The Story of Stuff

Guest blogged by Whisperwolf, with comments from Wildcat.

Browsing the internet I came across one of the best short animation-films I've ever seen. Called the story of stuff and presented by a lady called Annie Leonard, this film exposes the true cost behind todays society of use-and-throw-out. One really shocking thing that she said, which I checked out (and found to be true) was a true reflection of consumerism. What did President Bush tell people to do in the days after 9/11? (apart from bomb Iraq, I mean.) Pray? Spend time with families? Grieve? No. He told us to shop. Don't let the terrorists win, continue our daily way of life - in fact, we should shop more just to spite the terrorists. Yeah, that'll show them.

Do everyone a favour. Watch the film yourself, and when you've watched it, publicize it. Tell everyone you can think of about it. Blog about it, as I have done. Perhaps THE most important point she makes is that it isn't too late to take this back off the corporations. But time IS running out. The planet's resources are not finite. Watch. Care. Get involved. The planet is depending on you.

You know, wondering around in Second Life I see the echoes of the consumer society. Second Life is the ultimate utopia for consumer spending, where shopping is god, but ultimately there are no production costs, no problem with disposal, no using the planets resources. I look at Second Life and I see that its training us to think like consumers. Want your own land? Consumer. Even if you get your own land, you're going to want stuff to put on it. Even if you don't, every day there are group IM's about costume events where virtual money is up for grabs, but to enter you've first got to have the costume... so get out there and buy, buy, buy.

I was somewhat shocked to see on the television adverts for the latest version of the popular board game Monopoly. It's now available in a CREDIT CARD edition, complete with a mini computer (batteries not included of course). Each player has a credit card and when they land on someone elses property they use their credit card to pay the rental bill. They don't even have to work out the bills any more, it's all done by the little computer. One of the main parts of monopoly when I was a girl was doing the maths yourself, and if you got it wrong or wasn't paying attention and didn't notice before the next player rolled the dice for your turn, then you forfeited collecting that rent. It helped teach maths. That's gone in this version.

And you want to know what is saddest? What's the most likely way the kids will see their parents buying this new version of Monopoly? With a credit card.

I'm tempted to start an alternative sim, one where people donate things to be given away. One where with every giveaway, people are alerted by notecard and links to things they can do to save the first life world. Whisperwolf is right, time is running out... and we that play Second Life prefer to ignore that and take our consumerism into a virtual environment. But that won't stop the planets resources from being exhausted, and when they are - Second Life will cease to be, because it can only exist through the parts of the consumerism chain we all ignore or take for granted. When resources run out, and there's nothing left for power generation, so Second Life too will vanish.

Worth thinking about, worth doing something about, before time does run out.

Crossing borders

During the time I've been involved with Listening Ear at supportforhealing, I've seen a lot of cries for help. Some were obviously more a cry for attention, some were genuinely distressed people who needed help to find their sense of self, once they did so they were able to pick themselves up and go on.

But nothing could prepare me for a conversation I had today, and it wasn't even at the Listening Ear hut.

My spirits rose when I saw the online notification for someone I haven't seen in Second Life for a very long time. I was quick to greet the person and establish an IM conversation. Very quickly I realised that there was a serious problem.

People in genuinely suicidal moods (as opposed to depression or clinical depression) generally fit into one of two categories. The easier category to deal with is those who do something that draws attention to their mood; they can often be quickly identified and, although it can often be difficult, they generally are doing whatever it was that was identifiable because at a very deep down level they DON'T want to give up their existence, which is what someone trying to help them can use to find the key to then help them rediscover their sense-of-self. The harder category are those few people who are meticulously putting everything in order so that they can just slip into oblivion without any fuss and with as few as possible noticing. The person I spoke to was in that category.

In such cases, the ONLY warning sign is the putting things in order. And in these situations since they've already given up, giving such a person reason to go on living is one of the hardest things in existence. It brought me up short, and through a wall of tears forced me to consider something very seriously.

When we first met and got talking, I established fairly early on that the person I was talking with was married. That, to me, puts someone firmly off limits. If a guy is in a relationship, that's a sign to me that they are not for me to try and dissuade for my own personal gain. And yes, I'll admit it, I was tempted having seen this guys heart to tell him to dump his lifemate and come be with me. Perhaps more tempted than I've ever been in my entire life. But I didn't, and now I'm forced to confront the possibility that this was the wrong choice.

In our all-too-short conversation today it became apparent that this person has completely given up. His partner, I've always felt, was not a good choice for him; she uses him shamelessly, is lazy and unsupportive, and would much prefer getting attention than giving it. He has a business, but he told me today that he's winding that up. Alarm bells started ringing. I found myself in shock, ticking off the signs of someone who has lost all hope. His soul, as it were, seemed like it was already dead, and the following of his body was just a formality. Glib as I have been from time to time at Listening Ear, I found myself totally lost for a way to find SOME assurance that he could examine, even cling to, in order to pull himself up from the edge. I still find myself fingering a credit card I can't really afford to use, contemplating heading straight for the airport. If I truly believed it would do any good, I would do it.

But I don't. All the signs are that he's given up, and if that's so then there is nothing I - or anyone else - can do. And if that's the case the best I can do is respect his wishes - give him dignity in his slipping off into oblivion.

