Digital Deity

Earlier this year I wrote an essay asking the question: Has XStreetSL lost it’s soul?

I now contend that it has.

In my previous essay I argued that XStreet’s soul was it’s staff. That the people who ran the website were the ones who made it great. I gave examples of the people who worked there before the acquisition and then contrasted it with an example from the new, Linden Lab^® appointed, employees.

I now realize that my argument was false and that the true soul of XStreet is the vociferous community that has been built around it’s  forums. Collectively the forum users provide a source of conscience, and heart, to what would be an otherwise coldly functional e-commerce site. I hadn’t seen this before because when XStreet was run by Jay and crew they were also a part of the community. They engaged us in dialog, fought and argued, and showed that they were more than just corporate stooges. After LL took over we have found ourselves to be separated, marginalized, and now completely cut off from the site. The new owners are not a part of the community. They do not care to join. I cannot blame them for it, they are busy folks, and we are, apparently, small.

Right from the start they worked to separate XStreet from it’s soul. The first announcement by Apotheus indicated that XStreet had been acquired and directed us to discuss it on the official Second Life^® forums rather than XStreet’s own forums. We were directed to a place where we did not have a tight knit sense of community and of course we refused. The forums (XStreet) were abuzz with discussion and speculation about the changes.

The next day our reaction had elicited the following response from Jay (Apotheus)

The reaction to the Xstreet acquisition announcement has been passionate and thoughtful. I wanted to share some thoughts with you now that I have had a chance to read some of the feedback from the community. I can assure you from my experience in working with the Linden Lab ecommerce team, Linden Lab recognizes that Xstreet is more than a set of features. They understand that Xstreet is a community of Merchants, Shoppers and engaged community leaders. The value of the Second Life world hinges on the Residents who both create and reside there and Xstreet is a reflection and an enhancement to that world.

Note the bolded text.

At this point the soul of XStreet (the forum users) were still being listened to. However the next few lines indicate what is to come:

Xstreet is also a team of virtual commerce professionals who have built the leader in delivering online virtual goods to Second Life.

In other words a polite nod to the merchants who are not participating in the forums. The ones who view the website as a means to an end and have absolutely no care for community. Commerce professionals to whom the bottom line is money.

What is interesting, to me, is that LL was aware of this division and knew that the loudest part of the site was going to be the forum users. I think that from the start they viewed us as a nuisance, an adversary even, but that they needed to be gentle in removing us from interferring in their plans.

One of the more debated aspects of this post from Apotheus was the following passage:

Linden Lab values and learns from forum conversations and recognizes the value of the forum community. We are still looking for the best way to support Second Life forums and to encourage free speech while still keeping the forums a positive and productive exchange of ideas. Linden Lab will be evaluating how the Xstreet forum fits into the overall Linden Lab plan for forums and fostering online community.

A nice little reassurance that certainly quelled a lot of fears while also promising nothing.

Eventually we were to learn that most of this paragraph was false. Let us examine.

“encourage free speech”

It took us a while to realize the extant to which the new moderators on the forums encouraged free speech. The reason it took so long was because, unlike previous moderators, the new moderation consisted of removing entire topics from the forums, without any explanation at all. You would be happily posting and then suddenly recieve a message, “This topic does not exist”, and you would have no idea why. It could be a legitimate reason for the removal or it could not. There was no room for finding out, especially since forum policy stated that you cannot discuss a topic after it had been moderated. I saw times when a topic disappeared and I could guess why and other times when there was nothing in the topic that seemed inflammatory or illegal. Sometimes those topics talked about LL’s competitors.

Another interesting example of our free speech was when a regular forum member began to start posting topics about food. She would post a picture and name of the item and people would talk about it. Judging from the number of enthusiastic responses these topics were popular. A few months ago I was forced offline due to some RL difficulties so I was not there when this happened but apparently LL said that she could no longer post these food related topics. The extraordinary part is that apparently many forum members then began posting their own versions of the food topics in protest of this action. I do not know the outcome of all of this but it is an interesting example of “free speech” nonetheless. Hopefully someone can help enlighten me about this incident in the comments to this essay.

Today LL makes no attempt at all to pretend to free speech. Their new forum guidelines, which take affect tomorrow, clearly prevent mention of LL competitors and off-subject posting (anything other than SL).

