Monday, June 27, 2011

The Dirty Pot Calls the Shiny Kettle Black

Anybody else notice how Victor1st Mornington ranted libelously (last I checked he did not correct this aspect of his blog post from earlier in the year) how Whovian Ebak claimed exclusivity in hosting Big Finish audio dramas (which of course Ebak did not), yet did that very thing at their presentation by claiming he and his buddies were the exclusive go-to's for Dr Who fans in Second Life?

The dirty pot calls the shiny kettle black.

I don't feel so sorry for him like I did at first, but I feel sorry for anyone associating with him who unwittingly supports his agenda.  Because good people wouldn't knowingly feed a lie at the cost of others.  That's why there's a backfire that's building up.  The bigger they are the harder they fall.

I know people who use New London's TARDIS system and are very happy with it and with the level of support offered.  They're good people over there and understand retention.  If it weren't for their honesty I wouldn't be using a Hands of Omega, which suits my needs. There's enough difference in their function to accommodate different people and not pose any more of a problem than would Novatech to either of them, ditto the other systems out there.  And yes, I see Sen Pixie as a probable "unwitting supporter," because spreading lies about competition is a very bad business practice. 

It's a precedent set by FoxNews and the like, who rely on masses of people taking sides without doing their checking.  Just trickle down behavior. Remember that Rupert Murdoch owns FoxNews.  Nuff said there. 

A recent accusation of a resident's stealing builds from Katrina's Dalekanium products (the term "copybot" was used) may be a lot of fluff.  The accused in question is still in Second Life.  If this were a legitimate claim and pursued via the proper channels their objects would be off the grid as would they.  But nothing's changed.  It's probably bullshit propaganda made to look like an exposé.  I haven't yet seen anything outside Victor1st's claims which bear any credibility. (there are details of this incident in comments)

Meanwhile the folks in New London work hard maintaining their place to keep the Who fans who come there happy with events, contests, freebies.  They support civilians like Ebak to hold more events.  In spite of Victor's efforts people find New London anyway and see that there's a true community, thanks to a highly identifiable sim name: TARDIS.  Possibly the best publicity they have going for them given the tide of antipathy - and why in the end they won't be losing to liars. Kudos to them for taking the high road and just doing what they do best.

And we know from Victor1st's blog that he follows a pattern of "guilt by association" by associating Ebak with the managers of New London.  He also told me "Have fun in New London" when he found out about my original blog post.  Well yes, I often do. But not always. Can't please everyone all of the time you know.  I'm a Dr Who afficionado who finds entertainment there more often than not, but if there's something not to my liking I don't stick around for it. I just give credit where due.

As for Victor1st? I think by now we both know how we feel about eachother: Mutually insignificant.  Also not everyone is enchanted by someone just because they have an accent. That might work with the females in Katrina and New Babbage, but it won't work on a Hologram from the 24th century ;)  As for agendas and allegiances, there's an influx of sim funding involved:

"Almira Gulch, just because you own half the county doesn't mean you have the power to run the rest of us"


*shrug*

And about New Babbage: I don't rent from him in Clockhaven and that suits me just fine.  New Babbage is a big place and I've been meeting some really marvelous souls there. Very little of what I now do crosses what he does.  That's sort of like Second Life itself in a way...

4 comments:

  1. Ordinarily I don't step into off-world battles, but I should practice some honesty here and point out that Victor1st does have a legitimate point somewhere in his train of half-truths. It is true that I used prims and a sculpt map from what turned out to be a copybotted build. See this entry here for more details:

    http://timelordsofgallifrey.blogspot.com/2011/06/clearing-up-some-things.html

    As I pointed out in my blog entry, I did pay HBK Schwartzman 4,000L$ in compensation for the Dalek avatars I sold up to that point. I am not making excuses for what I did, nor am I complaining about having to take any of the consequences. But the false accusations against New London, its owners, and its staff need to stop. They are dishonest and destructive to the whole of the Whovian community in Second Life.

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  2. Well Arch it doesn't sound like you intentionally took Dalekanium's products and copybotted them. You also did the right thing when you found out. At least we have some aspect of that cleared up, but did anyone on the other end change their tune about you intentionally trying to rip them off? And if not, could it be because you DJ in New London?

    The thing which bothers me is that if there were a valid case against New London, Victor1st wouldn't have to lie. Tell it straight.

    He's probably telling people I intentionally set something opposite their SL8B nonsense, when in fact I had the time and DJ all set up well before their announcement. He has a habit of scheduling his Friday events opposite mine you know... been doing it for months. So as far as I was concerned, it was the fat cats taking slack from the residents 2 weeks ago.

    And yes he thinks this is great fun to play politics. I used to run a zine decades back. I subsequently ran a fan website in the 90s. Fandom can be great, but too often it goes ugly because someone thinks they're as big as their idols. This is nothing new. Victor1st is just another in a long line. There will be more when he's long gone.

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  3. What I was, Holocluck, was impatient to finish something I'd been working on for months, and I didn't dare to ask too many questions. When my comp went on the meltdown and I had to do a complete reinstall of my operating system about a month and a half ago, a lot of saved info got lost, including chat logs, which is why I couldn't bring up the name of the avatar I got the study model from. If I'd taken the time to finish and been completely kosher instead of getting impatient and cheating, none of this would have happened.

    Where Victor went wrong in his righteous indignation was dragging the rest of New London into this. I already admitted that I acted alone and that the people at TARDIS region had no knowledge of this. If they did, they never would have accepted the Dalek avatars with compatibility for their new TTC system. There's no need to involve people whose only "crime" was forgiving someone who owned up to his actions and paid 4k to the guy whose prims he swiped in this, and it certainly isn't exactly honest to omit that bit in his rant.

    As for this tendency to schedule events at the same time as other regions' events, that can't always be helped — especially when there's a lack of communication and two regions are locked in an ongoing feud. But the thing is that Katrina (and another region I won't name here) are in a hyper-competitive mindset and have an unhealthy need to destroy what they see as competition for their diminishing popularity. They have bad attitudes that turn off a lot of people and that is why they suffer a loss of visitorship when people inevitably discover New London and other, more friendly Whovian regions. No one likes to be treated poorly, and no one wants to go somewhere that has an elitist attitude. If Katrina would stop seeing everything as a winner-take-all competition, stop waging war on others, and simply be a lot friendlier toward people instead of constantly boasting about how great they think they are and others aren't, I think they'd see a vast turnaround.

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  4. Well it's all about owning up, and whether one takes responsibility for their actions or digs themselves further. Those are two ways a person goes, and it's a true test of character.

    Yeah victor1st probably thinks I work for New London or get some sort of endorsement, which of course I don't. I read his blog and was just gobsmacked by the claims based on personal experience (such as accusations of badmouthing Katrina in group chat, which was and is a total fiction. I wonder if some obscure fan said something during an offhour and it became gospel?).

    I went to Katrina to buy my first TARDIS, and I liked how the landing for the system put me into the artifacts room of their museum at the time. It was a very ambitious exhibit & a great spot to bring new recruits to the Who Universe. It's been moved to a warehouse space now. Sort of a shame that happened.

    So there WAS history. They're still evolving for a marketplace. Nothing involving any community activity except when Podshock comes to town, but it's become less of a friendly place to take business thanks to the rantings. I like Nodster; his friend isn't helping the cause.

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