interview | Crap Mariner

Posted on December 31, 2009 by Ana Lutetia | 4 Comments

welcome to the home by the sea (29 out of 365), originally uploaded by isfullofcrap.

Crap’s soundtrack

reworked three of swords, originally uploaded by isfullofcrap.

1 – How did you discover Second Life and what made you create an account?
A coworker was blithering about it. Talking about going around as a drunk priest with a gun, telling people “I’m off duty” when asked why he was drunk and carrying a gun.
So, I checked out what he was doing in SL while pretending not to give a damn in RL.
That was back in 2004 or so.
Some cool stuff, some not-cool stuff.
Didn’t get too hooked on it back then or get into the social.
Tom Hale’s statement about making a friend or a purchase pretty much sums that experience up… didn’t make either.
(Eventually, my coworker got out of SL. Something to do with a renter making a concentration camp simulation role-play thing. Sicko stuff, apparently. Apparently there were some bans or some other shit flying
around, never did get the whole story.)

2 – How did you come up with your Second Life name?
I know that some folks find it offensive, but “Mariner” was the best I could come up with from the list. (rimshot)
The current name is based on my deranged domain name: isfullofcrap.com.
To many in my online dealings, I’m known as “Mr. Crap.”
Didn’t see it at a last name, though.
I truly believe that everybody out there, without exception, is full of crap. I’m just honest enough to admit it, eh.
From all the last names, Mariner sounded right.
I hate boats. They make me very, very sick.
Don’t you hate it when you get a last name, and then you look back at all the better last names that could have gone with it?
Burrito. Lock. Blogger.
Go figure.
Anyway, it’s a great social firewall and moron detector. Those who can get beyond the name, well, fuck them. They can go pound sand for all I care.
Those that can, cool, eh.
And when someone’s only retort in an argument is “No wonder why you’re named that!” I just laugh.
Is that the best you can come up with?
Pathetic. Dismissed. Ignored. Blown off. I don’t have time to deal with your Fail.
Next!

3 – Lots of people only stay in SL for a week or a month after creating an account. What made you stay and what motivates you to log back in?
Wait? It’s been more than a month?
How long has it been?
Holy shit. Three years.
Fuck!
Okay, a week… a month. My first go-round, that’s exactly what happened. I stayed for a week or two, peeked around, got bored and lagged out, then POOF gone.
System couldn’t handle the graphics, my connection sucked, and there really wasn’t much compelling going on to keep me in there.
The second-go round was for a storytelling competition in podcasting. The so-called “Golden Age” of SL podcasting was winding down, and the marketing-driven chaff publicity whore virtual world developers were starting to separate from the dedicated, inspired and addicted wheat.
I stayed around beyond the first month because, let’s face it: I was a fucked-up suicidal mess after Piper died. I’d also written off about 99.9% of my friends from the past because they’d been total shit after a really
bad time in my life post dot-com bust.
Also, I did the two things that keep people in here: made friends and made purchases.
Let’s face it… if you know what you’re doing, entertainment can come cheap compared to that big thing out there called The Real World.
So, I traded in one pack of lying parasites who didn’t know the real me for… well, I hope it’s not another.
Probably not. Done my best to scrape off as many of the fakes, the flakes, and the jackasses these past three years.
Live Bullshit Free, and quit whining about wanting no drama.
If you’ve got life, you’ve got drama.
Just face it as best you can, try to do it with honor, and cut people a little slack for being fucked up. (But not too much… there’s only so much you have to take.)

4 – What have you been doing in SL? Tell us your story: what have you been up to or what have you created.
I spread love and hope and good cheer and happiness and…
Excuse me. (BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!)
Dunno. Been drunk for most of it. Check the logfiles? (Mind the empties.)
Okay, okay – the whole “drunk” bit is so Nineties, man. When I left the TV station, I left that part of my life behind. One day at a time, right?
Networked and friended and collaborated with podcasters, got seriously into music, reconnected with my long-lost (crazy) little sister, doing a bit of storytelling and comedy here and there, a hell of a lot of Linden-bashing blogging when I’ve had a bad day and feel like pretending to be some kind of Rebel Without A Clue, and somehow became some kind of mini-me anti-Land Baron kinda tyrant who prefers that people have as much leeway in resolving and doing shit as possible without having to come running for permission.
That’s the Edloe Way, really… folks don’t ask for permission to do stuff because it’s required… they float ideas out to others to see if they have anything in their inventory that can help, or if they have any suggestions for places to shop or people to seek out, yadda yadda.
Most of the time, it works. Sometimes, it doesn’t.
Oh well. Life, in all its many shapes and forms, is not perfect.
Apparently, I’ve done some good for some people here and there. Not just sticking prims together, empty gesture “link this please” bullshit. When others are just standing with their dicks in their hands, I had better roll up my sleeves and come out swinging.
Get off the goddamned sidelines and make a difference, people. If shit stinks, do something about it.

