New Article: "SL's loyal users embrace its decaying software and no-fun imperfections"

[CaerolleClaudel]

5 minutes ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

Lol, oh no I meant the phrase itself seems a little immature to me. At least when placed in an academic article. It stood out in a big way.

 

Something about the whispering, I think. Ugh, gives me the chills and NOT in a good way, lol. 

I mostly didn't like the fact that the writer associated people who like cozy games with people who like that sort of thing, and I'll tell ya right now - for me, ASMR is anything BUT cozy! Second Life is cozy. Stardew Valley is cozy. ASMR is nails on a chalkboard for me.

I do find it funny that that tiny phrase was enough to make me stop reading the article, though. I think I'm getting grumpier every year. 😄

Not being familiar with this sort of writing or the context for which it is produced, my take was that Alice was being 'clever' and flip a lot of places in the article. But likely I am judging the article by the wrong criteria.

I am sorry that ASMR has a negative effect on you! I have never heard of that before. What I have heard is that only a certain percentage of people get the tinglies and sense of well-being. I am in general suspicious of woo-woo stuff, but did quickly convince myself that I felt it. In the end I decided to not be philosophical about it and just enjoy the experience whether it is real or a placebo effect lol.

I feel most of us, or at least a lot of us, tend to get more ground down by life over the years, and either get grumpy or just finally run out of *****s as the saying goes. Personally, I have managed to pare down the number of toxic people with whom I have to interact and also to limit the situations that negatively affect my mental health, which always has been shaky enough on its own.

Perhaps if ASMR doesn't work for you, massage or yoga might ease your grumpiness a bit? Not advice, just throwing out a couple ideas!

[Scylla Rhiadra]

1 minute ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Question, do you agree or disagree with my assertion that, not having seen anything in the article that could be identified as a "new thing" in Second Life, it could have been written awhile ago (or about a visit taken awhile ago) then rewritten and published now?

 

I don't think there's anyway of knowing for sure, but it describes "major upgrades in 2023," and uses log-in numbers from that year, so it can't be that old.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

2 minutes ago, CaerolleClaudel said:

I am in general suspicious of woo-woo stuff

Stolen and stored for future use!

[Love Zhaoying]

1 minute ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

I don't think there's anyway of knowing for sure, but it describes "major upgrades in 2023," and uses log-in numbers from that year, so it can't be that old.

Good point. 

[Love Zhaoying]

1 minute ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

4 minutes ago, CaerolleClaudel said:

I am in general suspicious of woo-woo stuff

Stolen and stored for future use!

Great, what next? "UwU stuff"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uwu

[Luna Bliss]

9 minutes ago, CaerolleClaudel said:

but did quickly convince myself that I felt it. In the end I decided to not be philosophical about it and just enjoy the experience whether it is real or a placebo effect lol.

Sound is vibration, and our bodies also vibrate when we hear sound. So it's just Science really and not a placebo.

I enjoy it (ASMR) but can only take it for so long.

[Luna Bliss]

I like the idea that we experience and feel SL (typically) rather than know it intellectually as if reading a book.  I assume that's what she's referring to but don't remember the reference from her article.

Many say they feel like they've gone back to childhood when experiencing SL for the first time, and that's when we experienced more, were more in tune with our bodies, as opposed to the intellectual part of our selves that developed as we aged.

Edited May 15 by Luna Bliss

[CaerolleClaudel]

9 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Of course. Totally!

But again the piece isn't about "improving" SL: it's describing and analyzing the state the writer (apparently) found it in.

Interestingly, the one constituency of users who actually really DO love glitches is . . . griefers. Griefers look for ways to exploit bugs and glitches, both as a way of "subverting the system," and also, of course, because causing mayhem is their idea of fun.

What makes that sort of interesting is that there is a sort of historical and political connection between griefers and the ideological underpinnings of this article.

This piece celebrates the ways in which we exploit, circumvent, or adapt to bugs and interface faults because it sees that process as a subversion of the established mechanisms of power as embodied in the code, and the intent of the designers to control and limit our use of the platform to prescribed ways. That's the true burden of the term "heteronormative" in this article, which is kind of shorthand (I'm being a bit reductive here) for "fascist."

