Second Life is a 3D designers playground, sound and movies included, filling up with the old as the new content evolved, adventure games included. You can go ahead and put virtual in front of every word from here on, because none of this exists except in the minds of millions of people. People will pay for that, just like the movies, and here you're the center of the action, the makeup, the plastic surgery, the fashion, the cause, the camera.
I set up Sponto Gallery on the boardwalk of Venice Beach and filled it with my photos of Venice Art. The Landlord of Venice Beach even gave me $2500 to get started. I teleported from place to place to admire the works of talented designers. I dove into the scripting libraries for special effects and animation. There were people of conscience working here. Camp Darfur, AIDS awareness, Breast Cancer Awareness, CODEPINK! I joined CODEPINK because i am in love with them. The sight of courageous outrageous performance art tearing up patriarchial groupthink just makes me so happy. The people I met at the CODEPINK meetings were wonderful activists from across the US. I soon became a woman. My Pinky would be the CODEPINK poster girl, a big tall Irish 18 year old with flaming red-blond hair. She would fall to the earth and utterly transform it, to a punk metal anthem.
After the November election RootsCamp held a number of campaign debriefings, with real life activists and technology specialists from campaigns. I learned what content management systems and private web based applications people were finding useful. We planned to do an anti-war protest to roughly coincide with the January 27 2007 protests in Washington. Avatars Against the War. We sought out all the other progressive groups. Greenpeace, ACLU, Forward Together, Imagine Peace, Leftist Beatnik Revolutionaries, Not On Our Watch, Red Faction, SL Left Unity, and the Anti-fnsl, who have now split into two groups, one on a path of violence and one on a path of non-violence. We put together a large antiwar Peace Party and demonstration at the Capitol.
By large I mean about 120 people in two sims. A sim holds about 80 people before it
refuses entry.
My Photos
RubyJi's photos
An Article by Scarlett Qi
A blog and movie by Rik Riel
Searching the databases for progressives I found the Conscious Lounge, run by a lesbian performance artist from San Francisco. She played lovely lyrical and abstruse piano, quite modern. She was hanging out with a lot of Euros, particularly French people who had come into Second Life to protest the opening of an office for Le Pen, the presidential candidate of the National Front of France. Segolene Royal, the candidate of the Socialist Party of France also has an office. There were constant disruptions at the Le Pen office, as both sides switched tactics. Pushing, shooting, naked passive resistance, image bombs, annoying chatbots, these are all techniques of what is called griefing. Second Life has a set of anti-griefing tools. If you own land, you can expel and ban people, and there are even degriefers for hire to help get rid of griefers. Griefing is against the Second Life Terms of Service. Yet in civil disobedience there is a basic intention to disrupt the corrupt. The Anti Fascists managed to force the Le Pen office to move from it's first location, and kept up the pressure on the new location. However there is one problem with fighting neo-fascists, they love it, it is how they have sex.
It also helps them band together because soon into the fray comes Thor Forte, whose profile links to the National Vanguard, a white separatist hate group as certified by the Anti-Defamation League. Their website could have been written by the Onion. "We can have a clean, orderly, progressive, safe, and incomparably richer and more beautiful nation if it becomes a proud White nation again." They can't use "supremacist" and more but they'd like it if all the non-white people went back to where they came from, so the "True Americans" can get their country back. Christ is far to namby-pamby for these neo-nazis, they are Pagans. I could tell it hurt when I told my daughter that. So Thor starts showing up at the National Front office heckling the demonstrators, and spying on the left wing organizations. I meet with the ACLU and a degriefer, who suggests that people have a right to hate anybody they want. As for spying, don't think for a minute that everything you do on the internet isn't visible to someone. Get over it and make your brazen dreams in public, the world loves an exhibitionist, that's why there is an entertainment industry. Have nothing to hide, or confess, that can play well.
After the demonstration i go by the Le Pen HQ to see what's goin on. It appears that Thor Forte has handed out enormous penises to the National Front of France guys. They immediately use them on an unwelcome guest. The Video. The Photos. NSFW I felt like a photographer at a gay porn shoot.
Second Life was created by Linden Labs of San Francisco and we all know that in this world they are god. While they do have terms of service, violations of which can get your account suspended or terminated, they would prefer not to be involved in the disputes of mortals, such as the banning of hate groups. Some residents hope to launch self-government, where the residents have the ability to legislate. But all real world governments have police and army to back them up, and regions in SL may be able to opt out. War may be required for residents to take self-government seriously, but physical war in SL is an orgy of violent imagery, with no permanent damage.
The lawless mercenary is the hero of the militarist genre of video games. Legions of young boys jerking off with their remotes. You'd think it would be a militarist's bonanza of recruits but army life ain't nuthin like the video game for a grunt. However those who view themselves as an elite find theselves able to simulate military operations as training exercises, in Second Life too. All the hostility gives them something to fight for. So I suggested to the Anti-Fascists that we read Umberto Eco's article "14 Ways to tell a Blackshirt" which is about Ur-Fascism, the commonalities of fascist ideas thru the ages. I also suggested that we campaign against them with surrealistic psychic disruption. For the Ur-fascist, the weapon is the penis, and vice versa. No one seems to be going for my plan of counterattacking with giant vaginas, and getting Larry Flint to sponsor the film. Instead we are making Le Pun, a little chatbot who says "Death is Life!", "Le Pun loves his little boys!", "Take orders and obey!", and worse.
U.S.: The White Supremacist Movement's Metamorphosis
The National Vanguard
The National Front Of France
Umberto Eco - Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt
I was a racist little kid, despite having relatively liberal parents. My brothers friends were neo-nazi ROTC who marched across Fairfax High in Nazi drag. I wanted to be a Marine and go to Annapolis, at least until I discussed all this in first grade with teacher, Mrs. Gurowitz. I think the first crack in my armor was when I could see how a sweet jewish girl in my class was hurt by my words. I felt some sympathy now for those inside militaristic hate cults. We discussed how the neo-nazis held many self-loathing closeted gays. We are reading the Art of War and the Art of Peace. The most powerful weapon of war and peace is the human mind.
1 comments:
and the Anti-fnsl, who have now split into two groups, one on a path of violence and one on a path of non-violence.
This is incorrect! Anti-FNSL has not been divided. On the contrary the group is being consolidated. Instead of reading the info about the group, 1 person wanted to play with guns the second he had joined. When this was not applauded, he left and formed an isignificant group based on the obscure equation that Anti-FN equals FN. The no-violence policy is in fact the only thing that the info lists as a no-go and furthermore the first thing that was ever decided by the members.
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