Wired: Modern Times

[Kindrift]

Last week's Wired and writer Julian Dibbell introduce the world to the culture of Something Awful and 4chan.  The ramifications of a serious business Internet are explained from the points of view of Goonfleet, W-Hat, the Patriotic Nigras and Encyclopedia Dramatica.  Furries are included as favored targets, those on Second Life are appopriately described as a group of too-serious and oversexed weirdos.  The article takes a decidedly supportive but cautious view of the act of griefing -- which in turn brings out crazy Internet troll Catherine Fitzpatrick of the Second Life Herald.

Dibbell feels to me like those Sovietologists that wrote about the Soviet Union for so long, and tried so hard to understand it, that they wound up embracing the Kremlin, not only because they needed to get and keep access to sources, but because once they understood the dynamics of the Soviet mind, they liked it precisely because they understood it and now had a role in revealing it to others and kept dining out on it for years. Then they forgot to step back and condemn it.

She defends her claim that flying penises are exactly like terrorism in many... many... amusingly many walls of text scattered through the comment section, and in doing so proves exactly what the griefers set out to say.  Together we can create a better world, or something.

[Sono_hito]

giving legitimacy to asshats. awesome.... Sure, never take anything in life overly serious. To me though, once real life money gets involved in something, whether for entertainment purposes or not, it becomes serious business. The anonymity of the internet makes such behaviour easy to accomplish without any dirrect ramification. (unless you piss off the wrong person and they know how to track you down) i guess thats the good and the bad of teh interwebs.

[ProvincialTwit]

Tsk.  You're probably definitely going to be in the minority here as far as those particular opinions are concerned. 

The biggest flaw in your argument, the idea that once real life money gets involved in something..., doesn't really hold up when it comes to Second Life.  The vast majority of furries...hell, the vast majority of everyone...are on free accounts and never spend a dime on the game.  These are the same furries who never spend a dime on hosting their godawful smut on free services like FA or VCL, and then have the nerve to bitch and complain when things aren't perfect.  On top of that, the L$ is completely worthless.  LL state directly that directly in their TOS - at any given moment, there could be a 'server error' and - poof - you're broke and SOL.  If anything, people are taking more of a risk of going broke on SL than they are of getting 'griefed'.

Additionally, Prokofy Neva is fucking batshit insane and therefore anything connected to her immediately loses all legitimacy.  According to her line of thought, we, here, on this tiny little internet forum, keeping to ourselves and merely reporting the absurdity of the outside world, are somehow 'griefing' and/or 'contributing to griefers'.  What?  And by extension, by posting here, you too have become one!  OH NOES.

Anyway, I'm hesitant to speak ill of Anonymous, because Anonymous does not forgive.  Is what they do 'wrong'?  Perhaps, to an extent.  When it comes to SL, I see it as exploiting huge gaping holes in a very flawed system.  Blame not the hacker who finds a security hole; blame the admin who failed to patch it.  In similar fashion, blame not the griefers for their flying dong attacks, blame the Lindens who are too busy raking in money hand-over-fist to bother implementing fixes that would prevent such things.

Oh and as your own signature says, Second Life is for people who can't handle the first.  Someone who has invested so much time and real money into a poorly-rendered avatar's trials and tribulations in a laggy and buggy virtual landscape is obviously taking the Internet too goddamn seriously, and probably needs a nice long break from their computer.

[Sono_hito]

FA and VCL account whining. im the first in line to tell the people to STFU. free stuff is free and should be enjoyed for what it is. FREE. when people bitch and moan when stuff they have spent nothing on, i bitch right back at them to grow up and deal with it. Hense why any time somone attempts to "grief" me in SL i just lol and move on. Its when it interferes with legitimate business that i feel its wrong. are people wise at all to base income off something as nebulous as an online game that can just as easily crap out like you noted? no, i think they are fucked up in the head. in a word its just stupid.

Have i spent RL money in SL, sure a few bucks here and there. But still much less overall than i would spend on even a months worth of subscription for a real MMO such as eve-online. (WoW can kiss my ass....fucking MMO on rails...)

If we where to equate th is behaviour to RL situations it would not be tolerated. because of the anonymity people get away with, and are celebrated for, behaviour that would land them criminal charges if done in real world situations. But maybe im just taking things a bit too seriously. i dunno. i just want to be able to have a fun time devoid of drama that people seem to enjoy creating in something designed purely for enjoyment. Ill openly admit to having a slightly skewed sense of things though.

[Sono_hito]

Oh and as your own signature says, Second Life is for people who can't handle the first.  Someone who has invested so much time and real money into a poorly-rendered avatar's trials and tribulations in a laggy and buggy virtual landscape is obviously taking the Internet too goddamn seriously, and probably needs a nice long break from their computer.

heh, at the time i chose that sig, without getting too personal, i needed a break from RL. so it was very pertinant to my situation at the time. is it true now? pfft. ive got enough going on that i havent logged into my SL account in over a month. And even then less than an hour when i did. Do i hold the game on some pedestal above ridicule? HAHA. hell no. nothing is above scrutiny as far as im concerned. but i still recognise it for what it is, a sandbox that you can do more in than most other "games?". i would still rather play eve though than SL.

[LordNagetiere]

giving legitimacy to asshats. awesome.... Sure, never take anything in life overly serious. To me though, once real life money gets involved in something, whether for entertainment purposes or not, it becomes serious business.

I got through about a paragraph of asking what the hell was wrong with you before I realized you were talking about the measly dog-dongesque cubes being exchanged for fractions of a cent rather than being just another furry bitching about the cost of registering at SA.

I know of one (1) furry who actually makes a higher profit on SL than he spends. One. A grand exchange of capitalism it is not, it's just a bunch of you spending two bucks on ugly shit. Whoopty-do.

[Valente]

I finally post!

I came out of second life about 400 dollars richer than I came in.