Second Life Veterans Miss the World's Wild West Days of Creative Anarchy

When I wondered aloud last week if new SL users remember the virtual world's Wild West years of creative anarchy over a decade ago, many old timers replied by more or less sighing, "Those were the days." For instance, reader "Mondy":

I can remember a time when griefing by self-replicating objects was fairly common, and although it was annoying, it was also an event. People would COME to a sim to see sometimes hilarious flying...appendages? Or whatever infantile creations had been brought into being. Sure it was stupid, but it was also a talking point and often amusing. You also got to see the Lindens arrive to clean up the mess if the sim didn't crash and the owner couldn't deal with it themselves.

Or reader "Jackie", who fondly recalls what we might call an ethical, White Hat Griefer:

Knew a guy who did fun griefting such as turning the sky from blue to green a smiley face moon. He loved combat sims and making folks he knew fly three Sims away for kicks. Crashing Sims and hurting others wasn't cool with him.

I remember those days well and miss them too! I'd also distinguish types of griefing:

Above: The infamous avatar replicator from 2006

The anti-social kind, where the damage causes genuine distress on specific people who are clearly not enjoying the pranksterism -- versus a pro-social variety, where the "damage" is temporary and consensual on some level, and shows off the creative power of the platform. (I too fondly remember getting frequently flung like a ragdoll across several sims, thanks to the inventiveness of various wiseass scripters.)

Responding to my observation that this kind of hijinx doesn't happen in SL as much as it used to, longtime reader Adeon Writer makes an interesting, poignant point:

I've always said for years that Griefing/Trolling/Botting in a game is proof that it is still alive and relevant.

When that stops, outlook bad.

It falls under the same category of “piracy should be taken as flattery”

You need to be a certain level of good to be worth stealing.

I might phrase it a bit differently and say that the sign a game is still relevant when there's both pro and anti-social varieties of griefing -- and when we only see the negative kind, then it's time to be concerned. Along with being a constant community management problem, most anti-social trolling is boring, lazily pressing the standard outrage buttons -- rather than do anything creative to inspire surprise and delight. A world without both should worry.

Comments

[Skate Foss]

I remember as a new resident exploring and all of a sudden particles exploding over my head only to see a Linden pop up apologizing, he was on a break and was just playing inworld. Lindens playing inworld. Thats as rare today as seeing Bigfoot or unicorns. Yes, those were the days

[Adeon Writer]

You know it's bad when you find yourself waxing nostalgic for a time when a platform was at least popular enough to get trolled.

[FlipperPA]

Second Life managed to achieve the ultimate blank canvas in a way that nothing I have experienced in technology before - or since - quite has. It was a shared canvas for us, a dreamscape, if you will. Some of the creativity I witnessed in the early years with a limited toolbox was truly breathtaking.

There are very few experiences in my life that I can say significantly changed *who I am*, but being involved in Second Life in the early days was one of those experiences. I owe a great debt for that to those who made up that community, including the author of this blog. Leonard Nimoy's final tweet comes to mind: "A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP"

[Jumpman Lane]

Maybe I'm wrong; but, I never considered the days of Wild West Creative Anarchy as BEING gone. Rather, I thought folks were just too scared to mess with me, personally...nowadays. That, and Linden Lab WON the war against organized griefer groups, such as Woodbury and The PN. D3adly Codec, an erstwhile leader of The Patriotic...uh..WHATEVERS were absolutely enemies. We hounded each other until his dying breath. Oh yeah he DIED and Prokofy Neva contacted the funeral home to make sure.

Second Life is more relevant today due to covid than it was say 3 years ago. Many people are returning. I came back because even though I socialized on Discord in another game (Elder Scrolls Online) AND I found that such socializing was necessary to my sanity, I came back because if all I was going to be doing is sitting around socializing with folks I could do that BETTER in Second Life. ESO is BROKEN. SL works better than it ever has (for me) because I play SL on a gaming rig now. In the past I always built computers for SL slightly above recommended spec. My computer now is over kill for SL.

One last thing. It's ODD that copy-bot is still around after all these years. Considering Eros vs Linden Research Inc, you'd think The Lab would take that sort of think a bit more seriously...unless they REALLY won against that fool Stroker.

[Adeon Writer]

> One last thing. It's ODD that copy-bot is still around after all these years.

It can't be rendered unless it's downloaded. If it is downloaded, it can be saved.

[Alicia]

"One last thing. It's ODD that copy-bot is still around after all these years. Considering Eros vs Linden Research Inc, you'd think The Lab would take that sort of think a bit more seriously...unless they REALLY won against that fool Stroker."

You really think LL gives a crap about that case, Jumpman? If they did, then copy-bot would've been taken out to pasture years ago. Instead, they did absolutely nothing, and look at all the people who are literally copy-botting from people like Blueberry, etc. That, alone should tell you that LL truly doesn't give a rats ass about its users/creators unless the issue is enough for them to become the "Mary Sue's" they've always been.

[Jumpman Lane]

@Alicia you're right. My point was that LL must have really REALLY WON Eros vs Linden Research Inc, not to care about incidents of copy-botting AT ALL. LL must have won...

I don't think it's so much that LL doesnt care (and I agree with you, they DON'T). It's more that they won and have no reason to care...I suppose. No one ever mentioned how that case really went.

[Sigh....]

@Alicia - you never have anything positive to say about SL/LL. Everything is always sour. Why stay?