It was fourteen years ago today that one newsletter in Second Life closed down, and another began. Over three years earlier, JamesT Juno had started the Second Life Newspaper, and over time others joined him in writing stories about Second Life. Among them was Dana Vanmoer, who as editor helped it grow to the best paper covering the virtual world. We would cover the detailed and exciting places of Second Life, numerous events that were happening, the people that helped make Second Life what it is, and the goings-on of Linden Lab.
Unfortunately, events in real life would catch up to James and Dana. And eventually the decision was made to close the Second Life Newspaper. For four of us, Gemma Cleanslate, Grey Lupindo, Shelly Sands, and myself, Bixyl Shuftan, we made the decision to carry on as journalist. But it would be under a new newsletter, our own. Since I was the Office Manager in James' and Dana's paper, posting when they couldn't, I would be the editor. And so on June 5 2010, James and Dana would hold a farewell party in which they announced the Second Life Newspaper's closing and would be departing Second Life indefinitely. And I announced the opening of the new one. Our first story covered would be a sad one, that of our predecessor shutting it's doors.
We ended up hitting the ground running. After just a few routine articles came news of Linden Lab laying off a third of it's staff. This was soon followed by Linden Lab's CEO stepping down. It would be an eventful year, with Philip Linden coming back to temporarily lead for a few months and some controversial moves such as the Teen Grid merger and the Emeraldgate controversy in which the most popular third party viewer at the time was shut down due to actions by it's team. But not everything was controversy, and there was plenty of happy news such as the Relay for Life and the Second Life Birthday. Eventually, sponsors such as the Podex Excnage came forward to support the paper, and people came forward offering to join our team. And of course the Sunweaver community supported us from the start, offering us both land and an office as our headquarters.
Over time, we've had our share of challenges. There would be more controversies to cover, such as the rights of content creators when Linden Lab changed it's terms of service to some questionable language for several months. There have also been new developments, such as mesh and mobile viewers. There have been places to cover, such as Bellisseria. There have been many events, such as the Relay or Life and Second Life Birthday. And of course writing about some of the people who make them possible.
Sadly, we've had to say goodbye to people over time. Grey Lupindo and Shellie Sands would eventually depart the paper. The Podex Exchange would close down after a few years following the Lab ordering all third-party Linden exchangers to cease operations. But other reporters would step in, and other sponsors would come forward.
So where do we go from here? We've had our ups and downs. And real-life can sometimes butt in into our writing time. But unless there's some calamity that shuts down the Internet, Second Life will be around for years to come. And we at the Newser will be around to cover it.
Special thanks to our sponsors, Farshore Radio, Montecito
Bay, the Safe Waters Foundation, and the Sunweaver community that has been the home of
our office for all these years, to Linden Lab which created this virtual
world to begin with, to James and Dana to showing us the way in how to
report the news here, and of course you the readers.
Bixyl Shuftan
Editor, Second Life Newser
Bixyl Shuftan
Editor, Second Life Newser
how about an article about trump pub? I mean its present in SL and causing a lot of problems Once a week I gotta ban someone thats enrolled in the group that sounds exactly like all the nazi's I ban, I mean you were willing to cover that Palestinian sim, oh thats right its something going on SL that doesnt shine your views in a good light so just ignore it, come on bixyl, I just had one a bit ago enrolled in it linking me to shit like the quartering covers using racist terminology thats really something uniquely what conservatives use towards arabs, when I brought up the name they looked at the stuff in my profile calling out republican anti-trans hate and decided to claim to be trans and then they claimed to be trans as a trump pub member, big eye roller there, they wanted to shield themself for being called out for where they took it, calling all your parties anti-trans sentiment a backlash and not what it is a second stonewall spurred on by far right hate, I mean trump pub causes a lot of trouble bixyl theres something to cover there, I mean your parties 14 words doctrine is quite alive and well in SL theres enough of it I'm sure youve seen it, I mean banning a nazi used to be an annual thing for me, until trump, come on your willing to cover that sim cause it was politics crossed into SL, but how about all the hate spread from that one group, to be totally honest I think people like you want to maintain the guise of reasonable sounding but you know thats normalized now and to say something about that hurts your party, and you would rather have a party full of Nazi then to weaken your parties stance
ReplyDeletethat said lets look at something you said to me personally when playing the victim a prior time I pointed your BS out between us "Then they came for me And there was no one left To speak out for me "
its really rich how you conservatives lean on that but you all point out how the nazi were socialist cause its in the name, I mean lets look at that in its whole
anyone that looks it up can see that first they came for the socialists, anyhow im calling you out for a personal conversation we had and pointing out your stance cause you covered something in SL as your hateful party wanted it covered, yet you ignore so much of the politics that happen in SL, which only tells me your totally ok with it, I mean come on you covered a terrorist sim as you called it, so why not call out a hate group thats active in SL
its because it doesn't benefit you in your belief system, so im posting it here, wear your bigotry proudly
btw its pride month I'm tired of the asshole looking at my profile and my DNI post for you bastards and thinking they need to correct me and try to tell me the hate your party brings is backlash, no its not its typical fear mongering of a failing party trying to villainize a people and unite a voter base behind that you guys did it in stonewall and are doing it now since you wont post about it I did, tired of getting harassed by you bullies cause I got a little DNI towards you all in my profile
ReplyDeleteanyhow just got harassed by another one of the punks you support im just back here to say shame on you again.
