To throw the rock, to hide the hand
Ok, ok, we all know it… Drama is part of SL as is part of any human group, but, anyway there are things i can’t only ignore without, at least, laughing a bit about it.
I heard lately SLblogs are influential (not sure about it, just a minimum portion of SLers read blogs), anyway, inside SLfashion world i think blogs ARE influential, a lot of people read them looking for new stuff, new styles, etc… I do read some fashion blogs related to SLmale fashion. Shopping Cart Disco is one of those influential SLfashion blogs, with a lot of readers and quality in posts. Inside that blog there is a “section” named SLsecret where anonymous people posts (moderated by the blog staff) some images where they tell their “secrets”. This section was meant initially (for what i know) as a place for people to express themselves telling things they can’t explain publicly for privacy reasons, or only because they were afraid of being rejected. One can think that if someone is too afraid to say something he/she should simply not say it, or say it and to face the consequences, but well, is understandable, not everybody wants to do that. Some other posts talk about fears, love, some are a bit “I’m-a-stalker”, some are funny, some are not… well, one can find anything there. But there are some posts, the “I-hate-you” ones that really make me sick.
Those hate posts are build basically with vague accusations from more or less anonymous people to more or less anonymous “defendants”. But, well, i think will be easier to understand with a couple of examples:
I used to wonder why one of the sweetest people I’d ever met in Second Life hates you with a passion. Then I saw what a vicious and ignorant person you are. I’d never support anything sold in your sim or with your name attached to it.
We know you copybotted your ex-partner’s products and released them Full Perms to get revenge. It may be still a secret, but we’re watching you.
Under my point of view all this is mostly shit (sorry for swearing). It’s only empty hate. Sometimes i just can laugh at them, sometimes they make me feel sick. Sincerely, are full of cowardice and it seems that some people uses the anonymity because they feel then enough protected to express all the hate they have inside. To those people i’d like to say something: If you don’t like someone, if you really hate him/her/it/them, if you really hate enough to write this shit and to take the time to make an image, then be enough brave and express it publicly, or go to the “hated” ones and express it privately, or just shut up, is easy.
Now someone can say me “Just don’t look at that page.”, ok, i’m not doing it anymore, but wanted to write what i think about it in this post. Someone can also say: “They have right to express themselves and you don’t have the right to censor them.”, then i would answer: “Right, i don’t pretend to censor them, and i have the right to think they express only hatter crap, but at least i don’t say it anonymously.”. What that people do, as we say in my country, is “to throw the rock and to hide the hand” and that is simply not right.
8 Responses to “To throw the rock, to hide the hand”
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- - January 25, 2009
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I agree totally – anonymous hate messages are as cowardly as anonymous threats. And they deserve an equal amount of attention …….. which is to say, none at all.
I totally agree with you on this one; occasionally I will peek at SLsecrets because sometimes you’ll see a nice one, or some funny ones, but it does make me sad to see all the faceless bitching by some people.
Then again, it usually only takes one genuinely nice and heartfelt posting on there to reassure me there is still hope for people.
I find the anonymity in sl as a whole disgusting, and really don’t care to be a party to it. I can’t see the people who waste their time in endeavours like slsecrets or any other form of attack blogging as anything but insecure pedants.
There is NOTHING wrong with commenting on someone else’s childish or inappropriate behaviour in a community you are a part of.
*However*
This is a problem with the internet at large. Everyone has seen the funny/cliche images commenting on the subject, but I term the problem inherent in SL as ‘Compounding Anonymity.’ People on sl feel secure, because they enter a virtual world, and have the accustomed level of internet anonymity. They then segue this to a blog, writing anonymously as their fake identity, with an entire fake world and fake credentials (email, history, etc) built up around the whole artifice, in many ways like an onion of comfort blanketing from any potential reprocussions.
My personal opinion is that this degree of anonymity is absolutely the key factor in why SL produces so much weapons grade bullshit. I truly wish that the identity verification had come through, rather than faded into obscurity, because it would definitely have given people cause to think before they put words in writing.
I don’t understand why there’s so much hate in the first place.
I compare it to flipping someone off in my car…something I would never probably do if the person was standing in front of me. We feel safe hiding behind our anonymity in SL. Sad but true…and cowardly.
Thanks again, Raul.
As, for some weird reason, pingbacks are not showing in the page, i recommend to visit this post by Vint Falken.
great post, thank you.
Yes I completely agree. I think the direction of the SLsecrets has to be clearly re-evaluated, specially if they’re becoming a way in which people get their personal grudges out in the open. Sometimes offending someone in a very direct manner.