Does SL Have an Intelligentsia?

[Rolig Loon]

Well, for my part, Martin Luther King, jr. and Louise Day Hicks (look her up) were both alums of my alma mater.  Make of that what you will. 🤪

[Scylla Rhiadra]

2 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

Both alumnae, but probably not sorority sisters, I'm guessing. In any case, take it as a mark of distinction. 

Well, in the 70s I was bursting into tears at being left at playschool by my mum, so . . . yeah, probably not.

And yes . . .*sighs* . . . alumnae, not alumna.

Apparently U of T doesn't teach Latin (which I took as an undergrad) very good.

[Prokofy Neva]

27 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

/me ponders the implications of the fact that Prok and I are alumna of the same university.

I'm sure you weren't at St. Michael's College but it's a big university. I graduated in 1978, then went to Leningrad State University for a program for foreigners for six months.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

7 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I'm sure you weren't at St. Michael's College but it's a big university. I graduated in 1978, then went to Leningrad State University for a program for foreigners for six months.

No, although I took courses, and eventually TAed there for a year. I was a Victoria College girl.

I don't mind St. Mike's so much, now that they've lifted the heavy hand of the Society from the place. (I was once "interviewed" by a priest when I requested access to books in what was then, I think, still called The Pontifical Institute for Medieval Studies. He wanted to know why I needed their books particularly, and, really, couldn't I go somewhere else instead? *****.)

Trinity College is the one at U of T that I loathe.

[Madelaine McMasters]

52 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

57 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

Both alumnae, but probably not sorority sisters, I'm guessing. In any case, take it as a mark of distinction. 

Well, in the 70s I was bursting into tears at being left at playschool by my mum, so . . . yeah, probably not.

And yes . . .*sighs* . . . alumnae, not alumna.

Apparently U of T doesn't teach Latin (which I took as an undergrad) very good.

Joe McCarthy and Chris Farley roamed the halls of my alma mater. Chris was a contemporary.

In the 1970s, my mum leaving me at playschool made everyone else burst into tears.

[Akane Nacht]

9 hours ago, Rolig Loon said:

I think we have a resounding but fuzzy Yes. 

I'd have to disagree with that, if by intelligentsia we mean an educated elite guiding the structure of our virtual world as analysts, thought leaders and visionaries. SL is a corporate entity and is structured as such. We can shoehorn that into an "intelligentsia" structure but... imagine if Meta bought SL tomorrow.

I think, too, that the vast majority of SL users don't even know the names of what we may consider prominent scripters, builders, or even Lindens, nor do they care. As consumers, if the direction of the product goes somewhere that doesn't suit them, they won't adapt - they'll leave. In RL we are subject to Clever Ones running our countries and businesses. In SL we can up and leave the planet if it gets boring or frustrating.

In short, I think intelligentsia is an inaccurate term in this context, and it's also structurally impossible.

[Rolig Loon]

2 minutes ago, Akane Nacht said:

I think, too, that the vast majority of SL users don't even know the names of what we may consider prominent scripters, builders, or even Lindens, nor do they care.

Nor do they need to, any more than most people in RL can name more than a handful of corporate leaders, landowners, or politicians. The point is that people in those sorts of positions in both RL and SL make the day to day decisions that guide the general direction that society follows.  They are the influencers and trend setters. To chose just one example, advances in clothing in the last few years -- including rigged mesh, BOM, and many other features -- would not have moved along as fast as they did without the interest of creators who experimented, tested, and advocated for specific changes. You don't need to know their names to benefit from their influence.

[Persephone Emerald]

On 8/18/2022 at 10:34 AM, Han Held said:

My personal experience (people doing the avatar equivalent of staring blankly when I refer to forum this or forum that) tells me it doesn't even reach.

Most disagreements appear to reflect real world influences ("I saw this on FOX", "I saw this on MSNBC") than forum influences. At least as far as I'm able to tell.

This would be the Ignorantti of Second Life. 

[Akane Nacht]

7 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

Nor do they need to, any more than most people in RL can name more than a handful of corporate leaders, landowners, or politicians. The point is that people in those sorts of positions in both RL and SL make the day to day decisions that guide the general direction that society follows. 

Which is why I pointed out that this is not a society we are bound to in any permanent way... we can up and leave when it doesn't suit us. Not so for planet Earth.

