Burning Life in Second Life makes me sad this year

Burning Life is a big yearly event inside Second Life as the virtual version of Burning Man. You know, Burning Man that celebrates self-expression, art, self-reliance, community.. all of those wonderful ideals. I was involved with Burning Life in SL last year and it truly was a wonderful experience. There was a sense of community, everyone worked well together, it was handled and run beautifully. This year has been much different from my viewpoint.

Let's not even touch open the censorship incident - that's just completely ridiculous and there are truly no words to even begin to explain that.

The leadership this year has been.. disappointing at best. From the way things were communicated, to the land distribution, to the experience I had last night.. I'm fairly sure this will be my last participation in Burning Life unless things change dramatically.

Burning Life is now 'open' to SL residents. Last night there were numerous scripted/generated attacks in the different sims which, as we all know, are not at the forefront of what I would typically call an enjoyable experience. In the midst of this, pieces of someone else's build were located DIRECTLY in front of the entrance to my build, but not on my specific land parcel so that I could return them. They were in the 'no man's land' requiring me to IM the owner and then call for additional help.

When Linden help arrived and I asked them to return the two items, they were confused and thought I wanted something else returned and then told me to just auto-return them - which would have been great if they were on my land, but I explained that they weren't. I calmly explained what I needed and it was taken care of. Very easy - and I thought that was the end of it. A few minutes later, the same Linden IM's me to say that he'd found another similar item on another parcel and was returning it. Then, a few minutes after that said, "Actually I'm just going to return all of this because these items don't match the land owner". I freaked out a bit because I knew those items had been there since day #1 of the Burning Life set-up and I was fairly certain the items DID belong on that parcel. I immediately re-checked the owner of the item, and then the land owner. They were, indeed the same person. I IM'd the Linden back and informed that they WERE the same person, those items had been there for a very long time, and to not return all of them.

After the items were returned.. the Linden responds, "oh well. no biggie.".

Excuse me? "No biggie"? Well no, perhaps not to you, but to the person that made and placed those items on Day #1 weeks ago.. perhaps a bigger deal than it is to you. I was irritated, disappointed, and just generally 'blah' about the entire situation.

Good job Lindens. Way to pick the people that could have really made this event something to be proud of.

-Micala