will be removed from continuity soon. After he discovered that, he has limitation to write about Second Life. lol