The two days of silence I got myself involved into has reached their end.

Now I can talk:

1- I believe everybody’s(even thieves)  knows the situation is hurting creators, some times in very painfully ways. 

2- Why does it keep happening? As David Friedman says:  ”The economic approach to crime starts from one simple assumption: criminals are rational. A burglar burgles for the same reason I teach economics–because he finds it a more attractive profession than any other. The obvious conclusion is that the way to reduce burglary–whether as a legislator or a homeowner–is by raising the costs of the burglar’s profession or reducing its benefits.”

3- Customers and creators don’t have the tools to stop theft so, ultimately, responsibility falls on LL because they are our “government”. LL is rational (I hope ;-p), and what we need is to make the actual situation more expensive than fighting theft. That is what it makes so silly to try to show our strength, when it is obvious we don’t have it; we need to find realistic ways to reach our objectives, even if they are limited! At least that was a positive point of Artist’s Voice event, because it managed to do some noise about the matter.

4- And that is why so many bloggers (myself included) think it was pretty stupid to ask for two days of silence, when it was the right time for healthy discussion; and even if we want to weight the symbolic value of community’s silence, this made a farce of it (please, notice it is dated November’s 5).

Remember, just now creators can’t stop theft and, while I understand their frustration, I almost weep when customers are treated as wannabe criminals. It is like when I go to a film and they put one of those Piracy is a crime spots… WTF! I am obviously paying to see the film!

We need to stop paranoia from getting the best of us, try to find realistic solutions, and start showing some customer love.

Reading around, I just saw that tomorrow and the day after tomorrow are Artist’s voice ones!

I did read about the initiative, and while I am too cynic to hope it will help, I never wanted to oppose it; so imagine my embarrassment when I saw I had just launched a discount sale (my first discount sale!) just the day before it, and making it finish the same day. It was like asking people to spend the money those days *blushes*.

I can’t undo it, but at least I can join the initiative keeping my mouth and wallet closed, and extending the sale to Sunday, 7th of November.

And apologizing, too.

While I have the social conscience of an armchair, and even if the days I choose where simply a coincidence, some coincidences aren’t funny at all. Please accept my most sincere apologize.

Sale! Sale!! Sale!!!

(feel free to add more exclamation marks if you like them)

To celebrate the new shop location, and only until this friday (11-6-2009), I am applying huge discounts to all Pandora Designs products:

Pandora FACE: 10L$ (discount: 90%)

Pandora POSE: 195L$ (discount: 50%)

Pandora HUG: 395L$ (save 200L$)

Revolution HUD: 795L$ (save 400L$)

I’ll write soon about the shop (micro-mall would be more adequate) but, if you visit it before I do, cam outside ;-)

Keeping your inventory around 5.000 objects mark is a daily fight; I was doing a little cleaning, and chatting about it, when I got a surprised question: You are doing what?

I was simply sorting my bald collection, because they hold different brow shapes.

I asked around and nobody else seemed to change balds, isn’t it strange? After all, we change everything else.

So, tell me, do you use different brow shapes? I can’t be the only one!

(fashion plug: the outfit is Strap from M&A and, as everything in the shop, it was only 10L$. Well, all but the top hat, that I got long ago at Nymphetamine. Now keep reading if you want, but be advised: the rest of the post hasn’t anything to do with fashion :-p)

While I was trying to decide how to write this post about RL identity disclosure, I found Quaintly had gone and wrote her own about Surrogates and virtual isolation, and saw both matters where deeply related.

Let’s think about it. Would things be too different if  your body stayed at home, while a replica which looks like you and is connected to your nervous terminations roams around?

Since people wouldn’t worry too much about physical damage, some things would definitely change, but I don’t think it would mean isolation, don’t you think? In fact, there would be even more contact, since the main risk of meeting the wrong stranger would be the workshop’s bill.

What if our replica hadn’t to look like us? We can foresee health problems after peer pressure disappears, and there may also be a feeling of not facing the “real” one, where physical alienation could affect the depth of relations, isolating people.  But, in a world where everybody is mutable, I don’t think people would feel themselves deceived if the perfect bodies they are facing don’t match the real ones, at least if they kept their original genders; after all, marriage would probably involve replica sex and in-vitro fecundation, chill but viable.

Let’s say SL is something like that, a place where interactivity is enhanced because we don’t fear consequences, even if there is a bit of worrying about RL gender, and where a forty-some year old housewife can look as hot as she wants.

