Prokofy Neva

I'm not going to be "careful" using the word "democratic" because I mean it: it means open, transparent, under the rule of law" and it isn't merely "popular". I won't get hung up on whether you can compare the TOS and social contracts of this virtual world with real-life law because guess what -- you can in some circumstances in a general way. There are principles at stake. Anyone paying for this platform or contributing to its content gets to ask what they have done lately, and to ask "are you better off today than you were four years ago"? If residents did the work of trying to keep the LEA-revival effort and lobbied Lindens to revive it, then I don't view the Lindens so much as getting credit for SLEA; I see them reluctantly deciding to do it, then more enthusiastically as they could see "what's in it for them". I don't think you get life credits for keeping the lights on when people pay you to do so. I don't weep because they are caretakers of an aging MMO; they just sold it, although it is awaiting regulatory approval. I don't weep for the Lindens under COVID, because they have no suffered in the same way so many of us in SL have; there are people in SL who died of COVID or became terribly sick and crippled; there are people who lost their jobs; there are people who had to downsize their SL projects; there are people who left because they can't afford it any more due to COVID. COVID has been good for LL's business. The changes brought about by COVID will make their business even better unless there's something I don't understand. So let's put this into proper perspective here. I hope you enjoy your Second Life.

I generally find it not a good use of time to argue with anonymous cats on the Internet. But I think you mistake long texts with points laid out rationally to be something that you believe it is -- just because. And there's little I can do to dispel that rigid ideological position so I won't bother. In general, I don't think it's useful to debate the prospects for democracy in virtual worlds with people with pseudonyms who no RL connection or at least -- because I don't believe identity has to be forcibly revealed -- at least with some kind of recognizable persona and body of work so you can understand where they are coming from. I'd beg to differ that "actual democracy and accountability was not the social contract". And this statement, "I'm not aware of an online world anywhere that meets an absolute global high benchmark for liberal democracy and Universal Human Rights, if only because they must exist within flawed systems" is beside the point because the call isn't to meet a high global benchmark, a Denmark or a Germany or even a United States, even under Trump, but to meet some of the basic criteria. And there is such an online world. It is Second Life, since 2003. One way you can prove this is by the Lindens' actions over the years: 1. When the prim tax became overburdensome and harmed not just creativity but normal land use, people rebelled, and the Lindens were forced to revise their system. 2. When the Lindens were confronted with examples of biased behaviour (Lindens appearing on inworld billboards to promote just one resident's products and site, to cite one of many examples), and demands were made for them to develop a code of conduct, they did. This wasn't the Magna Charta. But it was an important restraint. 3. When Lindens though that they could sell grandfathered sims only to a list of insiders involved in selective development work with Linden business contacts, and that fact was publicized, they opened up the sales to anyone. 4. When Lindens decided unilaterally to withdraw telehubs, relying on the opinions of a few, mainly non-land owners, or those without telehub ownership, and did this abruptly, to install p2p teleportation, a group of land merchants, some of their biggest customers confronted them, threatened them with a "bait and switch" lawsuit (because right up to the moment, they sold this highly sought and highly expensive land on the auction), they did the right thing. They offered a buy back at $6/m of any telehub-adjacent land OR a plan to make a resident-run Linden telehub. That this was undermined by other things later doesn't matter; they faced a lobby that had an important principle at stake; they responded correctly. 5. When some of the general public, as well as more selective entities like German prosecutors, confronted the Lindens with the problem of their tolerance of "age-play" content in SL, they decided to outlaw it. 6. When land buyers were dismayed at the Lindens' decision to pull their "void sims" product because it was being misused and they were being stuck with the customer service, they created another product, the homestead, to serve some of the same purposes, while adding the restriction that ownership of a full-prim island had to be undertaken. 7. While it took more than 4 years, when land owners, whose land was devalued or crippled by extortionist ad farmers and provocateurs using political or other content to force land sale, the Lindens finally created a policy about ad farms which, while unevenly enforced, I could go on with other examples. The point is, the Lindens are responsible to democratic pressure; they are responsible to calls to have them adhere by their own laws or by certain liberal or universal principles of the rule of law. That's important. That's why these smug invocations of the right of corporations to be as rapacious and abusive as they want don't apply to *this* company. They have a history, and an interesting one. What have they done lately? That's a good question to ask, but I think the decision to end Sansara and increase Bellissaria is a response to democratic public input; adding to Bellissaria at this point, with the volume and rate they have, is an investment in Mole time and server infrastructure that likely the new premium account revenue has not yet exceeded. This kind of give and take matters. It is not on Facebook. It is not on Google. It is not on Twitter. It is on Second Life.

Oh, that's a shame. I want something that gives me a discount on texture uploads. If I got a Green Stamp after spending US $25 on the MP that entitled me to 100 free uploads, that would be great.

That's a whole other interesting discussion to have. My children and relatives and FB friends and this one and that one know I am in SL and know of the figure of Prokofy, and generally don't understand it or think it is a strange hobby to have. They're not interested in it. They don't take it seriously. I could show the Holocaust Museum and point out how wonderfully it has made use of the virtual world. A few will applaud but it's not enough for them to log in. I will point out the Black museum and African-American projects during the BLM marches and they will only nod like, yeah, one more good thing, but they don't come to see it. I could point to some creation I actually made, they are only made curious. Why? For what? I could point to some spectacular installation on a sim, or even a more modest one I made, that illustrates history or art or something -- and it's not even like looking at a postcard. There's no grab. I have not invested much time in either understanding why this is, or trying to make it different because I am content to have SL just for me. And I think that actually constitutes one of the problems more generically.

Um, there are several garbles here. First, I didn't set up any false dichotomies. I said artists need to get paid, they should sell their work, and how does LEA make that happen? If it doesn't sell on site, it has LMs back to galleries that do. So now the question becomes: do they have a credible board and good selections so that this potential cash cow is properly milked. And I have my doubts. THAT it should involve indeed basic monetary support of artists is basic reality in SL as in RL. They need to offset upload costs if nothing else. Scylla then interpolated this whole curious side debate about whether selling your art makes you a better artist or not, which is truly relevant to anything in real life or even SL but exists as some ideological warfare somewhere on another planet. Many artists are dead when they see their works sold for phenomenal prices. Some artists can sell a work for $10,000 and it really makes a difference because they are freed then from bar-tending or making kitsch for art sites on the Internet or whatever. But it's not the way to understand the question. True story: one of the various things I have done in my life was make some drawings that got sold in an artwork for $10,000 and is now worth much more. How did this happen? I can't draw to save my life. I flunked high school art class, which is actually pretty hard to do in the hippie era of 1975. My own children are constantly appalled at how bad I work at even Paint.net. But for a time my partner was a fairly famous artist who had as part of his style various parodies and pranks. And he asked me to put a few of my really bad drawings into a set, to see what would happen. It was one of those stories like people taking a kindergardener's painting and claiming it was made by a famous abstract artist. Except this actually sold. And the first and subsequent buyers probably have no idea that some of the pieces of it were done by a really bad amateur. Or maybe they do and it is part of a glorious legend of the type the art market likes. Did this act make me a better artist? It didn't make me an artist, period LOL. No, even if I collected the fee instead of my friend. It doesn't work that way.

