Prokofy Neva

But they did, and God bless them, because thank God, they aren't the technocommunists that many of you are. They are technolibertarians and have a semi-belief in business, at least their own. They did it tastefully and effectively which is more than I can say for some of you.

Let me tell you what I have seen in the last month in Second Life as the owner of a small rentals agency mainly on the Mainland, mainly with small parcels. I realize that on the forums, there are always people to find that a landlord is some kind of self-interested vulture trying to hustle sales or simply a clueless prat, and that's fine, but I assure you that I don't make a living from SL and would advise anyone doing that to create alternatives especially now, and I really have no stake in somebody renting for me OR in the Lindens offering reduced prices (which I don't think they should). Currently the population in 14 land or event groups is 1,923. Some of the members overlap or have alts. These are mainly rental land groups with active members who log in because if they don't log in and aren't paying after 30 days, they are removed due to group fees. Two of the groups have members that stay for exploration/events/hunts etc and may not log in. It's hard to know the exact population because many join the group and leave after they set prims because they are open groups that charge small fees to remain with resident powers. So imperfect or not, this sample of 1500-2000 avatars is a useful one, I believe. As I have seen in the past with crises ranging from 9/11 to the Japanese tsunami, some people are going to drop out and not be heard from again because they are dead or got sick or lost Internet connection and it's very hard to keep in touch. For the zillionth time I wished LL would have a policy in place that would enable them to respond to queries from anxious people about their virtual loved ones while keeping their privacy and issues like account payment form private. They could develop a protocol where they could answer with a status: "A" = account in good standing, i.e. that person or somebody is still paying for it; "B" not known to have logged in since X; "C" - does not respond to Linden Lab messages/mailings or they bounce; "D" confirmed terminated account. It would be nice if LL could use their RL information from accounts and Google around and see if they learned that person died of the coronavirus, but they won't do that, nor should we tax them with that now. If someone has not told you their RL information in SL, respect that, and don't make the Lindens compensate for the lack of it. Virtuality is not a sealed unicorn realm somehow existing in some free-standing cloud server in a magic Metaverse realm that is never affected by anything on earth; it is DIRECTLY tied to servers, Internet performance, electricity, and at the end of the day, those old-fashioned organic beings called "people" who don't show the resilience of robots to viruses -- who frankly have not shown themselves to be terribly robust at resisting the computer kind of viruses which will only increase. So: 1. The first thing I noticed just as I myself was going into RL quarantine on Feb. 28, observing clues in my RL environment (I'm immune-compromised) in New York City, was a stream that steadily increased of people joining and hanging out in the SL Public Land Preserve I maintain. These are places to hang out in a tree house or ride a horse or float a boat or just chill and look at various recreated things from RL or wander around doing various activities like hunts. I recently doubled the membership fee from $5 to $10 Lindens to set prims -- which is not even required to enter of course -- because this project is a labour of love and donations, tier, content etc only covers maybe 15% or less of the costs (you can see the annual expense reports in the tree house at Botany's Grove). In January, as I looked over the year's accounts, I figured this doubling of the fee might see a reduction of memberships but it's actually proof that people will pay a little more of a very small cost like that, not even the $75 or $250 they pay to be in a shopping group. I didn't really focus on why they were doing this streaming to these places now -- but I hadn't advertised them any more than usual. From their "gestures" as some in the industry call it, I could see nuch more use -- the saddles from the free horses return; somebody picks up the $0 freebies; they ride the boats and they return; they find a prize in a hunt; the traffic numbers go up on them, etc. I was really surprised that this increased and was glad that years of trying to provide this space with mixed results now had some use. I had two RL groups ask to use spaces there for RL meetings, which is free. And this began before the newspapers began to get scary and before, say, Gov. Cuomo's lockdown orders in NYS. 2. Next, what I expected to happen did happen -- refunds because people cannot justify a virtual rental at a time like this. People imagine there will be more flight to the virtual and more willing to spend on virtual entertainment, like people went to the movies more during WWII and the Depression. Don't. Refunds come from a variety of levels but mainly not the cheapest and not the most expensive but mid-level. What was interesting is that some of the people refunding in fact had 3-5 such rentals around the grid I hadn't known about, so they just wanted to cut one of them, and actually the cheapest one. These are mid-level rentals. 3. There was no more demand that usual on the very cheapest newbie rentals that you expect would be in demand in a time of trouble, and few refunds of something that cost 50 or 65 cents in RL. That's because people's ideas and illusions about newbiedom and cheapness are based on premises from RL that may or may not be true even in RL let alone SL. Newbies aren't necessarily desperately poor refugees; they could be IT guys with 6 figures. You don't know. Or anything in between. 4. Overprimming, taking of more than one in areas where I say "one per customer"; griefing of other tenants or of me; bad behaviour; squatting all increased *somewhat* but not at all to epic proportions as I've seen in the past actually during flush times -- the average college spring break week most years would see an upsurge in griefing but now we don't see that. Watch my son's film of the "hood swarm" if you want to grasp this behavior. People are not at their best in times of trouble. They ought to do X, Y, Z but they don't. I had to admire the sheer testicularity of the trio that set up a neon lighted disco with their own wares for sale and even a Returns kiosk in the sky above my rentals, but you know, I can't give places out for free. Linden Lab has not reduced my costs, and I don't want them to. 5. I saw an increase of rentals of the larger parcels, sometimes for months in advance. Some people have to work from home or do businesses in SL or whatever much more, and they are hunkering down. They may panic and flee in two or three weeks as they see that even spending US $25 a month is maybe not warranted now. 6. I see an increase in purchases of used gatchas, and even the little things I make myself. I always encourage newbies to put something they've made out with at least some kind of price tag on it because it will sell. Everything sells in SL. It's another matter whether you can find that spot between a willing buyer and a willing seller given the dysfunctional advertising in SL, but it more or less works in places and people are shopping more. 7. Many more people are taking part in hunts, quests, treks that I have set up around here and there and actively asking me for them. I have some Experience hunts now with mixed results because Experience can be buggy but overall it's a great thing to keep people engaged. I can't really keep up with that beyond some self-service and landmarks and re-route them to the big hunt companies. 8. Some people who have been away from SL are back; some who stopped renting years ago because they couldn't justify the expense or turned to other interest have re-rented. I would not say they are *pouring* in (yes I realize it can feel like a flood when it's a dozen "solutions providers" who are your friends who abandoned SL 10 years ago in 2007-2008 downturn), but there are some. "Pouring" to me is defined not by a dozen FIC who have talked on the forums the last few years but never logged in, but ordinary people who despite these times now think a premium account or an inworld rentals is justified. 9. I did a newsletter urging people to cease paying for rentals they cannot afford and to think of their family first. I urged them to tier down to cheaper rentals and some have done that. I urged them not to deal with coronavirus symptoms by nervously chatting with girlfriends in SL and trying shopping as a therapy, but to reach people in RL who can help. I told people they cannot expect free rentals from me because my concern now is to buy food and medicines in quarantine, something very difficult. But that I do have a lot of free hangouts or half-filled subsidized areas they can consider now. The Lindens have a far better handle on these sorts of figures or categories than I possibly could because they have tools I don't have to measure log-ins and see whether increased activity involves alts or actual stand-alone new people. They will not inform us of this. Linden policies *already* changed because a significant drop in users and brought us cheaper tier, faster turnaround of abandoned land to those who want to buy it and tier it; and the surge in Linden Homes. The sale of Sansar was likely a strong signal of a company "refocusing" because of the pandemic. Watch to see what further signals like this there may be. I'm really, really proud of my tenants that in the last month, not a single one has asked for a free hand-out or told me a hard-luck story and hinted I should not remove their prims after they expire (I have two-day grace periods). They know I already provide a lot of subsidized and free stuff with a lot of generous policies. They are troopers. They will go the distance. So can you.

