UNIMPEACHABLE OFFENSE, PART I

Being the final word (hopefully) on a curious (if butt-ugly) experiment that tested the boundaries of community values-- and the values of a community.

Just a few weeks ago, it seemed to be the most important thing in the world, but if I don't post something about it now, it'll probably be forgotten forever. So here goes:

THE GRIEF THAT KEPT ON GIVING

Last December or thereabouts, a guy started buying land. Lots of land. Not large parcels, mind, but tiny plots, on which he installed giant, looming, garish billboards emblazoned with a putative political statement-- "SUPPORT OUR TROOPS - End the Illegal War in Iraq - Restore US credibility - IMPEACH BUSH". In the eyes of many Residents, however, this wasn't the landowner's lobbying effort against the American President, but an outrageous extortion scheme against his neighbors. After all, he'd set this land for sale at exorbitant rates, and if they didn't want this eyesore hovering near their property, they'd have to buy the parcels off him, so they could take the signs down.

I covered all this here, including an interview with the man I dubbed "Jedidiah Profane", and had every intention of leaving it at that. But the outrage kept coming, partly because Linden Lab took a hands-off position on the signs. If they weren't overhanging Profane's property into another Resident's land, Daniel Linden, Director of Community Services, told me, then they weren't Linden Lab's problem.

In the official Second Life forums, Residents started topic after topic on the subject-- "Impeach Bush or Land Extortionists?", "Support for the 'Impeach Bush' Guy", "Is LL protecting Impeach Bush because they're thinking of bringing in billboards?", and so on-- until there were nearly ninety threads on the same subject. (We know this, because Nailati Elytis helpfully created a meta thread listing all the existing threads on the issue-- "'Impeach Bush Signs' - Handy Thread Index!")

At which point, I really had no choice but to revisit the controversy. And after all, the floating billboards are still in-world even now, and like barnacles, tend to attract still more signs, sometimes political, sometimes in protest of the original signs, sometimes advertisements and religious proselytizing.

But was there a real, substantial controversy, in the first place? Or was I just looking at a feedback loop of Forum drama which didn't represent a broader community perspective?

"Forums are great places for technical help," new Resident Clarrice Cinquetti warned me in a private message, "but when it comes to general discussions, you will find the same clique usually posting complaints..." And the small segment of total Residents most active in the Forums were doing just that-- the vast majority of them clamoring for the immediate banning of Jedidiah Profane.

But it's a huge world, and even for his hundreds of parcels, surely most of the community had little or no contact with Profane's signs, let alone an opinion on them. Instead of following the Forum's lead, Clarrice advised me, I should go into the world, to see what the average Resident was really thinking.

And so I did.

WORD ON THE STREET IS...

To get a sample, in mid-January I sent Instant Messages to ten Residents selected completely at random, and at different times of the day, asking what they thought of the "Impeach Bush" situation in Second Life.

As it turned out, seven in ten of them had heard of it. And all seven of them who did know about Profane's campaign were against it.

"Griefer, plain and simple," Bob Bravo, President and CFO of Globe Land Development, told me. He'd mostly heard about the controversy in the Forums, he said, "[H]owever, since I deal in land and fly around a lot you cannot miss his signs." Ginger Doctorow was of a similar mind, as was tattoo artist CaseyJo Giugiaro and JJ Koolhaas. ("Litter all over," Mr. Koolhaas pronounced. "An eyesore.")

Flynn Faulkland, a bisexual dragon skink (i.e., a hermaphrodite lizard) had a comporable view, more or less. "I have mixed feelings, really," said Faulkland. "I have no particular love for Bush, and I do support freedom of expression... to a point. Expression is one thing, clutter is another."

When asked, Snapple Sneerwell not only had a negative opinion, but a solution, too: "I have discussed this with Linden Lab 'til I am green," he told me. "[We need z]oning regulations, not only for political signs, but all signs. Each sim would have a Sim Council for establishing guidelines for that sim. All new landowners would have to agree to those guidleines before buying land in that sim.

Lallander Parvenu's opposition was not only against the signs, but to their content, as well. "Being a servicemember I found it highly offensive," he told me. Released from duty last summer, he had been stationed in Kuwait, and rejected the notion that Jedidiah Profane's sentiment was actually in support of troops like him.

"[I]t makes it feel like the troops themselves feel that way, which overwhelmingly is not the case," he told me. "When you're in [theater] that sort of thing rarely comes up, I mean he is Commander in Chief. You do your part and move on."

"No general annoyance about failure to find WMD, distraction from going directly after Al Qaeda, being out here under 'false pretenses', that kind of thing?" I asked.

"I don't feel that we were there under false pretenses, anywho," he replied. "The general consensus not only from the US side but also from Britain is that [Saddam] did have or was producing WMDs."

Then Lallander Parvenu grinned mysteriously. "I'm having to watch my words here, I hope you understand. I was with the intelligence branch."

On the other side of the ledger, Blueangel Kipling had not noticed the anti-Bush sign campaign, busy as he was hanging out with friends, and playing games like Greedy Greedy, Tringo, and Slingo. Reached at the base of her volcano, the flame-haired vampiress Susan Dangle (designated in her profile as "Mistress Tess' personal bodyguard sworn to protect her even in my death") said she hadn't noticed them, either.

"Too much time building stuff in Second Life to watch the news," she told me, smiling sweetly.

Nor, for that matter, did Mariah Ghia.

"What do you think of the 'Impeach Bush' situation in SL?" I asked her by Instant Message.

"I haven't heard of it frankly," she replied. "But I think he should be impeached. He lied, misled the people about this illegal 'war' of his."

"Actually, I meant the hundreds of giant 'Impeach Bush' cubes all over Second Life."

"Oh, I haven't seen any of them," Ms. Ghia said. "I rarely leave Ar. I am a Gorean slave, and we are not allowed to leave the city unescorted. If I do leave the city, it is to shop." Goreans retain a large private island in Second Life, known as Glorious Ar, and it is here that Mariah Ghia is a Red Silk kajira, "rented property of Master Aros Cyr".

"I have been real life submissive and online for four years," she explained, "and slave since November." She's read most of the John Norman novels that gave rise to the Gorean subculture.

"There is much honor in the books," she told me. "Plus I have an in-built need to serve. I love the freedom being a slave gives me."

"That's a paradoxical statement," I observed.

"I don't have to make decisions, for I am told what to do, I know what is expected of me. It is freeing to be able to be what you really are."

"If your Master told you to support Bush and the war in Iraq," I asked her, "would you?"

"I would respectfully beg not to, and explain my reasons... Please don't mis-understand." And Mariah Ghia began to unburden herself. "My husband was in the Navy, in Vietnam, and my son spent 10 years in the Navy," she said. "What I cannot stand about war is how our men and women are being killed, and for what? The babies, the innocent men and women who have done nothing to our country, being killed and maimed. The carnage, it just gets to me. Frankly, we had this conversation in church Sunday school for adults last week."

But, I pressed, what if her Master happened to insist that she support Bush?

"Then in all good conscience, I could not," Mariah Ghia answered after a pause. "And would be punished, probably."

So in the end, I had both a microcosm of real world opinion and the community of Second Life. It wasn't just a figment of Forum drama. Seven in ten had seen the signs, they didn't like them, and many of them seemed none too pleased that they were allowed to keep existing in their present state.

With that information in hand, I sent an e-mail to Second Life CEO Philip Linden, to see what he made of it.

Coming later: The Linden response, and the world's response to Profane.