It's utterly pragmatic and deep participation in the realities of RL to put the interests of Linden Lab first here. If it helps them look good, they attract investors; maybe they attract users, too (and many Silicon Valley enterprises do not care about the second, and care more about the first, as the business plan is to sell the bauble to another VC). But Linden Lab has styled itself as a Better Worldist, and a world (we could debate to what extent they do or don't hold by their early and mid ideologies, but whatever). Their reputation depends on them not just showing the art of their board member's grandson, but actually good art. So actually, their interest in *this case* depends on them to do 2, 3, 4 by their own merits. They can either weight towards content as king, as past CEOs have done and do 2 and 4 and get media coverage for it; they can care more about 3; I'm just saying that to the extent they make a credible process for the board and the curation, they will succeed better with any of these 4. I have my doubts.

So democracy and accountability are a "luxury". Merely because the community is small. I never think it pays to make democracy and accountability "a luxury" as history shows. I think a minimum amount of transparency and open competition could help this be a better and more credible effort. In fact, the design of it as we see now is quite bureaucratic indeed even without the burden of fund-raising. Boards are important. Who gets on them affects who gets seen. So there should be a credible process here.

Um, well, let me try again, although I know from experience that it will be impossible to break through the ideological windshields. You've implied that I expected Bryn Oh to rely on a tip jar only, which would mean $50 and $100 drops that couldn't possibly sustain anything. But I've said she should have sales. Sales might sustain her expenses in SL, like tier and uploads; it might even give her a modest income. PS, she *has* sales, and some of it is quite expensive, so she's not a good example for the use case. Could sales sustain her as an artist? Well, she's be crazy to expect SL to do that, and quite frankly -- and this needs to be said again and again apparently -- absolutely nothing that the LEA or new version of it does now or forever can ever sustain "her as an artist" as it will have a rotating roster of people it partly sustains. It is not the job of Linden Lab, the public, SL as a platform, given its limitations, to support artists individually forever, or even support "art" as a general construct. The question is, with its limited capacity, it will do anything really at all for good art as it is generally understood in RL. That is in doubt, in my view. But I do mention sales, because many artists do not put their work to sale, thinking it is "crass" -- I just went to yet another tiresome show where that was happening with many of the artists. They are too cool for school, or they think this diminishes them or something, or they think forcing a personal contact jacks up the price, or who knows. But it's stupid. Art should be sold. The kind of art in SL especially, much of which is framed, but even sculptures and installations, which are perfect in a 3D world even for a personal space like a home or office. I do want to point out your sleight of hand here, which is not a new experience. I was talking about the need of artists to get paid *something* and to be sure to offset costs, which they can do, if they get over their ideological bias against selling their art. You then injected the idea of "better". See, the socialist illusion that there is something crass or evil about selling art, and then the strange proposition that anyone doing so is not going to be "better" or can't "become better" -- well, it's pretty sinister. An artist who can sell art in SL by leaving it on sale where it kachings all day without her being there is in fact better off, because she has paid some costs of SL, and maybe some RL bills, that means she doesn't have to do even in a fraction the many things that artists in RL have to do, like wait tables or design t-shirts or whatever. But I can only repeat that selling art does not diminish an artist's greatness. There is no negative to selling art. Can it physically/spiritually/literally/metaphorically "make them a better artist"? Well that's an abstraction that I find irrelevant, and made in bad faith, and falsely impugned to me, among many bad-faith things about it. There are many factors that can make you "better". Artists I actually know in RL, including some famous ones, say that when you are new, or very young, the main thing to do is not "good" but "a lot". That you get better with practice which only comes from "a lot," not seeking perfection in "few". I realize that when there are so many robots to talk around here, it's impossible to get anything across, but I don't have any vested interest in "preventing the FIC" from getting yet another cozy birth in SL. There is almost nothing I can do to prevent that, and it tends to sometimes self-correct as a situation by the sheer passage of time. A situation in which a small group of friends of a company chosen for friend status, and not competence, get their hands on pots of money is not a recipe for the greatness of art, anywhere in the universe or the metaverse. We have the Soviet Composers' Union to look at to explain that, or the Writers' Union or even the Moscow City Committee for Graphic Artists, post "Bulldozer Exhibition". If artists can sell their works freely, that enlarges the number of people who know them, it offsets their costs. They can't charge RL prices in all but few circumstances; they fail when they do that (as I found by giving one prominent SL artist a free store, even -- no one can pay $5000 for a painting; few, at least). But if they price below that, especially in the $2000 or better $500 range, they will sell. Should they be allowed to sell them at the Linden-sponsored LEA? Well, given the way it is structured, that poses a problem. It means that the art FIC gets a cash cow that others don't get and that is really unfair. Maybe if the LEA was different, I'd be for there being a museum store like any normal RL gallery. Or maybe they should have LMs back to their private galleries. But it's really a conundrum here, because it is NOT organized fairly. And now we know for sure, as the announcement is out. Not a word in this press release about how the people will be selected; what the criteria for the selection of the council that selects them will be; whether they will have term limits; whether the Lindens will exercise more supervision here than they did last time, etc. (Although I don't think lack of supervision is the problem, just as it wasn't with the authoritarian Sansar FIC that developed; it's the very nature of the beast that keeps replicating these bad situations -- no open bidding, no open criteria, etc. UPDATE: I have made various inquiries to try to understand this, and here is what I got. This paragraph is misleading: It makes it seem as if there *was* this grassroots effort run by Tansee and Hannington but now there will be this other thing called SLEA. When they say "it is anticipated that HEA will continue as a separate entity" -- that sounds like they are peeling off from their volunteer effort, new people are coming in, and they are being thanked for their service. But to clarify, the new people running this ARE Tansee and Hannington. The volunteers spearheading a rebirth of LEA *ARE* the new SLEA. This is not self-evident, and if you think it is, it's merely because you're an insider. It really is not clear because it really is not spelled out. So now that we know THESE SAME PEOPLE are put in charge, without any kind of open process or open bidding, just because they cared and volunteered and bothered (that's often how it happens in RL, too) we can only hope, that they will pick equitable and credible advisors and credible projects by transparent criteria. It also strikes me that the set-up of the new LEA is very bureaucratic and overburdened with functions (are they paid?) that take away from the actual display of art and become something else, like "social media," which can be a huge time-consuming chore, and should be compensated -- yet the question is whether the artists should simply do their own social media so that you aren't forced to drain money and time on a social media paid position. So the SLEA has highlighted the idea in its mission of the hope that it will drive traffic to artists' own galleries. It won't be a sink of traffic itself and collapse on itself (and I'm not sure that was the issue for the LEA but may have contributed). It's hard to make any collective laggy Linden destination a driver of anything, but maybe, if it doesn't have a lot of visitors after the opening. The Coordinators Office; Volunteer Center where all the blogging and event planning is organized; and Education Center -- this is all art bureaucracy for which the RL world is famous, and it is not art and the display and viewing of art, and strikes me as prone to particular abuse and distraction in the SL context. That is, sure, somebody has to make a schedule for a thing like that but I can only say it appears to be overbalanced, it appears to be a busy hive "about itself" and not about the art. I think personally an enterprise like this shouldn't be burdened with "education," organizing classes" and "events" are likely best kept to shows only, but then, it doesn't matter what I think, I'm not an artist or any major patron of the arts in SL, I'm just a social critic who hopes that the world can be better and not step on the same rakes again and again. So when you criticize a thing like this, with beloved Lindens and beloved art FIC, what happens? First, you are told that you are "jealous" or "negative," merely trying to sabotage the FIC. Fun fact: no one needs me to do that, as it self-sabotages a lot of the time, but whatever, it isn't my goal. Describing and criticizing isn't destructive but necessary in a liberal democratic society; you all practice it in RL but seem strangely reluctant about it in SL. Second, you are told this is only a draft, it will change, why criticize it? Well, because it's no accident comrades that in the grand announcement of this enterprise NOT A WORD is explained of the process of selection and criteria for curation -- because that must be left in the pocket of the Lindens and their friends. UPDATE: So yes, it is a pocket Linden affair, given that people who lobbied the Lindens were blessed by the Lindens and obtained resources. So the conclusion you can only draw is: lobby the Lindens yourself? That often fails dramatically from what I see of other people doing this; I don't attempt it myself. Lobby the Linden favourites? Well, that's what you are left with. It's like how Patch Linden just airily announced that he was going to have some meetings with the famous pod creator (whose spam cars are critiqued not only by me) and in fact have even MORE projects with this person -- projects that are a mystery, and about which there was no open bid -- "just because". Because a private company "can do that". Private companies aren't required to open-bid everything by law; it's just a good practice. But it's telling once again of how especially the current Lindens do not see SL as a world; they see it as a canvas not for residents to draw on and make a world as a result; they see it as their canvas to draw on and make their world with their friends. They see it as picking and choosing what they think works for their corporate mission to sell software and a platform; they really no longer have aspirations to build a world OR a sense of responsibility to care-take the world that sprouted in spite of them and make it fair and just. Governance is too costly. I hold this up as an object lesson to Microsoft Alt developers who have no clue what they are doing and what's in store. If I can't find an answer to why I get iphoto file errors on Windows 10 now on their site and even in their fan forums without being told my question is answered when it isn't, think is what is in store. Whew, boy... But the Lindens don't have that existence of massiveness now or yet to come. They have a boutique product here with what, 30,000 concurrent? 100,000 monthly uniques? The figures are secret now so I have idea. But it's not a million. It's a very densely woven product with sprawl, to be sure, and much of it they safely or not safely ignore. But for those willing to pay attention to something called "art and artists," it seems it is entirely within their capacity to in fact make it fair and credible. Nota Bene: I have absolutely no aspiration to be on any board of anything with the Lindens, least of all this. I don't have the time or inclination and I wouldn't want to spend all the time I log on fighting with Lindens and their fanboyz over something like this. I also have NO IDEA what the drama back story is to the Hansington Center, but that those people are not even being given what is called in the business "a termination grant" seems pretty clear. That they are free to continue on their own appears like a kiss-off, but then, maybe that's a good thing, again, I didn't follow all the drama at all. What I'm going to say as a completely unbriefed outsider, it does seem odd that the residents who, on their own dime, spent a great deal of effort to stop the end of the LEA and help revive it, are being told now they are free to...keep their own center going (?) -- well, it speaks for itself, no? No good deed goes unpunished, sort of thing? On the other hand, if they would have ensured that the new LEA would become a particularly bad sink hole of FIC mania, understood. The FIC is dead. Long live the FIC! I simply don't know what that story is, but I am given pause, especially by this thread and what Dekka says. I get it about art and craft, and yes, a lot of what is in SL is craft, but craft can be arty too. I think most artists do not use all the affordances of the virtual world and those who do tend to select particles and twisted prims which gets to be a bore. So when I see the organizational chart of the new SLEA has a lot of top heavy things about events, and social media and education, it does seem like what he described as "look at me, here" -- what I have always called *reputational enhancement*. Many people look at an enterprise in SL, and if they don't see any actual money changing hands, they say, why, that person is selfless and doing the Lord's work. But I always point out that from Day One, and even after the ratings were removed from profiles, it's about *reputational enhancement* which is converted to gold easily enough. It converts to trips to your store and your offerings; it converts to other grants and perks; it just converts, period, so let's not be children here. Chic also discusses the problem of "sim styling" in this thread, i.e. what is planned to be a space for the exhibit of various artists becomes a space for a few people to style sims and help out those merchants and themselves with -- again, at least reputational enhancement if nothing else. Yes, there is a whole debate even within high-end merchants' events whether all work has to be original; whether models can be used; how much "inspiration" is allowed before it infringes copyright, and so on. This is a daily struggle all over SL. So let me conclude by saying I will visit the new LEA; I will likely find some interesting artists; I will even follow some back to their galleries and maybe even buy some works. I will not imagine I am helping to create opportunities for new artists, however, especially minority artists and those who are not from the first world. I fear some of them known well in SL may have died of COVID : ( UPDATE So to summarize, LEA was shut down when the last round of FICsters failed objectively and subjectively, and even for the Lindens. A set of people then lobbied to have a new one made. For their efforts, they were blessed as the new SLEA's curators, if you will, the people to run the project. What happens next? They invite their friends and it fails? They survive a year of drama and infighting and crazy and quit and the Lindens never do anything like this again? Let me suggest that to the extent they want to avoid having this happen again, they have to pick credible advisors (and PS, I don't want to be in this) -- advisors that are credible to the general uninformed, non-insider public, and credible to the insiders. The art they select should gain recognition by the general public AND by the insider art world and by RL art critics. That can be achieved by making actual transparent criteria. That means: o Make a mission statement - these are best kept short o Make an ideological statement about whether art in a virtual world is art or craft; how it differs; what its prospects are o Make a business plan - trim down the excessive wish-list of events, and theaters, and concerts -- it's an art foundation and should first do art, and add other things later -- educational seminars really should be cut as way too ambitious o Make goals to first have simple and them more detailed criteria for selection -- 1) age of avatar 2) number of inworld exhibitions; 3) revenue from sales (this question can be asked and answered on the honours system and need not be publicized; in the real world, it would be transparently available information so please don't invoke "privacy" 4) press coverage in SL related blogs and media and RL media. o Make definitions -- yes, mesh models may be used, no, copyright can't be abused, etc. Remember how the last LEA fell apart: self-dealing, insider cliquishness, irrelevancy to the general art scene, the "styling a sim" and "fairies" problem, the drama and favouritism, the lack of Linden supervisions. If it is set up properly at first with Linden supervision, it will need less later.