Sometimes there are good reasons for these things, sometimes there are not. What I find already sadly being duplicated is the way businesses and educational institutions come into the SL situation dooming themselves to failure. They insist on buying a full, stand-alone island that they can lock down and secure against griefers and intruders and just simply sexualized beings and furries. They are over-afraid of this, but you will not get them to get rid of this. They insist on having Lindens or Moles build infrastructure for them (I've seen this already) or on hiring expensive "solutions providers" to build expensive replicas of RL buildings. They start putting demands on being able to override copyright in order to serve their own narrow interests because they are in systems of brutal bureaucracies with self-interest served by Soviet-style gigantism. They insist on putting 4 regions together to have 200 audience seats available because they think in terms of mass stadiums, often like frankly Hitler or Stalin did. The masses. Who aren't even in fact there. They are adverse to simply buying a 4096 parcel on an island or even on the mainland and just putting an existing prefab from the open market on that 4096 and having their office or meeting there, which is really enough in 90% of the use cases. They could stream a Zoom available on that 4096 or 4096 x 10 or 20 or whatever scattered around SL instead of on 4 sims pushed together in a laggy slagheap, but they won't do that. Because they are too clutchy about the individual conversations that happen outside their controlled stream. They keep clutching and controlling as institutions to control the experience and that dooms them to failure. This can happen because they either have a heavily ideological meme-pushing regime of the type you see on TED talks (where there aren't Q & A or if they are, they are heavily scripted and censored) OR they have bureaucratic protocols from businesses or universities that are devoid of imagination. This is a time when they could walk around the robots and do things differently, but I think once again, we will see them not do that for all the reasons I cited, and all the reasons that govern your own ideological world. The security of data flow -- secure even from LL eyes -- is not unreasonable because LL is a rich stew of people who used to be in other big industries from IBM to Cisco to Facebook to whatever and they leak. But big businesses have pages on Facebook or Twitter without anything near this unreasonable insistence on locked-down data flow that they demand of LL. Facebook doesn't grant a special sequestered page to big corporations that have to remain open to the public if they are to have customers.

