bloodhound and of no better pedigree than what you see

I've been having tremendous difficulty gutting out SL IMs from my Gmail spam folder, and for the first time in a long time, I've actually told people--and am contemplating adding it to my profile--that really, honestly, I may well miss peoples' IMs, send notecards.

Why is this happening? M'lady Sphynx Soliel tipped me to the unfortunate tragedy.

Now, I know, the Alphaville Herald is rife with hyperbolic hysteria on frequent occasion--by their own admission--but here's the hot points revisited from the article:

* SL IMs are now targeted as spam by most email services due to Spamhaus' ruling

That one's huge, right there. If this is true--and I haven't found anything saying it's not--then enough folks complained that one of the "big dogs" took notice to stop the whining. But, that is then followed by:

* Snapzilla picture hosting and email-to-Flickr hosting are broken because of this

I don't personally use Snapzilla--I use PhotoBucket or a friend's privately-hosted domain--and while I have a Flickr account, it's woefully underused. How'ver, many, many other people do, on both, and use them on both.

Now we're told they can't? Can anyone with active Snapzilla or Flickr-linked accounts confirm this?

* credit card companies are disallowing charges incoming from Linden Labs

Does anyone know if this is true? If this is fact and not hysteria, this is bigger than the blocked LL IP debacle.

I'm wondering if this--as well as the whole "Adult Continent" bother still raging on the forums--aren't all slowly converging from this initial report from May of last year that got virtually everyone running and screaming for a bit. (By the way, Second Tense has a lovely blog post on the former topic that anyone interested should read through. It's concise, to the point, and refreshingly rational.)

I'm hoping most of these allegations are just that, empty and without substantive content, but--I'm still gutting SL IMs out of my spam filter. That at least is true, and I'm not the only one to whom it's happening. So is the rest of it? I'm still searching for verification.

(A small side note before I wrap this post up--no, I haven't given up yet. I just got word that my Penzance parcel is approaching rent-due status, I'll be in to take care of that. I don't intend to lose my land and walk away entirely.

(That having been said, of late it's been one crisis after another. We just pull out of the death spiral of homestead/open sim loss, when Second Life manages to screw up its own internal voice and music controls. We get that fixed and now it's everyone on the boat, we're pulling out for adult seas.

(It's tiring. I'm tired. I'm tired of being more frustrated and angry than happy and intrigued. I'm tired of going into world and not even wanting to build because I hate the drama and the controversy. I'm tired of feeling like I don't have the strength to create and I'm really tired of getting in world, scanning through my friends list to see who's online, and just not wanting to even IM anyone to say hello.

(And I'm currently having more fun outside world, with my loves, my friends, and the rest of my life. It's not a good sign.

(So no--I'm not out yet, but--just as with the complete and utter mishandling of the homestead situation--I can see the exit sign from here. Whether it gets farther away again, I'd say is entirely up to the Labs.)