I kinda find it funny post trump its ok for the nazi's to come out of the closet and the LGBTQ community has to be more closeted, I mean, I've gone from blocking 1 or 2 nazi's a year to it being a at least weekly thing where I gotta purge my block list sometimes to make room for more of them and hope the prior ones don't notice.
ReplyDeleteI mean the republican party with their fear mongering and exaggeration of the 9/11 stuff up to the arab ban, yeah you guys are still riding that has made racism cool again and come to think of it you have a grudge against Antifa I recall, in a time its no longer ok to punch nazis, I mean come on bixyl was 6mil not enough for you? I mean you look into the history your a history buff? Antifa was fighting the nazi's long before america was hell it took einstein to appeal to the americans selfish nature to get us involved, Antifa's Ideals havent changed since then, they remain the same fight fascists so we dont go through another genocide, however I will say it again their ideals have not changed, and your party wants to call them a terrorist group, I think it says a lot about republicans
now lets look back at that sim you covered, by all means fuck Hamas, its an extremist group, but lets look at before that, we had an apartheid and segregation israel made it impossible for the Palestinians to live, Hamas is an aggressor but so is israel, which is actively engaged in genocide, seems you guys just root for whatever side is doing the genocide, however lets look at whats going on in florida.... I see bills being pushed that allow anyone to tell a trans person to leave a bathroom or they become a sex offender, I see that your party is also making that a capital offense further more to be convicted of a sex crime, and trying to lower it to a 2/3rds majority, theres about 600 other bills last time I looked that are meant to work together, Honestly what can I say, it sounds like your party is engaged in a genocide to me
further more weve talked before I remember a conversation about a civil war and your just going to default to the side of your conservative family, this is why I stopped talking to you. that and you saw yourself as the goodguy in this situation
Antifa's values havent changed, they stand against conservatives as they once did the Nazi's and for the same reasons, you guys are engaged in a genocide
those of you who are anti politics or in denial of this, you dont stand against it, the complacency is used as a cudgel and maintains the status quo and thus you are part of the problem
bixyl you cover plenty in SL theres planty your party does you can call out other than saying Trump Pub minds their own business, they don't they organize and actively hunt and harass LGBTQ people and socialists and anyone else that doesn't align to far right values, you really should be saying something about them , SL Isnt free of your parties bigotry, but I mean you still support them in spite of all this so its yours too whether you want to acknowledge it
Happy Pride Month
14 Years in Secondlife, needs to be challenged to acknowledge to be a better person
ReplyDeletewhen are you conservatives going to acknowledge Jan 6th was your bierhaule pusch
ReplyDeleteAs a Non-Binary person I gotta say I'm pretty sick and tired of the people that want to interact with me sexually in SecondLife but think I'm purely a fetish like you damned conservatives put it fuck Trump Pub to all hell they dont leave people alone why don't you cover their harassment campaigns against people that say they don't have any love for conservatism, you guys are a hate group, and quite frankly theres many of you I have met that absolutely fetishize me but at the same time push for one of those bills like one of the genocidal ones going on in florida, I've went god why so many times at the horrible people you seem to ignore the problems their causing cause your conservative bias, and the only honest answer I can get is because they fetishize people like me being forbidden and risque and someone they can turn in if they dont get their way, but yeah got another conservative after my ass tonight cause I dont fit into the binary in one of those places most dont, yet again shouting me down because I don't worship the ideaology thats trying to have me put down like a dog thats just attacked, those florida bills are seriously messed up and deranged and the fact you guys are trying to spread it to the US as a whole, I mean SL is the one place I got to be free and be me, but its ok now for nazi's to come out of the closet cause all the trump supporters on there, even in places like that so I'm losing my places because people like you dont tell it how it is worship trump or get shouted down and then theres that karen that goes and tells the sim owner some shit and lies, Bixyl again, shame on you, you got a powerful tool, an audience, and when you get into politics its what the far right would agree with address some issues, real ones, you sure covered that thing where someone claiming to be antifa harassed a friend of yours and took it at the most convenient for you face value, but ugh when it comes to the Nazi Fill groups conservatives support you say little
ReplyDeleteBut hey article on Antifa harassing someone because they claimed to be Antifa, in the mean time theres people that clearly follow your ideals I've been harassed by, many non binary folks, for not sucking their cock and worshipping the ground of the people who say we should be killed off
