What is wrong with Prokofy Neva?

For those who don’t know, Prokofy Neva is probably one of the most infamous people in SL. Prok consistently attacks anyone who rises to any kind of fame in-world.

Prok’s vitriol has been splashed countless times on people who didn’t deserve it. Let’s just take a few recent examples:

Extropia - Prok attacks this new group, saying that the owners are the leaders of a “cult” and they are an aggressive “sect.” Extropianism is about embracing the future and letting go of the things which limit us. I would ask that you read the page that she herself linked to again. For those of you who fall for Prok’s knee jerk reaction about Extropianism being “anti-religion” you might note that it doesn’t say that you shouldn’t believe. It simply says that you shouldn’t have “blind faith.” Also, when Soph said that they didn’t have time for negative attitudes, I believe that she was referring to the kind of mindless tripe that seems to stream endlessly from Prok’s blog.
Open Source “Crimiality” - The fact that open source and free software advocates have practically built the internet and the foundations of it doesn’t seem to sway Prokofy Neva at all from calling them criminals and elitists. Apache is open source, languages which back the internet… such as PHP, Perl and, soon, Java are all open source… Mozilla, which is built into SL is open source… and anyone *anyone* can contribute to these projects. Operating systems which run it, Linux, and also Solaris are open source (see Open Solaris). Prok uses the tired old argument of calling it communism. Time and time again open source has been accused of this and time and time again, it’s been shown to be wrong. Open source is not communism.

One very concerning thing that I believe should be addressed is:

but so far, at its public salon with a prominent designer, we’ve heard –without any pushback — a simply awful idea that would essentially brand a scarlet electronic letter “A” on the foreheads of people disliked by these elite technocultists. Um, exhilirating?

This was in response to Csven’s suggestion that there be a way to reflect one’s reputation in the “dynamic tattoos” that were being discussed. The thing that Prok conveniently leaves out is that, during many salons at Extropia MANY ideas are discussed and debated. The lack of “pushback” on an unpopular or, obviously, exclusionary idea such as Csven’s doesn’t NOT imply acceptance of that idea. The idea of the salons, I believe, is open debate about issues regarding the future. They’re far from “policy setting sessions.”

Hey, Kids, Futurama Tip: Make your building look like
today’s vacuum cleaner, flashlight, or hair curler, and ensure it looks like Tomorrow’s architectural wonder!

I can’t believe this… I would really like to see Prok do better. I once went to Ravenglass Rentals (thank goodness I didn’t rent there). And saw the great “quality” of the builds there. .

From observation, most of Prok’s postings consist of scare tactics about how things are communist, marxist, anti-religious, anti-american, or simply slamming things which he/she doesn’t understand or like. Most articles Prok writes are a thinly veiled attempt to stir up negative feelings in the people who are gullible enough to fall for such things. Such tripe really belongs in tabloids on supermarket shelves hidden away somewhere where only the idiots or fools who are stupid enough to buy it will waste their money or time reading such things.

One of the interesting things you should notice when reading the article about Extropia is the comment where Prokofy says:

“I think frankly, if we’re going to play ‘democracy on the grid’ here, Prokofy Neva’s Ravenglass Rentals remains the most democratic system of all, under the rule of law, even having a landowner whom Gwyn calls ‘a benevolent dictator’.”

Oddly this pat on the back was posted by Prok. Now… this, to me, raises suspicion about how many people really read Prok’s blog. You might note that there is a third person reference in there as if the post is being made by someone who is NOT Prokofy Neva. Hmmm curious.

Prok is such an effective and annoying troll so to have been banned from virtually every blog that has anything to do with SL. Prok’s modus operandi is to wait until someone becomes notable and then rip them publicly on the blog. It’s really almost a rite of passage.

If you want my personal opinion… Prokofy Neva should stick around for a while. Free speech is something I very much believe in and everyone has a right to their opinion, no matter how misinformed it might be.

Sincerely, Anony Mouse

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You’re currently reading “What is wrong with Prokofy Neva?,” an entry on Identity In The Digital Age

Published:: 12.24.07 / 6pm

Category:: Uncategorized

Tags:: prokofynevaisthevillageidiotdept

London Spengler 12.24.07 / 7pm

Was going to comment… posted instead.