When you reference a modern author without recognition of past schools of thoughts, and someone points out that there are past schools of thought, and this author drew on them, sure, you can play this game of taking umbrage that you "didn't say that" or the OP didn't say it, or whatever. Or that atheists get to be blessed, too. And all matter of side issues and taking of offense and implications of "don't you know who I am???". But there's a simple premise here. There were schools of thoughts, very deep and complex and enduring, that existed before you did, and perhaps you don't know them, or realize how modern thoughts are taken from them, or whatever. That's all. But this sort of forums conversation is screamingly dull when you have it with anonymous people whose age or location or college level you can't know -- and worse, are supposed to pretend that it doesn't matter, that they are capable of clear, penetrating thought as disembodied pixelated Internet beings. I think a great deal of this is baloney? To be dead honest. And that's because you have misunderstood the ancient saying, and tried to impose on it various baggy modern conceptions. Love your neighbour as your self doesn't mean love the things in your neighbour you find in yourself; love your neighbour as much as you love yourself; love your neighbour by social constructs in society; love your neighbour [fill in the gap with any modern deconstructivist jargon you wish]. Love your neighbour as you would yourself doesn't mean you draw self-hatred as the high bar or the standard; it's not in the sentence. It means love. It doesn't mean you love him for some thing he wish he were appreciated -- for that, he has to find his partner or teacher or someone else. It's not about that. It's about loving people so as not to harm them in a civil society, treating them as equals and lovable beings. It means that you have empathy, and don't inflict on your neighbour pain you would not wish to endure yourself. You love him unconditionally in a higher sense as you would expect others to love you. It's a variety of "Do until others". It's about reciprocity and community. If you feel the need to get Foucault about this and say that you can't impose concepts of what love is when you love a neighbour, you're just off track. You are in Paris in 1968 and not the real world. It's a saying about a social contract; it's not about you. I sometimes jump into these conversations because they are so painful to see, and one hopes to reach some thinking being who might rise above them. But I'm done here now because I don't smoke pot and don't enjoy talking frivolously about the devil by people for whom evil seems to be unreal or relative. Have fun in your SL!

Sure. And none of those institutions function like this: a powerful company that sells server space calls in a few of their friends and gives them money to make art pieces. That is, banks do that, actually. But even banks try to keep some element of relevance and plausibility to what they are doing in order to *keep the value of their art to resell*. Instead, there are institutions like MOMA with boards, with curators, with fund-raising departments, with democracy, with accountability, that gets that server company to give them a corporate contribution, but which then doesn't let them run the selection of artists and art. That is, there might be some symbiosis here, and it's a complicated subject, but it is never as crass and crude as it is in our virtual world. There are open procedures to hire and vet and deploy curators; board members have fiscal and civic responsibility; I know of one museum in NYC that threw a wealthy Russian oligarch's wife off the board when he was arrested for fraud because the art world has to be at least not blatantly tied to crime and corruption. Boards in private foundations and boards in government-funded councils have transparent criteria; when you have something like the "Piss Christ" is sets off controversy and inspections and de-funding and so on. Nowadays, when an institution sees they have nothing but white boys in their show rooms, they have a crisis and people are fired and they begin to broaden out and try to be more inclusive and bring in women and people of colour. And so on. Process. Democracy. Transparency. They are all economic. All of them. Every bit of it. And if you think they are not, you haven't actually studied real art worlds in the real world. The issue then is to make what is essentially a part of the economic and an economic function -- sustaining the literal livelihoods of artists; paying for buildings and electricity; paying costs of purchases -- a transparent and democratic and inclusive process. If you imagine that because our world is virtual and you can fly and buy fairy wings for two cents on 30L Saturday, that therefore the economic concerns of what Kazimir Malevich, one of my authors, used to call the "Grub World," don't come to play, then think again. I mean, look at how Kazimir starved and nearly died if the American Relief Committee hadn't sent him some care packages once the Bolsheviks found his black square and such too critical of them and their need for "socialist realism". The analogy is that people need to at least have some money to rez out a cube and upload a texture; they may need an entire sim to deploy a build on. Someone has to pay for it. Fairies do not pay for it.

*Blinks* Let's rehearse it again for you: But if you want to have support, selling the art is the first and best way to sustain it. I buy it; I put money in tip jars So There are two things here: 1. Buying art for a price set by the artist. 2. Tip jars. Bryn Oh can set her art to sale. Indeed she does that. Indeed I have bought it. It might be set to $600; it might be set to $2000. She could charge more. She could advertise more. The Lindens could assist with advertising rather than subsidies of the doing of art itself. Selling art brings in more money than tip jars. If Bryn had to rely on sales and tips, but mainly sales, she would face a problem: a market that does not understand her or wish to buy her because of mass taste. Even so, there would be some not a victim of mass taste, if you will (which I don't think is a bad thing), who would buy her stuff. Like me, even if I can't make "motel art" out of it. That won't be enough for her to live on then. So as in RL, she will have to decide to make more cute rabbits that are least angsty, so they sell, or starve, so to speak, although no one with a high-end graphics cart, high-speed internet, computer, and leisure time could be said to be "starving" if they access SL. So then she could either try to get a real-world private foundation grant or government grant -- and surprisingly, there are those who have done this; they may not be in the LEA clique. Or someone could mount all this LEA stuff done in SL, which I suspect is not very conducive to either producing good art or non-starving artists who can then make good art. One of the reasons is that unlike real life, there is no democracy or oversight or process as in real government or real foundations. It's the Lindens' friends, and whatever they work out. Or it's the Soviet Writers' Union. So the solution is to try to broaden the LEA so it isn't so ridiculous, but frankly, more people checking off their art for sale; the Lindens providing more avenues of advertisement, including the splash screen; that would be more helpful and less abused.

The only person I know in my original real life who has come to SL is my own RL son, who was on the teen grid originally, and now occasionally drops in to help me with rentals but isn't really interested. Absolutely no other person in my RL -- and I have many friends and colleagues all over the world -- has ever come into SL, sometimes, even despite being given formal proposals during the pandemic about how they could do this and save money and aggravation. I think there are deep reasons for this. I say "original real life" to distinguish it from those people I might meet in SL, and then later meet in RL and keep up with it. It's funny how some of my original SL friends are people I talk to now on Twitter and Facebook but they don't come to SL any more. Some of the people I met, if they are still alive, I might very rarely meet in RL but generally not. I could tell you my whole theory of that but let's see if anyone has a different experience. So the criteria is -- again -- a person must have been originally rooted in your RL -- a sibling, a parent, a boyfriend, a work colleague, a neighbour -- and you then interacted with them in SL.

My contribution to art is SL is made by buying it. I really think there is no better contribution to be had. For that, the artists have to put the art to sale. Not all of them want to do that. OK. But if you want to have support, selling the art is the first and best way to sustain it. You can then get into all these other democratic, socialist, Soviet, whatever models, but I personally am not really an artist. I may make an art thing as a parody right now but I have no investment in the art of art, so to speak. I buy it; I put money in tip jars. More people will be able to do this when this gang gets out of the way.