5 – Have you found, developed or improved any skills because of SL?
I’m a lot more organized time-wise. Now all my appointments and events are synced to my Blackberry so I can easily ignore them and blow them off one at a time.
I think I’ve developed my writing skills a bit. And my comedy timing has vastly improved.
Patience. I’ve learned a lot about patience. You’ve got to be a seriously impatient, rude or selfish fuckhead to get my blood to boil these days.
All this, and still haven’t learned to keep my fucking mouth shut. I figure that’ll happen when the undertaker spends an hour trying to sew it shut, then reads the chart and yells FUCK IT’S A GODDAMNED CREMATION SHIT
GODDAMN IT I DID ALL THIS WORK FOR NOTHING???
Have I improved my leadership skills? Maybe… although I’d say it’s more like trying to lead best by leading least.
Cutting the needless profanity out of my language?
Um… fuck. Still working on that shit. (Shut the fuck up, bitch!)
Connecting people, networking them, bringing folks together… I think I do that pretty well. And not just in a “Leave me the fuck alone! Go bother this other guy!” kinda way.
Every day, someone’s looking for something in IMs, and I guess I know who does what.
Oh well. And here I was, trying to stay oblivious to all that and crawl under my own rock, nice and warm.

————————
What makes me laugh is when people think I know a lot more than I really do.

“Social Media Expert” instead of just “Loudmouthed, Opinionated Prick.”
“Scripter God” instead of “Jackass Who Knows How To Copy-Paste And Do A Little Code.”
“Builder Genius” instead of “Makes Really Big Shit For The Sake Of Building Really Big Shit.”
Folks, what is so damn compelling about having to make everyone a god or a genius or an expert or a guru or a rockstar?
How about just easing back on the superlatives and appreciate things for what they are? No need to hype the shit out of everything and blow it all out of aproportion.
I do a little of this, a little of that. But everything I do, there’s always someone (or a lot of someones better).
Except one… and anyone calling themselves a funnyman or a comic on the grid can hold my purse while I take a shit and I’ll STILL make that funnier than any routine they can come up with.
I just don’t need to rub people’s faces in it like others do. And I don’t rankle when someone claims some kind of comedy crown or they get the usual hyped-up crap in Events listings.
Why? We all know that if you have two people funny nearby, they will be funny together in a way that’s funnier than just one of them solo.
Also happens some with musicians… someone who’s total shit solo may be awesome when playing with someone else in the studio or in a relaycast or whatever. (Especially when Beth takes them up ten notches… she’s the awesome.)
Ranking just leaves me feeling rank, hype just pumps more hot air into a burst balloon. Blech.
“Resident Choice Awards” are a fucking joke. The real choices, we make every day, every second. We cast our ballots with lindens, with messages, with trust, and with worry when we don’t see them on for a while.

6 – Could you share a funny or awkward story that happened to you in SL?
Two fags dressed in gorilla suits walk into a bar…
Oh. Wait. You aren’t asking for a joke.
Hold on…
Funny? In SL?
Ahem… do I look like Lauren or Prad? Or that son of a bitch SecondLie?
No, really, was I supposed to be taking notes? Didn’t realize there’d be a quiz or an Albert Brooks “Defending My Second Life” trial going on.
Let’s turn the tables here… I’m doing enough shit already, the last thing I need is a goddamned homework assignment.
If you’ve got a funny story that involves me somehow, put it in the comments.
(Most probably deal with my way of responding to blind teleports and other acts of presumption and imperative from others. Instead of just telling people to fuck off, shove it, or go screw themselves – I gotta do it with style.)

7 – What would you change or improve in Second Life?
Ever notice that “focus groups” and “fuck us groups” sound similar?
Especially when you have a ballgag in your mouth. Try it sometime. (And take photos, baby!)
Improve? That’s for people with a last name of Linden. I don’t know what you folks are smoking, but I say the self-imposed slavery days on the grid are over, eh. Mentors are GONE, and Answers end up just being ads in disguise.
If I find anything that bends me over and fucks me hard, I’ll file a Jira or a bug report and watch it rot with the rest of them.
I’ll know that it’s all working and trustworthy when I can get into a music gig and not have to fire up the stream in Winamp to protect against crashes or other bugaboos.

