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.
Honey, it's all right… cause, baby, i don't care
Drama… that ingredient of human relationships. Second Life, as any way of “virtual” communication (from the phone to a chat, a blog, etc) is not complete, there is not “body language”. Not only that, sometimes the text one can write is limited (like in Plurk or Twitter), or one doesn’t have a complete knowledge of the language he is using to communicate through this ways (like in my case). That means misunderstoods are easy to produce. Moreover some people takes advantage of the “anonymity” to do somethings, or to react in some ways, they are not “allowed” in RL.
Being Drama inherent to Second Life, how to face it? Well, that’s THE question. Sincerly, i’m quite antidrama. I find it boring, stressing, disturbing… I don’t like to have it around and i don’t want to cause it. Sometimes is difficult to be away of drama, for the simple reason that sometimes drama comes alone… one doesn’t need to call it, that means that sometimes having drama it doesn’t depend on your acts… so again, how to face it?
I just can say how I face it, i don’t even know if is the “right” way… but is my way, at least the way that stress me the less. When drama comes then i wonder: “Should i care?”. This is not the only question, the other questions are: “Is this drama caused by me?”, “In this case, did i acted right and is a misunderstood?”. If the answer to the first question is “No” then i should’t care, if the answer to the second question is that all is a misunderstood then i try to explain myself better, if i acted wrong by mistake (I always try to act under my ethics) then i apologize and try to explain my reasons or try to find a solution. If after trying hard to explain myself clearly in a misunderstood, or after apologizing and fixing in the case of a mistake the drama remains then i should’t care, i did my best.
Anyway, i should say now there are different levels of care, i care specially for the ones i call family or friends, for the ones i love. That means i will try harder to clear misunderstoods with people i love. Anyway there are what we can call “sidelines” about all that, some like principles about all this:
- As the song says: “I am what i am, and what i am needs no excuses”, if one doesn’t like me, sincerly, i don’t care. I try to respect everybody and i ask for the same respect, if one doesn’t like me, just go, is easy.
- If someone comes and says: “Oh, Raul, [Avatar name here] is upset with you because [issue here].” normally i don’t care, if someone needs to talk with me, he/she has many ways to do it. If that person doesn’t talk with me that can mean three things: he/she doesn’t care enough to come and talk about it, the one saying that is making BIG a really small issue, or, finally, he/she doesn’t care enough about me to come and talk about it.
- If someone comes and says: “Oh, Raul, i’m having issues with [Avatar name here] becuase he/she did [issue here].” i listen as a friend, try to understand the one explaining me the issue but i always end saying: “You should talk with [Avatar name here] about this”. All for the reasons explained before.
I’m not sure, as i said before, this is the best way, but, at least, is working.
Maybe you wonder why the name of this post, all is becuase an old song i love named “Baby I don’t care” of a group of the late 80′s-early 90′s called “Transvision Vamp“.
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