Well, I don't know about ridm, but there is a more prosaic explanation for all this which is that it is merely 12/8 and 4/4 beats called Clave, common to Cuban, Caribbean etc music and imitated in some American pop and rock. Here's the technical explanation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clave_(rhythm) But what I'm hearing in your samples here is just a straight up 4/4 with some downbeat variation.

Well, my contribution to this discussion will be to point you to Nandi, an amazingly talented girl in England with Zulu and British roots, who may introduce you to the world of other drummers you may not have kept up with over the years, like that fellow named Dave Grohl or something, and this Lenny who apparently still gives concerts! But she has definitely outstripped them all!

I don't know this fellow, but this concept has been developed by spiritual thinkers from Thomas Aquinas to Gurdjieff. Rodney Collin said if there is nothing else you can do, you can at least give a smile. There is the concept of the widow's mite in the Bible. There is the concept of the Corinthians about love not being show-off stuff. Many people today don't realize the great works and thinkers that came before us and they think there is something new about somebody named Frank Andrews, but he probably read the Torah and Martin Buber, let's say. It's all good, but I will point out that splintering love into a million tiny little acts of "paying it forward" or some other popular culture concept does leave out the backdrop that should exist for this which is God, or a higher power, or "Love your neighbour as yourself". And people don't like that, it's work.

Well, there's trouble. As long as the Board of Advisers is done by some non-democratic process, by Linden Lab choosing their friends, it can't work. Democracy is always hard to do. It's hard to decide who the class of constituents should be who should be franchised to vote. But not THAT hard because if you have criteria to let someone in the SL17B or the Shop-Hops, you can have them for this. Say, a store with X amount of income. A site already selected for Destinations (not fair, but at least widens the list from "LL in secret"). Traffic? Maybe just a simple registration system. You register to vote and give a URL to your store, its name, etc. Or if you are an artist, you send a literal portfolio of work. I don't for a minute think this will ever happen, and I expect the worst out of this. People will think, "Well, we got rid of this dog-in-the-manager or that difficult or even corrupt person". But institutions are what curb bad human behaviour, not picking friends better.

I don't recall a single low stone wall like that anywhere in Corsica. It wouldn't solve the problem of driving off your lot. But it would look better. They could make some parts to be retractable gates temporarily.

The whole reason I bought land in Immortalis is that I liked the Lindens' road elements. They are a little weird -- tiles and hedges in the middle of nowhere -- but I like them. I don't like the old trees; I do like some of the new and their funny space-age telephone boxes. I can't really drive in and out of my lot very well but I'm not a driver. I can fly, did you know that? I bet you can, too. I don't think they should remove things; I think they need to stop enabling bad actors to abuse report those who build ramps. They should tolerate ramps if they are on the shoulder of the road, full stop, the way they tolerate bridges over Linden water. That is all that is needed. Anybody can build a ramp and root it on their land so it doesn't return, in such a way that it doesn't block traffic. That some zealots believe it harms their vehicular passage is absurd. As has been proven, other elements of the Lindens' builds (underneath) do that. When the Lindens are willing to drop their zealotry about ramps on their land, and also willing to stop enabling their vicious fanboyz to file ARs, we'll see a better world.

But it's not about "allowing you to use your land". If you buy it, of course you can use it. It's about enabling you to abuse the system -- in ways a normal RL market could never let you do -- by enjoying the use of your land AND putting a ridiculously high price on it that means it may never sell or sell in a year. Why should you be rewarded for doing that? The way to understand is not that you are harmed by not being able to enjoy the use of your land while it is for sale. If you want to enjoy it, don't sell it. The way to see it that is by enabling you to enjoy staying AND putting a high price, you are making it further possible for other abusers of the system. When you are prevented from keeping a build on land and living on it, and have to sell it for a normal price, the entire market changes. You don't then have to pay a ridiculously high price to have a home; that is what makes you sit on a 512 you bought in 2006 and think you can sell it for $20,000 even if it is not waterfront. And the number of people who are end users trying to sell their one parcel and wanting to wait for a better price are simply a minority compared to those many rentals that want to invade the buy-view map, and clubs that want to invade the buy-view map, and political causes that want to invade the buy-view map. So I'm not for rewarding those abusers. There is never a time when you have to search for yellow. That may be the case in the 16 sims you see in your view. But trust me, it is not the case generally. I'm not for depriving people of ownership because others want to abuse a system -- you are. You want to enable abusers to go through this loophole in order to keep your ability to get a high price. And when I point out that is abusive, you want to compound this abuse by telling me that if I don't like the view or that practice (which isn't about you in your bungalow setting something to $20,000, but land dealers putting big and sometimes grossly kitch builds up -- why, I can move, thus suffering a loss. You aren't willing to look at this in the round and how it affects all the components of the community. It is not good for anybody but the rapacious few. Changing it elevates everyone to a better place.

