The Cleaning of Ear.

One of the more annoying things for a landowner in SecondLife are when the 16 m ² ad people come through, buy a parcel, and slice and dice it into places where they can hang ads for everything from SecondLife escorts to... well, mainly SecondLife escorts. Very little else. Whether they are useful or not is not really something easy to quantify; the Search button for the Classifieds does wonders. Really. Don't believe me? Log into SecondLife and click the search button, select the 'Classified' tab and type in 'Escorts'. Click search. A long list of places to get your cyberfreak on ensues.

Arguably, a lot of these ads have lead to the misconception that SecondLife is all about sex and pornography, with a side order behavior which transcends the standard deviant. But that is not the majority of SecondLife: Like the internet, the best advertised things are related to sex. Don't believe me? Check your email. It seems like the broadcasted messages are missing their demographics with quite a few of us caught in the crossfire - sort of like Johnny Dangerously going to work in the morning - only we get to dodge viagra, pornography and a slew of other bulleted items.

I bought some virtual land in SecondLife - in Ear - mainly for an area to me to work on personal projects when I'm not slaving away between Drupal and a promising simulator in SecondLife. A place where I can leave out my stuff without my boss arching virtual eyebrows at me (though he apparently hasn't seen the cows I left in the building he's working on). A piece of virtual land in SecondLife, though, is like a tattoo. You can't have just one. Soon, you're looking at other pieces, expanding, building, toying around... and then your border comes to a group of 16 m² plots with all sorts of half naked people on it. This, of course, is fine in a mature rated sim - but maybe I don't want people's advertising affecting my view. It isn't even art - they are McDonald's signs for cyberjoy, even with job applications.

It would be foolish of me to lie. I love women, and I do find scantily clad women to be eyecatching. I'm hard wired for that; all of my ancestors had sex at least once and I'm not ashamed to write that in public view. So, you do the sensible thing. You find something you would prefer to look at and block it. This, of course, masks the problem. Then you block it from a few sides. So it goes. So you start offering to buy out some of the plots, and some try to raise prices on you in the hope that you will pay more. This is called extortion, but is firmly supported by the SecondLife Terms of Service and Community Standards, it would seem.

Some of them are reasonable. Some of them can't be contacted - lost in the cyberwasteland while people are forced to look at their signs, or block them from view. It is my opinion that anyone who cuts a 16 m² plot should be dipped in molten lead, their skin removed with red hot pincers, tossed on the rack and stretched a bit so that the salt and lemon juice soaks in nice and good... and when bored, we can draw and quarter them, afterward shooting each of the 4 pieces of them.

But a few things happened today. First, one lady IM'd me and said that I was breaking the Terms of Service by blocking her ad. My prim had encroached on her sacred space, so I moved it and IM'd her back - explaining to her that it would be blocked anyway, and that I would buy it from her. She sold. Others I tried to contact I got no response from. Governor Linden is doing something with one for maintenance, so who knows. I IM a few other owners.

Suddenly, I get an email (from IM) - a message from Anders Bartlett who said he would give me the plot for free - he was holding it to avoid people placing an ad on it. Logged in, found it, woosh - he gives it to me, I pay him anyway. He says he has 3 more in Ear. Woosh. Pick those up - he refuses to sell the land to me, instead selling it to me for nothing - but I pay him anyway, since he has done all residents a service by keeping such things Ad Free.

Anders even said he read the blog here from time to time. We stood there on the last patch transferred to me, talked about the Arbor Foundation (touched on before), and said farewell as friends. Fighting the fight against 16 m² plots. Boldly removing what shouldn't have been there before.

In the end, if you're going to clean up anywhere, you have to start somewhere. I've decided to clean Ear. Good thing it wasn't Armpit or worse...

I suppose I should make a Q-tip.