The Lindens Do the Right Thing

[Prokofy Neva]

This is an extraordinary story that I have never seen in 16 years, and it gives me hope, but like a lot of things in SL, it's shrouded in mystery (there's no public police blotter any more) so I can't really be sure what happened, but I hasten to tell you:

The other night I was flying around a few sims away from my own, wondering why a guy with some nice Mainland islands had lowered the price, and why someone else put up giant picture boards, which I personally hate and discourage wherever I can unless there is a real emergency, but I didn't think anything of it -- that's the Mainland.

So as I was puttering around doing tickets for tenants, I had an urgent IM from a nearby merchant to whom I have sold land for her to extend her business, after having the usual struggles with her putting ban lines on her land upsetting the experience for everyone around (on the residential part of her holdings) and after she completely surrounded me and pressured me to sell my land (which she eventually bought but due to other circumstances on another sim).

She asked me what Mainland Rules are. Well, there aren't any, that's the point. Other than the basic TOS ones. She pointed out an ENORMOUS grief tower that had a huge, misogynist image on it, with flickering plywood boards as well, and a medley of fire balls, annoying sounds, grief pictures, and other junk below. In short, the typical grief-tower bouquet. I said there was likely no violation of the TOS here, technically, as we all know, you can build WTF you want on your land. Still, the Lindens have trended more toward sanity and pragmatism in the 16 years I've observed them, so you never know. I said we should get an AR group going and find as many people affected by this monstrosity as we could to AR it under the rubric: "targeted behaviour so as to annoy". Sometimes "spam" works or something else, but "targeted behaviour" fits best as it is definitely the point to get in your face, be obnoxious, make you uncomfortable and angry -- all by people who are not even on the sim but are likely on a griefer island somewhere or possibly even banned by now.

So I contacted the club, the rentals, the single owners all in the view of that tower. I also contacted the parcel owner, since the land was on 0 autoreturn. Studying his profile and groups and comments, I realized he was a griefing gentleman himself, but you never know. Sometimes if you let someone know that everyone around is furious and assume that he is in fact oblivious but now will do the right thing, he takes the occasion to have some remorse and clear his lot.

Came back a few days -- still there. One big panel had been removed next to the club -- but probably because it encroached and the club owner flicked it back to lost & found of the absentee owner. The thing was big and ugly and depressing. Well, lower your draw distance, and move on. A former tenant returned to a spot that had it in the view -- she was unfazed. Yes, you can use de-render, although that's a mixed bag because each new guest has to de-render, too, and sometimes griefers deliberately change up their prims to defeat derender. 

In any event, I bother with this because I want to live in a shared world with at least minimal rules, not de-render. I think the Linden's old Community Rule 2C (since retired) about refraining from the "interference of the enjoyment of Second Life by another person" was really as good as it gets and I've always regretted that it is gone.

Flew by again last night -- and noticed the land dealer had lowered his prices further and wrote "best offer". I considered buying and holding and waiting for the grief tower to go away. Since I waited for the insanely gigantic Refrigerator of Ravenglass to go away for some four or five years, I could do it again, but I really didn't want to take on that much tier. Then all of a sudden...I realized the giant picture boards had nothing behind them. The grief tower was gone! Just a few flames and junk items remained but the worst was taken. The land was abandoned. 

My neighbour them joyously told me that two Governance Lindens had appeared on the scene. (Perhaps they have to go out to the Mainland under Moscow Rules).

They grimly set about removing the tower, but left a few pieces. My neighbour IM'd them to pick them up -- they didn't answer. They never do. So, another ticket. 

What does this mean?

The Lindens have finally realized that grief towers are not about freedom of expression (they take it away from others and the expression is like a hammer over the head) and not art (no redeeming qualities) and about anything else but criminality? It breeds abandonment of land, and people stop coming not just to one sim, but 16. The misogyny in this one maybe was persuasive enough? 

HOWEVER I'll be the first to note that the grief tower may have been the least of the issues here. The Lindens don't seize land idly. Either you have to have not paid your bill for 2 months, or committed some egregious offense. For example, on other sims, these same griefers could have crashed sims, copybotted, passed around malicious scripts, spied on people, outed RL, who knows. Any number of things in the griefer menu. I notice the owner is still in the people list. Perhaps it was a simple overdue bill.

I would love to think that the cumulative effect of lessons learned from SL (ad farms, Bush Guy); #MeToo movement; and all the platforms being hauled before Congress with possibly the removal or redaction of Section 230 (something I heartily support), maybe the Lindens now remove grief towers. I wouldn't take it to the bank, but it does mean if you have one you're suffering from, AR it, get those in the view to AR it, maybe you will get some relief.

 

Edited September 24, 2020 by Prokofy Neva

[Marianne Little]

I'm happy it was removed.😃 But you say that prices are lowered on attractive mainland parcels. Why, since I thought land was more sought after now?

Can you send me a LM to one of the "Mainland isles" in a PM? I am curious, you know.

[Prokofy Neva]

16 hours ago, Marianne Little said:

I'm happy it was removed.😃 But you say that prices are lowered on attractive mainland parcels. Why, since I thought land was more sought after now?

Can you send me a LM to one of the "Mainland isles" in a PM? I am curious, you know.

It's not sought after when it has a grief tower next to it and people compensating with photo real boards.

Even before that, it wasn't sought after because its texture looks like the sort of hard gravel driveway we used to have in Penn Yan, NY in the 1960s, before significant advances in road surfacing. And that's the *land* not the roads.

Even sims that have the names of the Finger Lakes (some of which are by Penn Yan, NY, leaving aside the fact that they are rivers, not lakes) have textures that all look like a range from gravel to a sort of slate that is the sort of approximation that someone who had never been there might make but looks more like the slate around my Dad's chemical plant in Dundee, and some sort of beat-up grass that doesn't look like anything except the land around a chained dog next to us in Penn Yan, NY who ran around in circles all day who once bit me as a child. Well, you get the idea. I feel right at home here but I'm not sure most people do.

That's on the Sansara sims that are supposed to be sort of "North West" or perhaps "North East" if you squint.

Then there's the textures on the Moth Continent, the one called Hetero-etcetera or something I never remember exactly. I was showing a newer person, by which I mean somebody who is maybe 12 (I'm 16) what I meant by "chemical wasteland" there and she conceded that yes, it was kind of motley and blue in colour. It was supposed to be "coral". The best grass lands there still look like a particularly overgrazed mountain, like the painting "The Scapegoat".  I don't think you can really say today, given everything, that there is a *good* Mainland texture. I personally like the pink mountain. But not everyone does. The single most often question I get from new tenants, after "can I put this land in my group" is "can you change the texture". They are used to islands. And no, and no again.

Some of these sims were made by people who actually could see, say, California or the Yukon, or the Lake Country in the UK and mountains in Wales and such. But the texturing possibilities of 17 years ago for making targa files perhaps were not what they are today.

Yes, you can buy all kinds of things to add and textures to put even just on a board, but that adds to your prims.

So that's one point.

The other point is that Mainland is not generally "sought after". I think you mean Blake Sea land, which is hugely expensive, and then sort of by analogy, Sea of Fables land, which people have tried to make hugely expensive even though the sailing is nothing like Blake Sea.

 

[Aethelwine]

The grief tower in Dex has gone too.

I don't know if this is a change in policy or if Governance Lindens are just feeling a bit more empowered to use their judgment than they used to, to intervene and make mainland a better shared experience for everyone.

[Ardy Lay]

Mainland must be recovered and monetized.  Allowing a few people to devalue the product has to stop.  I am encouraged to hear some effort is being made.