What happened is that the Lindens ideologically conceived of this as an end users' game, like Animal Crossing in a way, where little woodland creatures would trade parcels to each other, perhaps adding a few little acorns for tea into the bargain. Instead, what happened is that because handling land is often poorly understand; it is a learned skill and punishes you brutally if you mess up (by tiering you up or causing the loss of your land); because people are just kind of scared of all that, they don't want to learn anything hard, they just abandon it. After all tier, a recurring expense is the problem; not land purchase cost. The auction might have soaked up some of that pent-up demand if people could post a parcel no one could see in the vast Mainland, and find a willing buyer. But naturally land barons swooped in. As they always will when there is this kind of setting with Linden indifference to education and monitoring post-deployment; public fear and reluctance; lack of incentive. So it's way easier for them to kind of pose as an end user looking for other end users on a kind of mass sale. I don't know if the Lindens every put in any brakes on that use of the system -- I never got it to work and gave up. If you have a relatively free economy, one that's even more like Russia or China than America, but still... -- you can't build in all sorts of rules especially if you can't enforce them. If you say only individuals not groups can sell; people just make alts. If they IP track alts, people will log in with an anonymizer or another browser; if they try to stop that abuse, people will wail and pretend they are in the same apartment building in Kenosha. And so on. It's hard to do this stuff on line, and they only substitute is organic, real-time policing and engagement. One simple mitigation I always thought (which they used to have!) was a simple function where the RESULTS of the auction are POSTED. Then we can see Anshe -- and the alts that we can now detect! -- is scooping up all the telehub land. We can see her alts because we can see now who is behind the sale and what the signage is. We can see that time and again she or Blue or Adam or whoever their latter-day equivalent are has jacked up a big margin for themselves by bidding on land they don't even want or can't even take, just to keep the price high. When you have that publicity, you learn to see which companies jack up prices; you then avoid them in favour of more friendly ones. The Lindens tried to mitigate this -- again -- by forcing you to have money in your account, and tier available (I think) before you can bid on an auction. Before that was not necessary and heavily abused. Someone without tier could buy and flip and auction win buy undertiering a group for 12 hours or even 24 hours and Linden couldn't catch them. Now I think that loophole is closed, but not completely when it comes to group land. To be honest, I don't need an auction. I need a system that enables me to bid on land that is abandoned in my sim, not competing against land barons who don't live there and will jack up the price again for me. I just had that happen again on a sim and I am really furious. If you do something like just go to bed at night for 8 hours, which you have to do, someone can dump land while you are asleep and it can be available to be ticketed and handed out before you wake up. Yes, tickets have been going that fast! Now I see more of a brake on them, 3 days at least. Now I see some willingness sometimes for a Linden to IM you or a neighbour and say hey, do you want this land that is next to you? To give you first dibs informally. But that's time-consuming. We can't expect them in a world with 5000 sims to do that in every instance. So that's why I can wake up and see 3 waterfront parcels that my neighbour was not willing to sell me or tell me she was abandoning already in the possession of a land baron selling them for $15/m. Not so high, but still, back-breaking. There's nothing that can be done about this until the Lindens can automate the process. And I have no idea if that is hard. That abandoned land triggers a status for 30 days where only other owners on that sim can see a colour of it and a for-sale status that only they can buy. One downside of such an automated system is that it would raise the bar for rapacious barons to scoop up 16ms anywhere on any sim, such as to be poised to grab that "same sim owner only" piece. Yes, the Lindens could code in that it has to be 512 or greater. But then someone with a 448 trying to eke out a bigger spot will be stymied. I can only say that to make any land thing work at all, the Lindens need to deploy dedicated staff in the way they did with Jack Linden and his staff in the day. This means not a Moncierge meeting which I have discovered are utterly useless. They are to blow off steam or file suggestions but they are feel-goods. They don't have the rigorous practicality and results and action that the scripting and server meetings do, truly. And their answer is likely, but we did that. We have Patch Linden. We have the Moles. Look at how insanely busy they are. To which I can say that there's the rest of the Mainland. And at this point, as Belli increases, as abandonment does not improve, "the rest of the Mainland" may not be compelling to the Lindens to bother with.

