“A committee is a group of the unwilling chosen form the unfit, to do the unnecessary.” ~ Unattributable

Dear Sir or Madam:

What. The Fuck. Is Wrong. With You?

Sincerely,

Salome Strangelove.

“Stupid should hurt.” ~ Unattributable

/me facepalms and takes a deep breath. Okay, kids…

Attention: Those of you covering yourself in invisiprims to “prevent” people from inspecting you — not only are you ineffective, but you are painfully stupid. Any monkey with a basic knowledge of SL can thwart your make-believe security system.

If you’re that insecure about someone finding out where you bought your hair, get over it. If you’re trying to hide the fact that you’re smothered in copybot items – you’re not fooling anyone, either.

What you are doing is making anyone with half a brain feel embarrassed about being in the same location that someone as dense as you would hang out.

Please stop.

Thank you.

“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” ~ George Bernard Shaw

Right so, that whole being gone a long time stuff, it happened. If you know me, you’re used to it, if you don’t, that’s likely not going to be the last time I go underground and recharge for a bit. For now, sit back and grab a cushion, it’s going to be a long entry.

I’m going to start by telling you a story about how easy it is to lose sight of the motivation to write about the things we love because we forget to play.

A long time ago, in an SL far, far away, two friends started a blog. They were a pair of sarcastic girly girls who had played corporate big-league ball way too early in life and discovered that after reinventing their professional lives to accommodate telecommuting, messing around with make-believe paper dolls was shamefully fun. They quickly realized that there was going to be an avalanche of other women who would tap into the addictiveness of their wicked new delight. Being writers, they started a blog, because, well, that’s what they knew they were good at.

The blog became popular: it was fun, it was light-hearted and even when they licked off the sarcastic side of the lollypop, the grown-up techogeek girly girls they were writing for knew it was all in sport and no one went mental. Not at first. Like all those who happen to find themselves in an elevated status due to something frivolous and popular, they were a little oblivious to the seething egos lurking in the shadows around them. Jesters who were biding their time to invent make-believe crowns and rule over virtual realms. It was a few months when the first rumble reached them, and although they brushed it off, the smarter of the two said in a rare moment of seriousness, “This will not end well, you know. Eventually it’s all going to pants.”

When Sabrina said that to me what is now, I’m shocked to say, years ago, I thought she was being a worrywart. After all, we were writing about make-believe shoes and dresses, and so long as we didn’t take ourselves seriously, what possible harm could come from or to anyone. Yes, I was just that stupidly naive. I still am from time to time because there is part of me that will never stop being five years old.

In retrospect, if Sabrina or I had less integrity or self-confidence, or simply been capable of maintaining the ruthless business sense we’d previously abandoned, the roller coaster of Linden Lifestyles would have been far more enjoyable and would have lasted longer. Being writers, however, and successful bloggers, we’d figured that we’d simply write about what we loved and then hire people to handle the icky things that came with success. “Those are problems we want to have,” we told ourselves. This was a plan that had served both of us well in the past, except we forgot the fatal flaw of the formula: if the subject sours for any reason, it’s no longer something you love and writing about it morphs into gruesome work on the good days and Cheney-level torture on the bad days.

Both Sabrina and I came of age at the start of the internet revolution and both of us are throwbacks in many ways when it comes to online etiquette. I say this knowing well that it makes me sound like the crankiest granny smith apple that ever fell off the tree. But I still remember when AOL ruined the interwebs and that was before 4chan /b/ was so much as a twinkle in the Sesame Street-watchin’ eye of a kid named moot. In fact when it comes to griefing I have a very “lay back and think of England” attitude about it: just get it over with and don’t get anything sticky in my hair.

