The stories seem to find me — if I go looking for them, they are chased away like shadows, but from day to day, things just have to come up, and come to me they do. Ah, I've got a lot to share, and today's tale involves neg-rates. Short for "negative ratings", it's part of the SL system that is technically used to evaluate people with pluses or minuses (or you can abstain and leave it neutral) based on three self-explanatory categories: Behavior, Appearance, and Building. There's also a row showing how many you've given out. I think my Jadey holds the all-time record for that, with 10,000+ before the ellipsises disappeared due to ratings decay. On a side note, I just looked up Robin Linden's profile and noticed her sig?quote:

"Story is a side-effect of interesting experiences." -Will Wright

Well then! Much has already been heatedly discussed in the Forums about the rating system. I'm not here to talk about that, but I do want to spin the yarn of something that happened to me a few days ago. Bad at?the time, looking good now. The current Welcome Area is the Waterhead one because of construction happening at Ahern and the surrounding environs, and I happen to visit often because it's such a transient hub of people coming and going, the kind of hustle-and-bustle in SL I like to see. Unfortunately, there are also troublemakers who are there for various reasons: some know they'll find a captive audience because it's a public area where landowner ejection doesn't come easily, and they know a steady stream is sure to come through sooner or later. And then Lindens swoop in to oversee the "friendliness factor", but they have much work to attend to elsewhere, so the cycle continues.

I was hanging out with friends, some of them newfound, when a fellow whose name I won't disclose as it's not important — what is important is what I learned afterwards, as you'll see — walked up to me to comment on me and my website. He quite enjoyed it from the tone of his typing, but then, that's when things got ugly. He asked if I had Asperger's Syndrome. I answered affirmatively. I saw his fingers get to work, typing on air?and as they did, I began to wonder if he had crashed. But he hadn't, and the following soon appeared in blocks on my screen:

Avatar: How DARE you claim to have that horrible disease when my OWN BROTHER suffers from this HORRIBLE syndrome, he cannot even TALK or make sentences, yet you claim to have that same disease and are sitting here making coherant sentances right now??

Avatar: I am DISGUSTED

Avatar rated you negatively: DISGUSTED

UGH! My gut reaction was to be disgusted myself with what he said on so many levels, because of how wrong it is:

• Asperger's Syndrome is not a disease. It cannot be cured. I have it for life.
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• The majority of people with AS can talk.?Autism is a?spectrum and?what "Avatar" was describing is accurate of?some forms of classical?autism, but certainly not Asperger's.?It is more typical for someone with AS to ramble on and on about an obsession.
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• He certainly was quick to be hostile to me, especially after claiming to read my website which is really quite rainbows and sunshine. I don't exaggerate. And if he was really paying attention to my website, then of course, he'd?know I'm here to help others.

Quickly, Avatar vanished, presumably teleporting somewhere else but still online. Promptly, I fired a quick?IM off to him.?Avatar continued to be rude, threatening to report me for harassment, trying weakly to swing things around on me. I?camly told him to feel free to Abuse Report me if he wanted, but that I am here to help others. (Like I just said. ) I encouraged him to tell me more about his brother and told him that I'm here to listen, and left it at that.

I've not heard back from him. Of course, he might not really?have been DISGUSTED. He might not even have a brother. And it's clear to me he doesn't know what Asperger's is really all about. For all I know (or don't know), he might have just been an ignorant?jerk, or an alt of someone else who has a problem with me for some inexplicable reason and hasn't come to talk directly to me about it… so he resorted to?doing this?instead. Which makes it even more disrespectful to those who do have autism *points to self*,?which is why I emailed the Linden family?afterwards, hoping they can make sense of this with the logs on their servers. And I'd like to thank for my friends for being supportive when this was happening.

A red flag about this guy was that although I will talk at length about Asperger's if asked, you do have to dig fairly deep on my website to understand my context clearer. It's not like I shout out "I'M AUTISTIC!!!" at every turn and corner of Second Life's roads. That would be a RRL = Really Redundant Loop. So, he may have had prior knowledge of me. This may have been planned to set me up and peg me with -3, which isn't fair anyway — hey, who DOESN'T like a flower-hat? At least give me a +1 for Appearance! Sheesh. Seriously, speculation aside –

Now, this is not the first time I've been neg-rated. It's not even the second time. (I might save those stories for particle rainy days.) But this got a passionate?fire burning in my heart again. At the time it happened, I was honestly angry. But then I began to recall all the good, better, and best times I've had on here, and it all comes down to what I do best: being me. And I'm not going to be a fool and perpetuate a cycle of hatred by attacking others, even in retaliation. On the contrary, I'm going to see what I can constructively build upon from this little Second Life lesson. I've figured the following out:

• This is a blessing in disguise which has rekindled my interest in increasing awareness of Asperger's autism and related mental health issues. Heard of Brigadoon and Live2Give? If not, check 'em out! Wonderful examples of how SL is being used to improve real lives.
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• I'm more daring now of going into some areas in SL where controversy runs amuck. I used to be afraid of getting neg-rated en masse, but really, when someone unreasonably?neg-rates me, it says more about them than it does about me. And if I do wrong, I'll be the first to admit that and apologize.
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• It's thickened my skin up even more, both real and virtual. Sure it stings, but over the wounded flesh grows liquid metal. I am a cyborg after all.
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• It encourages me to discuss policy more actively with the Lindens and see what can be done to improve the way the system works. I don't discuss to be right; I discuss to learn.
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• It's reminded me and reinforced my belief?that Second Life is a progressive place where change is constant and dynamics are the same. And that I can't hold on to my ratings, positive or negative, but I can certainly let go of myself for the greater good. To make others's lives happier, and hoping the good vibes?keep flowing freely. To realize that while I'm just an individual, each person can make a difference if a lot of them come together with some great ideas to make dreams come true. Hurts can be?healed, childhood can be?rediscovered, and you have fun.?It's what happens in Second Life.

A picture is worth…

"Words without action are the blueprints that never gets the house built."
-Torley Torgeson, blue-and-orange variation