Scylla Rhiadra

We addressed this issue here a while ago, actually. Note the graphic. It pretty much says it all!

Well, this is a thread about a quasi-academic article. So I guess it's a sort of "academic" thread. But ALL of our threads here are, OF COURSE, "intelligentsia threads," because, well, we're all part of the intellectual elite here! Right?

Gosh, that sounds like f ... No. Just ... no. 😬

Jealous? 😀

The blogosphere is a weird thing. I dont know anything about this particular publication, so I'm not entirely sure what its aim is, but there is a lot of movement these days towards public engagement with academia. There are fields like Public Sciences, and the Public Humanities, that are all about taking academic disciplines outside of the academy. Usually, though, things written in that vein are written in a more accessible style, for obvious reasons. But there are also just highly specialized public venues for publishing academic or related work. I mentioned The Journal of Virtual Worlds Research (which seems to be on hiatus at the moment): it's an open access publication.

That's definitely an issue that can arise in all analytical work, in any field.

Pretty much. Not a fan of griefers or hacktivists.

Stolen and stored for future use!

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.

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.

Yeah. There's been some of that generally. I get it, sort of -- this stuff is densely written and jargon-laden, as any specialist discourse is bound to be to some degree. But it's also very true that we live in an age that features many who, in the timeless words of Michael Gove, feel that "we've had enough of experts."

Nah, all discussion is good. Even (*coughs*) "gaslighting" and "bad faith" arguments! Another thing to sort of bear in mind: while this is not a peer-reviewed article, it is in a sense "academic." And academic writing is never intended to be the "last word" on its subject. One writes it not merely knowing that people will take issue with it, but with the intent that they will: it's supposed to be a part of an ongoing dialogue. And that's true of any discipline, including STEM. How many papers in physics have taken issue with, corrected, or supplemented Einstein's work on relativity? (Answer: A LOT.) It's the process. I'd hope that if Bucknell ever does read what's in this thread, they'll engage with it as constructive critique in just that way.

It's absolutely central to their thesis, which is that those things are what makes SL interesting and still worthwhile. (Which I know sounds like a paradox, but it's literally the argument they are making.) This IS something the article could have discussed, because it's precisely in line with its argument. Good point! (Although, as someone who is an AWFUL driver, I'm not sure I agree!) Yeah. I've mentioned above a few times that I think that the SL economy, the ecosystem of SL creation, and consumerism generally might be said to undercut their thesis.

Anubis would be proud of you. Maybe a Long Island Iced Tea as a reward??? 😏

[redacted] Wait, you mean the actual author of the piece???? I thought you meant AI. A case of my not reading closely and carefully enough! (Pot, meet kettle!) Bucknell has clearly read the forums, and cites them in at least one place. I'd be surprised if she didn't run across this discussion. Whether she'll pitch in or not . . . well, honestly, I wouldn't! This is a scary place!

Can we please take a moment to learn what this word actually means??? From the OED: I did nothing of the sort in my reply to you. I disagreed with you, and pointed out that you had misread the article. Which, honestly, you did. I wasn't actually accusing you of that: I was suggesting that the poster who sponsored my reply to which you responded was implying as much by complaining about how LL was pandering to the LGBTQ+ community at the Welcome Area. And there's no such thing as being "politically neutral." Even the act of asserting that one "isn't being political" is by definition political -- and generally a fig leaf to cover the actual politics of what one is saying. So that's not what you were suggesting here? Of course it is. I literally said as much: There is, again, no such thing as an article, academic or otherwise, that is not "political." Saying "I'm not being political, like that guy over there: I'm just telling it like it is" is, in fact, a rhetorical ploy to dismiss an opponent's perspective and "naturalize" one's own as somehow "above" politics. "Politics" is almost always something one's opponent is "doing." And, again, I said as much myself. I even explicitly agreed with you: "They" is the author of the piece, not the platform itself. Do you know that there is a connection between the two? And, yet again, they are not complaining about SL being broken. That is literally not what is said. They note that it is broken, and talk about how residents have leveraged that. Sure. Bye!