Yes, they should entice more people to come. Maybe not with ads that are that crude, certainly, but stressing education, art, culture as they have been doing, and also socializing and data which they do anyway. I do not believe they should offer any cost reduction, and their reductions in cost over the years have not been in response to any crisis like 9/11 or Hurricane Sandy or the London metro terrorist attack and so on, but a steady policy they can do as servers get cheaper. There is always the question of whether offering more sales for less is a prudent . To be available for all of us, they need to secure their own business first, and providing handouts now to the needy is not effective even to the needy if they cannot stay in business. I'm here to tell you that handouts and freebies and subsidies -- based on the tiny mirror image that my rentals company is to Linden Lab and SL at large -- are not effective, either for those who provide them but still have to stay in business, or ultimately those who benefit from their generosity. You can take large parcels, reduce them to small ones, and offer them for less, even subsidize them, as I have done for 16 years, offering newbies "a chance" -- even if those newbies are IT people who earn six figures and utterly dwarf my own RL income. I've always done this, but there is a real down side to it, and if you can't understand, I'll explain, but suffice it to say: the people in the cheapest places complain the most and also violate the rules the most and make it pretty impossible to run cheap "newbie" communities effectively. Those in slightly more costly rentals that are not subsidized and at least pay the tier complain the least and conscientiously pay their rent and don't whine. There are all kinds of socio-cultural reasons for this. But that it is an unshakable fact, I can tell you based on vast experience. I have many free places to hang out in my land preserve and urge people to use those existing free places rather than ask me to pay their rent, essentially, when I need to get my RL groceries and medications, more and more difficult to do as I am at the epicenter of the coronavirus in NYC and immune-compromised. Lindens aren't made of steel; among them are people who are vulnerable in various ways both economically and culturally -- their workforce is not made out of fancy Facebook and Google engineers who get fantastic salaries and a special bus to work; their work force has a lot of very dedicated people of the type who work in non-profits and volunteer because they believe in the cause. The people who run LL are not on yachts now in the Hamptons; they're running your servers. I do wonder how their colo is doing and how much access they have to it. I would not like to see the Lindens release the homesteads for $79 tier into the wild again. I'd benefit if they do but the problem is that this concept doesn't work as you imagine, just like Air B&B doesn't work as you imagine. It's not that single owners who want a home maybe with a partner, or little old ladies who only log in on Sundays to hold their book clubs are the ones who get the advantage of these servers, like grandma or mom & pop renting out the spare bedroom to survive on Air B&B. It's land barons who can buy them in bulk and flip them with almost zero customer service and trouble shooting, just like in NYC it's slumlords who create entire ghost towns of B&Bs that they rent out to big corporations who buy them just in case and don't use them. That you aren't in this category is besides the point because the overwhelming number of cheap homestead servers purchased in an open plan as you suggest will be essentially slumlords, and they place more demand on the Lindens. If you weren't here to see the mass flip of these flat white pancakes cut into cheap slices overloading the system back in the day, well, I was, and I know what will happen to this. I would not want to see Lindens, who are a precious, non-renewable resource, deployed to the welcome areas. They did that in the old days, where top designers and programmers were worn to a nub put on that sort of insane and stupid duty that doesn't work to increase retention and only wears them down needlessly. I don't even want to see "helpers" or "guides" of their friends deployed because those systems are instantly corrupted. It's key to remember that newbies aren't necessarily helpless creatures like refugees being turned away from our border or arrested -- those are people truly in need of your help, concern, and charity. They are affluent Americans who have at least some kind of job or gig. They are well--paid IT guys often. They aren't as helpless as you think, and there are already a lot of helpers like Caledon Oxbridge out there to help them. The Lindens need to secure their own staff and premises. They are a business that relies on reputation and trust and so they won't scare you now with their harsh realities but they do exist. They are in a lock-down city where I'm not sure all their staff can come in as they are not a "crucial" or "mission-critical" business. It doesn't matter if they are "100% working from home" because it's not like "home" is a magic unicorn realm that won't have its Internet cut off or slowed soon. Some staff may have the virus already. I don't know whether they were able to fit themselves under "media" or "IT services" that are listed in city and state protocols as "critical". They are and they aren't. So don't place unnecessary and selfish demands on them. They have a lot of remote workers and so on and they can strengthen that but they need their own war chest now to survive, not to waste it on people who in fact have resources -- their users. Somebody who can't spend even US $5 on a rental in SL without a premium account is someone who likely shouldn't waste their electricity playing on SL.

1. You don't need to literally read a Chomsky book to read Chomsky as it has bled into much of college courses anyway in various forms, shaping your concept of "The Man" who is out to get you and suppressing all your freedoms. 2. There isn't any such thing as "everybody knows" anymore or "The Press" precisely because the media is so diverse now. The last time I remember everybody watching the exact same television show called "Huntley Brinkley" was when I was riding my bike down the street in Niagara Falls, NY in 1961, and a teenage boy rushed by and warned me that "Huntley Brinkley" was starting and I saw the dads coming home from work in time for Huntley Brinkley". By 1962, Ramparts magazine had started and -- oh, never mind, history is lost on the ideological such as yourself. 3. This is just a crazy, wild-eyed idea -- but maybe you can't find any unbiased news sources because...you're biased yourself. 4. Twitter has a great diversity of truths and falsehoods and the wisdom is to know the difference. 5. You're welcome to have the last word as debates with anonymous people in SL even if they went to college 30 years ago are seldom rewarding.

I'm in NYC, and I simply can't take a wild statement like that seriously, especially as I work in journalism. We have an enormously diverse, wild and free media, including even "oligarch" owned. There are enormous numbers of totally scrappy independent outlets that exist either on volunteer contributions or meager subscriptions. There are Twitter accounts with hundreds of thousands -- millions -- of viewers that function like media, like radio used to. That you can write something like that lets me know that you cannot read anything except perhaps the Noam Chomsky books on your college reading list or perhaps you only read The Intercept. But if you even read just the Intercept, funded by an oligarch who used to be on the board of Linden Lab (Pierre Omidyaar), you'd grasp that your claim that we need to "pretend" USA is "still" a democracy is a wild exaggeration. But Good Lord on a crutch, you could at least listen to Amy Goodmann on "Democracy Now".