Rudeness is rarely funny to me. It’s not that I don’t get the jokes, I just think they’re funnier when they’re not actually being rubbed in someone’s face. I have what can only be described as a phobia about seeing people humiliated – even fictional characters. I spent the entire running time of Never Been Kissed bargaining with my friend to leave the theater with me. I cannot watch anything that stars Sacha Baron Cohen unless he’s using a mock Italian accent and standing in the vicinity of Johnny Depp. During episodes of Extras I beg out loud for Maggie to stop talking. In the season finale of The Office I had to fast-forward through Michael and Holly’s skits because it became physically painful to watch. I could go on. This is a personal idiosyncrasy that cracks most of my friends up and inspires them to send me emails with titles like “watch this” simply because they know I’ll be twitching two seconds into the clips. And when it comes to real-world examples like gotcha journalism or segments where idiots are put on camera on The Daily Show, all of it just feels like a really mean-spirited episode of Candid Camera under the pretense of important social commentary. It’s like Bob Saget and Quentin Tarantino went rogue and took America’s Funniest Home Videos out on a date with Reservoir Dogs. I know real life can be gory, but do I really want to watch it, no matter how snappy the dialog is?

I’m aware that the attitude of mainstream society has advanced beyond me in this context. The things I was raised to think of as proper behaviors and good manners are outdated — and I’m introspective enough to see that in many ways this is a good thing. A generation that does not go though the motions of niceties for niceties sake or tip toe around sacred cows of any stripe has sincere advantages in cutting through much of the BS that calls itself “tradition.” But, that doesn’t mean I’m ever going to be able to watch Ricky Gervais without curling into a fetal position and scrambling for the remote. Yes, he’s brilliant and I laugh my ass off, but he also makes me monumentally and sometimes unbearably uncomfortable.

All of which is just a long-winded way of explaining that even after years of flame wars and drama-lama extravaganzas in the virtual world, I am never prepared for things that I consider to be bad manners. Sure, there are the obvious things that are just flat-out, where-do-you-grow-that-kind-of-gall rude like, say, griefing someone with goatse prims or behaving like a social parasite and making a name for yourself by acting as vile as you can dream up. However, there are many other things I consider rude that don’t exist in terms of grand gesture. IMing someone you don’t really know on a social level without employing “Pardon me, may I ask a moment of your time?” as your opening line is rude in my book. Wagging your ass and pulling little attention-getting antics during someone else’s musical performance is rude in my book. This list could go on, but let’s stop there, because no matter the items on the list, the thing they all have in common is the fact that I am never prepared for them and often, I’ll find myself in ill sorts and do not even realize why I’m miffed until the exchange is over.

In this always plugged-in age of hyper-connectivity my time is my most valuable possession and wasting it or imposing upon it is a type of theft that cannot really be explained without getting into complex theories of social debt. We all only have so many hours in the day and only so much of ourselves to distribute amongst our various duties, obligations, loved ones, and recreations.

So, there were dozens of things that led to the end of Linden Lifestyles. Certainly, Sabrina and I were always guilty of mismanaging our time and certainly our principles got in the way of our business sense (then again, if you can’t hold to your principles when you’re dealing with make-believe clothes, where can you hold them?). That we attempted to apply real-world board room ethics to a virtual world over-populated by college students and bored housewives was our oops. However, if I’m to tell the truth about why I think Linden Lifestyles ended, then I have to say that I believe it’s mostly attributable to the (often innocent, occasionally deliberate) rudeness and amateurism of people who had more ambition than decorum. Not a single one of those people could have broken the dike; it happened one pebble at a time, one hysterical designer at a time, one Paris Hilton wannabe at a time. Each of them took their fifteen minutes (some repeatedly). And for every angry notecard, bitchy blog comment, or behind-the-scenes dramafest, there was a cost. Because even if you’re going to ignore such things (and, believe me, we ignored 99.99% of those things that were ignorable) you have to make the choice to ignore it. You have to say “…wait, what was that…?” and figure out what the hell is going on and then weigh the options. All of that is before you’ve even outwardly responded.

I’ve been told by the people who have the balls to say it to my face that they believe Sabrina and I fiddled while Rome burned. To which I can only shrug and smile and try to explain that when the fire is bigger than you, all’s that left is to get comfortable with the notion that Rome is fucked. So you might as well fiddle. Sabrina fled the city; like I said, she was always the smart one. I stayed and threw buckets of water on cinders. We each make our own choices.