Now, you asked about Second Life there… but not Linden Lab.
Oh, there’d be a few changes and improvements at the Lab I’d love to see.
This whole “Kiva Wreath” campaign… folks, Kiva’s just loansharking for the third-world packaged as a charity drive, with investments and gift certificates and First World Guilt momentum and some seriously good unquestioning and uninquisitve press.
You know, the same good press that turned Al Gore from just another greedhead politician to some sort of environmental guru. Never mind that for all those years, his mansion was an energy sinkhole and only got weatherized when he got caught by the media?
Yeah. That kind of lazy WAKE THE HELL UP! press.
Kiva’s barely on the grid, just hanging with the Non Profit Commons there, one of many, while there are so many charities and true SL-RL groups that use the immersive experience of the platform more deserving of the Lab’s power of promotion than this obvious attempt at charity-starfucking and coattail-riding.

How about an example? Fine… when I heard that Alanaugh Recreant was having tier issues for UTHANGO while the Kiva wreath campaign was going on, I hit the fucking roof.
Pissed. Me. Off.
Just seeing good people doing good things getting taken for granted like that, left in the gutter for the next rung on the hype-ladder… leaves me cold.
Yeah, all that’s on my blog. Clear as day, crazy as a shithouse rat.
Expect anything less from me?

8 – Can you share your current and/or future projects for SL?
I’m still in SL? Haven’t been banned yet?
Well, shit. Now I gotta come up with something to do, right?
Tunes inSL is a collection of social networking and sales sites for musicians in Second Life. I’ve been doing it for a while, and I’ll keep it going as long as people find it useful.
Still doing my 100 Word Stories podcast, and always interested in writers in SL giving that a shot if they’re not afraid to record their voices for it.
I’ll be doing more storytelling on the grid. Will hunt down some open mike events, Turtle Beach on Nowhereville, and we’ll see if West Of Ireland has more vacancies in their calendar.
More crap on the blog, blah blah blah. It’s a routine. (Until the Next Big Thing comes around, of course)
How the fuck does Phaylen keep from burning out?
No. Really. What’s her secret?
Find it. Bottle it. Sell it.

9 – Have you ever had any issues whatsoever within Second Life? If so, how did you reported and was the feedback positive?
Who the fuck hasn’t? Give me their names. And a baseball bat. (Wooden, not aluminum. This ain’t college pussy-wimp bullshit time. It’s major league time.)
Many. But I don’t report most of them because I’ve fallen into the same pessimistic pit as many other people do: oh well, it’s a part of the platform, just move on.
The ones I’ve reported, the response has been 50-50.
The stuff I knew was going to be alright, it turned out alright. Sims needing to come back up, that kind of thing.
Getting a few thousand bucks in phantom charges on my credit card because Concierge and Sales couldn’t figure out how to run a simple credit card back in 2007 was absolutely classic. They made it to five thousand bucks before they got it right. (Having a bunch of Platinum cards left over from my dot-com days to use until their payment processor handles one right kinda helped… getting drunk at Cabo’s in Downtown Houston and
laughing that all off as Dee juggled numbers helped as well.)
It was when I lost a HUDDLES full of Sine Wave dances and animations worth forty or fifty real bucks that almost set me off for good.
Look up George Carlin’s routine on stuff that’s lost: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ySI8yxZ97I
See? That’s funny.
Having Concierge tell me they were gone for good because of the way the system is, well, that’s just crazy.
It’s a database. There’s logfiles and transaction records. Shit comes, shit goes.
How the hell does stuff vanish when you crash mid-teleport? If that’s how flaky and unreliable your inventory system is, well, that’s pretty shaky, guys.
I thought “This shit’s not going to fly at all” and decided that LL either needs to get its act together or someone’s going to set up a class action lawsuit on them for substantial amounts of lost stuff.
Well, whaddya know… Stroker and Friends did exactly that for foot-dragging on content theft issues.
*sigh*

10 – Is Second Life merely an online game or do you consider it more of a metaverse or a virtual world?
It is what it is. It has elements of each.
But then, life is a game, right? Fuck the most chicks, leave the most offspring, try not to die crossing the road.
Look that “Game Theory” shit up. Then read that Darwin dude with a bit of Gregor Mendel in there.
God does not play dice with the universe, said Einstein, and he’s right.
The old fart plays darts, he’s drunk off his ass, and we’re all on the triple-twenty.
I think that if it’s a game, then one of the Victory Conditions is that you can look around you, look at your friends, look at your inventory and say with absolute certainly: “I have no need for anything more.”
Are you content? Are you happy? Do you finally have the burden of MORE! off of your back?
No skins.
No eyes.
No hair.
No shoes.
No clothes.
No land.
No weapons.
No vehicles.
You have found yourself, and you don’t need to look any more to find you.
Jut doing your schtick and having a good time of it, not needing to rush this way or that because you’re cool with missing an event or two.
I felt like I had achieved that a few weeks ago. Probably around the same time as the “Anniversary of John Lennon getting shot and Yoko Ono not getting a single damn scratch.” Imagine can seriously mess up our Greed Anticulture minds, you know.
Then, the feeling passed, and I got back into Blind Consumer Mode like everyone else.
Oh well. Fuck me.