9 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

They are the influencers and trend setters. To chose just one example, advances in clothing in the last few years -- including rigged mesh, BOM, and many other features -- would not have moved along as fast as they did without the interest of creators who experimented, tested, and advocated for specific changes. You don't need to know their names to benefit from their influence.

Those are tools. If I use a hammer, am I bound to follow the thought leadership of the person who invented the hammer? As for influencers... those are just marketing people. Many of us can blissfully ignore influencers our whole lives, or pick and choose what we like. That seems to me to fall short of what I understand Intelligentsia to be.

[Prokofy Neva]

12 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

No, although I took courses, and eventually TAed there for a year. I was a Victoria College girl.

I don't mind St. Mike's so much, now that they've lifted the heavy hand of the Society from the place. (I was once "interviewed" by a priest when I requested access to books in what was then, I think, still called The Pontifical Institute for Medieval Studies. He wanted to know why I needed their books particularly, and, really, couldn't I go somewhere else instead? *****.)

Trinity College is the one at U of T that I loathe.

If they could tolerate the Communist Party and Spartacus book tables at Sid Smith (as we had in my day any way) and Noam Chomsky in Linguistics 201 (which I dropped mid-term in second year and was fortunate to get into Turgenev in the 300 level), then surely they can allow the Society of Jesus, and any way, Canada still has freedom of religious (or non religious) belief in compliance with UN treaties the last time I checked. The Jesuits are among the most liberal. My daughter's Catholic school (Fordham University) had professors who called God "she" and even a transgender bathroom). I can't speak to their book policy back in the day. I think when they merged the campuses further under the University of Toronto, the colleges lost some of their identities but surely not all of them.

I was fortunate to have even a first-year course at PIMS and to audit the lectures of Anton Pegis. PIMS is respected the world over for their scholarship. even if you balk at the term "medieval" or the beliefs.  They taught all the world's great thinkers there, not just providing a solid background in Plato or Heroclitus but Martin Buber or John Paul Sartre. BTW I also attended the lectures of Marshall McLuhan, the great pioneer in media studies. You may not know McLuhan used to attend daily Mass.  

Once, as we walked to Mass, McLuhan quoted to me the verse "Who will stay the dyer's hand?" (he actually taught a course on sonnets as well) which of course is the main "tragedy of the commons" in media and in virtual worlds. It's the background for the name of my first avatar in the Sims Online, Dyerbrook (also the name of a town in Maine where we once had land) and my first avatar in SL (who was retired long ago when Philip made us cut down to 5 avatars only, I should bring him back). By this question, McLuhan was asking, if you provide freedom of the media, then anyone can get into the stream, and of course he with the purple dye upstream dumping it into the stream, will be most visible. So who will stay (restrict) the dyer's hand? College education is wasted on 20-somethings and it took me some years to understand this. I used to have a Basilian priest professor, the same who had us memorize "The Four Quartets," complain that we should all go to work and send our parents to college instead of wasting their time. 

I am grateful to St. Michael's for providing me a Catholic and catholic education, for launching me on the life of the mind, and to the people of Canada for my low tuition and scholarships when my father was laid off from Xerox. It wasn't a priest but a lay professor who said I was his best student in philosophy (I wrote my thesis on St. Augustine - my major was Russian studies and minor was religious history) -- but that he wouldn't recommend me for graduate study because likely I would marry and have children which would be my proper role in life. Fortunately, you don't hear that nowadays from anyone at colleges. PS some was paid back in 30% real estate tax years later in Nova Scotia! (Which BTW the US government retaliates with same against Canadian citizens in the US renting or buying property).

My grandfather emigrated with his family from Ireland to Quebec City and in fact its the Basilians who reign at St. Mike's even with the Jesuits, and the reason people from the Rochester, NY area come to St. Mike's is that it is the same order of priests as at St. John's Fisher College and the same order of nuns, St. Joseph. 

I could note that in my SL Public Land Preserve, the religious sites get the most traffic and are used daily.  There is the Notre Dame de Cyberie which has among the highest tips to help cover tier (I put a photo there for Strawberry's famous landmarks challenge this week, as she said you could pick the Eiffel Tower or any other famous RL landmark -- of which there are many in SL!). We have a working mosque with multiply daily visits from the faithful who likely provide the most tips (no project in SL ever seems to get covered by tips alone but I estimate at least 15% of the whole system is covered, and mainly by religious and spiritual sites). 

