OpEd: Fleep’s Mea Culpa – Chilbo Artist Misprint Thursday Banned from SL7B
.jpg "Misprint Thursday's SL7B Exhibit")
Misprint Thursday’s exhibit at SL7B
I woke up this morning on the wrong side of the bed. For one reason or another, things on the grid weren’t working quite right and I’ve got tight deadlines for several projects and I found myself in a generally cranky mood. Then various groups started buzzing with talk about an SL7B exhibitor who had put up naked Barbie dolls and had the exhibit rejected - the hew and cry of CENSORSHIP flooded my chat windows.
“Sheesh,” I grumped aloud, “This happens every single year, you’d think by now the people building at SLBs would learn to read the darned rules and follow them. No nudity. It’s not complicated.”
That comment received furious replies and though no one pelted me with virtual tomatoes, the tenor of the conversation was pretty much equivalent. And before long it turned into the usual timeworn “Linden Lab sucks!” and “They’re killing Second Life!” and woe the sky is falling, and here I am furiously working on a project that in part my real life job and career depends on. “What’s really killing Second Life is all the darned negativity,” I think to myself, “And everyone picking fights over things that we should have stopped fighting over a long time ago.”
Somewhere in the midst of all of this, someone posted a link to the comments (and just the comments) on Joonie’s blog about the exhibit controversy, and I popped off with an irritable comment of my own:
(Oh darn, I deleted it and didn’t save a copy. Basically it said “If you break the rules, what do you expect? No nudity. It’s not complicated.”)
I tweeted something similar, and then I got back to work and went on about my day.
. . .
First lesson: Never post a comment on a blog without reading the blog post first, AKA, don’t jump into a controversy without bothering to learn the facts.
Hello, you’d think I would know how to play in the internet sandbox by now, but just goes to show that even seasoned veterans do really stupid things sometimes. Why I posted a reply to a list of comments without bothering to read the blog post itself is beyond me. (I’ve never liked that Blogger separates the comments from the post, actually, now I know why.)
I’m sure I’m not the only one to make this mistake, and I think it is something that we all are guilty of from time to time, and certainly when it comes to Second Life, I’ve seen numerous cases where Residents or Linden Lab or both jump in with both feet before they know the full story. It would behoove us all to take a step back and make sure we’re looking at the whole picture before forming an opinion.
Blogger separates comments from the blog post they’re attached to, which doesn’t facilitate Lesson 1.
Second Lesson: Whether guidelines are reasonable or not becomes completely irrelevant if the way they are enforced is “hamfisted” at best, or horribly disrespectful at worst.
Upon learning the actual facts of the situation, it became apparent that regardless of whether Misprint Thursday’s exhibit violated the “No nudity” guidelines, how the situation was handled by one of the volunteer staff members was simply beyond the pale. Misprint is a long term, well respected artist. Accusing her of furthering pedophilia is so absurd that it is beyond absurd – it’s insulting, it’s ridiculous, and it would almost be laughable if it hadn’t actually happened. But it did.
Further, they didn’t just remove the image that was judged to violate the policy (which is being hotly debated across the grid), they also ejected and banned her from her own exhibit and apparently from all of the the SL7B sims. This is again disturbing on so many levels – the punishment doesn’t at all fit the “crime” and it seems very wrong to continue to display someone’s work but refuse them access to it.
Misprint Thursday’s edited exhibit sits atop a chain of ladders
thanking other SL artists who have inspired her..
~
Perhaps all the more ironic for being in the “SL7B Absurdity” sim.
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/SL7B%20Absurdity/29/15/29
As I said in a fascinating discussion this evening hosted by Manx Wharton at his exhibit The Pros & Cons of Population Control, I am sympathetic to Linden Lab’s need to have guidelines for the event. It makes sense to me that they want the birthday celebration to be a welcoming experience for everyone and they made the guidelines for participation pretty clear before everyone began building their exhibits.
The analogy I used was this: If I invite you over to my birthday party and invite you to come make posters, but I say no nudity, and you show up wearing a naked Barbie doll costume, or draw naked Barbie dolls on your poster, I think it’s well within my rights to say that doesn’t make me comfortable and ask you to get dressed or take down your poster.
But though it may be within my “rights”, it would be awfully rude and more than a bit bizarre to accuse you of being a pedophile and forcefully kicking you off my property, getting a restraining order, and leaving up the rest of your poster minus the Barbie. I mean.. wha?
I think Manx was being kind when he said their response was at best “hamfisted”. That is simply no way to treat a wonderful member of our community regardless of whether or not she broke the rules.
Third Lesson: When you’ve made a mistake, apologize. Sincerely.
When I popped off and posted that comment this morning, I had no idea what had actually happened. My commentary and irritation was largely fueled by frustration with the rampant negativity about Second Life that has followed the sad news about Linden Lab’s layoffs.
The Doom & Gloom naysayers are having a field day and while I share in the concerns about the direction Linden Lab is taking, and I too worry about the future of our world, and I too mourned the loss of good friends and colleagues from the Lab, I refuse to believe that this spells The End for Second Life or the vision of the metaverse that inspired us all to begin this journey in the first place.
Now is a crucial time in this story, it is more important than ever for us to be engaging with Linden Lab and their efforts to steer us all on a good course. It is more important than ever for us to be coming together, virtually and in person (at SLCC!), to talk about what’s next for our future, for our projects, for our world(s), and for the metaverse itself in the next decade. It would be a shame to let bumps in the road or silly spats detract from the Bigger Picture that needs our attention.
Looking out over the exhibits of Second Life’s 7th Birthday..
Nevertheless, in order to have any good dialogue, both parties must be coming from a place of respect, and the way Misprint was treated was extremely disrespectful. It is exactly this sort of thing writ large in the history of Second Life that has garnered Linden Lab’s reputation for being a walking PR disaster with its own passionate userbase – people who love Second Life just as much as any Linden Lab staffer.
When you make a mistake, you say you’re sorry, and you don’t do it again. Linden Lab desperately needs to learn that lesson. Especially the “don’t do it again” part.
And perhaps so do the Residents of Second Life.
To Misprint: I apologize. Sincerely. And I won’t do it again.
~ Fleep
