“L’enfer, c’est les autre.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

So, okay. It’s been (checks watch) one post. It’s time to bitch about something.

The other night a friend commented that I don’t hang out at many live music performances anymore. There was a time when I attended every music concert in SL (granted, there were only two or three performers back then) and a time after that when I attended more than I missed. These days, unless Grace or Lyndon are preforming, I’m a general no-show. With the surge in performers, it would be easy to fall back on the claim that most music in SL is amateur drek, or that I just can’t keep up but that’s not entirely true. Granted, there are some performers who should have tuning forks shoved in both ears, but there are also a number of highly talented individuals. So, why do I generally only hang out at my own venue and the scattering of venues haunted by my ubertalented cohorts?

Well, there are a few reasons. Some of it is the SL Music community in general and the feelings I have toward some individuals. No matter how I try, once I’m soured on a performer or owner, I cannot separate my distaste for them from their music and/or venues. I’m happy to accept this as my personal failing. Every subculture has its politics. For SL Music, imagine a mini-fashion community with all the accompanying egos and drama — not quite so well dressed, but with a much better soundtrack.

Still, this is minor collateral damage.

The big killer, for me, is the behavior of the average audience in SL. I’m totally serious. It takes, on average, 2.3 seconds for a typical SL audience to piss me off — I know because I’ve timed it. There are a variety of reasons ranging from immaturity to downright rudeness, but I think the biggest is macro-abuse. For those of you not hip to this annoyance, it’s simply the copying, pasting and outright spamming of stuff like text graphix, cheerleading, and lyrics in open chat.

Let’s put this into perspective before I go all snippy bitch about it. At the end of a song, you don’t want to leave a performer with no indication of appreciation. So, it’s understandable that people want some sort of /clap or other such gesture to execute into room chat. My favorite is either to type something specific to the song “wow! love the rework of that!” or a standard “/me claps and cheers happily.” Why do this at all? I don’t deny it’s RL social conditioning imported into the virtual. We’re programmed to politely and periodically acknowledge our approval of a person who is entertaining us. In SL, the performer might experience a 30-second lapse between the end of a song and the crowd response, but a late response is generally considered better than a dead room.

The current herd of concert-goers, however, don’t seem to be showing appreciation for the performance so much as trying to find ways to draw attention to themselves.  This “look at me” mentality has spawned an evolution of all-caps text macros or nightmares of grafix text that started out, innocently enough, looking something like this:

ListenerX: ♫~♪~♥~♪~♫~~APPLAUSE~~♫~♪~♥~♪~♫
ListenerY: ♥♥♥♥♥Applauds♥♥♥♥♥

Which, okay, I can handle these. And if it were left at everyone being content to offer up a single line of their stock text gesture macro, I’d have no real complaint. But, of course that’s never enough for the “look at me” brigade (because, remember, the important thing during someone else’s music performance is to do things that draw attention to yourself). So, the next step up is the three-peat or three-line gesture:

ListenerA: ♥’*•.¸  ‘*•.¸  ‘*•.¸*•.¸APPLAUSE¸.•*´¸.•*’  ¸.•*’  ¸.•*’ ♥
ListenerA: ♥’*•.¸  ‘*•.¸  ‘*•.¸*•.¸APPLAUSE¸.•*´¸.•*’  ¸.•*’  ¸.•*’ ♥
ListenerA: ♥’*•.¸  ‘*•.¸  ‘*•.¸*•.¸APPLAUSE¸.•*´¸.•*’  ¸.•*’  ¸.•*’ ♥

ListenerB: ~~~******Applause!!******~~~
ListenerB: ~~~******Applause!!******~~~
ListenerB: ~~~******Applause!!******~~~

ListenerC:                *•.¸(‘*•.¸ ♥ ¸.•*´)¸.• *
ListenerC:           .•*♥¨`• AWESOME•¨`♥*•.
ListenerC:                ¸.•*(¸.•*´ ♥ `*•.¸)`*•.¸

Now. Imagine one of these per listener at a standard concert of, say 30 – 70 people and…there you’ve got the visual. It is, quite literally, the definition of chat spam. But wait — there’s more. For some people, you see, getting lost in the sea of three-line gestures is no longer acceptable. So they have to out-spam the spammers. The lazy ones combine the three-liners into 9 or 12 line extravoganzas, but from those who just can’t stop pushing the envelope, you get:

Listener:         \_ \ l _ l _ l /_/
Listener:          __               __
Listener:             ( @    @ )
Listener: ___oOOo_(_)_oOOo___

And, the ever-popular:

Listener: V^v^.:HowwwlzzZ:.^v^V xxXXx V^v^.:HowwwlzzZ:.^v^V
Listener:                                 ^,
Listener:                            _/   |  _
Listener:                          /’      `’ /
Listener:                      <~       . ‘
Listener:                       .’       |
Listener:                   _/         |
Listener:               _/         `.  `.
Listener:              / ‘     \__   |   |
Listener:      ___/         /__ \  \  \
Listener:    (___.’\_______) \_|_|
Listener: V^v^.:HowwwlzzZ:.^v^V xxXXx V^v^.:HowwwlzzZ:.^v^V

Did I mention that sometimes these were accompanied by sound files? During. A. Live. Music. Performance.