Whatever brief bitterness, exhaustion or negativity I have regarding Linden Lifestyles is settled, and it is a drop in an ocean of memories of the fun and overwhelming positive response we received and continue to receive. It is a part of me that I carry with me every day in my virtual identity; I have no choice in this. Every day I log into SL there are samples from designers, comments from readers, and a gust of other reminders of how much Linden Lifestyles was loved and continues to be missed. I could no more ignore it or pretend it didn’t happen than I could cut off my right ear and pretend I never had an ear in that spot. But, I’ve come to believe it’s human nature to pay more attention to the one jeer in the crowd of a hundred cheers. With a bigger crowd, the louder the cheers, but the louder the boos as well. Having the energy to navigate that in such an intimate social environment as SL is tricky, but for a writer who holds themselves to any level of quality, it can go beyond taxing to become mentally exhausting.

And before we go any further, let me be clear: I’m not saying poor me. I wouldn’t trade the experience of being Salome or being part of Linden Lifestyles for all the pearls in all the oysters of the sea. Salome and Linden Lifestyles both led me to people and places in my personal life that you’d have to wring from my cold, dead fingers to get away from me. It’s just that if you’ve already been shot in the head, there are those people (and many of them love you) who ask you why the hell you’re still keeping guns in the house.

So why am I doing this to myself again? What the fuck am I thinking? And why am I only asking these questions now? Well, mostly because the bats in my belfry came back to nest before I went AWOL and I knew I had to address them before I moved on.

Sorry, let me explain that again in English.

Not long after writing this entry (a store review) I got a notecard from the owner/designer. My rebuttals (long overdue) to her complaints are below. The delay is in no small part because I thought long and hard before addressing it at all. Certainly our policy at Linden Lifestyles was to simply respond as politely and briefly as possible to such circumstances, if we replied at all. When you have a partner, you have the benefit of taking turns being the politician and the shrew.

A product or store review is not a cake walk. First you have to find items that give you a reason to blog. Then buying or getting the items form the store owner. Then you shoot the items (using store displays is just…why the fuck bother to write a review?), edit the photos for publishing, upload them and link them. Then you write what you hope is entertaining and balanced commentary. At the end of the entire process you end up with an investment of time (and often L$) that benefits no one in particular.

The reward for this can be anything from a gushing designer that wants to heap their entire inventory upon you and talk about how brilliant you think they are for hours on end to a vindicitive soulless badger that will ignore anything positive you mentioned and personally attack you with puffer fish spines and lemon juice in your paper cuts until you confess to war crimes…erm, fashion crimes. Most fall somewhere in the middle. The rare diamond in the rough is simply gracious or humorous and leaves you to your trade. Often, these are people too busy to bother with bile and there aren’t enough of them to suit me.

So why am I doing this again? Because SL is still a large part of my life. Because shopping in SL and writing about playing virtual paper dolls is still something I love. Because I don’t want to allow the rudeness and amateurism of others to make me grow any older than I already am. Because I don’t want to forget how to play. Because I’m a consumer and I have a right to my voice, and the thousands of other people who think like me but cannot articulate their thoughts have the right to have someone who speaks for them. Because I don’t want to forget how to play. Because, at its best, its fun. Because I want to and no one can make me stop except me. Because I do not want to forget how to play.

However, I’m adding a caveat from this point on — my own personal “here, there be dragons” if you will. If you take up my time, then I will no longer default to affording you the kindness of silence. Drop a passive-aggressive notecard on me full of forth grade logic and I may or may not post it and respond to it — depends on the day of the week, how funny the previous night’s episode of Big Bang Theory was and what phase I’m in of my menstrual cycle.

And, if you think this sounds like a great way to start promotional drama with me in comments, please know that I’ve put in my time dealing with idiots and free speech in comment sections; I gave at the office. Here, you get as much free speech as I’m willing to deal with. Period.

*****

Below are excerpts from a notecard sent to me by the content creator of the store I reviewed here. The designer dropped their notecard on me a few days later. I’m responding to it now because I finally have the time and inclination to do so. The creator’s comments appear in italics with my responses below. I have broken the note into seven basic sections and edited for brevity where possible without disrupting the author’s intent.

1. “Ignoring the fact that my style doesn’t seem to really appeal to you, and that there is not much “constructive” in your recent criticism of my work…”

This may seem pedantic, but by stating the fact, you’re not ignoring it. Welcome to passive-aggression 101. Had your style not appealed to me, I wouldn’t have dropped L$5k on 15 items. I also wouldn’t have paid the compliments I did in the review. As for whether or not the review was constructive, I’ll leave that to readers and fellow consumers.

