I feel a chill deep in my bones

*jaw drops* This is "AKA--why next week is going to SUCK".

Well, of course comments have been disabled--bet me on that one? It was all user shrieking.

And vendors continue to fail in world. Wonnnderful.

Which reminds me, I need to check my vendors...

In the meantime, I received this in the mail:

[CL] has invited you to join a group.
There is no cost to join this group.
Group:
Screwed by LindenLabs Inc: My Fellow Secondlife residents, lend me your ear.....
Most of us i know here have a house, land, a business, a shop or a social gathering spot. Since the outage of last saturday, we have seen a drastic drop in sales, visitors etc. This is the time to take action and show our discontent. After all dont we pay the tiers? Dont we pay for lost inventory? Dont we pay for Linden Dollars? Dont we pay for land on which we conduct our business? Well its about time we started to get together and protest...

And I just shook my head. Oh, honey, I thought. Linden Labs is not a union shop.

This is where I got confused earlier this year. Protesting will do little, other than convince them there are some 'user problems' that might need to be addressed. A thousand people walk away from the grid, two thousand, more...they can make that up. Linden Labs do not care; it's small change to them. It will be an annoyance at best.

There are no 'rights of free speech' on the grid. I wish there were, too, but there just aren't. We speak by their sufferance. We live by their sufferance. They kill us, we die--we have no recourse, and no appeal.

It's not that they are that dismissive of the end user, it's that they're disconnected. And part of that is corporate culture, part of that might be intentional; I, in my small person, do not know. I only know that all the protests and all the raised voices and all the 'fighting back' will only serve so far; sooner or later, everyone is going to hit that point. Put up or shut up. Stay and fight, or walk.

And when you walk...they will replace you. And the grid will go on.

At least, that's their hope, and it's not my place to convince them otherwise. Much as I want to, forming protest groups? Just doesn't work.