i didn't actually say that the article was "non-political." Any article on a subject like this, indeed arguably any article at all, is "political" at least in the sense that it reflects the politicized assumptions and premises that its author brings to the table. This article is no exception. What I said was that the article did not address the inclusion or exclusion of the LGBTQ+ per se: there is, as I noted, not a single mention of that subject in the article. The word "heteronormative" appears twice, and, yes, is a good signpost indicating this piece's ideological affiliations, but the term means a great deal more (and less) than whether or not a platform advertises how "inclusive" it is. We can certainly discuss the embedded political perspective of this article; that would be relevant. But using it as a jumping off point to complain that LL is being "woke" or whatever in its welcoming message to new sign-ins who identify as LGBTQ+ is not because it's simply not something that the piece discusses. Yes, mostly, it is. Because that is the focus of this particular article. This is a "think piece" that uses SL as an example of the ways in which failed or out-of-date code empowers users. It is not, as I've said, a "game review," nor does it make even a vague attempt to suggest ways in which SL might be made "better" or more popular: that's not its function. Complaining that it doesn't is a bit like being upset that a spoon doesn't slice bread very well. I think that this is a valid criticism of the article: while it does mention in passing that there have been improvements to the platform, it doesn't really address these very fully. That said, you'll find no shortage of residents, here on this forum and elsewhere, who complain about how "broken," "out of date," and glitchy SL is. And in a sense, the perception (in the context of this article) is as important as the reality. To repeat something I've said above, this article isn't written for us. Everything about it -- its language and use of specialized academic jargon, its obvious affiliations with certain kinds of academic theory and areas of study, its ideological assumptions -- indicates that it has been written for a relatively specialized audience. Reading this, I recognized immediately where it was coming from, and whom it was written for, because I have some familiarity with its milieu, and my own areas of specialization (which include academic feminism) overlap to some degree with it. I think that the idea that this collection of academic jargon was published to deliberately raise the ire of non-specialist conservatives in order to garner clicks is silly. It would have been written differently, and much more accessibly had that been the case. But, sure. That is not at all what this article says. Its thesis, again, is that the parts of the platform that don't work well actually empower users. It attributes SL's continued survival, to some degree, to it's 'brokenness." This, to repeat, is not a game review. It's also not "journalism," in the conventional sense: it's a sub-academic think piece. I will agree that, while the author clearly does have some familiarity with the platform, she has not spent enough time properly researching it. There are some truths here, but also a lot of half-truths, and a fair number of outright errors. Again (sigh). This is not what the article says. In fact, it's nothing like what is actually written. There are lots of valid things for which this article can be faulted. I've suggested more than a few myself. But to judge it rationally, you need to 1) understand what it is actually says, and 2) not complain that it's not the kind of article (i.e., a game review) that you think or wish it was.

Yeah, mine fixed the third time around. Weird.

Anyone else's FS login screen just a big, blank white???? 😮

A new rendition of the Mosque at Ross. https://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Ross/128/240/45

I've got a new design for the male Senra.

I'm not, as you know, what you would likely call a "spiritual person" (although I feel I am, in my own way), but I do think that SL and other platforms can legitimately function as sites of spirituality. Our experiences here in SL are different from RL, but they are in their own way no less "real." Key though is that the spirituality is emanating from you and not from the code or the platform. A church or temple or holy place is a pile of stones or a collection of trees, until we lend it spiritual significance. Same with SL, I'd argue.

And the very real danger is that buying into the "tech is magic!" or "tech brings us nearer to God!" argument simply turns our tech overlords into priests whom we permit to wield unlimited power over us through the ways in which they use code to reshape and ultimately control our lives. Father Zuckerberg and Father Musk know best . . . Which, again, is what, on a more micro level, this article is about: how SL residents have resisted and subverted the dictates of the Holy Church of Linden.

The kind of critical approach that this article takes is, in theory anyway, "demystifying": it's trying to show how the quantifiable mechanics of a system -- code, rules, etc. -- work unseen to create what may appear as "natural" or even "mystical" ways of doing and understanding things, but are actually artificial constructs imposed by design. So, when one does something that in some sense "subverts" design by exploiting a glitch or a cheat or whatever, one is actually pulling aside the curtain and showing the wheels and pulleys and the little man trying hard to control everything behind the scenes. Every subversion that highlights the realities of code and design is also in that sense a reminder that none of this is really mystical or magical or natural: it's all just been coded to seem that way.

I've seen some amazing things in Minecraft, including the production of a working CPU actually in-world. The idea of porting one game inside another is also a really interesting concept. The article doesn't get into that sort of thing, but it seems to me that this is definitely another way in which users craft spaces for themselves outside of the confines of the platform design.