the fact you covered one and blowed it up based on a claim was probably someone trying to get your dumb ass wriled up
however clear drawn conservatives harass people all the fucking time, so I guess you like to be the victim in something you started like a typical con
Imma be forward with you, I'm not calling Rita names, but I used to hang around with sunweavers that group your in a lot and having the group tag scared a few people off when I was new to it that immediately assumed I was a nazi because of your groups tag in my profile and overall reputation, the people rita keeps around some of the bigger names in her circle, I can see why people came to that conclusion and I am so glad I left, got a reminder how glad I was when I later ran into sworn static who was at the time enrolled in your group and had the progress flag arranged into a swastika and a profile pick comparing the tolerance we ask for to being something forced and to what the nazi's had done when quite frankly were not the ones calling for the othered group to be executed, we are the othered group, the one you guys othered
ReplyDeleteYou want to cover Secondlife news but hey politics happens in secondlife, and you want it whitewashed to be in denial of your political parties hate, but also grab onto any fringe thing so yeah it looks like you only cover the political issues in SL if its got a conservative bias and hey I was your friend once but I walked away because I thought you a complete bastard for this you covered your other friend when it suited your needs, and when it came to all the shit ive endured because it didnt support your bias you acted like I was full of shit
I found a memorial to alleara you bastard, said covid killed her, what about your parties denialism to the virus, the situation wasnt even over yet it killed a mutual friend of ours and of course you sided with politics and said nothing about it.
I'm going for the low blow, I always pulled my punches when we talked, you call conservatives reasonable people, but one of those reasonable people has called for my execution for being trans and has pushed bills to that effect in his home state and is pushing for copycat laws in other red states, remember you said when I was naming the bastards they were decent folks, and this virus, your mytholoization of it, meant our practices got worse than the country you guys named for it, it killed a mutual friend of ours, im not saying she would of survived had people been better, but it certainly didnt help
the blood is on your hands though
this fall in line attitude the escalator and oh great leader
look you guys put the blood of many nasty historical events on the leftist economic model of socialism, the thing is theres always been a far right social model at the top of that but really the blood is on your hands socialism makes people equal, whether it be uplifting them or oppressing them, you guys have always bombed it when you found it regardless
still though, so many of the covid deaths are on yours and every conservatives hands, we know so much about managing pandemics, and the potential more easily spread outbreak of ebola was quelled cause we used that knowledge however this covid has stuck around longer than any previous pandemic because we decided as a political thing to throw that knowledge out say it isnt real and actively troll the response, that blood is on your hands and possibly allearas
the anti asian violence that proceeded from the fascist trump rhetoric is as well
But I'm sure as a good conservative you will point the finger elsewhere
its like you blaming those deaths in another incident on social programs in another country, you know which one im talking about, and it was the capitalists in this country that engaged in an embargo for not bowing to our oil barons , I dug into it and found out the truth about that a week later you were on the same ol bullshit, its what you do
anyhow goodnight, shame on you again, its pride month and some nazi ass trump pub piece of shit spouting the same shit you spout pushed me over the breaking point, and I felt like why dont you do something to quell your parties hate rather than leaning into it, theres plenty of it to go around in SL that you could write about a conservative group and knock the hate down a peg
but I know you wont so I'll call you out publicly
btw about that memorial it would of been nice if you said something in person even though you and I werent talking I had been wondering where they been and I hardly read this anymore because its hardly worth the read with the slant towards filtering out what looks bad on cons in SL I gotta say it comes off as so dishonest this blog as a whole its not worth a read, only reason I came back to say anything was harassed pretty badly recently, for being Non-Binary, and was more conservative hate, and to follow up another bastard came around to stand up for the prick I muted too, but hey as dishonest as you been with me when we were friends having to defend your heroes I mean you put reagan on a pedastal but the difference in policy is Nil from Nixon just one got caught in a scandal and one didn't, but hey you valued that slant over our friendship so what else can I say other than your a completely evil person who like the rest of the cons hides it by only addressing one side, Will say youve been the more aggressive in this but I bet you will find a way to vilify me for finally having said something, or use that remark as a stepping stone to make yourself appear better, its what conservatives do play the victim when someome finally snaps back at them.