New Guidelines

“fostering online community”

LL still maintains that they are encouraging online community. However, by removing our ability to talk where we want (XStreet forums) and what about (new guidelines) there can be no denying that it is being discouraged. They took the forums from being something that served us to something that served them.

I realize that LL is a company and they own the servers and it is their own prerogative as to what goes on with them. What bothers me is that they say one thing, and do another, all while patting themselves on the back.

“Linden Lab values and learns from forum conversations and recognizes the value of the forum community.”

Soon after my original essay asking if XStreet had lost it’s soul we were introduced to Pink Linden. Pink reassured us that she wasn’t just the boss of the bosses but that she was also “one of us.” and could also reliably represent LL. She seemed to hint that she was the glue that would tie us all together. That she had years of forum experience and was flame proof. She certainly did prove that she knew how to act silly. While I tried to talk reasonably with her, as well as welcome her to the forums, I still felt that she was not sincere. I figured, what the heck, atleast they are talking to us now. Anyway, after several months of her syrupy enthusiasm we are treated with this lovely statement from Pink.

I wouldn’t call the number of merchants who post in this forum the majority by any stretch of the imagination. For example, not a single one of the top 10 merchants who account for a significant percentage of XStreet Revenue are here, ever. With all due respect, we manage the marketplace and the forums for the majority…that is the fairest way. We do try to respect the minority, but it’s rarely possible to accomplish this for 100% of a dynamic, active, passionately engaged customer base.

This was said by Pink in response to discussion over the removal of the XStreetSL forums.

So now we come back full circle. No longer are they giving the forum members any consideration. Rather it is the top 10 merchants who are important. Apparently money makes a majority since the top 10 people are, according to pink, the majority. We are no longer a community, we have become a minority amongst a customer base. Such is the way of corporations.

Thanks guys.

XStreetSL has lost it’s soul. It’s forum and its community of unique users. One can only hope that LL will stand by their promise to archive the forums.

As of this moment the forums consist of 606,461 posts in 121,571 topics and 12 different categories. In the time that it took me to write that sentence there were 5 more posts on the forums. Tomorrow it will all be gone.

Fortunately some of us, while cut loose, have found other places to rest. The two that I am frequenting are That Other Life, and Slapt.me.

In the immortal words of Pink, “see you there, gang“

P.s. Something that was removed, without explanation, from the forums:

Second Life and Linden Labs are trademarks of Linden Research, Inc. These words are the opinion of me, Shadowen Silvera, and are not affiliated with or sponsored by Linden Research.

I’ve been thinking a lot, lately, about writing. Every day I look at the computer screen, place my hands on the keyboard, and say to myself, “I want to write.”

It’s not enough to want to write.

I need to have something to write about. What I write about must be something that I feel passionate about. Something that is interesting and engaging to myself and others. Otherwise I might as well go back to writing in my journal.

So how does one find a subject to write about? Self examination. What am I passionate about?

I like computers and technology. I have been programming since I was little. A rather dry subject though, only of interest to other programmers.

Cooking, now that, I am passionate about. I cook professionally. In the kitchen I talk endlessly about food and why I like it. Everyone needs it, everyone has an opinion about it. I can definitely write about food.

Ok. Now I have a subject to write about. Hands back on keyboard, raring to go! Umm, but how do I start?

Food is a big subject. I really need to be more specific than that before I can start. Hands back off the keyboard, turn up the music, close eyes, and think. While I am working on that lets get back to writing.

When I do finally decide what to write about I need to do some research. You know, to make sure that what I know matches up with reality. Sometimes I forget this part… BRB.

Oh, hey! BTW, did you know that an acronym is only an acronym if you can pronounce it as a word? For instance P.U.S.A is an acronym but F.B.I. is not, instead it is an initialism? Actually, this is debatable.

Afterwards I can start writing. When writing about something I need a middle, an end, and a beginning. Let me a take a minute to examine why it is that I mention the parts in that order. I have found that, when I am writing, I start from the middle. I make my way to a conclusion. Write a beginning as a summary of the rest and then edit, edit, edit.

Editing is the most important part. I tend to ramble a lot when I write. I also tend to have very badly formed sentences. Editing always takes me the longest time. When I am finished I have something that looks quite a bit different than what I started with. Hopefully it is also more interesting, easier to read, and better looking.

I decided that today I would write about writing rather than about food. Maybe tomorrow I’ll write about food. Maybe not.

Ciao.

