Communities

Compared to what happened before .. the LL team reduction, the stepping down of M Linden as CEO and the mess at the birthday exhibion the last week was rather silent. Of course it is hard compete with all the mess and excitement but also allwos for some look back at what was going on. For example, the birthday exhibition went past without being that exciting as I bet the LLs wished it to be. It even was rather silent lacking any proper advertisment and form what I have seen .. going past large parts of the SL communites wihtout being noticed. What is a shame for some of the great creators puting up their exhibition there but at the same time, being a good expression of how the event seem to have been recieved.

It was .. to put it short .. tame.

The biggest excitement around it was the change in the CEO position of LL while the discussions of the event have been dominated by the issue of art censorship by LL and rather rude beheviour of the people LL has selected as admins for the event (see previous posts for the links to the relevant articles). There was lots of arguing around that and it for sure ruined the fun for many who thought that LL has stepped over the line with what they did. At the same time the forum discussions quickly filled with lots of people accusing the artists for wanting to stir up drama or repeating the old quote of 'SL is owned by LL and they can do what they want! We have no rights and nothing will change that ever!' The fact, that we are the consumers of LLs product and as such don't need them, but they need us usualy escapes such people who always forget that the world does not and should not belong to those who want to silence everyone with cheep consumption so that no one can see where the money is going into. Of course, that is a exageration when speaking about SL, but it brings in the thought about what we as the virtual world residents, LLs customers, want and think about the virtual lifes we lead here. We have rights when being on the platform and jsut because LL owns it, it is not allowed to do what they like.

Now of course come in the big problem.

While in RL, there are lots of regulations, laws and limitations that gouvern the relation between any comapny and it's customers, the same is lacking for a international virtual platform like SL. Now one could ask, why would we need anyhting like this? We might not actualy but the amount of transactions and work being done over virtual worlds would indicate, that no owning company can treat them as private marketplaces to milk for money for much longer. After all, they will not only have their own shareholders to listen to, but a increasing number of people who invest enough to look for ways to secure all this money. That is of course if the growth of virtual worlds continue and it stays with the currently still very strong ultra-capitalist market liberal notion SL showed from the start on. It was the land of opprtunity and everyone wanted their share of it. Everyone wanted to get rich and everyone forgot that the majority of people who rush out into such adventures come out of them broke and disapointed. It is bad for those people but it is hard to have too much pitty if it all started with false expectations about what would have to be done. It did gave birth to the copybot too since on a unregulated market everyone will be able to do everything to outcompete their opponents. Market rules and then the same people scream the loudest who before argued for the abolishment of any thought about rules and laws being imposed on everyone.

The same as in RL .. really ....

Now calling for the LLs to step up is equally futile since they can't and I very much suspect that they are very aware of it. They might not saying it, but it is not a far fetch to think, that they endure the cosntant merchant screaming because they knew, that doing anythign will make thigns worse and that in the end their profits are secure as long as enough merchants come up and fill the marketplace. They might forget to embrace the rest of the SL population equally, but that was LLs problem anyways and should be discussed in another place. Here, I am more thinking about who might be the one ruling and regulating. We can't really have a all out virtual space government or even a SL wide one since that would surely end in drama, griefing and be more or less silly. I am sorry to say it, but I don't see that ever functioning (I might be wrong, but I don't belive that even RL proven methods can be implemented easily online). The way I see it, is, that individual communites need to form and create their own rules. Trade within each other first and then with other communites forming the larger sphere of a virtual world where everyone can become a part of what they see as the best way to spend thier online time in. That might be something that we might not like once we realize, that next to democratic and open minded communites we will see dictatorships, griefer bases and outright nazi ones but I am not sure that such a step of fragmentation of the virtual world could be avoided. Each communtiy their own servers (or rented server space) to build what they want and let's see what will emerge. We might repeat what happened in RL and see virtual wars and conflicts but we might also see somethign completly new. It would be a social experiment like one never seen before. I am sure we would see the best and the worse of humanity in it just like on the internet as a whie, but I am sure, that the almost physical apearence of the 3D landscapes, the goods and creations and the feel of ownership of those 0s and 1s that form everything will have a bigger impact then everyhting seen on the 'flatweb'.

I for one would be very interested in the outcome of this.

Rin