The big problem is SL users aren’t living in a surrogate world, but between two worlds. If you want to love somebody, and would like to transfer that love to real life, matters like gender, marital status and world location are crucial. And even if you are only enhancing your life with virtual friendships, it isn’t easy to accept that the avatar you are talking with may decide to stop logging someday, disappearing without a trace.

It isn’t only virtualization that isolates us, but anonymity, because our virtual self doesn’t answer for our real one.

For a long, long time, I’ve struggled with the idea of fully revealing my identity to my SL close ones; I slip a lot already, talking about everyday matters and sending holiday pictures, but never daring to share my full RL name and address. And I’ve always felt that, if you are truly involved with somebody, it isn’t right to keep that kind of secrets from them. It is like saying there is no real trust.

The fun thing is I don’t feel the same way about other people’s RL details; while I am naturally curious I respect their privacy, as do my friends with mine.

It is a need to give what drives us, not to take. We don’t fear not knowing, but we don’t want to hide.

And even if I had done many naughty things at SL, peccadilloes I don’t want my husband to know, I still don’t want to hide.

Just now the problem became more urgent: somebody I love offered me a RL gift and, while  I could accept it at a PO box, it feels soooooo ugly to do so. Because the only excuse we have to avoid giving our RL address is:  you can’t trust somebody you meet at Internet.

When I told my husband about it (disguising the gift as a reward after giving a helping hand, and due to my natural niceness and how often I give a helping hand), he was also curious about seeing it, but didn’t want to give our address; as I said, the point is we can meet people at the Internet, but we should risk bringing them home.

After all there are many, many things I wouldn’t had done at SL if I hadn’t been an anonymous woman. I don’t want to risk public exposure!

But if we can’t trust, we are truly isolated.

It is pretty easy for a RL being not to match the SL one; maybe they aren’t so cute, maybe their political and religious beliefs aren’t what they say, and maybe they aren’t even the right gender; I could be the trucker of the story, enjoying the tenderness and “freedom” of being female… even if it isn’t as if I act in a feminine way, dammit! *winks*.

But the truth is we know people at Internet. We talk with them, read what they write (if they are bloggers; if you aren’t, start one!), see the way they interact with others. That isn’t something easy to fake, and as the friendship builds, you end knowing people pretty well, and even if there is always the risk of a nasty surprise, it is the same at RL, where we build facades, adapting to the people we are talking with in a given moment.

At the end everything is a matter of trust. We need to give our trust to our friends and our loved ones if we don’t want to be isolated. But we also must deserve their trust, deciding how far we should go; and while it isn’t easy to reach such delicate balance between our RL and SL responsibilities, it is worth trying, because our RL can be deeply enriched by a trusting SL life.

Warning, absolutely gratuitous image below, inserted only to pick your attention, and because it was handy.

Internet is as a huge worldwide community, where we have a lot in common: we all are computer users, often talking about computer matters, and often talking in english… which very, very often isn’t our native language.

While years ago I managed to communicate pretty well by knowing only a bit of English, now I felt like I’ve reached a kind of uncanny valley: not good enough to avoid (huge) misunderstandings, but good enough to feel like a zombie if I don’t push the language a bit. And it seems to be a typical problem around Internet.

Some interesting comments about at the pre-previous post (which also linked to the comments of the pre-pre-previous one. Mmmm… this is starting to look like a self inflicted chain letter :-p) showed me that maybe English isn’t the problem but, strangely enough, our national sense of humour.

One of Larry Niven’s characters in “Ringworld” defines humour as the interruption of a self-defence mechanism;  while the description can be challenged, it gives us an interesting idea… how should we push, and how far, to start a defence mechanism we can interrupt? Do different countries have different pushing limits?

We surely do; there is a kind of behavioural personal space, a national limit that defines the things we can touch and the ones we don’t, some things you don’t make fun at. When talking with people from other countries we may push too much, and be annoying, or too little, and they don’t get the joke.

But don’t worry, there is hope for us, and it is called globalization. I grew seeing sitcoms like Man About the House, and I think it gave my sense of humour an ironic, British touch, with a liking for word play; if you are a sitcom addict, we can probably communicate.

Of course, there may be some problems, like the funny looks I get, so many times, when trying to be fun at RL… I wonder, did I alienate myself from my own country sense of humour?

After three months of silence, dandellion Kimban just wrote a new post, and you shouldn’t miss it; she nails the feeling of tiredness that affects many of us, SL oldies, when she describes one of her old friends.

