Embedded Files
Griefers on "Truth"
As I say, it wasn't long before the ALM church site was awash with troublesome people of one kind and another. Indeed, it was rare for us to spend an entire session without some kind of unwelcome interruption, and at times it grew so bad that we talked about relocating to somewhere else for our chats. Here you see a screenshot of items placed on the Sim by "griefers" - trolls who only live to make trouble.
The snapshot here is of a griefing attack on the ALM site where a huge box was created to cover everyone and everything on the site. This was done by a man calling himself "Anya Heberle" who dressed as a woman most of the time.
He pretended to be a Christian, but those of us who knew him, found him to be abusive, foolish, immature and a troublemaker. (The profile text was included to prove that the box was indeed created by Anya Heberle. NOT that there was any point having proof, since no matter how many times we complained, people like Anya were not banned from Truth. He is still there to this day!)
My Help Rejected
We talked it over and by agreement I took up the task of finding a suitable peaceful meeting place, and creating a Group (called RABBIT - the UK slang word for chatting) so we could keep in touch with one another about meeting times. I created an amusing little poem for a description.
In the Group's charter it was mentioned that it offered an "alternative to Truth" [sim] but this then fell totally flat and caused me a lot of irritation when certain over-religious people on ALM decided "Jesus Christ is the Truth and I don't want to join any alternative to Truth". They then refused to take part. It was unfair, wrong and hurtful, but I was beginning to see that certain Christians were so stiff and/or stuck in their own religious rut that unless everything conformed to their particular (safe) viewpoint, they went to pieces.
Hypocrites
There was a lot of hypocrisy too, with Christians leading SL lifestyles that were unacceptable and yet criticising others at the same time.
The other problem was immaturity, so that some people on ALM had no experience of and no ability to deal with "real life" and hard knocks. There were "paper christians" who spouted bible verses but had no genuine wisdom, and know-it-all Christians who wanted it all their own way - all-in-all the whole ALM experience was becoming disappointing and discouraging in the extreme.
Sadly though, troublemakers were apparently welcomed and forgiven for what they did, while we (the very people who were trying to maintain order and sanity on ALM without the Pastor's help) were criticised and treated with suspicion.
They thought (on what evidence?) that we were either "too friendly" with troublemakers, or "too eager" to eject visitors. Little did they know that, with our long experience of life on ALM, that we were well able to make informed and sensible decisions about who really needed to be sat down and talked to, and who needed a swift kick up the backside to eject them off the land. (None of this would have been necessary in the first place if the owner and pastors had taken an interest in their own project.)
All of these annoyances came together for us in 2006 and (as described in our story pages) we made the decision to leave Second Life. We concluded there was no real fellowship, nor even friendship there. It was a cut-throat environment with everyone jostling for priority and attention.
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