Hacktivists and a certain kind of ideologically-motivated griefer similarly view their exploitations of bugs, and their use of these to destabilize the platform and its users, as a sort of revolutionary act that attacks power.

Yes, I think I got their point. To me they just seemed really excited about the opportunity for subversion (which I can sort of understand). However, I may be misunderstanding their point.

Either way (ugh I use that and 'in the end' too much lol), I love your explications. I have always felt your students are lucky to be to take classes with you.

[Ayashe Ninetails]

5 minutes ago, CaerolleClaudel said:

Not being familiar with this sort of writing or the context for which it is produced, my take was that Alice was being 'clever' and flip a lot of places in the article. But likely I am judging the article by the wrong criteria.

You could be absolutely right here. That's a very fair observation! I'm unfamiliar with it as well, so I wouldn't be surprised if I'm misinterpreting the writer's intentions there.

 

6 minutes ago, CaerolleClaudel said:

I am sorry that ASMR has a negative effect on you! I have never heard of that before. What I have heard is that only a certain percentage of people get the tinglies and sense of well-being.

It could just be that I'm sensitive to certain sounds. I've heard other people complain about listening to people eat/chew too loud and how it bothers them (which doesn't really bother me much) - probably just that sort of thing.

 

8 minutes ago, CaerolleClaudel said:

woo-woo stuff

Now this - best phrase EVER, lol. 

 

9 minutes ago, CaerolleClaudel said:

I feel most of us, or at least a lot of us, tend to get more ground down by life over the years, and either get grumpy or just finally run out of *****s as the saying goes. Personally, I have managed to pare down the number of toxic people with whom I have to interact and also to limit the situations that negatively affect my mental health, which always has been shaky enough on its own.

Perhaps if ASMR doesn't work for you, massage or yoga might ease your grumpiness a bit? Not advice, just throwing out a couple ideas!

Yep! I've been actively reducing my exposure to toxicity lately (usually in the form of blocking half of Twitter - that's oddly soothing). And yeah, I love yoga and need to start doing it again, for sure. That would totally help. Thank you for that! 

 

Okay @Scylla Rhiadra, I'm done now and I apologize for the brief derail there. Back on topic, I do want to say you've done a fantastic job of explaining the ideas and theories in that article. I do believe due to the way it's written, that was easily missed.

By me. It was me. I missed that. 😂

[CaerolleClaudel]

5 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

Sound is vibration, and our bodies also vibrate when we hear sound. So it's just Science really and not a placebo.

I enjoy it (ASMR) but can only take it for so long.

I am weird and often (usually?) accused of being inappropriate, but I have to laugh at the thought of ODing on ASMR lol.

[Luna Bliss]

1 minute ago, CaerolleClaudel said:

8 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

Sound is vibration, and our bodies also vibrate when we hear sound. So it's just Science really and not a placebo.

I enjoy it (ASMR) but can only take it for so long.

I am weird and often (usually?) accused of being inappropriate, but I have to laugh at the thought of ODing on ASMR lol.

I did kind of OD on vibration once, and do wonder if ASMR could produce what I went through.

It was during a Kundalini awakening and I could feel my body vibrating intensely even when no sound was playing.  It was kind of painful at times, and sometimes I'd even have to turn off typical types of music due to the intensity.

In Yoga literature they say the vibration is part of a cleansing process.

[CaerolleClaudel]

Seriously, @Scylla Rhiadra and @Ayashe Ninetails, I did NOT invent the phrase 'woo-woo' lol. If you do not already know, it is based on scary ghost sounds and denotes something supernatural ("wooooooo-woooooooo-wooooooo").

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/woo-woo

First used in 1992, it seems. I still wish I could decide to splurge on a sub to the OED though, lol.

[CaerolleClaudel]

1 minute ago, Luna Bliss said:

I did kind of OD on vibration once, and do wonder if ASMR could produce what I went through.

It was during a Kundalini awakening and I could feel my body vibrating intensely even when no sound was playing.  It was kind of painful at times, and sometimes I'd even have to turn off typical types of music due to the intensity.