*Vampiric blogger attacks again :-p*

Sophrosyne Stenvaag 12.24.07 / 7pm

Anony -

Well said, all around! I didn’t reply to Prok’s post, and won’t engage with Prok, because there’s just no upside to it. Prok (a) sneered, (b) made baseless accusations and (c) name-called. Engaging with that sort of thing just gives them the upper hand - there’s *no* good reply to “when did you stop beating your wife?”

And yes, that bit in the Extropia FAQ was aimed at Prok and Prok-alikes. “I din’t like this!” is a perfectly valid response to Extropia - we don’t *want* to be a lowest-common-denominator, please everyone, offend no one, environment. But there’s nothing to *debate* on that score. The only response is, “OK, SL’s a big world, I’m sure there’s something for you somewhere.”

The Board had a full and intense discussion before agreeing to pre-emptively ban Prokofy. What we decided was, doing so would be inevitable, given his history in other forums, and our friendship with his targets, Benjamin Noble and Michel Manen. So, rather than face the situation in the heat of a public event, we decided to act coolly and pre-emptively. It was a hard decision, but we stand by it.

dandellion Kimban 12.24.07 / 8pm

there’s *no* good reply to “when did you stop beating your wife?”

Yes, there is…. “when she said the safeword”.
Sorry for the offtopic.

London Spengler 12.24.07 / 11pm

I know I am already “fighting” Anony and dande on my own blog, but that doesn’t means I cannot come here and add some more answers to the beating question…

“I am not married”.

“It is she who beats me”.

“Who are you? Where I am?”.

“Never did it” (too classical, and yes, then it comes “you deny it?”. But truth is always powerfull, even if there is only a grain of it :-p).

Also, I had to come and agree with Soph; there is little sense in answering back to a troll. Not sure about if banning her from the start was right; in one hand she uses a lot the “I was unprovokedly banned” argument, but in the other one you avoided some bitter moments, having to read her at your own home.

Prokofy Neva 12.25.07 / 4am

People who think their brains are exclusive and should be uploaded *should* be sneered at. It’s a normal, healthy reaction.

I’m not a “troll,” I’m a normal person who voices pretty normal, pragmatic opinions about the really wacky extremist stuff that goes on in SL. This isn’t “vitriol,” it’s just stinging truth.

Um, here we have a post called “Identity in the Digital Age” and it is sounded by Anony Mouse. I’ll say!

Extroprians claim that they don’t wish to encourage blind belief. Yet one is required blind belief in their own wacky ideas.

If something is not to your liking in Ravenglass, well, wait a day, perhaps another tenant will come in and build something you do like. They are free to build within very simple rules that pretty much work to create nice neighbourhoods where people in fact feel at home. Sorry *that* scares you.

I think it’s absolutely hilarious that this august grouping of Metarati held a meeting of their Magisterium and vigorously discussed whether to pre-ban me, and decided to do so because a) I have exposed the cultishness of Manen b) have exposed the pompousness and errors of Duranske. So…yuh, that’s a reason to ban someone ROFL.

Question: if a pre-emptive ban falls in the forest and nobody is there to know it and get bounced by it, is it in fact a true ban? ROFL.

BTW, one of the grave falsehoods of the opensource extremists is this notion that “The Internet” is all based on open source. The presence of a paid-for non-profit Mozilla or an Apache doesn’t mean what they imagine, as this is merely a utility upon which sits proprietary sites on the web like amazon.com — and that’s what makes up the Internet for most people.

I think it’s a good thing to call people on their leftist or rightist ideologies. There’s all too much of it masking as normal moderation. It’s anything but. The trigger-happy ban-hammer is ample indication of this.

anonymouse1 12.25.07 / 5am

“People who think their brains are exclusive and should be uploaded *should* be sneered at. It’s a normal, healthy reaction.”

Why do you care? If people feel as though they want to upload their brains one day, I think the question you need to ask yourself is… is it hurting you?

Your posting about Extropia was full of half truths and misunderstandings. The comment regarding the reputation based tattoos suggested by Csven being accepted simply because everyone didn’t jump on him for suggesting such a misguided thing is an example of your willingness to stretch the truth in order to spread misinformation and lies about people.

