“Friendship is essentially a partnership.” ~ Aristotle

I’m not addressing the new SL web interface yet because I can’t decide if it sucks as much as I think, or I’m just opposed to change in general. Both are possible. So, let’s table that for a day when I’m in the mood for a more fair-minded look at it.

A common question I’ve gotten from my friends over the last year is why I haven’t unpartnered with Sabrina in SL. The answer is unexpectedly complicated. While I do miss the redhead’s presence in my life, I’m not in any sort of denial that she’s moved on from virtual knickers and escaped back to that reality place I keep hearing about where she blogs about shiny Irish things with her usual snark and delight.

There are all kinds of friendships, and Sabrina’s and mine is best when we are working on something together, pushing each other to do better, exhausting each other with debates about ethics and standards and complaining about why we don’t have the goddess-like powers over others that we so richly deserve. Our current status is in flux which is not uncommon for people who are long distances apart and who maintain relationships that ebb in and out of sync. I do not really doubt that we will tangle up later down the road any more than I doubted we would fall out of line. Of the people in my life I speak to everyday or near-everyday on the phone, Sabrina was never one of them. We are good in text, at a certain pace, and when we align on projects. Otherwise, we’re “at a distance” people and we know this about one another.

When we partnered in SL lo those many years ago, it was for a single reason — to keep from being hit on by wankers with epeens for brains. At the time, we discussed and toyed with the idea of having an SL wedding for blogging purposes — to research and examine the wedding industry in SL. I think we got as far as cake shopping and holding one meeting with a woman who did prim “animated invitations” before we both realized we’d honestly rather buy off the rack at JC Penny, die, and be forced to wear that day’s shopping through all eternity.

Mocking SL partnership was a gag for us, but it stopped being funny when we realized how seriously others took it. I try with all my vanity-soaked heart not to look down on the fun and interactions of others, even if the whole make-believe wedding and baby industry in SL makes me cringe. I do, however, appreciate that for those who cannot marry the person they love IRL or have a child, being able to engage with the idea on a virtual level is something that might register as meaningful. That is their choice and should be, at least on some level, respected (so long as they do not wear a talking fetus in my chat range).

Their virtual experiences should especially be respected by the platform that pimps itself as the land of of dreams imagination.

There is something — I must admit — to the formality with which LL addresses this textual tether. The fact that it’s even a feature means it registered as a meaningful concept for someone. As much as I mock it, every time I try to change my partner status something quirky and unexpectedly sentimental simply refuses to let me. Sabrina’s avatar no longer appears in the SL database (do NOT get me started) and her SIM is long since offline. Except for that spot on my profile and the occasional items in my inventory where the wench’s name appears as creator, she’s mostly grid-gone.

Today, however, I toyed with the idea of going partner commando again, only to be greeted by the following:

A fee? To unpartner? Seriously? Has this always been the case? I laughed out loud and then felt surprisingly sick.

This strikes me as fundamentally tacky on LL’s part. I can understand and even get behind a fee to partner. In fact, I’m not sure what the fee is, but I’d probably support increasing it by a bunch. Charging someone a fee to unpartner, though, is ten degrees of gross all over.

One of the things about platforms of online immersion is the bonds that form between individuals. Sure, SL partnering is a joke to me, but there are those for whom it’s a meaningful statement. While I’m sure the vast majority of people who partner and unpartner on a regular basis are just relationship flakes, I’m willing to bet quite a few of those who partner are not. To have to deal with the destruction of a relationship carries its own price, I don’t think there’s any merit to attaching a fee to the reminder.

Imagine, for just a moment, that you have an SL partnership and the person dies, or you have a bitter break-up, or any one of the million things happens that pull people apart. The bookkeeping of breaking up digitally can be just as annoying as it is RL. Sure, you don’t have to sort who owns what CDs and books, but I know people who’ve stopped using social networking sites, switched game servers, abandoned forums in the “you stay on your half of the internet, I’ll stay on mine” sort of attitude that can result when people break up on the interwebs. All of that is ignoring the actual emotional toll that is ferried by the very human feelings we can have for people who do not necessarily sit beside us, but who are part of the mosaic of our digital lives.

No matter the circumstances, odds are when you get to the “I wish to unpartner” phase, you’re not going to be in the best of moods. It’s something you’d like to get done quickly and cleanly. And, Linden Labs, in what must be either an insipid lack of empathy or a very tiny streak of moronic avarice charges L$25 for the pain and bitterness of residents going through this motion. How tacky is that?

Guys, if you want to discourage people from abusing the system then double the cost of partnering and get rid of the break-up penalty fee. It’s too disgusting. Does the partnering system even use up enough resources to justify a fee? You don’t charge us for removing someone from our friends list and that has to be at least as equally taxing on the system.

Give the scarecrow a brain, the tin man a heart, and smack whoever is wanking off behind the curtain when they’re supposed to have the thinking cap on. Oy. Frickin’. Vey.