Sorry for the silence but work has ramped up a lot of late so I’ve not had much time to blog about Sal’s brilliant ArcheoExpo11 in SL or all my many adventures in LOTRO. Normal service will be resumed once I get The Man off my back. Fight the System, man!
Tag Archives: Bollocks
Hey! Journos! Bored of writing news? Kick SL instead.
Warning: This post contains a lot of swearing. Do not read if you don’t like that sort of stuff. Normal service from a once more calm Burro will be resumed soon.
Flicking through the BBC’s inline Magazine (something I never do – it’s about as interesting as Heat except minus the gossip and pictures of starlets with there norks flopping out) I saw a headline about Second Life, specifically “What happened to Second Life?” and I made the mistake of reading it (1).
Well, what a big old bag of toss that was. I’ll boil it down for you.
- 1) SL hit the headlines in 2006 and you suddenly couldn’t shit or have sex if you didn’t have an account.
2) Some businesses came in, riding the wave of hype and hoping to make money and not get left behind in something they knew nothing about.
3) They left after finding SL wasn’t the place for them to, oooo lemme think, sell cars.
4) SL is not facebook and is therefore doomed.
5) Oh, some stuff about new people joining still rising, bah, who cares – read 4) again!
There you go. That’s your lot. Some bored fuckface pretend journalist tippytypes that lot of piss on her airbook and shoves it up the ever hungry bunghole of the 24-hour news whore until the slutty she-beast vomits up pure shit and teeth for us to wallow in. News she-whore craps out some shinny pennies so pretend journalist can pay her rent for another week. The end.
Still, as I have just turned three and my love for my second life is still fresh and warm in my mind (like a French loaf, freshly baked, shoved betwixt my lugholes), I wanted to disagree with the piece in a nice grown up and constructive way and this is the comment I left – fek knows if they’ll use it, but I’d urge you to go along and leave your thoughts too – keep ‘em clean and constructive and don’t sink to the pretend jouro’s level of nonsense.
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I’ve just had my third “birthday” in Second Life and fully intend to have many more there. I attribute my happiness there to four simple rules I follow, three DON’Ts and one DO:1) I don’t run a business – I have enough of that in real life. Second Life is a hobby and I’m willing to pay for my hobby.
2) I don’t get into relationships – far too dangerous as I’m a happily married family man. My friends in Second Life are just that, friends, and not ‘friends with benefits’.
3) I don’t get involved in arguments and fighting – again, enough of that in real life. A hobby should be fun, not a slog.
4) I do have a reason to go there – like real life, Second Life is not Facebook, which is simply about keeping in touch with people in your network. Second Life is a world where you can do and create anything so going there expecting it to be a Facebook network won’t work. You have find something to do – explore, build, write, create. You’ll get back only as much as you put in. It’s very much like real life like that. I was lost at first, but quickly found new friends and new things to do. These days, amongst other things, I help run a travelling vaudeville theatre group and write & perform comedy acts – something I’d never have thought of doing in real life. In fact my second life is as busy and involved as my first.
Second Life will never be for every one – hell, I have no interest in Facebook and can’t stand football, yet no one predicts their demise because I don’t like them. Second Life has a healthy and growing population that doesn’t need hype and counter-hype to continue to grow and enjoy it.
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Oh, and by the way, don’t you just love Social Media Marketers, whatever it is they are? (2) Here’s an extract from one such poor, lost, scared soul who is hurt and confused by the whole thing, despite having a totally made up job title that means he’s a brave soldier battling the darkness of “selling stuff to people”, only without actually selling the stuff. Or making it. Or handling it. Basically he tells people that things exist they don’t understand but other people do and therefore they must fear them unless he is paid to use them to allow them to sell their stuff to the other people. Like I say, brave lad and lasses all. Go the future.
“[Mr X], a 23-year-old freelance social media marketer, believed the hype in 2007. He signed on, created an avatar with a shock of red hair that vaguely resembled him, and jumped into what he found to be a lacklustre experience. “It was a real pain. You have to learn how to control things and read manuals on how to get to islands and get off. Half the time you’re just wandering around talking to weirdos.” After three months [Mr X] became bored and left.”
Fuck me! You have to learn a new skill? A whole new skill? You don’t just turn on the PC and know how to do it like you do with every other bit of software ever invented? And you say there’s a manual to read? No fucker gave me a manual to read! I want my manual! Especially if it tells you how to get off – something I was pretty sure the media thought we Second Lifers could do quite well anyway. Now, for a 23 year old self-proclaimed social media marketer (3) to admit he spent three months in SL and couldn’t use it where I, a mere mortal with no social media skills or powers, picked it up in a few hours would lead me to think twice about ever employing him to do whatever the fuck it is he does. You don’t hire a dog to guard your house if all it does it is wank over pictures of iPhone apps and complain the house isn’t the type of house it normally guards and therefore is can’t possible be expected to guard it. No, that’s the kind of dog you take to an Eastern European bear fight and throw in the ring for a laugh.
Hell, after 3 months *I* was bored, but I simply put in the time and effort to find something to make me not bored. But then that would mean ‘doing’ somthing and ‘doing’ might not be Mr X’s strong point given his *cough* ‘job’.
Anyway, fuck it. Fuck the article and fuck something else as well. SL isn’t Facebook and if you can’t handle and understand that then frankly I’m glad you fucked off. Don’t come back.
Yours with hugs n love,
HeadBurro Antfarm.
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(1) Dio, if the piece about the Web killing reading made you piss blood, this will cause you to shit your spine out.
(2) Me either. I’m sure some are lovely and useful but I’ll bet they are the ones we never hear about – instead the whining pissbags who can’t be arsed to do a real job float to the surface like week-dead corpses farting their vapid guts out for all to hear. The good ones should form a posse and shoot the others in their stupid flapping mouths. For fuck’s sake, get a real job if you can’t handle a made up one you twats.
(3) I like the mouseketeers better – at least they were useful and I’ll bet they could kick the limp little arses of Mr X and his Marketeering Posse of Doom.
(4) I know I don’t swear a lot in this blog, but I’d say the above is a fair representation of my normal speech. I do swear like a fucker.