Do you run a Second Life business that in fact is your real-life income with which you feed your family? Is your little side business in SL now what your family may have to rely on because your RL jobs are paused, shuttered, done? Tweet your Congress people to include e-Commerce in the bailout for business due to COVID-19 https://www.ebaymainstreet.com/campaign/tell-congress-dont-leave-small-ecommerce-businesses-behind?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_1098838

I'm glad you're at least thinking in the right direction. Well as Rodney Collin said, if you can't do anything else, if you have nothing else to give, you can at least give a smile, that costs nothing. I think what many are slow to grasp now is the interconnectivity and interdependedness of human beings. If self-care doesn't involve an eye to the Golden Rule and basic decency and old-fashioned religious self-sacrifice, it's in fact damaging to the self in the long run. I bet we're going to hear enormous screaming from people whose Internet has slowed down or Amazon slowed or stopped as these services either turn themselves to mission-critical work or are ordered to do so by authorities. We're going to hear an enormous amount of ranting and raving from Ayn Rand libertarians and Soviet-style socialists which abound in the Second Life community that "the man" has "trampled" on their rights, that either the Deep State or Evil Capitalism have crushed their special snowflakes. Other-care *is* self-care now. And that's why I'm not going to be discouraged by notions of "staying on topic" that may be too limited. Even on a very good day, the forums are a toxic, self-centered, self-aggrandizing place with most posters never actually logging in world or sticking their head up above their hunker bunker to see what the rest of society is all about. So for self-care for some might quite rightly be simply ignoring forums like this, Reddit, Twitter etc if you don't have the ability to screen facts and usefulness out from insanity.

I actually think a completely different approach is needed. Yes, self care is nice and as I said, knowing from my years at the UN, the first rule of relief work is never to become a case yourself. Make sure you have food and water and medicine if you need it. Even so, our society could use more Christian/Jewish/Muslim/religious ethos of self-sacrifice for the sake of others. I'm ok. Do I need to worry about putting on lotion now or should I see if my elderly neighbour has food? Yes, fresh air is nice, but have I even called my grandmother? I think not enough people realize that this is not about a chance to hole up and watch Netflix and practice your omelette recipes and post funny pictures of your cat. If you are able bodied and not sick, you need to figure out what you are doing to lesson the burden in your community for those who are sick or taking care of the sick.

I guess you don't appreciate the value of your free press in the EU, which is available to question, correct, and independently check things like UN statistics. As for your other extreme libertarianism and hatred and suspicion of multilateral institutions -- which itself becomes a kind of totalitarianism -- no bandwidth no, sorry.

In the United States, the states are responsible for health, education and welfare, not the federal government, except at a higher level of aid to states that are less well off. So do start ignoring Trump; sparring with Trump; expecting a bailout from Trump. I'm very glad that Cuomo, who I voted for but am not thrilled with (his stance on abortion and his corruption) is exercising real leadership and taking drastic measures that need to be taken. DeBlasio should be removed or ignored the way Trump should be. The NJ governor is also doing pretty well with this. Local leaders are what you need to look to and encourage now. The endless blathering about what Trump did or didn't do now is so irrelevant that I have no words. What's relevant is whether a local leader can commandeer hotels to provide hospital beds and enforce shelter in place while keeping free media open.

Could I urge all of you that are still in relatively safe conditions, with food, running water and Internet, and your main concern a slow run of Netflix or Balducci's taking more than an hour to deliver or your Amazon groceries a day late: you do not have the luxury to be scared, do not be scared, and focus on doing every single thing in your power to help first yourself to survive (first rule of rescue work is never become a case yourself), then your immediate family and neighbours with as much groundedness in real life and bricks and mortar as you can muster while sheltering in place and practicing social distancing and clean hands (please disinfect glasses and doornobs too). I'm at Ground Zero for the virus, across from hospital row in New York City. We have the most cases in the country. It's very bad here, and the newspapers do not even know the worst of it yet. I've already been in quarantine for 14 days now as I'm immune-compromised. My medicines began to run out and basic staples. I can't go to the store, which were emptying even 2 weeks ago. NOTHING I have ordered on line has arrived, whether from 14 days ago; 7 days ago; let alone 4 days ago. Not "overnight prime Amazon"; not "overnight" FEDEX. Local store deliveries take a minimum of *three days*; local pharmacies are NOT delivering, full stop. My daughter has been working in a hospital without masks because they've run out. She's screening frightened cancer patients and their relatives for the virus. Her co-workers are sick. It has breached the hospital walls as you may have read. She was able to get a few masks from her boyfriend's job. After worker protests, her hospital is now issuing more masks -- but they have to be reused. Surgeons, doctors, are reusing all protective items. So my goal, and yours too, should be NOT to end up in the hospital. Don't fall in your house; don't party at bars and get infected and infect others; stay home. If your symptoms are mild, stay home and don't overwhelm the system. There are no tests instantly on demand at this worst place in the country; they are *rationed*. They are rationed even for medical personnel. My son and his wife were helping me, but they can't now. They stopped being able to smell or taste food the last few days, which they found hugely weird, although they only feel a little tired. Unfortunately this weird loss of smell and taste is a classic and well documented feature of this virus -- Google it. They've watched as their local business and others have shuttered overnight, leaving open the question how any of them will buy food, even if rent can be postponed. The Costcos near them in NJ was empty last week. My church is overwhelmed with taking care of sick and elderly; my tenants' committee is overwhelmed. Thank God a college kid from a synagogue who started "Invisible Hands" was able send over somebody to first go to my doorman, then my mailbox, searching for a FEDEX of vital meds that never came; then wait in line at the pharmacy to finally get me 30 days. They won't issue 90 days which everyone thinks they will as they advertise it. Not without a doctor's permission. Good luck getting your doctor on the phone or through apps now. I am not scared. I am not panicked. I've been in quarantines before; I've been in disasters before, like Hurricane Sandy. It's bad, but FDR had it right when he said the only thing to fear is fear itself. I'm going to keep doing my RL jobs, which fortunately I still have; keep helping my family, and keep open my little SL business. What I do want to stress -- and nobody wants to hear it because while they can accept the dire situation of the virus, they don't want to hear that their salvation from that -- the Internet -- is going to slow down, get really slow or non-operative, and stop. So plan accordingly. Do not rely on Amazon or FEDEX for medicines, pet food, groceries. Start figuring out what real-life organizations, institutions, people, individuals can help with this -- and be one of those people yourself to help. That's how we will pull through. Linden Lab is in a shelter-in-place city. Ebbe didn't explain how he is dealing with that and whether his workers can come into the office or whether anyone will consider they are "media" or "education" and "mission critical" (likely not) and let them physically keep their doors open. Thank God the Lindens developed the MoonLab, and all of the wonderfulness of SL, but SL is tied to RL. Except people to disappear, as they did with the Japan earthquake, Sandy, etc. Only way worse. Except people not to be able to log on and do things for you that you take for granted. Try to be helpful instead of whining then.