But I'll mourn. Oh, how I will mourn if he does indeed slip beyond my help. So many things, so much could have been... so much could be lost. I know he reads this blog, and I'm not trying to guilt trip him. What he decides to do is his choice, and no matter how much it affects me, he will always have my support and my love. If he wasn't sure of it before, he can be now.

I will go on, for those who I can help, for those who have still got enough of a sense of self that I can reach out and touch them and help them find the will to go on. I'm a healer, it's what I do. It's all that I do.

Even when I can't reach those I love.

Stay safe.

The JIRA issue that won't die

In it's long and distinguished career, JIRA issue Web-382 has gone from being a carefully worded attack on a group somebody didn't like, to a moderately serious proposal, to something almost workable and finally back to being a carefully worded attack again.

So why won't this issue die? Quite simple. The original poster won't let it.

And of course, the original poster just has to turn out to be Prokofy Neva, perhaps the most outspoken person in Second Life's history. Prokofy is an unbeaten expert in turning things around and beating people with slightly different things while pretending those were the original things, with being the schoolteacher disciplining recalcitrant schoolchildren and with the most interesting set of double standards which she will never admit to.

Let's have a look at the wording of Web-382 for a moment:

It is too easy for feature suggestions and bugs to be prematurely closed.

This must surely be the point at the heart of the debate, and this point I don't have any problems with. But she goes on to say:

A small group of coders here on JIRA are constantly closing and resolving issues in the belief that they know best, yet they do this at times without consent and support. This results in undue pressures and discontent, and makes it very hard for the author to re-open his proposal in the face of hostility. By providing the authors with a feedback period some of this can be avoided and if deemed appropriate the issue in jeopardy can be kept open.

And here is where the problems and the biases start to come out. It all revolves around the idea that she has of this "feted inner core". Now, she's not big on conspiracy theories. Just ask her if the US government were behind 9/11. But when it comes to Second Life, there's definitely a cabal and there's definitely a 'feted inner core'. Naturally, she's a target for this group because she's the big Defender of the Second Life Freedoms. So, if she opens a JIRA ticket, and somebody closes it, it's because they are in one of these tin hat groups.

JIRA-382 has ceased to be a productive discussion. At one point I backed her into a corner which she got quite vicious about. Part of debating a propsal where the consequences could be unexpected is to consider hypothetical situations. I posed two: Firstly, if someone were to directly or indirectly insult another person (for example an immediate example of Godwins Law) then where would the JIRA stand on closure? Linden Labs simply don't have the manpower to spend a lot of time on the JIRA and this means that if other residents don't tidy things up (closing duplicates or pure waste of time tickets) chances are nobody will. If issues can't be closed without the permission of the original author, and that author purely wants to use the JIRA like a soapbox or to grief someone else, that ticket isn't going to get closed. The author will just re-open it. 382 itself is a perfect example of that. Secondly, if someone does decide to deliberately misuse the JIRA, and Linden Labs don't notice - who is going to police it?

So now I've been branded a troublemaker too. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be in the 'feted inner core' or the 'coders cabal' - probably the latter - but regardless, the fact that Prokofy Neva has double standards isn't supposed to be relevant. What do I mean by double standards? Well, this self proclaimed champion of SL civil rights holds two very different views about age verification at the same time:

So a list of adult consumers with their avatar names and RL birthdates will be in the hands of one of the most aggressive and persistently nasty BDSM types in Second Life. Maybe the BDSM community won't care -- they like abuse, and maybe even this kind of RL abuse of their privacy. But as it spreads, and begins to be used by any club, or any rental, or anybody who just wants to be free from the plague of kids harassing and griefing you, it could become the device of choice, as it advertises being "better" than Integrity by not taking your RL name and drivers' license or Social Security number.

She gushes in her hate filled blog entry about a resident-created age verification system called agelock. But then she immediately goes on to say:

Hey, give me Integrity *any day of the week*. They are a real-life registered company with a business reputation and a bottom line to fulfill and a board of trustees. If I fear they've abused my trust in taking my info, I can protest -- with lawyers, by getting Congress involved, by getting the media on it. I can't do that with these anonymous avatars in Second Life!

I've got news for you, Prokofy. You can't. Nobody can. It comes down to an issue of contract law. We have a contract that we agreed to with Linden Labs when we all clicked the "I accept" on installing for the first time. That contract is enforceable. If Linden Labs breach it, ultimately they can be called to account for it in a court of law. We have no such contract with Integrity, nor do we have any idea what - if any - safeguards apply in the contract that exists between Linden Labs and Integrity and as such the very reason - unaccountability - that she cites for Agelock, also applies to Integrity. Yet she's passionately in favour of one, and passionately against the other. A double standard.


Ironically, the very reason Web-382 won't ever go anywhere is because the original author of it is the best example of why it should never be implemented. Somebody who absolutely MUST have their say, is abusive of others and won't let the issue be closed.

So I've called on Linden Labs to finally put an end to this self serving soapbox facade, by actually telling everyone what, if anything, they intend to do. Either to say "This part of the issue makes sense, we're looking at the viability of implementing it" or to outright say "this isn't going to be implemented, case closed." While I doubt they'll bother, it does show how badly the JIRA can be - and is being - manipulated for personal reasons, in an issue that simply won't die.