Edited August 21, 2022 by Prokofy Neva

[Prokofy Neva]

7 hours ago, Rolig Loon said:

Nor do they need to, any more than most people in RL can name more than a handful of corporate leaders, landowners, or politicians. The point is that people in those sorts of positions in both RL and SL make the day to day decisions that guide the general direction that society follows.  They are the influencers and trend setters. To chose just one example, advances in clothing in the last few years -- including rigged mesh, BOM, and many other features -- would not have moved along as fast as they did without the interest of creators who experimented, tested, and advocated for specific changes. You don't need to know their names to benefit from their influence.

I guess the creators of mesh bodies and heads are the intelligentsia of SL then, such as it is. Not an easy job. Then there's all that rigging for different creators.

[Prokofy Neva]

17 hours ago, Rolig Loon said:

So, after an impressive number of pages of discussion, back to the first question: "Does SL have an intelligentsia?"

I think we have a resounding but fuzzy Yes.  As in RL, I think we have several candidates. Some are real and some are imaginary constructs (although that still makes them influential shapers of our universe).

There are many intelligent people -- some of whom have become successful in their own pursuits as land barons, merchants, creators, and the like -- who thus have a major influence over where people live, what they consume, and what new features on the landscape are likely to survive. Some, but I think really just a small number, may actually work together as semi-permanent groups to achieve common goals.

There are technically-minded people -- Prok singles out scripters, but these also include many mesh modelers -- who understand the infrastructure of SL well enough to push it in directions that even the Lindens may not have imagined. They also advocate for the further features and refinements -- like materials and Experiences -- that have shaped residents' expectations and changed their standard of living.

There are forum denizens, who are (or imagine themselves to be) the voice of the people.  I suspect that many of them spend more time in the forums -- our equivalent of coffee houses and bistros -- than they do in world, but they spend a lot of time thinking about SL. Lindens do listen to them, either as sounding boards when they introduce changes to SL or as canaries in the coal mine who are sometimes the first to point out unexpected behavior.

There are people from each of the first three groups who give a lot of serious thought to moral and ethical issues that are often overlooked in the nuts and bolts conversations that concern most other people. These might be the absinthe (or red wine) intellectuals in RL. They are in the awkward spot of being cast as effete snobs or eggheads by both the power elite and the average residents. Paradoxically, that makes them both influential and easy to ignore.

I could go on and on.  There are bloggers like Inara Pey, for example, who keep tabs on what's new and deserves attention. There are the developers of TPVs -- perhaps a subset of the technically-minded intelligentsia -- who shape the tool set that gives us access to and control of SL. There are drivers among the gaming and RP communities who advocate for changes that will make SL more attractive to people in MMORGs. 

Each of these and many others might be called an intelligentsia or perhaps, collectively, as The Intelligentsia.  They are certainly influencers, and their voices are heard beyond their own groups.  The cynics among us can debate how much real power they wield at one time or another, but the Lindens listen to them, if only because they affect the corporate image and thus how the world outside perceives SL. 

Finally, what makes this not a simple YES but a fuzzy one is that individual residents may think of themselves as members of an intelligentsia, or may vehemently deny it, for personal reasons. There are practical reasons for imagining or denying the existence of intelligentsias. Among them are desires for (or the fear of) authority or simply a place in the spotlight. Intelligentsias might just be a convenient way of explaining how the world of SL works.

Well, thank you for turning in the best essay in this thread, and sharpening my own thinking on this question, which is why I muse out loud and make a thread like this.

I think by their nature, as others pointed out, the intelligentsia, whatever their influence (and it is weak in SL I would argue) are usually a mixture of loyal opposition and sharp critics and I think the bloggers in the LL-approved stream mainly fall into the former category. I don't think it's lowering my standards to credit even those who simply record and publish Linden officer hours as "the intelligentsia" because civilian control of the state always begins with recording and publicizing what the state does, ask I.F. Stone)  Pantera Polnocky records the office hours, which is why the Metaverse Mercury, a very modest and irregular inworld notecard newspaper I have published, awarded him the virtual civil society award last year. Inara then summarizes these meetings and comments on them, generally in an enthusiastically supportive way, but when she makes even a tiny word of criticism, on, say, building styles in Bellisseria, it has all the more resounding and even thunderous weight in Linden circles. 