I understand that not everyone has been on the internet forever. To some people this kind of stuff is probably cute. I thought it was cute in 1992 — for about three days. Then I got over it. And, at the risk of sounding like an elitist bitch, it’s my personal opinion that everyone else needs to get over it, too. People who do this should be sent back to AOL chatrooms until they’ve demonstrated the ability to express themselves like grown-ups;  we’ll call it the Chat Reincarnation Project and maybe design a charming little game board a la Chutes and Ladders. I can do this; all I need is absolute power and some duct tape.

So, there is the reason I am not the SL music tramp I once was. You can’t mute an entire room of people and still pretend to be taking part in a group activity. My virtual living denial only goes so far. At some point, you simply decide to stay in your own hobbit hole and make more furniture.

Even this, however, hits the occasional snag. When I’m at someone else’s venue, I would never dare to tell others how to behave. I’m an elitist bitch, but I keep my elitism to myself (and my blogs). However, when concerts take place at my venue, it’s my pool and my rules and my little line in the sand. The merry band of regulars who drift into the Slip on Thursday nights are protective of our last haven and those using chat spam are often met with sarcasm or hostility (and most often a combination of both). In order to prevent the blood of the spamming innocent getting all over my toucans and squids, I’ve taken to IMing first-time offenders as politely as possible. I actually have a block of text I copy and paste. Here is a typical exchange:

Salome: Hi, ListenerX, it’s really great to have you here at the Slip and I’m glad you’re enjoying the music, but we ask our audience members not to use applause gestures over one line long. In addition to spamming others in room chat, it also makes it difficult for the performers to occasionally monitor room chat and interact with their audiences. Longer gestures can also contribute to lag. I’m sorry to ask you to limit their use, but I hope you’ll understand our reasons. Thanks!
ListenerX: I just like to express myself.
Salome: I can appreciate that and I know it’s confusing because some performers and other venues encourage the practice, but we ask here that you please limit your applause to a single line.
ListenerX: Is that a rule? Because I’m not going to stay in a place where someone tells me what I can’t do.
Salome: We don’t have rules, per se. When I first IMed you, I explained our reasons, and you’ll notice no one else here uses such gestures. I’m not trying to single you out or make you feel censored, it’s simply our way here.
ListenerX: Well, you can have it, I won’t be back.
Salome: I understand.

For the record, this is an actual exchange and I was *just* that polite. Yes, it makes me sound like an automaton, but I find it to be the least confrontational tone I can assume. I did not, for example, ask how in the fuck she could claim to be expressing herself with text spam that may well have been older than she was. I understand how offensive it must seem to be pulled aside like a punk kid and semi-lectured on your behavior; I have no desire to make that pill any harder to swallow. This type of thing happens about once every 2-3 weeks and about three-quarters of the people leave in a huff, no matter how polite I try to be. The vast majority of them are women (or, men pretending to be women) and they can get Springer-level hostile — far more hostile than this individual was. Those that stay get it, apologize, and some even become regulars.

Other than griefers, I’ve had to ban exactly two people at the Slip and it was only because both went completely mental over this issue and began bitching rudely and putting on emo performance art in open chat during a live music performance. The first called members of my audience a bunch of hookers, and the other ranted about their “rights” being trampled on. One has since apologized and been unbanned. Not a bad record for over two years of hosting concerts.

Happily, there are several Slip regulars that revel in being called hookers, and who will send up cries of “Help! I’m bein’ oppressed! Come and witness the violence inherant in the system!” while I right-click-eject people who get all first amendment on me in room chat regarding their spam rights. As if spam is contributing anything.

I don’t mean to give the impression that I think everyone should sit on poseballs, hands folded, dead silent and applauding at the appointed times. Far from it.

At the Slip we tend to banter during music performances and the conversations range from comparing geek-cred to sexual innuendo (especially if Chase is attending) and pretty much everything in between. From time to time we even talk about the music, and we’re interactive with the performers. We have contests to see who can make Grace giggle first. We harass Lyndon about his kilt. It’s a diverse group and we value wit in all its forms, even *sigh* puns. But most of these people would slit your throat with the sharp edge of a ram strip for using an emoticon, let alone firing off chat spam gesture after chat spam gesture. If you’re going to play sound clips, just don’t bother showing up because they will decide about the best way to prepare your sweetbreads (often this involves fava beans an a nice chianti). What can I say? They’s just my peeps; it’s how we roll.

What I value most about SL Music is the capacity for such interactivity. At a RL concert, you are removed from the performer and limited in your interaction with fellow audience members. In SL, you have the opportunity to foster a more intimate experience. We are all familiar with the practice of having music performed at us, but SL is supposed to about coloring outside the lines. We can actually text chat without rudely interrupting the audio of the performance. It’s an entirely different social scene and performance experience. It is unique to SL; it was the way music in SL started, and I sincerely mourn the fact that it had become the exception rather than the norm.

Too often now, you see performers flip on the stream, don a prim guitar, go through their playlist and then TP out as soon as their set is over. You can’t blame them. There isn’t really any motivation to interact with a group of people trying to out-spam each other for attention.

It used to be different. SL venues were once like favorite neighborhood clubs, where the performer was somewhat tangible, inserting little chuckles and in-jokes at the regulars into the music. The format equalized the audience and you were regarded and taken into fold on the merits of personality. Somewhere alone the line, we traded Frank, Dean, and Sammy-esque winking small club charm for a stadium full of screaming teenagers who lack common sense, dignity, and decorum.

Which leaves me sounding like one of *those* people: These kids today with their prim hair and their music.