Er, what you make of it is that statistics and reporting to the UN in a country like China controlled by the Communist Party are cooked.

Good thing the Lindens ignore the forums when they make marketing decisions.

I read the other thread, and read about Roblox, which I don't think you can compare to SL. The reason Roblox has a billion users is that it has a built-in "things to do". SL doesn't have that. Most people can't make their own fun, and it's not a slam on them, why should they have to? Most entertainment in life is made by companies, not by you. SL is free, too.

I got several notices today from Dinkie groups about various fun, games, prizes -- and they didn't even seem to involve chipmunk voices, although they might have. Again, this already exists; you're soaking in it; you create it yourself. WHY do you want the Lindens to make it for you??? As for all the comments about the Metaverse, you do have to go back 10 or even 15 years and read the literature on this that existed way before Fortnite, and even before Second Life, and isn't just about Snowcrash. It's helpful to read past literature, for example the book Exodus to the Virtual World by Edward Castronova published in 2008 (and his other books published around that time)- now that was 12 years ago. I remember hearing Ted speak at the conference at New York Law School which was also the venue for the first SL meet-up with Philip Rosedale, the creator, present and Cory Ondrejka and other famous pioneer Lindens and philosophers like Richard Bartle -- now we're talking 16 years ago, ancient history! His thesis was that people would become so addicted to virtual worlds and gaming in particular, that the National Guard would have to be sent in to haul them away from their computers and force them to work at jobs that maintain critical infrastructure like electrical power plants and food and deliveries and such. Imagine! He was the first person I heard talk about bitcoin before it was called that. He said that terms like "virtual economy" or "virtual content" would lose their descriptors in 10 years because all economy would be virtual, all content, etc. etc. I haven't seen anything from him in ages, and it's not fashionable, and now there are other people, at conferences not subsidized by game companies, that find that yes, violence in RL is linked to violent video games, something he denied and is still denied and furiously fought about, although there is more and more studies that support this. It's funny, he denies that reality, yet he could mount a thesis that people would get so busy playing Fortnite that they wouldn't keep the electricity on in their city. He and others never explained why gaming or virtuality never became a massive phenomenon -- yet social media did. I remember we went out to an outdoor cafe -- it was in September -- and we were sitting with Pathfinder Linden (John Lester) who had on this SL necklace which the Lindens sold then, like swag. And there were tourists from Florida or something, and Pathfinder, sounding like the member of some cult or secret society, told these tourists who asked about the hand-eye icon that few were in on this secret now, but soon the entire world would know about it and be in it! That was how these virtuality zealots talked about SL back in the day. Philip confidently said that all the office buildings in NYC would be empty, because there'd be no use for them, because everything would be virtualized and be on a 3D Internet, which would be based in SL and similar platforms. It was taken for granted that the 3D Internet would be here any day, and I first saw the "Internet of Things" proto-typed in SL by I believe Yoz Linden -- and again, this was 15 years ago. I could go on and on. There were these enormous conferences with thousands of people coming to buy into the virtual world craze of 2006-2007. One year it was even at the Jacob Javits center next to Toy Fair, the biggest industry expo. And now, Toys 'R Us is closed, Internet-tied toys didn't take off, and the entrepreneur who used to run those big virtual world conferences -- Chris Sherman -- morphed to augmented reality, and other kinds of things because it was a "virtual world winter" it was said. Google even ran a virtual world for awhile called "Lively" that died and went to the Google graveyard with other products much touted like Google Plus. I see some of these people I have kept up with as friends over the years sold off their virtual reality businesses and got into other things like SEO or streaming music or who knows what. Corey Linden works at Facebook as VP of engineering now, you know? A Naval officer who once worked at NSA, who was CTO at LL and left over a disagreement with Philip, evidently related to whether the entire thing should be open-sourced or just the viewer. There's a staggering amount of history. The people who have worked at SL are are responsible for its features come from some of the best companies, with the best skills, there are people from IBM or Microsoft or whatever. A former Linden created Fair Vote which is about lobbying ranked voting which is now popular and even implemented (not something I support). The point is, the Metaverse came and went, and left in its wake people who know make it easier for you to see just the cats you want to see on Facebook or Twitter, not other cats. It is now ramping up for another "Virtual World Spring" and round of wonderfulness, after the VR goggles thing tanked? Oh, I don't know. I don't think so? The coronavirus pandemic might make it seem as if now SL has found its time. The things that make people stay home or need to seek entertainment (there are more movie goers in a depression) or need remote meetings online may give it a bump, but the tether to real life is strong. If people lose jobs or have to tend the sick or be sick or lose property or homes, they are less available for online life, not more.