In Yoga literature they say the vibration is part of a cleansing process.

Way OT, but I *do* believe there are frequencies to all that is in us and all about us. In my earlier days I believed (perhaps even something more visceral than that) that everything was connected and interacted with each other, and loved that about Taoism and Buddhism (at least Mahayana Buddhism, esp Indra's Net). Now I am a bitter nihilistic existentialist and believe in pretty much nothing, but those feeling meant a lot to me once and influenced my life deeply. And was even before I really knew about yoga.

[Luna Bliss]

32 minutes ago, CaerolleClaudel said:

Way OT, but I *do* believe there are frequencies to all that is in us and all about us. In my earlier days I believed (perhaps even something more visceral than that) that everything was connected and interacted with each other, and loved that about Taoism and Buddhism (at least Mahayana Buddhism, esp Indra's Net). Now I am a bitter nihilistic existentialist and believe in pretty much nothing, but those feeling meant a lot to me once and influenced my life deeply. And was even before I really knew about yoga.

I think people have to experience these types of things to know them. They're not something you can 'believe in' really, and I wouldn't expect anyone to think such things exist unless they experienced them.  For me "woo" just refers to something one hasn't experienced, or to phenomena that hasn't been proved by Science yet (much of the time anyway).

Edited May 16 by Luna Bliss

[Love Zhaoying]

17 minutes ago, CaerolleClaudel said:

Seriously, @Scylla Rhiadra and @Ayashe Ninetails, I did NOT invent the phrase 'woo-woo' lol. If you do not already know, it is based on scary ghost sounds and denotes something supernatural ("wooooooo-woooooooo-wooooooo").

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/woo-woo

First used in 1992, it seems. I still wish I could decide to splurge on a sub to the OED though, lol.

It reminded me of a movie, but I forgot that was "Woop Woop". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welcome_to_Woop_Woop

[CaerolleClaudel]

41 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Great, what next? "UwU stuff"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uwu

I didn't know the term 'UwU,' but I am quite familiar with kawaii, and like it. I mostly know it via SL neko culture, though, not furry culture (I also know about otaku culture lol). Then again, are nekos sort of furries, or at least furry adjacent?? I dunno.

In case you might be interested, here is one of my fave looks from my fave period of SL. I had other less cheery looks, with dark clothes and hair, but I no longer have any of those pics.

[Codex Alpha]

1 hour ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Of course. Totally!

But again the piece isn't about "improving" SL: it's describing and analyzing the state the writer (apparently) found it in.

Interestingly, the one constituency of users who actually really DO love glitches is . . . griefers. Griefers look for ways to exploit bugs and glitches, both as a way of "subverting the system," and also, of course, because causing mayhem is their idea of fun.

What makes that sort of interesting is that there is a sort of historical and political connection between griefers and the ideological underpinnings of this article.

This piece celebrates the ways in which we exploit, circumvent, or adapt to bugs and interface faults because it sees that process as a subversion of the established mechanisms of power as embodied in the code, and the intent of the designers to control and limit our use of the platform to prescribed ways. That's the true burden of the term "heteronormative" in this article, which is kind of shorthand (I'm being a bit reductive here) for "fascist."

Hacktivists and a certain kind of ideologically-motivated griefer similarly view their exploitations of bugs, and their use of these to destabilize the platform and its users, as a sort of revolutionary act that attacks power.

Oh dear...

[CaerolleClaudel]

18 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

It reminded me of a movie, but I forgot that was "Woop Woop". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welcome_to_Woop_Woop

OK, that's some film.

Somehow, this does not surprise me in this story:

"he has a wild liaison with a quirky, sexually ravenous girl"

[Luna Bliss]

1 hour ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Hacktivists and a certain kind of ideologically-motivated griefer similarly view their exploitations of bugs, and their use of these to destabilize the platform and its users, as a sort of revolutionary act that attacks power.

haha the image of disturbed adolescents, rebelling against the parents who control them, but with 'thinking caps' on comes to mind...

[CaerolleClaudel]

5 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

haha the image of disturbed adolescents, rebelling against the parents who control them, but with 'thinking caps' on comes to mind...