2. “I have a good reason for the hair to be no mod, but I have specifically stated in the notecard that comes with the demo, and on recent blog entries, that you can contact me if you want a mod version. There is the potential to ruin your style with a script reset, hence the no moddness.

This will seem cold, but the bottom line about this issue is that, as a consumer, I don’t care. Honestly and truly — I don’t care what your reasons are for trying to sell no-mod hair. Hair has been sold mod for years in SL. I’m sure you think you’ve built a better mousetrap but you haven’t. All the major designers have sold mod hair for as long as most SLers can remember. If you’re going to go against the grain, then you have to be ready for the grain to wonder what the fuck is going on. Moreover, if you’re going to deny a consumer something they’re familiar with, then it’s your job to sell them on the change and go above the bar in making the change appealing.

Saying that you’re making hair no mod to keep people from ruining their hair is just…lame. It’s no copy/no transfer. If you’re worried about people messing it up, include a back-up boxed version in the folder that they can rez over and over to pull fresh new copies from.

It’s also meaningless to say consumers can contact you if they’re not happy with a product. Obviously, a consumer can contact any content creator for any reason. However, as anyone who works in product development or customer service will tell you, the test of a good product is having the fewest amount of consumers contact you as possible.

More importantly, don’t try and make up excuses to me about the problems consumers have with mod hair in SL. I literally wrote the book on how to fit, re-texture, and otherwise modify prim hair. You’re wrestling outside your weight class when you try and sell me this song and dance. You made the hair no-mod because it was easier for you and fit what you wanted as a seller of a product. That’s your right as a creator. As a consumer I can, and did, cry foul.

You’d have been smarter from a business perspective to add a comment on the blog saying “hey – fyi, I know this is an issue for some people and I’m trying to address it…” But then you don’t get the snarky notecard satisfaction.

3. Nevertheless, I am developing a system which will allow the scripting for texture change, and still allow the hair to be moddable with fewer potential issues. However, as it is just me in this business, with a part-time scripter, and I only have so many hours in the day, this will come when I can do it…”

So… you know it’s a problem and you’re working on it. Given you acknowledge it’s an issue enough to have ear-marked future time to spend fixing it, it’s silly for you to get all hissy about someone pointing out the concern when evaluating your product line. Until you fix it, it’s something the consumer should be aware of — how is that even controversial enough to drop a notecard over?

And if you’re so time-depressed since it’s just you in the business with a part-time scripter, then it really puts that whole “anyone that needs a custom change can contact me” claim under the microscope.

4. Also, I am not a “they”, I am just a “she”. And not a M->F transgender “she” as you seem to be implying.

I don’t consider transgender to be an insult, and even if I did, I never said you were transgendered. Admittedly, I was using snarky humor while pointing out that some of the store’s femme clothing is set, by default, to near man-friendly sizes. I generally tend to use “they” when referring to a store or a line of clothing for the simple fact that I don’t know who is behind the content. Again, this warrants a notecard…why?

5. “I am tall IRL, and my avvie height is 6’1 and in proportion. I would *never* expect something to fit me out of the box and if your avatar is petite, I’m not sure why you would either.”

I’m short IRL and my avatar is 5’8″. If you know your avatar is unusually tall, then certainly you should be aware that your default sizes are, too. My avatar is average-sized for SL because I don’t like refitting everything I buy. I developed my avatar shape to be shopping friendly (something I know a little bit about). My girlie doesn’t have bimbo breasts that make textures play silly putty games, nor is she age-play short; by the SL avatar standard the rest of us use, she’s just an average girl in piggy buns. Simone’s clothes are made for gals a bit more hippy with way more junk in the trunk than I have and I can still resize them in my sleep because they scale down to the waif look so many of us go for.

The vast majority of avatars I encounter in SL are within my range. While most things do fit my avatar out of the box, I never expect anything to fit perfectly and I have an SL black-belt in fitting that dates back before most SL labels existed. I don’t have any problem in fitting something to my shape if it warrants the time. However, when I’ve shrunk an item to the smallest possible setting (dictated by the smallest prim in the linked items) and it still makes me look like Baked Alaska trying to masquerade as a pudding cup, I consider that a serious sizing issue. I shouldn’t have to hunt down the smallest prim, unlink, reconstruct, and re-link to wear something — which I did to make one of your items wearable.