There's nothing to say that the intelligentsia has to be united; usually it never is, because of all its factions. That are people who oppose mesh bodies completely (yes there are still some); there are people like me who bought mesh bodies only so that our 30L and 60L discount clothing purchased on weekends would simply fit (they can't any more on the system body) but draw the line at a mesh head; there are people who loathe Mainland and those who champion it, etc. etc.  

I think yes, for better or worse, the forums are the coffee houses (where those intellectuals rant and rave until the state sends them to pick potatoes or to the Cornfield even literally). It's a pity there aren't coffee houses where people actually have discussions any more inworld. I once used to have a group "Too Busy in RL" as people always say they are and had 20-minute meetings at the Rekviem Cafe which has a description claiming humourously that this is where the intelligentsia meets and says "you come to!" -- and has the poster devoted to Anna Akhmatova and references her famous poem's epithet, where she describes waiting in line at the Crosses (which I once visited with a film crew making a film on the GULAG) to visit her son.

"Can you describe all this?

And I said, 'Yes I can."

Then something like a smile crossed swiftly over what had once been her face."

People still come there mainly to listen to the Orthodox chant stream and sort their inventory. Oh, well. Sorting inventory is still an act of the intelligentsia.

Civil society isn't merely opposition parties (although it's often understood that way even in Eastern Europe where the concept got its visibility in our time). It includes religious institutions and business as well -- the entire third sector which isn't just non-profits but non-state, therefore religious and business entities. But civil society isn't coterminous with the intelligentsia. Yes, there are members of the top business classes who are in the intelligentsia even if they make breedables or a third-party BDSM viewer because they shape policies that effect the world as a whole. When certain highly visible posters on the forums and their supporters propose using RLV to solve region crossing challenges by literally forcibly picking up avatars and plopping them back down on the other side of a sim seam, it's actually the RLV makers who object to having their viewer used in this way which was not their purpose as in theory they have the theory of consent for their worldview, and what, you put a notecard giver or blue screen asking for consent at every crossing? 

There is more intelligentsia than meets the eye, and I would argue scripters have outsized weight. Example, back at the dawn of time (2004), I argued to Philip that he should deprecate the orb script (push) (back when Lindens did more of this) that so ruined the experience traveling around the Mainland as you could be unseated from boats by security orbs even if on Linden water as the scripts had that range, not to mention unseated from airplanes or cars -- and these issues persist today. And Philip actually readily agreed. Then a caucus of oldbies, Linden alts, and Lindens raged on the forums and the plan was scrapped. They argued that you needed this function for elevators -- at that time there were about 4 known elevators in SL which were mainly an exoticism nobody used. Many people hated the "TP home" that came straight out of the gaming world where you die and have to be returned to your home base -- and even the "push" seemed unnecessarily aggressive when you could put up ban lines. (The technical problem is that "ban" doesn't work above a certain sky level and people wanted to secure skyboxes from peeping Toms.) Of course a prominent orb maker funded the chief non-SL forums back then and had business clout and there was a determined cadre of Lindens who never met a script they didn't like. I have only one item in my inventory called "blacklisted" which contains a griefer script put into Philip's party hat or something he created, a trick often used by griefers as the items were on all perms and then would contain your name as if you were the griefer when copied.

Yet when the Lindens started Bellisseria, they echoed this old debate by installing company-made security panels that allowed only bumping away -- not the aggressive TP home -- and even made a rule that any third-party orb had to comply with this rule -- "no TP home." This is why it is always worth protesting. There are many, many people who dislike the TP home and who also dislike the influence of orbs on even Linden waterways and this debate, as obscure and "virtual worldy" as it is, *is* what the intelligentsia is all about.

If it weren't for the SL intelligentsia, such as it is, which has been different at different times, with leaders rising and falling, the world of SL would be a worse place. 

Edited August 21, 2022 by Prokofy Neva

[Randall Ahren]

4 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

If it weren't for the SL intelligentsia, such as it is, which has been different at different times, with leaders rising and falling, the world of SL would be a worse place. 