So how is business? The forums are really not such a good place to discuss this as there is too much free-floating hatred of "land barons" or enterprise in general (even by people who claim to be capitalists), and just too much willingness to sneer and snipe and pretend you are up and the other person is down and not tell the truth of the situation. And of course anything I say will draw the usual Flying Monkeys. Let's ignore all that for now. A Crisis or a Seasonal Downturn? My own anecdotal view of the land sales and rentals business, which is what I know best, is that it is heading to a crisis. It is doing badly. Yes, summer is always a drought. September is still a drought. Halloween finally reverses that low ebb and we're still 3 weeks out from that, although of course content sales are already out for that occasion. Is it significant that a leading merchant has Apocalypse for the theme? Not pumpkin lattes, not black and orange witch outfits, but zombies. This is just a disorganized pastiche of thoughts and don't bother to read it if you need something fact-filled and organized, but maybe you will have some thoughts to share. What are the Signs? Now, many people start arguing with this immediately because they want everyone to know they are superior and it is better for them, or they want it not to be true, so they argue. But I do see the signs. There are a lot of move-outs. There are a lot of downsizes. This isn't just for me -- at my level, which is significant and varied but small. I talk to other rentals agents and land sellers and I hear them worried and I see them shrinking or even going out of business, although most who are still here after all these years, or even one year, do tend to stay. There are a lot of quick sales, as in the Recession years. Yes, land sits baking out in the sun for sale for ages and ages and notoriously so in some continents. But that's because the price is too high. Once it is set to prices that are half of what 2006 was, it sells. There are not purchases of abandoned land that should be sought after in some cases -- although sure, I see some of it snapped up. Bellissaria There are Bellissaria lots even available in odd spurts. Generally I am pro-Bellissaria even though in a sense it competes with me because every premium account is a plus for the economy, and it truly is a rising tide that lifts all boats. Bellissaria gets boring after 3 minutes when you are done decorating for some, then they come to my rentals. Or they add my rentals to Belli. So it's all good. But are we reaching a saturation point and over-saturation where there is now so much Belli -- there has to be given all those page refreshers of people who want to kit out their alts with log homes -- that it really is harming the rest of the economy, sucking away from the land dealers and even content dealers whose content needs much larger homes and lots? COVID Now, I personally see a mixture of people moving to bigger rentals and spending a lot more and nesting because COVID quarantine for them is not ending, and they are in work-from-home now for a good long while. So that -- for now -- offsets the move-outs and downsizes for me. From my perspective, a deep, long-term nesting instinct might not lead them to a rental, but to a purchase of a whole island for themselves -- and I see some of that and I can only welcome it in terms of the whole health of SL, even if it is a loss for me. Kenny Linden used to say, "There's always another guy to buy the island" if anyone complained about Linden policies and though they'd get Linden to change by threatening to leave. There is. But at less of a price. And whenever I update my religious sites and my real-life countries sites servers, I'm astounded at how many places are gone. It's a fraction of what it was 10 years ago because there are far less sims and less people. Sites are important. They are the "things to do" for people who may want a private home but after 45 minutes of that, need something else, and not a laggy bar with griefers and creeps. And I feel there are less of them now because people can't sustain the tier and work to keep them going. I don't mean big islands. I mean 1024s by the side of the road where somebody had an interesting art park or shrine or nature walk. Depression Spending Or another phenomenon often discussed, when times are hard, it's the Depression, it's the Recession, people spend on entertainment to forget their troubles, they don't really have $5, but they spend it on a movie or a beer or a magazine or Second Life. And with COVID, they don't go to restaurants or bars but have to stay home so they splurge more in SL. That's all true. Even so, there are other factors at work here. I see in real life mostly my own country, and I see Americans probably more than Europeans and Asians, although I do see a lot of non-Americans because my rentals are discount, and not everyone in the world is as rich as Americans and they also have VAT and so on. (Their countries have done way better with COVID). Back to School/Unemployment Ending So this week there was back to school in New Jersey, not hard hit as New York; in New York City, the Catholic schools opened; some private schools opened on a very limited basis; public schools are still dithering. On my plaza, I see swarms of boys with backpacks that somebody has dressed up and kitted out to go to school, but talking to them, they aren't actually in school and school isn't open -- or it was for an hour to hand out some textbooks or worksheets (which seem archaic, no?) but now closed. Mom and Dad have to work; they are hanging out, and the candy store is closed, the movies are closed, the McDonalds are closed, the basketball courts are filled with grown-ups in quarantine, so there is not room for kids -- but the liquor stores aren't closed, not to mention the nearby needle park, so there's trouble. Thank God these kids have their phones, where Mom and Dad some times appear among their IMs and games. But these are not the denizens of SL. I'm just describing a phenomenon I see in RL and SL, in my actual location and in my business but also among friends and relatives in other states: people are having to go back to semi-normal. Back to school doesn't mean back to work literally; but it feels like it. Back to school for my niece on her first day is Zoom, but it still means out of habit her parents bought her a new knapsack, shoes, pencils, and a lunchbox which means even if the restaurants were open this week, they would not be going to them, and they will not be buying Fortnite stuff, let's say. (I do not know a single person in RL who will come into SL with me other than my son. Not a soul. And I know many artists, photographers, women of a certain age interested in wiccan and book clubs -- and forget about it. They run screaming.) Move-outs When I talk to tenants to have to move out, or have to downsize, generally they say one of two things: they have a new job even more demanding than their old or they have to go back to actual physical work OR they are losing their job now for good OR the unemployment is running out now (as it is in many states around me -- there are some very hard times coming up). Why would someone end a US $2.50/month rental if they lose a job? Because when you are suddenly deprived of income and even unemployment, that's what you do. $2.50 is half your family meal for one day, let's say, or even 2 days depending on your location. So you don't dare spend it on frivolous things. People tend to view the SL population as hedonistic or spendthrift because my God, they are buying invisible stuff to play with anonymous people. But most people in the world have the "Protestant work ethic" even if they are Japanese or Italian. They feel they have to cut back and be sensible; not spend beyond their means. They need at least to cut out their 3 rentals out of 5, and take down that alt. Content Sales I wonder how content sales are doing. I have to assume, unless the Lindens decided on a massive bailout plan for the LinDex, which they might have done, that because content sales are higher, even the inflationary pressure of the stipends from Bellissaria has not undermine the new normal for the LindEx which is a robust 241 -- and please don't tell me that was always like that, because some of us keep records. It was 251 for most of the year before this latest COVID-era improvement. Merchants may have privately demanded this of the Lindens. And maybe they realize that they can't keep devaluing the Linden and hope for merchants to keep staying and making things and having their own expenses, if not tier, then their own uploads and events fees and such. 25-30-50-60-69 Days The enormous plethora of discount weekend events -- there are now too many to physically get through in 3 days -- tells me that merchants are not selling things at regular prices and have to dump to discount to make ends meet. It's not just generosity during COVID; it's necessity. I personally find I have tamped my content purchases way down because I tell myself I need to save money. I need to save it for the Fantasy Faire blowout next year, if nothing else! But I also just personally am at a point where a lot of stuff seems identical and I don't want it. And arguably with an inventory of 144,000, I can't argue I need it. You do indeed have to refresh your housing and furniture constantly to keep tenants and they themselves will demand the latest thing. But it is possible now to get that latest thing for $65 out of a gatcha, and not spend $650 as you used to have to do as a minimum to get a decent prefab. Food Basket The "food basket" of SL, if you will -- the minimum purchases people make to live in the world comfortably -- really has changed in that regard. I used to map out a typical newbies "budget" for clothing, a prefab, a vehicle, to see, would he have any left over for a rental, or so much left over he would buy and not rent, given the figures of spending $25 US every month that were once floating across the screen. The average log-on was 4 hours; that might bring $1-5 in purchases. What is the minimum SL food basket today, with the advent of gatchas and 30L Saturdays and Belli? It is no longer the $2000 Lindens used to start you with; it's not $2500 as it was 10 years ago; let's not pretend everyone buys a $10000 mesh body etc.; this is *the minimum* and I believe it is no longer $2000. It might be $1000. I don't know how the Lindens judge the health of the inworld economy; I don't know if they even think that is important any more; I don't know if they still have a staff person whose job is only to sit and fiddle with the sinks and sources and plan the economy (they used to); I don't know anything, and neither do you, because they don't tell us. The question then is: do they tell themselves? They may be telling themselves that increased Belli sales or less island dumping means the economy is healthy. But unless they can show that big hill that has the middle class at the largest group with spending of $25 per month; the working class, figuratively speaking, that spends $1-5, and those high-net-worth individuals in the US $500 class, and what its trends are, they can't persuade me they have a good thing. They would judge this sometimes by looking at cash-outs, beyond the payment of tier. That would be one way of trying to see if their customers could make money, any kind of money, let alone a living, from the world. They could pride themselves that this figure was US $450 million per year. That's a ton of money. Facebook doesn't have figures like that, even for app engineers. Instagram doesn't have figures like that. LL does. That is its special sauce. But do they nurture this? The lack of curiosity and even belligerence around discussing this topic lets me know that the situation is likely this: the few who can pull serious money out of SL do so quietly, and they don't care if the rest of the world can, in any amount. Nor do the Lindens. And I suppose that is acceptable, because the purpose of this company is to make money for themselves, not for you or me. They want a Better World, but they want it to become Better by someone visiting an inworld museum or reading a book in a virtual book club and becoming woke; they don't actually want a poor American or Brazilian to earn a living with their platform. If they did, we would see an astoundingly different place, unrecognizable from what we see now. It's sad because if they took on this social mission, which I think can be done with an entrepreneurial mission and not as philanthropy, they could really change the world. Instead, Microsoft will do this, and while I'm not a hater of MSFT like all the Apple fanboyz, I don't think they will do it as well by any stretch. Spending Chart So, again, we used to have a chart showing all the people in SL and how much they spent every week. A huge hill of them spent no more than US $1 or $5. You had a middle class target of 50,000 that everyone had to chase who spent the $25. You had a much smaller group of 5000 that spend US $100-500 that high-end island dealers could reach, along with weapons and vehicles creators. Today, I have no idea whatsoever what that chart looks at. I wish the Lindens would release it so we could have some notion of what the economy looks like. If I knew there were 100,000 people with $25 a week, I would put out more rentals and do more ads. But I don't think so. I think there are 30,000, or less now. It's the number of premiums at one level, but not only; don't forget you don't need a premium to buy an island or rent an island. If the economy is really shrinking -- and I do believe it is starting to -- and the Lindens are realizing with Belli they may have competed too much with their own merchant class (of which land dealers make up the bulk and who pay the lion's share of their own earnings), they may pull back. Due to COVID they are not buying new sims in general, something I don't completely understand as being only COVID related or only related to waiting for the regulator to clear their sale. Linden Actions SO, assuming the sale will go through (and it may not unless Biden comes in, so I hope they stretch that out; there is so much hostility to tech due to Facebook and Google predations that it could spill over to Linden), the Lindens could: o Offer the homesteads without restrictions. I don't think they will for the same reasons they stopped them -- the reasons didn't change as I have copiously explained in other threads. One person wanting them on the forums or 20 people wanting them in a Wednesday Concierge meeting will not sway them. It's laughable to think that the Lindens don't do everything with restrictions and therefore proving they are capitalist is somehow proved by this "gesture" of removing what is not really a restriction but an anchor of responsibility and guarantee that Linden, not residents, make the cash around here. Every single thing in the world is restricted. You cannot buy Linden land. You cannot buy your Bellissaria land. You cannot sail on water between continents -- it's not there. And so on. Not to mention no free press or independent judiciary but that's another conversation. If anything, new fancy premiums might bring more restrictions we haven't dreamt up for arcane reasons we can't understand. o So -- Offer a shinier premium -- the new premium is being so anticipated that when it comes inevitably it will be a disappointment. I'd be happy if all they did is offer me a higher price premium that might actually discount my zillions of texture of uploads. What could LL honestly offer in a fancier premium that would *help the economy*. The answer is: nothing. Because anything they offer that makes it a better and more attractive offer -- better content, more Belli houses, more perks for content creators -- *harms the inworld economy*. I want you to think about that for a minute. It is the Zen Koan that lies at the heart of SL since its beginning. The Lindens constantly step into the same stream twice with this Zen Koan. But I think we are about to see, especially with new owners, that the balance will tip toward harm or even deliberate eradication of an inworld economy; driving all content to the Marketplace where tax can be skimmed off; and more policing of adult content. And the reason is that enabling a virtual, organic resident economy with the trade of goods and services and lands is an exoticism; it's hard, it's expensive. It's like making a Space Dome. And if the experiment hasn't been particularly attractive, and the people are fighting and the plants dying, they will pull the Space Dome. o Try to promote all kinds of inworld events like book clubs to get people to spend their COVID time and dollars here. And here, I have to mention an enormous competition that is finally coming to SL that has got to be making them tremble, as it makes Facebook tremble, and which, if the buyers didn't know about before, could cause them to withdraw. And that is the big foot of Microsoft coming into the virtual world space with their AltSpace which recently put on Burning Man. Note that Scoble calls this social VR (and not only he). He has a whole book out on this now about "spatial computing" which is really quite brilliant and comprehensive. "Virtual world" is going to come to be seen as archaic like MUDs or MUCKs or There - or Second Life -- because this other thing is going to be so light and portable and ubiquitous. Why run 30,000 heavy expensive sims with cantankerous customers that keep you one step ahead of the police in some countries with content theft, griefing, and adult materials when you can run platforms accessed by people and shift the burden on them? Cartoons You will laugh at the cartoons. You will say, silly Scoble, he thinks hurling a car and chatting with a friend is immersive, and SL isn't immersive (we debated this on Facebook, where else). But he's right. The average Joe doesn't need the sheer crueltry of the on-ramping of SL. I personally don't think concerts and chatting are compelling enough. But they are to the billions on YouTube. And that's what this is about, taking YouTube from Google and putting it on Microsoft in VR social form. Can't Keep Them Down on the Farm I recently had to get my RL son to do some land operations -- he was on the Teen Grid and once had the number one mall there in his day. He has helped me inworld now and then on the rentals and taken responsibility for a few spots. He has dabbled in some creations. But he has a RL business with RL money from RL photography and video work so he just isn't interested in coming on SL more than he has to. SL just makes him wince and shriek with its complications and errors and bugs. In his bios, he credits Second Life with teaching him business skills at the age of 13 and giving him confidence; he puts it on his resume. SL was for him like 4-H club or AV club was for us in the old days. But nothing more. I can't keep the kid down on the farm. It makes me sad.

