In the inimitable words of Strongbad, "The System is down!". Second Life is currently experiencing one of its longest downtime periods since perhaps pre-beta (I don't know, I wasn't there!) and havoc (not Havok 2)?is breaking out on the forums. Redundancy and rude pandemonium are running amok, but to counter that darkness, there is the lightfocused optimism of Happy New Year's messages and support threads for the Lindens — who are still working to fix these problems when they should be at home with offline family and friends. Lots of virtual group hugs are being passed around.

Unfortunately, due to the downtime and other circumstances, I am not able to attend the fundraising events I had mentioned earlier as planned. But as they say, after the storm, you look for survivors. And if the world should break in two, and I should lose you –

Anyhoo, it's a "crisis" like this which really says a lot about the people involved, by how they react. What about the bigger picture here??This is small fries compared to, uh, say, the recent tsunami *sigh*, and there is a certain liberal irony coming from those who are shouting inexcusable personal attacks at the Linden family, yet expect Second Life to be fixed like instant coffee. Really, if not the Lindens, who does one believe will solve "The great?Snow Crash of almost-'05"? Those sort of acerbic?statements might as well be made Phantom, since you can walk through them without any effect or grand Confucian lesson learned.

And similarly, this redundance?will all look puny in hindsight. Maybe even a little laughable.

It's quite the anthropological observation of human beings: our individual views, but also, how we interact together. And isn't that what Second Life is about?