True Story.

When I was a teenager my brother, uncle and I would go camping every weekend. We would pull out the map and pick a random place in the state, drive out there, camp, fish, hunt, etc,. We did this for years.

One weekend we picked a place that was far out in the middle of the Oregon desert. It took us all day to drive there and once we reached the area we drove around trying to find a good place to camp for the night. It was about 3am. We hadn’t seen any traffic for hours.. it was just a long lonely highway without any sign of civilization (except for the highway itself of course). We watched the sides of the road for good places to turn off and camp when suddenly we passed a broken-down car parked on the left hand side of the road. Because we were way out in the middle of nowhere we slowed down to see if anyone was in the area and whether or not they needed help.

We went about two miles further down the highway when we passed a couple walking down the shoulder of the highway. As we came up behind them the woman turned and ran out into the road at us but the man grabbed her and violently pulled her back to him while she screamed something at us. It seemed obvious that she was in distress so we went a little ways up the highway and pulled over.

We wanted to help her but we didn’t know what kind of trouble to expect so we got our rifles out of the back of the truck and then headed back to where we came from. We hadn’t gone far ahead so we expected to see them right away, but we couldn’t find them. It was strange because we were in the high desert with no trees and only low scrub and there weren’t any good places for them to hide. We were also shining a big spotlight around as we drove. Soon after we came to where the car had been.

The car wasn’t there.

The strangest thing is that there was no way that the couple could have run back to the car before we got there. And there were no tracks or any other sign that the car had ever been there in the first place. To this day I have no idea what happened to them.

I worry about it sometimes because if they weren’t ghosts as my uncle and brother like to explain it then that woman was in trouble and we were not able to help. I know we did the best we could but I really hope she was ok.

“Want to fight about it?” I looked up from the computer at my brother who
was standing over me with his arms spread wide. I couldn’t help thinking
about how foolish he looked. He had just come home angry and I had innocently
asked him why he was upset. The ensuing argument didn’t make any
sense to me; He was angry and I was reacting to his anger. At the point when
we started calling each other names I decided to turn away and ignore him.
I couldn’t understand why he was acting like this, why he was angry all the
time. I realize that we did not have perfect lives, that violence and crime had
become a regular part of it, but why did he take his anger out on me. We’ve always
fought each other growing up, but it was different now. We hardly ever talked
to each other, except to argue.

I tried to play it off, I acted as if I was doing something important with the
computer and had a reason to ignore him. Suddenly he grabs my neck from behind
and I quickly turn in my seat. I shove him backwards and he flies over the top of
a chair and lands half on his feet, half on his back. I stand up shaking from the
adrenaline flowing through my body. The muscles in my legs and arms twitch and my
breathing gets deeper.

My brother gets to his feet and half yells, “come on, let’s fight!”

I stare at him his eyes are bulged out and his face is flushed. He
starts toward me and I sit back down. I do not like to fight.

“You know what you are? You are a chicken shit.” He shouts as he
sees me sit back down. He says it several times as he approaches me.

I answer back, “I don’t give a fuck what you think!”

He then leaves out the door to our apartment slamming it behind himself.
I get up and pace about the room. I then walk into the kitchen and briefly
think about heating up a burrito. I realize I am not hungry and thoughts of
what is happening between my brother and I pass through my head. I turn and
slam my fist into the freezer, it’s large frame rocks back and forth. My
hand hurts and I suddenly realize how glad I am that I did not fight him. If
I had hit him that hard I could have killed him. I get scared thinking how
dangerous a brotherly fight is, now that we are grown. I turn and get down
the aspirin bottle. I empty about twenty pills into my hand and begin a
process of putting them back one by one. At ten pills I consider swallowing
them all. Maybe they will kill the pain. I continue the process, running reasons
why it is not the correct amount through my head. I finally settle with four.
Almost imediately the pain receeds. “Plecebo” I think to myself. I sit back down
at the computer and notice that a friend had come online.

She sends me a message, “Hi, how are you?”

I respond, “Im fine, how was your day at work?”

We then proceed into a fairly normal, everyday sort of conversation. I
have stopped shaking and the pain in my hand has receeded to a dull ache.
Maybe the rest of the day will be normal now that my brother is gone.
Normal days are boring, I want a boring day. While having the conversation
with my online friend I also work on a story I am writing. It is about a
cat who is stranded in the middle of a big city. The cat is taken in by
a homeless man who is also a drunk. The man loves the cat but abuses it
when he gets drunk. Eventually the old man is found dead in an alley way
with the cat laying on top of him, loyal to the last. With the way things
have been going today I decide that I will write one of the abusive
scenes. I rock in the chair as I type, forgetting.