I see this more often than I should. I kept falling through floors last night that weren't on phantom. I kept checking linked items, because anything phantom linked will infect the next thing and make it phantom, but nope. And I see another thing, related or not, where half a room disappears. This is not because it's straddling a sim (that is one reason that phenomenon happens). This is not because it has old alpha textures from 2005. It's something else. It's not -- please God do not tell me this advice one more time or I will scream -- the Render Volume not being at 4. It's something different. Yes, re-sets cure it. But never permanently. Some sims I have to ask to be reset once a week to cure these ghosty things.

You keep not getting it simply because you were not here in SL when this ALREADY HAPPENED. When you could ALREADY BUY THEM without the hobble of having to buy a full sim. So that you didn't face a) the much higher set-up fee then for full prim islands b) the tier then every month for that island. All costs that the baron who can "buy as much of them he wants now" has to face, and which is a deterrent. In fact, you're in such a kneejerk reaction to what I write that you can't see the obvious: that if you think *I'm* advocating people "buy through me not from LL" THAT IS WHAT WE HAD. THAT IS THE POINT. (They didn't rent/buy them through me as I didn't get into that business; I have only one. I am a tiny landlord compared to these people, which you may not grasp through your seething hatred of capitalism/landlords/"rent-seekers" blah blah.). The people who want this system back speaking on the forums are end-users who want one, or maybe 6, but not 100. The land barons would love a pancake flipping farm like this are staying out of the conversation because they know either the Lindens will never do this, or they will pressure the Lindens, but not look like they caused it. Because what happened when there was no restriction and no penalty cost, landlords bout up zillions, flipped them to renters who had estate manage powers -- again, read what is written -- who had estate manager powers as if they were owners -- but then didn't do any customer service, leaving it to the Lindens to fix griefers, crashes, etc. The glut on the market also made it impossible for some to get even 80% occupancy, they couldn't make tier, they went bankrupt, leaving people who had paid a lot of money to "buy" a thing that wasn't there holding a big bag. You're just not hearing is that WE ALREADY HAD ALL THIS and THAT IS WHY WE DON'T ANY MORE -- it was too great a burden on the Lindens. This has nothing whatsoever to do with me as I RENT MAINLAND. I do not "sell" islands. It's hard to see where your seething hatred of landlords and capitalism -- especially on the Mainland where it is more like share-cropping that baronry -- such that you would wish to cripple this normal business that provides many people a low-cost alternative to islands and Bellissaria, and for very little remuneration. In fact, land bars were already cut off at the knees because -- WAIT FOR IT! -- land already sells for $1 a meter to anyone, i.e. as abandoned, and if there were more of it, the Lindens might even mark it down to $1 per 1024. Land barons were at their peak when the auction had NEW sims that were a different texture and landscaping every time so it was thrilling. Land barons could make money when abandoned land for $1 and Bellissaria didn't compete. Now it does, so there are less of them. But the Lindens won't mark it down because it doesn't sell, ikeeps losing value, and even at that price, it wouldn't because purchase price isn't the issue; tier recurring is. It's hard to have these conversations with people so ideologically hide-bound, so blinded by hatreds, that they can't see the facts on the ground here. So I'll leave you to have the last word and hope all the high-fives of your friends will give you a feeling of accomplishment. Meanwhile, it's all barking nonsense.

Well, remember what happened. They used to be for sale like that. And barons bought up hundreds -- thousands. Some were flipped to one person who had Estate Manager. Some were chopped up to 16 and rented and functioned horribly. I already wrote above about how this led to flooding Linden CS with the customers of absentee landlords, but more to the point, enabled land barons to make money from these hotcakes that Linden did not get. Those customers were not theirs. Making it for premium only (although islands have never required premium and that will be a problem for them), making it more expensive -- the analogy is making 4096 or 8192 cost more for a single end user at that level than it does for a land baron who already has at least one sim, so that he begins to get a discount. I just think if they keep within the model of their own system, they can't make this a premium perk, they can't just make it a higher fee; they have to have a throttle on it. So they do, requirement you buy one full sim.