Drama ! For Me
Well, I've officially muted a resident. I've never done such before. I've never had reason to truly mute a resident before. I have had a mute on my "SL Boutique Vendor" since about the second day - let me tell you that is one needlessly chatty vendor - but I've not intentionally shut someone else up before.
As I write this I'm not sure how much back story I'll include. Perhaps some, perhaps enough to ensure that the conversation leading up to this decision will not be completely lost on you. You, the hapless, faithless reader of this rest-stop on the web.
Whatever history I put in here to support my choice to mute Lars Bismark is completly one sided. Meaning that Lars has not had a chance to rebut anything here, and I could have a failing memory on some minor details. Also meaning that I will not include anything second hand and my decision was not based upon anything I heard about Lars's interactions with any of my other friends in world.
Lars Bismak is one of the founders of the Shelter. When I first started hanging out at the Shelter I would chat with him once in a while and I think we had some nice conversations. Way back then I cared about getting every 1L I could, most newbies do of course. Lars would do the coolest thing when he would win the random money ball raffle - he would pay everyone present the same amount he had won. You could sit in the Shelter all day long and as long as there were 3 or so people present every 15 minutes a money ball would give out somewhere between like 8 and 15L. That was big money to me so I was there just chilling in the chairs (which Lars made, along with many of the other things in the Shelter) around the table. So if Lars won 8L from the money ball he'd pay everyone in the building 8L in turn. Very nice of him indeed.
Anyhap Lars and I eventually friended and I would check in with him once in a while as is my habit with people on my friends list. As I noted in an earlier entry when I started working on the concept of my own game to host at the Shelter Lars was very helpful. To quote my earlier entry:
I started formulating the idea of a holo vendor to give away entries that had been built during the game. I consulted with Lars Bismark a bit who encourage the idea and really helped quite a bit with the philosophy and goals of the project and the user interaction/workflow of the game.
He definitely helped me put together the foundation for the Building Shelet game by brainstorming how it could work. I was considering all kinds of alternate ideas including a Wheel of Fortune style game, a Jeapordy style game, etc. Lars and Travis both commented that a new game at the Shelter need not be Trivia based. Further Lars said he'd been thinking about some kind of building game for a while. I recall him saying he would like to see someone put a game like that together (from which I inferred his support for the game I put together at least at that time.) After seeing Salem Penguin's SLictionary game in action I knew a bulding game held at the Shelter would be fun for people if it was put together.
One odd thing to note is Lars never played any version of my game. He certainly provided input and ideas but by the time I was in alpha testing mode he was ellusive. He stopped coming to the Shelter regularly. Eventually, after apparently pinging him with "Hi there" or "Want to see the game?" or whatever one too many times, he removed me from his friends list. I also believe that was the first time I had been removed as a friend in SL.
Time rolled on and Lars started frequenting the Shelter again more often. He appeared to want to be more involved with things. At one point I asked him if he would like to create some animations for me to use when I host Payment Podium. I really respect the animation work he does - very nice stuff. I know that making anims is time consuming and tough work. I didn't know why but he seemed offended at my asking him to help. I ended the conversation with one of my typical light hearted jokes - I'm a skeleton in world so I try to make funnies about that - I said something to the effect that I was going to retire to my grave, or it beats being dead or something. 10 minutes later Lars replied saying he had reread the sentence 10 times and wanted to know if I was threatening him - that I wanted him dead. Wow - that's a misunderstanding! I explained no, most certainly not, there was no ill will intended whatsoever! I was just funning on my avie.
More time rolls by and I login to the following IM conversation:
[19:48] Lars Bismark: (Saved Wed Jun 28 22:31:37 2006) LOL you begged me for your BS game idea LOL
[19:48] Dolmere Talamasca: Hi Lars. What did you mean by that?
[19:48] Dolmere Talamasca: I do recall working together on the idea and gave you credit for such on my blog.
[19:48] Lars Bismark: i was looking at your profile
[19:49] Dolmere Talamasca: do you take objection to something there? it looks acurate to me.
[19:49] Dolmere Talamasca: would you prefer different wording? You helped out quite a bit in helping shape the game and concept
[19:49] Lars Bismark: i think your a joke ,,this will never be CLUB Dolmere
[19:49] Dolmere Talamasca: happy to reword it
[19:50] Dolmere Talamasca: club? joke? You're confusing me a bit, buddy.
[19:50] Lars Bismark: you make Shelter guest PAY to play it also very un shelter
[19:51] Lars Bismark: im against it all 100%
[19:51] Dolmere Talamasca: against what? I'm VERY confused right now.
[19:51] Dolmere Talamasca: No guests pay for anything I have anything to do with here.
[19:51] Lars Bismark: yuo make them give up things they make
[19:52] Dolmere Talamasca: why not? They make it in a competition. Why in the world would that be a problem?
[19:53] Dolmere Talamasca: No one pays for aynthing, they work for 10 minutes and what they work on becomes free for anyone to use. No profit made anyway and an increase in the amount of freebies in the SL universe.
[19:53] Lars Bismark: any how welcome to MUTE ,,any thing i can Black ball i will
[19:53] Dolmere Talamasca: very strange.
[19:56] Dolmere Talamasca: I'll share this converstaion with Travis to see what he thinks. I think I'll also post it to my blog.
I've always disliked the abbreviation for Building Shelter, btw :)
The profile entry that he took issue with was:
Blog: http://www.lovelymachine.com/Dolmere/ (Thanks Coal)
Host of Sunday night's Payment Podium
Host and creator of Building Shelter (much thanks to Mera Pixel). Sunday nights at the Shelter - Wingo(33,2)
See my inexpensive t-shirts on the second floor of the Shelter, at Mera Pixel's pad or Dan Gerstort's space.
I've since changed my profile to read:
Blog: http://www.lovelymachine.com/Dolmere/ (Thanks Coal)
I don't plan on changing my schedule of events at the Shelter. I do not plan on talking to this person again for the forseeable future. I do not like drama - I'm in SL for the amusement factor and nothing more.