When I remember my lowest times at SL, trying to find new things to do, trying to keep with my loved ones in a sad, gray world, I feel like wearing a pair of fangs myself.

And then SL bloomed again for me, probably because my heart is weak, and each time you fall in love is like looking at the world with new eyes. And here I am, spending hours logged in, writing like crazy, taking time I don’t have from my RL…

Messed up, but very happy ;-)

Anyway, I digress. I am writing this to congratulate dande, and to tell her I am sorry I missed her rezday, even if it is logical it happened: I dont know a single rezday date, not even mine, because I don’t take the effort to check them. To be true, I only know six RL birthday’s dates, and that includes mine.

At least I have an excuse at RL: time flies too fast, and a year is too small to be worth celebrating it. But at SL a year is almost a geological age; too many things happen in a year to count them.

Maybe I don’t care because it is enough to live, day by day, and piling up 365 of them isn’t too important… or maybe I am utterly lazy.

Anyway, dande, happy rezday; we will be here for the next one *hugs you tight*.

And yes, I pinched the picture from dande’s Flickr. Lazy, lazy me :-p

Fun title? Glad it hooked you… but keep reading! Below you will find a complex story that introduces you to a terrible mistake, the dangers of  hearsay and, at last, the explanation of why there is so much drama in the fashion blogosphere.

Well, that or an apologize about one of my typical blunders, with some related musings;  it is all a matter of opinion ;-p

But let’s get started:

In my last post I was having some fun, introducing a blog I had found, Banana’s hubbie. One of the things I playfully said was he should had posted why did he choose his strange name:

Anyway, I find Banana’s blog lacking, somehow. After so many posts, he didn’t explain why he calls himself Banana’s Hubby?

Note to myself: If he calls himself Banana’s hubby, maybe there is a wife called Banana… and maybe she has a blog?

Of course there was a wife, Banana Vella, whose blog isn’t lacking at all; so it wasn’t the best moment to short Banana’s hubby into Banana’s, don’t you think? (and yes, I added to the crime thieving this picture from one of her posts).

I can only guess how she felt when, reading a comment about her husband’s blog, found that “her blog was lacking”, without further explanation. Whatever she thought, she did something  very nice: she asked for an explanation.

Consider it: how many times in similar circumstances, we think WTF, became angry, and simply keep angry? What if she had published a post about it at her blog, which I didn’t even knew at the moment? How many people would think I am stupid?

Mmmmm, let me rephrase that: how many MORE people would think I am stupid?

By being asked an explanation I was given the opportunity to discover my mistake, fix it, and apologize. If you think that it isn’t a great feat, please, keep reading.

Oh, I also got an excuse to write another post (always welcomed) and discovered a new blog, which, as I said, isn’t lacking at all *smiles*.

Ah, yes. It also gave me the opportunity to wonder if it had been proper to post a picture of my right nipple when posting about somebody’s else husband; but that is another story :-p

The thing is, how many times we get angry at an innocent comment, because it had been badly worded? And bad writing isn’t the only way to slip.

Not too long ago I wrote a post about my new skin from Laqroki. Soon after it, I got a mail telling me that the old Laqroki business (formerly RaC) was guilty of skin theft, and so a no-no between bloggers. I considered that the right place to say that where the post comments, but my interlocutor answered he didn’t want to stir more mud.

That annoyed me, and I started Googling. What I found is that Laqroki used to have a bad name because their first skins where too expensive for their quality (if so, their quality has greatly improved, at least to my taste), and that Laqroki filled a DMCA about skin theft, even if it never prospered.

Maybe both concepts got mixed, giving Laqroki a bad name about a skin theft they didn’t commit? I don’t know, but it sounds probable. I told so to my mail companion, and he said he didn’t really know, because he had been told about it by another blogger. we did talk a bit about the dangers of hearsay, and that was all at the moment.

So, the point isn’t if the accusation was true this time, the matter is how easily a reputation can be damaged, even with the best intentions, like trying to punish a thief.

Now, let’s look at fashion: while standard bloggers (if there is something like a “standard” one) tend to talk about their personal thingies, fashion bloggers have the responsibility to judge people’s items, and transmit their opinion to customers. They need to decide if saying nice things about something they had been given for free is ethical (btw, my opinion is yeah! Gimme, gimme, gimme!), and of course they want to use their weight in the community for important things, like denouncing thieves.

Do we doubt the whole community feels edgy?

