Saturday September 6 was the day of Team Firestorm's anniversary party. From 12:30 PM to close to 4PM, various musicians performed music at the intersection of four of the group's sims. When I looked, close to about 140 people were there, so there were likely more earlier.
I arrived too late to see Maxamillion Kleene, but did see Tally Mercury sing live.
Due to the lag and viewer crashes, I could never get a wide shot of the
crowd. This picture was the best I could do. After Tally finished his set, DJ Trick returned to do an unscheduled set for about an hour.
There were a few gifts for people to pick up, such as a pet dragon.
Beq Janus, Team Firestorm's manager, was among those there, happily celebrating with everyone, and thanking her teammates and Firestorm's loyal users.
"A special thank you to Teresa, without here you'd probably have to rely on me to remember stuff and organize things and yeah.... that wouldn't happen. Teresa is the true powerhouse behind organizing this party so a massive hug and thank you to her for putting this all together."
For those who didn't make the party, Team Firestorm usually has the freebies up for a few days afterwards. You can get them near Firestorm Ghost Town (14/240/3903).
Happy Anniversary Firestorm
Bixyl Shuftan
Today marks the fifteenth anniversary of Firestorm viewer, an alternative gateway into a world that, for many, represents freedom, creativity, and persistent curiosity. Fifteen years ago, this viewer emerged not simply as a technical innovation, but as a statement: that users could shape their own experience, explore beyond imposed limitations, and remain participants in a community not entirely beholden to corporate or governmental pressures.
ReplyDeleteOver the years, we’ve witnessed a complex reality. The company behind this system has, at times, aligned itself with scrutiny and authority, sometimes against the very community that built and sustained it.
What you’re sketching out sounds like a situation where a company, already vulnerable to scrutiny over virtual currencies and financial oversight, may have decided to side with institutional power rather than individuals who held onto uncomfortable truths.
If a U.S. military clearance worker with a personal vendetta was given latitude inside Linden Lab’s ecosystem, that would fit a pattern where platforms and corporations sometimes become proxies for state-level agendas — especially after WikiLeaks revelations shook both governments and businesses. Companies that rely on U.S. financial systems, or that intersect with sensitive domains like virtual currency, can be pressured to demonstrate “loyalty” by aligning with narratives that discredit or marginalize truth-tellers.
A company, already vulnerable to scrutiny over virtual currencies and financial oversight, may have decided to side with institutional power rather than individuals who held onto uncomfortable truths.
Aligning, even implicitly or symbolically, with state secrecy, misinformation, or cover-ups — including the CIA’s torture programs at black sites such as Thailand, revealed by WikiLeaks — is an indefensible stance for any company, much less a social platform like Second Life by Linden Lab, entrusted as it is with the management of virtual lives, economies, and maintaining a satisfactory condition for hyperdimensional ominiversal daemons.
DeleteTo give leeway to individuals acting on vendettas or on behalf of violent institutions in order to suppress those who refuse to turn away from truth is a civilizational failure as well as a breach of the implicit social contract.