I suppose your animosity toward me preceded this discussion because of the way you have reacted to literally one line that suggested "Tinyland" is not a viable project for LL in a marketing sense -- and a line that came after agreeding with your point that "creator" is not just a literal maker or scripter but also a decorator. You could have said, "Thanks for buying my Dinkie wares, Prokofy, on the MP, and I'm glad you're interested in tinies". No, instead, a line that merely states an opinion based on fact leads to round after round and the really ineffective argument "you don't know me" -- ineffective because nobody knows anybody in SL, everyone has a fictitious avatar to some level or another, so it is what it is. I don't perceive Dinkies as "child avatars" and you don't, but it doesn't matter. It was in *the Dinkie discussion group itself* that I first heard complaints of Dinkies being banned "as child avatars". So others see tinies of any type as child avatars, and they aren't wrong to do so, quite frankly, so there's little you can do about it. Child avatars might have a better reception if they didn't try to push the envelop (remember how they landed at the opening of Zindra and demanded the right to be present on this *adult* content *devoted to public sex*? Not much more you need to cite than *that*, but scads of bad experience, with griefing also notable, leads to this attitude. Now to return to the topic of LL's marketing. Would LL make a stand-alone world, with its own accounts, log-ins, monetary system, engine, etc. etc. I think you don't to be a rocket scientist, after Sansar has just been announced on the block and the staff fired, to conclude, noooo, the Lindens are not going to be creating any stand-alone worlds which they would create to give you a controlled Dinkie/tiny/etc experience. Would LL make a separate *continent* like Nautilus or Bellissaria, devoted to tinies? Well, maybe, but I also think it's not likely. Remember Elderglen? I do, because I lived there for some time. I liked the content there, I liked the house styles, I played the game with the fairy jars, I made a wizard house open to the public with various magic things shown. There were elves and fairies, too of course there. But it was empty, because that's not what most people wanted. Most people are norms, and they don't want to RP anything except "human norm". Sure, fairies or wizards are different than Tinies. Still, it's an experience you can use as a yardstick to predict the likelihood of LL doing this. If anything, they are continuing to produce "norm" after "norm" stuff -- houseboats, Victorian homes, campers, and now log homes. I don't think hobbit caves or Dinkie miniature abodes are likely to come because it's too much a niche. Only the maker of the original Dinkie avatar knows how many she has sold -- it's got to be thousands and thousands, but not half a million. And why would you want the Lindens to take over this thriving, creative niche?! Here Etheria Parrot, the Dinkie creator has made a remarkable avatar that isn't too "cute" and that has "cat" but avoids some of the cliches. The eyes are very different, not just the cliche "cute" wide eyes of an animal cartoon or child. Those eyes create expressions which seem to range from "a little grumpy from being awoken too early from my nap" to "haunted at the things I saw in trench warfare at the Somme" -- but that's just it, it's a range, and like the expression-free dolls of the Montessori schools that are supposed to stimulate imagination rather than killing it (as Barbies are supposed to do), the Dinkie eyes enable people to have a wide range with it, and are very compelling. Only God can make a tree, and the Lindens make pretty good trees (some continue to hold up well 16 years later), but only a resident -- not a Linden -- can make a Dinkie, you know? Truly. The Dinkie thing has spawned ENORMOUS numbers of clothes, scenes, props -- the freebies made by Veloce are bar none, the best, most intricate and well-working interactive freebies of any kind from any group I've seen. WHY would you want the Lindens to co-opt this??? Tinyland exists already. There are entire communities and shopping centers just for tinies. It just boggles the mind while you would want the Lindens to capture this and manage it for you -- which inevitably would end up homogenizing it and flattening it and locking some out. Why would you, as a creator who makes and sells things for Dinkies, want the Lindens to take over this niche? Do you believe it would bring you more customers? The Lindens do what they want, of course, and who knows, Patch, who has Neko ears (elf ears? some kind of ears) may lean toward the Dinkie/tiny/woodland creatures for all we know. But I think it's unlikely, and not even advisable. If you want a Tinyland, buy 10 sims and run them, like Mieville does. it's a lot of work, it requires a lot of sacrifice, imagination, diplomacy and it's fragile as we have seen. One person dies or one person is sick -- it suffers. Even so, there is a group that rallies, it has a spirit, activities, content -- it's a model for such niche communities. (BTW there are a lot of tinies in Mieville it seems, which has a Steampunk theme). So before getting the Lindens to do X community, it would be good to do it yourself on 10 sims, with your friends who share your views. Lock out who you want; block who you want; do what you want. You don't need the Lindens for this. Should there be yet another option, where the Lindens helps such themed RP communities, or "communities of purpose" of any kind, with a more hands-off but helpful means, as they do with RL educators by giving them non-profit tax-free rates? (Because they have RL tax-free papers from authorities). Just as they give 10% extra land to use in a group as a bonus to land contributions to a group, shouldn't they do something extra like that to help RP survive? I don't know what such a thing would be -- making all texture uploads only 5L instead of 10? Adding more prims? If they did that, they would first get outrage from those who felt this was more favoritism, and they'd get deluged by groups who aren't really a dedicated theme but just want free stuff. And remember, this isn't about getting the Lindens to do more and pay more themselves. It's about them MARKETING and getting more users. So how does making the land you'd like to see do that? I might like them to make Buryat Mongolia, but I know that I -- and the only real Mongolian that I have found in SL -- are probably going to like it, plus the odd dragon or yurt camper. So I make it myself, you know? So what this comes back to is your notion that parents want an Animal Crossing kind of game that they play "after hours" when the kids are in bed. And this is based on what kind of data or even anecdotal impression? I don't think the demographics cross. There are those Moms who play WoW and swear like sailors and beat all the bosses, but they are a minority. I do see husbands and wives plus the occasional child playing Free Sims Online -- the Sims Online always had that interesting phenomenon of actual families in RL, who came from playing the offline game to playing online. The top traffic FSO houses are often actual Mom & Pop shops who actual find the mindless repetitiveness of the Sims to be soothing. I don't think there's a basis to market to "families" or "mom and dad after hours but still for kids" with SL.