Likewise, the same applies to you. SL would be a worse place without you. You bring something unique to SL that otherwise would be missing.

[Luna Bliss]

13 hours ago, Rolig Loon said:

Nor do they need to, any more than most people in RL can name more than a handful of corporate leaders, landowners, or politicians. The point is that people in those sorts of positions in both RL and SL make the day to day decisions that guide the general direction that society follows.  They are the influencers and trend setters. To chose just one example, advances in clothing in the last few years -- including rigged mesh, BOM, and many other features -- would not have moved along as fast as they did without the interest of creators who experimented, tested, and advocated for specific changes. You don't need to know their names to benefit from their influence.

I think we are all influenced by others, including the intelligentsia, much more than we're aware of.

[EliseAnne85]

I read the Wiki and to my limited understanding of something I've just heard of it involves politics, morality and the bourgeoisie.

SL has a TOS.  Otherwise, we are free here; no judging on other's in a moral way as it's no one else's business.  So no, I don't think SL needs this intelligentsia.

Except perhaps some have talked about a violent content warning which I agree with if the sim is mostly or completely containing violence.  

[Coffee Pancake]

Meanwhile ... 

What we actually need is an additional couple hundred concurrent users per week.

An intelligentsia will be debating on the beach and mud slinging on Twitter as the tide goes out for the last time.

 

 

[Rolig Loon]

38 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

An intelligentsia will be debating on the beach and mud slinging on Twitter as the tide goes out for the last time.

No, only if you take the narrow view that the intelligentsia are the effete crowd that sit to one side and do nothing but sip absinthe (or red wine) and bemoan the state of SL.  My broader view is that the intelligentsia are the influencers, the ones who have not only a voice but the vision and ability to get things done. They are not necessarily recognized publicly as leaders, although they may be, but they advocate for change in those places where they have the skill and experience to make it happen. The Lindens may run the corporate ship, but this is largely a world created and maintained by residents. Our decisions go a long way toward shaping what a newbie finds here. 

[Coffee Pancake]

27 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

No, only if you take the narrow view that the intelligentsia are the effete crowd that sit to one side and do nothing but sip absinthe (or red wine) and bemoan the state of SL

They are powerless to do anything but pontificate on the state of SL and issue social or moral dictates that the vast majority will either be unaware of, or reject on principal. Any decisions made by self important resident groups can do nothing to shape what a newbie finds here (unless you're volunteering significant time and monetary resources to both build and staff said content).

If this had any legs or the capability to do anything at all, we wouldn't be debating it, in our 20th year, here, on the forums.

If a newbie makes if off starter island and comes back for a second session (already a big ask), they will either find content and friends that interest them independently, or they wont and will leave.

End of story. No philosophy required. Least of all the kind on display in this very thread.

Edited August 21, 2022 by Coffee Pancake

[Prokofy Neva]

21 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

They are powerless to do anything but pontificate on the state of SL and issue social or moral dictates that the vast majority will either be unaware of, or reject on principal. Any decisions made by self important resident groups can do nothing to shape what a newbie finds here (unless you're volunteering significant time and monetary resources to both build and staff said content).

If this had any legs or the capability to do anything at all, we wouldn't be debating it, in our 20th year, here, on the forums.

If a newbie makes if off starter island and comes back for a second session (already a big ask), they will either find content and friends that interest them independently, or they wont and will leave.

End of story. No philosophy required. Least of all the kind on display in this very thread.

But we have legs in SL, unlike Meta! And I've given examples of how influence has worked. At least some of the newbies come for the interesting intellectual experiment.

[Rolig Loon]

5 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

They are powerless to do anything but pontificate on the state of SL and issue social or moral dictates that the vast majority will either be unaware of, or reject on principal.

Not at all. You are still thinking of those who debate philosophical issues among themselves. You are right that those discussions rarely make any difference. I'm referring to the creators (scripters, 3D modelers, builders) who advocate for improved features and policy changes that have contributed to everything from voice and flexi in the old days to TPVs, animesh, Bento, and BOM today. I'm referring to bloggers like Inara Pey, Draxor, and Strawberry Singh (now Linden) who highlight aspects of SL, including rising problems. These people do things.  They shape SL themselves and they have the Lindens' attention.

[Love Zhaoying]

1 hour ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Meanwhile ... 

What we actually need is an additional couple hundred concurrent users per week.