11 – Imagine a new customer asks for your help. What would do? What would you tell him/her?
You’re calling them “customers” there. The Labbies tend call them “residents.” Interesting…

Depends on what kind of help. If it’s technical help, I’d tell them the same as I’d tell a friend: hit F1, search for an answer, and file a ticket if the issue persists.
I’m not Linden Lab Technical Support, I’m not a mentor, and I’m not your fucking mommy.
You’re an adult. (Or at least using an adult’s credit card)
Do. It. Yourself.
I would say that you’re not crippled, but quite a few people on the grid are “challenged” or “differently abled” or “handicapable” or “fuck you, give me my parking sticker-ed” so that might be assuming too much. But you are online to the point where your twitching mass of flesh can suck and puff on a straw-device to get that avatar dancing, so you’re capable of sucking and puffing up an answer to your own question, right?
Suck! Puff! Solve the problem, Gimpy!
Now, if the help involves a loan, I’ll tell them to get fucked and mute them. If you can afford a net connection, computer, or even shoes to walk 50 miles to a village with a net cafe, you can get your own damn money.
(Friends, on the other hand, can count on a few thousand linden if I can spare it and I know they’re not a goddamned deadbeat.)
If it involves finding something, I’ll probably tell them to use Search to find it.
Do I look like the Search button? Do I look like the Search feature on XStreetSL? Is my name Google Linden?
Oh, you want to know where that thing I have sitting out came from? Just use Edit and search the profile of the creator like I did when I saw it somewhere else. (Otherwise, I’ll tell you “I prayed to Thor the Thunder
God and I shit the thing out… MIRACLE! MIRACLE! MIRACLE! Oh and then I washed it off.”)
Once again, do it yourself. Discover how futile and annoying search can be when it’s filled to the brim with bullshit search terms and crap.
(Friends, on the other hand, will actually get me to check the creator of the item I’m wearing and I’ll give them a landmark or location if I have it handy.)
Oh, and the last words many a person has said to me are “I know you’re busy, but…”
Think about that for a moment. “I know you’re busy” acknowledges that they perceive I am busy.
Then, they countermand that thought with “but”
BUT?
And proceed to ask me something that they could easily do themselves.
What. The. Fuck. Is. Wrong. With. You. Just ask me the fucking question, okay?
RAWR!

So many things people can do for themselves, but it’s so much easier to ask someone else, I guess.
Makes me wonder how they got online in the first place. Once upon a time, they were sitting in in a puddle, rubbing mud into their hair, and they thought HOLY FUCKING SHIT! I SHOULD GO ONLINE!
What jackass caved in to them and did everything for them to get them connected up?
Probably the same jackass who got sick of their constant questions and ran screaming into the hills, leaving them in the lurch so… so…
That’s right. Here with me. Asking the same fucking questions.
Maybe I should start answering these retarded questions with insane quest-like answers? After all, folks ding Second life for a lack of goals and quests and achievements, right?
“Where did you get that hair?”
“GATHER AROUND THE FIRE, YOUNG PILGRIM, AND I WILL TELL YOU THE TALE OF THE GREYBEAST OF CASTLE VARGAR AND MY BATTLE FOR THE SILVER CHALICE OF GROM…”
“Um, all I need is a landma-”
“I HAD GIRDED MY LOINS WITH THE FINEST MOONSTEEL ARMORS FROM YANYON THE CLOCKWORK BLACKSMITH, A CREATURE MOST FOUL AND CRUEL TO HIS SERVANTS…”
“Who made it?”
“WE HAGGLED OVER THE PRICE OF THE ARMORS FOR DAYS UNTIL WE FINALLY AGREED ON A FEE THAT WAS FAIR AND JUST TO US BOTH…”
“Er… right…”
“I SET OUT FOR THE BURNING FIELDS OF EMBERCORN THAT NIGHT WITH MY TRUSTY STEED…”
There you go!

—————————–

By the way, this is the answer to Hamlet Au’s constant whining about what it takes to get Linden Lab and Second Life into the mainstream.
Big companies do not dump these kinds of things on their customer base.
Big companies do this shit for themselves.
Sure, companies like Microsoft may publish books and hold training classes for certified engineers to do the work, but in the end, Microsoft does this for themselves.
How many companies in the Fortune 500 (who are still in the Fortune 500 and aren’t going away anytime soon) do this crowdsourcing of sales, support, PR, and community relations thing?
Not many, man. Not many.
Get serious about this stuff, lay off the Answers and Wiki and Mentors 2.0 and Community Gateways and “Resident” run initiatives, and see what having a real professional relationship with the customers will do for the growth and the experience.

12 – How would you describe yourself in one word?
Eingeshpahrt

day of rest (34 out of 365), originally uploaded by isfullofcrap.

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