Norman Rockwell made his painting in November 1942, based on FDR's 1941 speech on the "Four Freedoms" (it's "Freedom from Want"). It was published in 1943. I think it's more likely that this dumpling mix, which look like it came from the 1960s, judging from the wide collar, tie, and haircut and photo qualities, was consciously copying Rockwell's painting because the company would know it would find resonance with people who knew Rockwell's iconic painting. Unless you can put an earlier date than 1942 on this photo, but it doesn't seem so.

This has been an interesting thread, and it proves several things: o the idea of what is NFSW is subjective, especially for @Beth Macbain o depending on your Twitter settings, location, and past search history, you see different things. Even so, most people will find a lot of NFSW furries on that search. Even a furry who describes himself as going through three phases of fandom says there are lots of NSFW furries. So I think this is the usual story of either denial, or desire to be contrary to anything I say just because I say it It has been pointed out that there's a lot of porn on Twitter. Yuck, that's for sure. And I don't wish to view it and don't click on it, so it's not showing up on a search of "second life" because I view porn. If anything I am harassed by Russian trolls using porn as a means of shocking and annoying, and block such accounts. I have "show safe content" checked ON -- which I hadn't realized because I never bother with net-nannying settings -- and I would need to leave it on my RL account because I have to tweet for some of my jobs. And because all kinds of free speech, LGBT, torture, human rights, war etc content can be declared as "unsafe" or "sensitive", I would need to keep it checked. I *un*checked in on my @prokofy account and that cleaned up the furry related stream in search somewhat, so that's good to know. But it isn't even just "NSFW" and graphic furry sex, it's just furries period be associated with SL. And as much as you want to yammer on about how "this is the Internet and get over it," it need not be that way when you simply post other content, and not in the contrarian way Beth suggests, merely to add graphic human sex, but other non-sexualized topics so that SL is presented more diversely. There really isn't a way to do this in some widespread way and the Lindens aren't going to put to work 100 interns doing this because Twitter might then ban them as having deliberate, targeted Russian troll like behaviour. I could note I did this search on my RL account which has "Moscow" set for its location so that I can see the hashtags popular for that location. I *think* that means that I also have to have censored what Twitter decides it will censor because the Russian government asked it to, merely to keep its service from totally being blocked. And that's annoying but I have another account set to "New York" so it's all good. But that Moscow-centric account is what produced the furry deluge -- there's a lot of Russian furries, did you know? And graphic ones at that. There isn't any "skewing" of my narrative here @Storm Clarence I've REPORTED ON what I found on a Twitter search. That's what you do in a normal democratic free society. It has all the usual parameters we all know from the way social media companies skew your search. I've now tried this on three different accounts after reading about the "safe settings" issue and the "location" issue and while some of the most graphic stuff doesn't show, it's still mainly furries associated with Second Life, the search term. It's not like YOUR search of "second life" on Twitter is going to produce fairies and unicorns and rainbows and no furries, so let's not be children here. The purpose of discussions is to add facts and information and useful opinions, and this thread has done that by pointing out the issue of settings, history, location. Chaser has reported with a useful post based on real experience, "So in summary, I don't feel it is much of a problem as most people looking for info about Second Life as a business platform will have nsfw enabled on twitter, and if they did, they probably wouldn't be the type to judge considering theres some pretty weird stuff on twitter." And I certainly take that point. But this topic veered off into the "UNSAFE" furries not filtered out. And ultimately, there's a different, larger issue that it's furries IN GENERAL in the search, and for the average prejudiced person deliberating about SL, their association with furries will be a) sex b) griefing/harassment. Which is unfortunately because it's not the majority of furry presentation in reality, or the majority of SL as a whole, either.

I don't know which sect you are referring to, but most Christian churches believe that Jesus redeemed the world and time, not that He merely made time stand still by dying. He descended down into hell but arose again on the third day. It seems to me you're leaving out the central tenet of the Christian faith -- Christ doesn't condemn us to time but in fact rescues us from time by offering us eternal life. We move through time and according to this belief we reach eternity, which is not the deadness of time or death but infinity. The idea of the "time standing still" is similar to some pagan or Eastern religions with a notion of eternal recurrence, or the failure to advance out of time. The Russian mystic Pytor Ouspensky, a student of Gurdjieff's, wrote a novel called "The Strange Life of Ivan Asokin" in which a man gets to repeat his life, but each time he comes to an incident where he could make a choice and change his life, he finds he can't, and does the same thing again because of his unchanged nature, til the end where he gets the bullet -- and the whole thing starts over again. This story line was taken for the popular movie "Groundhog Day" and quite deliberately, as you can read in various places. Bill Murray himself was a student of Gurdjieff. Long story short, I don't think that real life or Second Life are simulations and that God toys with us; I think we are created with free will. I don't know about 1970, but I have a folder in my inventory that says "1969" after the Lindens took my account and overhauled it because it was so buggy from so much inventory, and had it machine-separated into folders. "1969" is what happens on a computer system when the date isn't known. Not sure why it didn't go to 2004 and created that folder, but it did. I saw that in my hospital file which was completely lost as well during an overhaul of their system. It would put in putative AIDS tests for 1969, which would not be possible as AIDS hadn't been discovered then. If you stare into the abyss too long you see...an abyss. There is lots more to life so look up.