ReplyDeleteI mean look at rittenhouse brandishing a gun in a heated situation and fired on em the first excuse he got and now hes a conservative hero for playing the victim, he aint the one that got a bullet in him or chose to go onto the attack over ideaology, now hes a hate group hero
Sorry to any readers outside of this if this seems a little weird to the readers but ugh its been personal and its a plea for them to do the right thing and when covering conservative groups its a plea to greater accuracy not content like trump pub left people alone
ReplyDeletefurthermore
hes quoted first they came talking with me in the past and always left out the parts that were inconvenient for his ideaology
14 years of SL Newser
14 years he should of done better
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
you always left out the first 6 lines as they werent convenient for you to acknowledge the nazi's were anti socialist too(they were capitalist continuing a more regulated discriminatory use of the mark in the days leading up to the violence) the evil man that called them socialist in their creation like the symbol he bore re-appropriated it, just as some conservatives today suggest bringing back the triangle mark for LGBTQ people today
but anyhow I think about how you left those lines out, you also always left out so many articles you could of written, you could of shouted them down shame on you, but instead you left it out so now im here shouting shame on you,
Im Done. seeing this has gone on for 14 years with you and everyone in my community has to be perfect or else it gets broadcast as the norm where as you get to not post about the truth thats inconvenient, you and your party of alternative facts to use their own terminology
I'm upset you still cover this, because quite frankly the stepping stones youve taken to politics and what youve slithered away from when it comes to how those you support behave
your 14 years of publishing this have been harmful
I'm done.
While I do have an interest in politics (and have voted for both Ds and Rs), I haven't written about it in the Newser as much as I used to. The biggest complaint wasn't that of bias, but that it was mentioned at all. And considering how ugly it's gotten in the US in recent years, I can't say I blame them.
ReplyDeleteI've also started to wonder that when I talk about it too much, I start looking like this :p - http://slnewspaperarchives.blogspot.com/2008/08/cartoon-of-day.html
Congrats to 14 years of the SLNewser !
ReplyDeleteAn awesome timeframe already.
Thank you for the kind words Zada. :-)
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=op0yk50uMlQ
ReplyDeleteTrump Der Führer und Reichskanzler
Looks like most SL would become illegal soon
ReplyDeleteYou say you voted for D's and R's but I remember in the face of trump you had told me you would be voting for a third party candidate, I mean in the face of such extremism you couldn't bring yourself to push against them too hard, so hey like anything else right wing, your totally full of it. You had already told me otherwise.
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/qW7CGTK-1vA?t=753
ReplyDeleteOn the D's and R's thing, I gotta say another sign of your party faith, and your supposed avoiding of politics, yet you got some stuff that looks badly on the dem's I gotta say your silence on Project 2025 speaks volumes about you in a blaringly loud way, to your conservative values, its something so bad it kinda must be said
ReplyDeleteSo I'll do that for you
Basically the biggest most important part of it is the installment of right wing loyalists by making public employees firable for any reason, this would allow the next republican to install loyalists such as judges, and replace anyone that doesnt put party first over law, basically stuff the nazi's did when they came to power in germany
that said, aside from the planned installment of a dictator by throwing out the books, theres anti-LGBTQ parts that classify any education on orientation and gender as porn, furthermore, these make porn illegal, this is something your party is doing so they can start their genocide in the US, but some places such as florida which have made using what is deemed the wrong bathroom a sex , crime, made sex crimes a capital offense and lowered the death penalty requirement have already started their genocide ahead of the rest of the party,
ultimately though, I mean you say you want to stick to secondlife news in some places, well making porn illegal, kind of makes most peoples avatars illegal due to the amount of adult content on the grid, still even to this day, as big a thing as this is, and with a foot in secondlife, you have not said a single peep about this, as it looks bad on your party, that their engaged in the early stages of a genocide
Basically you have something that effects secondlife in a major way thats being done to harm LGBTQ people and youve ignored it because it shows how bad your party politics are, the way it effects things on the net, it certainly effects both secondlife and the furry fandom greatly, and You have said nothing as your a loyalist
ReplyDelete