This being the case, from observation. Is there any reason why I or anyone else should believe anything that’s said on your blog?

“Um, here we have a post called “Identity in the Digital Age” and it is sounded by Anony Mouse. I’ll say!”

Yes, indeed we do.

“Extroprians claim that they don’t wish to encourage blind belief. Yet one is required blind belief in their own wacky ideas.”

No one is required to have blind belief in anything involving Extropia. That’s the point of it. An open society free to determine it’s own direction and not confined by the beliefs of the past.

“If something is not to your liking in Ravenglass, well, wait a day, perhaps another tenant will come in and build something you do like. They are free to build within very simple rules that pretty much work to create nice neighbourhoods where people in fact feel at home. Sorry *that* scares you.”

I never said it scared me, or perhaps you misread my posting. I said I’ve yet to see anything better in Ravenglass. I’ve been there relatively recently too and I very much doubt that there will be anything approaching something decent if I “give it a day.” Freedom of expression never scares me. That’s what’s great about SL and, frankly about the world at least our corner of it. People are free to believe whatever they want.

Regarding open source… not ALL of the internet is open source, but given that the first webserver was open source, written by Tim Berners-Lee and the first web browsers were also open source (WorldWideWeb.app and NCSA/Mosiac) and also given that more than 60% of the webservers today run on Linux and use Apache, much of it is. These are not “extremist opinions” or falsehoods. They’re facts.

“as this is merely a utility upon which sits proprietary sites on the web like amazon.com — and that’s what makes up the Internet for most people.”

You’re twisting the meaning of what’s being said. Naturally amazon. com and other proprietary sites aren’t open source. But the technologies they are built on top of, for the most part, are. Amazon is one of the largest users of open source technologies in the world as is Google. This is why Google regularly sponsors open source projects because much of it’s technology rides on top of the work of open source developers.

Without these technologies… development would be much harder than it is today. Web developers would have to pay enormous royalties to people. Open Source is a fact of life in the industry.

Many sites are built on proprietary technologies. Many more are not.

“Question: if a pre-emptive ban falls in the forest and nobody is there to know it and get bounced by it, is it in fact a true ban? ROFL.”

Yes.

London Spengler 12.25.07 / 8am

Mmm… most of what I whould say, and even more, had already been said (and comments between you probably whould keep going on).

Prokofy, I can be mistaken, since it is impossible to look in people’s soul, but I still think that your posts are deliberately inflamatory; you find something you dislike (and you keep finding things… I don’t know if you ever wrote a constructive post instead of a negative one) and then proceed to bash it choosing the worst possible view.

Maybe troll is a word too hard, since up to where I know, your style matchs newspapers like The Sun or The Inquirer, and they aren’t trolls; but I don’t like their style at all, too. Of course is my personal decision.

About why I don’t think you try to be ecuanime… let me repeat what you said: Um, here we have a post called “Identity in the Digital Age” and it is sounded by Anony Mouse. I’ll say!

I think that Anony Mouse is a valid digital identity, to be judged by his/her/it’s words and not by the related RL/SL aspects of it. I remember that you protested a lot about people trying to link your RL identity to your SL one when discussed you, and I agreed… but now you try to deprive another identity of weight just because the name is Anony?

One more thing; I also lived at Ravenglass and enjoyied the time there, even if it was short. It was cheap and I really needed cheap, hadn’t bad views and it was almost lag free; it was not top design, but it wasn’t bad too. I liked it there, and I think you care about your tenants wellfare (in fact, it was shocking to discover you owned it! ;-p).

I also love Extropia design; very original for SL standards and a pleasure to look at. Yes, it is a bit like the old SF series, but I grow with that series and that makes the place homely; warm concrete, glass and steel.

That’s why I cannot read you, even if something I do a brief browse at World of SL; maybe you are right about some things, but I keep finding extreme oppinions, so against my nature, that I end rejecting the whole lot.

dandellion Kimban 12.25.07 / 10am

The word “troll” is not too hard!

London Spengler 12.25.07 / 10am

I just noticed I defended Extropia architecture without saying anything about the cult thing. My fault, I simply took the effort to give it a thought :-p

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What is wrong with Prokofy Neva?

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