An intelligentsia will be debating on the beach and mud slinging on Twitter as the tide goes out for the last time.

 

 

If they were "smart", they'd buy all those college research theses and shake them at Linden Lab meetings, insisting that "RESEARCH SAYS!!1!"

[Love Zhaoying]

5 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

Not at all. You are still thinking of those who debate philosophical issues among themselves. You are right that those discussions rarely make any difference. I'm referring to the creators (scripters, 3D modelers, builders) who advocate for improved features and policy changes that have contributed to everything from voice and flexi in the old days to TPVs, animesh, Bento, and BOM today. I'm referring to bloggers like Inara Pey, Draxor, and Strawberry Singh (now Linden) who highlight aspects of SL, including rising problems. These people do things.  They shape SL themselves and they have the Lindens' attention.

I like your take on it! This group could actually intersect / overlap with the group Prokofy explained pages back (people who "show up" to meetings, are not afraid to speak, etc.)

[Coffee Pancake]

Just now, Rolig Loon said:

Not at all. You are still thinking of those who debate philosophical issues among themselves. You are right that those discussions rarely make any difference. I'm referring to the creators (scripters, 3D modelers, builders) who advocate for improved features and policy changes that have contributed to everything from voice and flexi in the old days to TPVs, animesh, Bento, and BOM today. I'm referring to bloggers like Inara Pey, Draxor, and Strawberry Singh (now Linden) who highlight aspects of SL, including rising problems. These people do things.  They shape SL themselves and they have the Lindens' attention.

But what does that actually accomplish ?

I've been meeting with Linden devs every few weeks for years now. We have negligible influence, and to think we do fundamentally misunderstands how the Linden machine operates.

(I'm not going to derail this detailing all the specific platform features that we tried and failed to influence during development, and are now functionally junk or the hours sunk into explaining simple things users take for granted .. like AOs)

Most recent case in point, following the forum changes I and many others emailed. What have we seen come from that .. we don't get the scary warnings anymore. That's it. No announcements, no clarifications, no public acknowledgements of adjustments to factor in community feedback. I even brought up the lack of LGBTQ+ forum and received apparent enthusiastic support in reply .. yet what don't we have.

LL do pick up on what's been said or advocated for, eventually, 5 - 10 years after it was brought up as being something of import, usually coinciding with a change in management structure.

 

[Rolig Loon]

1 hour ago, Coffee Pancake said:

But what does that actually accomplish ?

I suppose I could catalog all of the features in the Linden viewers that were developed initially by you guys, Henri Beauchamp, NiranV Dean, and the Firestorm team, but you know that list already. Many of those were years in the pipeline, yes, but they are now available in your viewers and LL's for all residents, thanks to your diligence.  The existence of TPVs in the first place was not an idea that sprang from the Lindens' heads without a good deal of pushing from the developer community. The fact that progress is not as fast as you would like and that many great ideas die stillborn does not take away from the major impact that TPV developers have had on daily life in SL.

As a scripter, I know about all of the great ideas that have been suggested and ignored in JIRAs and bounced around (and rejected) in meetings over the years. I also know that we have pathfinding, KFM, Experiences,  improved HTTP communication tools, and a flock of LSL functions that shape what users see and enjoy in SL.  Many of those are features that originated with or were championed by skilled residents. 

I have stayed in SL all these years because this is a world shaped by residents, not just a place where we come to play dress up and decorate toy houses.  Most residents are indeed consumers, not world shapers. Some are, though, and they make a difference. If you didn't believe that too, I suspect you wouldn't have stayed either.

Edited August 21, 2022 by Rolig Loon

[kali Wylder]

1 hour ago, Rolig Loon said:

Not at all. You are still thinking of those who debate philosophical issues among themselves. You are right that those discussions rarely make any difference. I'm referring to the creators (scripters, 3D modelers, builders) who advocate for improved features and policy changes that have contributed to everything from voice and flexi in the old days to TPVs, animesh, Bento, and BOM today. I'm referring to bloggers like Inara Pey, Draxor, and Strawberry Singh (now Linden) who highlight aspects of SL, including rising problems. These people do things.  They shape SL themselves and they have the Lindens' attention.

So yes there is an intelligentsia, and despite what some may think, it ain't us forum dwellers.