Soon after my mother walks through the door, disturbing my reverie. She
bustles about the room her breathing labored due to her asthma. I know
that something is bothering her but I do not want to know what it is.
I continue to type, trying to ignore the unidentifiable anger building in me.
She then sits down at her table and works on a puzzle. Half an hour later
I hear her mumble something to herself and get up. She then picks up the phone
and makes a phone call. I assume it is to my brother, wherever he is. I overhear
her telling my brother to come home and how she wants him to take her to see the
veterinarian. After a moment of silence she hangs up the phone and sits down
in her recliner. I can hear all of this behind me and can tell what she is doing.

A few minutes later my brother walks in the door in his usual way, fast, the door
swinging shut behind him. I follow him with my eyes. He sits in the other recliner
and stares at my mother, his eyes dangerous and cold.

“I don’t need you yelling at me like that on the phone.” My mother
says with a strange sound in her voice, choking almost.

“I was only joking.” He says in that arrogant voice he always takes
with her. I feel the anger building, I feel as if I am about to burst.

“Give me the keys, Bobby is going to take me.” She states with that
unidentifiable sound still in her voice.

“Doesn’t matter, I am getting a car tomorrow.” He says throwing the keys
at my mother, hard.

She stands up and starts half-yelling at him. I cannot make out the words
everything blurs and all I can think is that she is crying and my brother
doesn’t seem to care. I stop thinking, I am only a body trying to contain
it’s anger. Dimly I see that my mother leaves and my brother also. I hear him
stomping down the back stairs. I quickly run out onto the balcony and scream
at him to not come back. I hear him shout something and start stomping back up
the stairs. I come back inside and stand before the door, getting myself ready.
My heart pumps madly. The door flies open and he bursts into the room, his eyes
wild. He stands before me and we circle each other. I have my back to the door
and am standing only a few feet from him.

He spreads his arms wide and puffs out his chest, almost comical, “Whatcha
going to do about it?”

I don’t even realize what I am doing as I reach out and calmly grasp his
throat with one hand, pushing him backwards. He looks surprised, his face
getting red and strained. At first he doesn’t react, too surprised. When he does
react, he easily gets out of my hold on him, he has a longer reach than
I do. We have always been opposites, him tall and wiry, me short and burly.
Before I know it, he has his arm about my neck and is behind me trying to
wrestle me down to the ground. I push back with my considerable strength
maneuvering myself around so that we are side by side. I have a hold of
his neck and he has a hold of mine. It is like a strange embrace. I gather
myself and punch him in the face. He rocks back but still holds onto me.

Suddenly my mother comes rushing into the apartment and pulls us apart from
each other. We stand glaring at each other with our mother standing in between
us. Dimly I realize that she is crying again and my anger deepens because of
the frustration of the situation. We were a poor family and couldn’t afford
to fight amongst ourselves.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I ask, after catching my breath.

“You wouldn’t understand, nobody understands!” He says and then storms out
of the apartment. My anger fades and I follow him out into the hallway and
grab him from behind.

“Wait! Tell me whats going on. Why are you angy? why are we fighting?”

He shrugs himself out of my grip and continues walking away from me. I watch
helplessly as he turns a corner and dissapears. I think to myself that I should
follow him but I decide that it would be better to let him cool off. When I get
back into the apartment I sigh to myself when I see my mom sitting at her table
and working on her puzzle. We all have our problems and my mother’s was denial.
Going back to the computer I see that my friend had sent me several messages
asking where I was. I apologized and made up an excuse for why I was away. I
guess I was in denial also.

I am several years older now and this event still resonates within my mind. I have never found out why my brother acted as he did on that day but I suspect it had to do with drugs. If I was smarter at the time I would have recognized the signs. He would often come home late at night and not talk to anyone. And sometimes after lying down for a few minutes in our shared bedroom he would suddenly run to the bathroom and get sick. I think I even knew it then but I felt so overwhelmed by everything in my life that I refused to acknowledge it. Later I found out that my brother had become addicted to methamphetamines but that is another story for another time.

Some of the above is exaggerated.