What you say brings to mind a couple of juvenile delinquent dumb *****s who in one scene were revving a chainsaw and yelling, "Breakin' the law! Breakin' the law!!" Amazing the one with the chainsaw did not accidentally cut the other in half . 🙄

[Love Zhaoying]

13 minutes ago, CaerolleClaudel said:

OK, that's some film.

Somehow, this does not surprise me in this story:

"he has a wild liaison with a quirky, sexually ravenous girl"

Well, that's just how he got kidnapped and forced to participate in the insane commune of Whoop-Whoop.  Key to the story, is a giant (real) Kangaroo God, vengeful because Whoop-Whoop makes its income butchering kangaroos to make canned dog food.

..I am suddenly reminded just how surreal the article is probably trying to be, like the movie.  Of course, being firmly ensconced in the surreal myself, I sometimes hardly recognize it in others.

 

Edited May 16 by Love Zhaoying

[CaerolleClaudel]

1 minute ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Well, that's just how he got kidnapped and forced to participate in the insane commune of Whoop-Whoop.  Key to the story, is a giant (real) Kangaroo God, vengeful because Whoop-Whoop makes its income butchering kangaroos to make canned dog food.

..I am suddenly reminded just how surreal the article is probably trying to be, like the movie.  Of course, being firmly ensconced into the surreal myself, I sometimes hardly recognize it in others.

 

No, I understand why he got kidnapped, and perhaps the ravenous sex was what got him distracted so they could kidnap him, I just am ambivalent about that plot device; at first take, I can see it two ways, one of which I find kind of cool, and another which I find not so cool. I won't go into the factor that sends me one way vs the other, though.

The Kangaroo God was not mentioned at all in the Wikipedia entry, seems like they let something important fall through the cracks there.

I like weird and surreal depending, like pretty much everything else, on my current mood. Unfortunately I process most subjective experiences preferentially through my emotions. Even objective things like making major purchases, sadly, even though I usually do a LOT of research.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

26 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

haha the image of disturbed adolescents, rebelling against the parents who control them, but with 'thinking caps' on comes to mind...

Pretty much.

Not a fan of griefers or hacktivists.

[Love Zhaoying]

21 minutes ago, CaerolleClaudel said:

The Kangaroo God was not mentioned at all in the Wikipedia entry, seems like they let something important fall through the cracks there.

Can't spoil the entire plot with a Wikipedia entry, so that was a good choice (leaving it out).

22 minutes ago, CaerolleClaudel said:

I like weird and surreal depending, like pretty much everything else, on my current mood. Unfortunately I process most subjective experiences preferentially through my emotions. Even objective things like making major purchases, sadly, even though I usually do a LOT of research.

I am sooo numb to it lately, to much umm...RL experience. That's it!

Maybe that's why I like the Forum so much, "a fix of the surreal".

Which brings me to another thought on the article.  I mentioned how the author's fast-switching description of teleporting between locations reminded me of a story by my favorite Science Fiction author (Alfred Bester).  Well, I finally realized that while I didn't "appreciate" her use of "neologisms" (as Scylla so kindly put it, if only I were so kind), I finally realize that Bester also had his characters using "invented" words - a lot.  So, there's that.

Guess I need to go get the old can-opener and open my closed mind. Like how the "Flatheads" in Oz would carry cans of brains around which they could use to increase their own intelligence (being flat-headed), but they never actually used the brains until some pivotal scenes.

https://oz.fandom.com/wiki/Flatheads

 

[CaerolleClaudel]

37 minutes ago, CaerolleClaudel said:

What you say brings to mind a couple of juvenile delinquent dumb *****s who in one scene were revving a chainsaw and yelling, "Breakin' the law! Breakin' the law!!" Amazing the one with the chainsaw did not accidentally cut the other in half . 🙄

@Luna Bliss, I'm sorry, I forgot to mention this is a pop culture reference to a USian TV series called Beavis and Butthead, not something that popped into my head. And for sure I was not thinking that one cutting the other in half with a chainsaw was a good fate for them!!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beavis_and_Butt-Head