And I watch him fade from me, mind gone long before his body turns, and I can raise no hand in protest, no scrap of voice, I must kneel and wrap my arms around me and tell myself I will not die for want of him--
This isn't what I wanted to talk about.
I'm still concerned that the dragons on the grid now belong to the gods who set it up.
Let's be fair here--it took a friend from elsewhere to point this out, but it's true nonetheless--the Lindens don't have to respect free speech, fair practices, or even business concerns of businesses not theirs. I let myself forget this, true. But now I've remembered, and...it's more acid than the anger from earlier.
Because it's their playground, essentially, we're forming our societies, interrelationships, ways of behaving both right and wrong...as individuals who can be banned, evicted, sent home--at any time, because nothing in there is ours. Even the textures we bring in, the snapshots from other lives, the music we play, the art and objects we create--we created all of it with the tools they gave us.
The Lindens give, the Lindens can goddamn take away, and it is their right to do so. It's their home, not ours. Their rules do apply.
But it galls nonetheless. There is a small voice within me, stamping her foot and saying it's unfair, this treatment, that they don't have the right to do this to us, their citizens, the ones who have chosen to live our lives in their world...
...but fair? Fair doesn't matter in business. Fair doesn't matter, free speech doesn't matter, diplomacy and democracy don't matter. It is not a democracy, it is, it has always been, a commercial enterprise, a benevolent dictatorship.
That they've hidden the claws caught in the silks should not have let us conclude the claws weren't there.
And all this is too cynical a topic for this morning.
*spins off into limbo, curling into a small ball, sighing*
come to bed, don't make me sleep alone
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2 Comments:
There is a silver lining. The Lindens have stated long ago that they intend to release their codes to the world when the time is right. That means in ten years..or perhaps next year for all we know..private SL-based grids will by as numerous as MUD-based Internet games are today. Then anyone can buy a server and set up their own SL, with their own rules of conduct. And for certain, there will be realms for every fantasy, no matter how dark.
Well, if one considers that a silver lining.
It's not that I'm so much for darkness qua darkness; it's more I'm for, freedom of expression. Some people are into the JLA years Batman; some like Frank Miller's Dark Knight. Same character? Yes, more or less, but radically different interpretations. People who might find Sin City fun to live in may or may not get into Disneyworld; it's generally a surety, though, that if you want to live in a theme park, you're not so much into grit along the edges and the dark alleyways of thought.
I don't want SL to be "Disneyfied"; I think it's fine as it is. I just wish they'd concentrate more on fixing what's already broken, and not more towering vague edicts on unspecified conduct.
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