6. Anyone else with “serious sizing issues” has contacted me for a custom fitting. This option is always available to anyone who needs it.

For every person that contacts a designer about a concern, there are a dozen others who simply move problem items into the trash folder and decide not to shop there again. I don’t have time to chase after designers who can’t be bothered to tailor their items to the market. Neither do most of the people who shop in SL. And, frankly, there’s too much variety in SL these days to expect people to go out of their way to accommodate problem products. While there are a few elite labels that can make shoppers jump through hoops, it’s important to know when you’re not one of them.

7. Anyway that’s really all I want to say on this. I appreciate your time and effort in writing about my creations, even if you didn’t like them.

If you had appreciated my time and effort you wouldn’t have wasted my time with a notecard that was both thankless and meaningless. Should I ever write up an item of yours again, please feel free to demonstrate your appreciation by remembering that:

a) I spent L$ in your store and while I’m entitled to my opinion no matter what, I actually put my money where my mouth was where your products were concerned;
b) I led with your strongest and most original item;
c) I left out the worst examples I could have shown;
d) I actually said several good things about your items.

If all of the above fail to jar a seed of genuine thanks from you, then just content yourself that all publicity is good publicity and try to resent me in private like the rest of the not-ready-for-prime-time designers do.

Although in this case I do thank you for providing me a perfect example of why everyone thinks the SL fashion market is populated by spoiled children and trailer trash housewives.

“Thou wouldest speak, and then hear no reply? ” ~ Sophocles, Antigone

After what can only be described as a surreal and arbitrary experience dealing with Linden Lab customer service, I have finally come to understand the Linden customer service model: Greek Mythology.

Being a resident of Second Life for years now, I’m shocked it took me this long to recognize it. Let’s examine the evidence:

* They often appear amongst us mere mortals unexpectedly — strange in appearance and manner;
* Their laws are customarily declared without warning and accompanied by swift punishment doled out upon hapless individuals to set as example;
* There is, customarily, no method to their practices and behavior;
* They present the pretense of communication with those they rule over, but rarely acquiesce to popular opinion or logic;
* Their priorities are based on vanity and personal desire rather than common good;
* Nepotism and incestuous crossover traditionally trump qualification and ability in establishing their hierarchy

Like foolish mortals destined to be turned to stone or sacrificed upon Trojan battlefields, we have been using reason and rhetoric to vent our woes within this virtual soil. We have pontificated and debated on blogs, forums, and office hour meetings only to find that for all the words and promises, nothing improves and little gets done. No prophet or philosopher can establish a foothold against their whims, and the deus ex machina promises of JIRA go largely unfulfilled.

Once, George Carlin proposed that it made far more sense to pray to Joe Pesci rather than God, if for no other reason than Joe seemed like the kind of guy that could get stuff done. In the spirit of such practical use of prayer, I propose a solution.

In lieu of JIRA or concierge, we should erect sacrificial altars and monuments to various Lindens. We can set forth criteria for priests and priestesses to manage offerings and schedule appropriate forms of worship. The Linden that receives the most sacrifice and worship from we genuflecting masses will then perform the awe-inspiring miracle of fixing something – anything – in their department from the never-ending stack of things that need fixing.The high priests and priestess can be afforded jurisdiction over the penitent and obedient and provide spiritual guidance to those of us who sin against the gods. When we demonstrate the proper level of contrition, we will then no longer seek to fix things that reason tells us should work differently, and not be plagued with the frustrations that come with things like hope or expectation.

It’s a win-win. Residents are provided with something to do that feels purposeful, the Linden gods get the necessary ego stroking to motivate them to appease the foolish mortals just enough to keep the machine in business, the bile of debate boils down to mere muttering, and we get about the same rate of sucess as praying to Joe Peshi.

Alternately, the Lindens could start hiring customer service personnel with experience in actual customer service and communication abilities greater than that of an average three year old, but I think the better bet is on the altar and worship end — it’s far more likely to succeed than expecting real customer service from these gods.

“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.