That's a reasonable prognosis. I do see some indications, however, that people who fled SL might be back, especially universities and some businesses. Certainly every company from Subway to Via to Google is flooding my email box now telling me what good deeds they are doing now with this virus epidemic. So LL will be no different, and there are ways they can do this tastefully and with sensitivity.

Here are some OTHER Normal Rockwell paintings that actually depict Second Life scenes more than those above -- he was more complex than some people imagine. Perhaps they better depict the insularity, prejudices, hatreds, browbeating, and horror-story recounting that is particularly concentrated on the forums. Like cynical and suspicious attitudes towards religious believers -- who still make up a large percent of the population. Like attitudes towards minorities and those who are different. Like attitudes towards those with terrible experiences. Like attitudes towards those who refuse to go around with the received wisdom of the "crowd".

Do a search on Twitter with the term "Second Life". If this link doesn't work just go to twitter.com and type the term in yourself. And here's what you will find: Furries, furries, and MORE furries. And in fact some of the most graphic and grotesque furries you have ever seen, of the kind you actually never see out and about in Second Life. There are even clips of furries having graphic sex. Loads of them. Scads, droves. Now, I don't have anything against furries as such -- I have long had a dragon and some other animal avatars and now have several Dinkies. My tenants are furries. Furries are thought to be the soul of SL in some ways, although for me, elves and fairies are more the soul, but whatever, it's different for everyone. But this is a particular kind of very exhibitionist furry -- it's often the males who have those female furry avatars with the ENORMOUS boobs -- or other bits. And that is the face of Second Life and draws ridicule. Nothing can or should be done about it -- except to post other kinds of things -- of course first overcoming the hurdle you inevitably must overcome as your friends and family say, discovering your post about Second Life on your RL social media counts, "Isn't that the furry sex place?" No, it's not just one account with a lot of posts. It's numerous accounts. I have an SL Twitter account that I go on every few days @Prokofy Neva -- I was an early adapter of Twitter on this account, and I actually never see those furry pics and graphic clips go by when I'm casually reading through Twitter. I had to make a point of looking for them (Twitter like other social media funnels what you see to your friends or things you've liked, so I tend to see lots of exploration pictures and videos and stories of new sites, not graphic furries. But if you look on Twitter now, what's interesting is that there's also now a smattering of posts from universities, saying they are dusting off their old SL campuses due to the need for remote learning now; one says "People laughed when we spent six figures building an SL campus but who's laughing now?" A number of universities and businesses are now including SL in lists of recommended sites where to have meetings, and posting on Twitter. And facing skepticism and ridicule. So what do you figure the turn-off is? What is SL ALREADY associated with? Graphic furries. Teachers fear these graphic, hyper-sexualized furries distracting their students and businesses fear it will harm their brand. Of course those of us actually *in* SL know that this is a caricature, an exaggeration, "not what it's really like". And there is no way you could stop such posts nor would you want to. People should be free to do what they want on social media. But here the Lindens are spending time and money on ad campaigns; here everyone is arguing about how they should be done, but for free, another massive, home-made ad campaign is going on that drives away many customers, even if it might attract a niche, and that is "Furries of Twitter". Sure, come on and defend the furry life and the graphic furry sex life, that's fine, I'm all for that. But surely you can see the problem when it becomes *the only way SL is envisioned*. And that's unfair, because it's far more diverse than that. I see hundreds of sims, I go to all kinds of events, including things like "We ❤️ RP" where you'd expect to see strange furry get-ups -- but I'm telling you, I have never seen a more graphic and off-putting parade as I have seen just now on Twitter, as I look at it through the eyes of people potentially looking over SL as a possible venue to have virtual meetings. So this is why I mention again that ad campaigns have to stress that people can control their environment -- the way they look, who they let into their space, how their space is used. Controlling the environment. This is the secret sauce of SL that Philip mentioned early on. And to be sure, griefers override things like island ban efforts. But truly, there is a great deal you can do to control your experience, and griefing is far from the bane sometimes imagined -- and I speak as someone targeted specifically for harassment for what I do in SL and RL with some of the most persistent and grotesque griefing out there. What can be done about this? Nothing directly -- you can only put out MORE stuff so that the mix is more diverse.

Here's some polls I have which are mainly answered by newbies because they are at infohubs. Not all of them, but many of them. It only allows one vote per avatar, but of course with the existence of alts and even what you might call "Family Voting," the results are not pristine. Even so, it's more than what most people collect: Some of my polls don't have very many answers -- but what are polls anyway? Devices to measure the opinion of everyone who likes to answer a survey -- not an ACTUAL measure of opinion LOL. Here it is: Baileya: 3950 Ballots (This has run probably 10 years?) How Can Newbie Experience Be Improved? Simplify Orientation Island 452 Have a Buddy System 581 Provide Jobs to Newbies 1797 Have Paid Help-Desk 24/7 258 Suggest Places to Visit 862 So the "Jobs" have it and interestingly, long before there was a Destination recommendation section, this was getting higher votes and still has the second most high. In Ross: Do you like Second Life 185 votes since 6/27/2017 I just got here 54 votes 29% Not it's too hard 9 votes 5% Not it's boring 7 votes 4% I used to buy my friends are gone 27 votes 15% Yes it's ok but needs improvement 24 votes 13# Yes I love it! 64 votes 35% I hope to find a voter than lets you have more than one answer (not more than one avatar vote) and I will ask about clothing and the library.

Thankees!