I don’t write much about fashion, but I remember when I decided to post about why did I delete a dress from Eshi Otawara.

Before posting it, I was told it was a mistake going against such a sacred figure, and even I wasn’t going to let that stop me. At the end nothing bad happened, the traffic was awesome, and I even got nicely invited by Eshi to her Plurk a bit ago (I wonder, am I the only one who doesn’t have a Plurk account?), but I felt a bid edgy, anyway.  Edgy enough to answer an innocent comment from Terry Toland in a pretty rude way, that she was nice enough to forgive.

So yes, I know some blogs could pay more attention to fashion instead of stoking the flame wars, but even without them, fashion blogs are EDGY. In that kind of enviroment any mistake can have huge consequences, and more if the writer doesn’t even notice it, at least until the thing explodes. It isn’t only a matter of writing carefully, or documenting yourself, we need to try to find all that makes us jump in a WTF way, try to find if it may have been a mistake, and try to clear it nicely.

And even then, the whole thing can backfire.

I wrote once about communication, and mentioned a problem that Prokofy Neva’s blog had with the World of SL feed. Prokofy got it wrong, posting a slightly acidic comment, and I answered back, err, with a slightly acidic one:

Prokofy: I discovered long ago your TypePad problems while reading the header of that post at World of SL, and stored the link for future use. I always worry about not expressing myself right in english but: “avoiding hating somebody for things that aren’t their fault, like the way Prokofy seems to hoard World of SL feed”? Did you read the whole phrase before commenting?

Guess: I never got an answer to it :-p

The feeling I got is Prokofy never read my answer, and thus the misunderstanding never got cleared with her, but now I knew about it, which annoyed me, even if it wasn’t enough to justify sending an IM.

Teeth grinding.

Edgy.

We live in a written world where it is too easily to offend and be offended, even against our best wishes, and it isn’t enough to be careful. I wonder, did my mail companion tell the original blogger about the Laqroki matter? Did the original blogger check the facts and, if it was a mistake, was the hearsay chain followed, fixing the mistake?

I doubt it very much, not because I have a personal opinion about them (wait, I have it; both of them are wonderful), but because it isn’t in the nature of the human being to pursuit back that kind of error and, even if they tried, it would soon stop at the next one, or the other. This kind of things never make the first page.

As Terry Pratchett says, a lie goes round the world before the truth has put his boots on; it is sad but we, and I include myself, are made that way. But we can always try :-)

So, I apologize again, Banana; even if I only peeked briefly at it (OMG, hundreds of posts in less than a year!) you have a great blog. And thank you, very much, for telling me about my blunder; I am glad you took the effort :-)

When somebody new posts a comment here (something that doesn’t happens as often as it should, work, guys, work!), and their name has a link to a blog, I loooove to follow it, and most times I read the whole set of posts… or at least I have a peek at them.

Last one has been natural born kiavik, from Banana’s Hubby; and yes, I know that a blog from Banana’s Hubby would had been Banana’s Hubby’s blog… but once you have two apostrophes in a three word sentence, seemed fun to add a third… and it is a way to make people read the post .-p.

Most of his post have a touch of fun, even if I find some things are too far fetched, like: “My inventory is a mess. I have 3,875 items there, but i usually use less than 20 of them.” I also was in the brink of hating him when I saw he was talking about a funny SL video but, fortunately, it wasn’t the other funny SL video I had been waiting for an excuse to publish… and here I have it :-p.

Btw, I found the video at another blogger’s profile, isn’t life fun?

The usual thing would had been to leave one or two comments at my favorite posts but, since he commented he was trying to promote his blog, up to the point of getting banned in the process, why shouldn’t I give him a hand? So I decided I could mention him, and even throw the pic I submitted for Peter’s rezday BOOBIE FLASH Plurk.

I know, it was very generous of me. After all, he can’t promote his blog by submitting pictures of his nipples.

Or can he?

Anyway, I find Banana’s Hubby’s blog lacking, somehow; after so many posts, he didn’t explain why he calls himself Banana’s Hubby?

Unbelievable!

Mr. Peter Stindberg is three years old; SL old, of course!

So many years, and not a wrinkle, can you believe it?

I would like to say more, but I have sent him my nice words through e-mail, and now it feels a bit redundant to do it here. So, happy third rezday, dear Peter. I hope you a great day…

… and the rest of you, keep an eye at his Plurk; a little bird told me it will be an interesting one to behold :-)