You might have noticed that I haven’t really been blogging very much about the coronavirus pandemic lately.
I mean, the news is everywhere now; there’s really no reason to keep writing about it.
I have been struggling with despair, anxiety, depression, and anger over the past few weeks. Every morning I get up at the same time, have a shower, get dressed, brew a vat of black coffee, and face the day as best I can. Some days are better than others. Some days are worse.
I find myself taking longer and longer breaks away from the relentless negative news media, breathlessly reporting on the latest celebrity to become infected with COVID-19 (this morning, it’s Prince Charles).
I have received permission from my employer to work from home since March 16th, 2020, and I have been keeping busy working shifts at my university library’s virtual reference service (via text chat, email, Webex, and Zoom), as well as couple of other projects I have been assigned. At present, all of my coworkers are also working from home, and all the libraries are closed, as are most buildings on my campus. (Good thing most of our collection is digital!)
As you know, I reserve my blogging for my off-hours, mostly weekends and evenings (and the occasional lunch break). I feel like I did my little bit, starting in late January, to use this blog to warn people about the potential risk of a global pandemic, and to get them to take it seriously, and to tell them how best to prepare. For a while this blog became my little soapbox, which I used to yell myself hoarse in hopes that people would listen. Some did; some didn’t.
But now I find I need to refocus my attentions, and step back into the original purpose of this blog, as outlined by the tagline: News and Views on Social VR, Virtual Worlds, and the Metaverse. There’s still a lot going on, in dozens of virtual worlds and social VR platforms, and I still plan to cover it as best I can.
From time to time, I might still write the occasional blogpost about how the coronavirus pandemic is affecting me personally.
And (of course) I reserve the right, at any time, to gallop off on another one of my patented Ryan Schultz tangents. As you know (and as this current public health crisis has proven), literally anything can happen.
I find it bemusing that the algorithm flagged these posts now, a full year and a half after they were first published. (What, just catching up now?) Apparently, “some advertisers are choosing not to advertise on your page because of issues relating to some of your content”.
So it would appear that I have to, once again, self-censor pictures that should have passed muster in the first place. I could request a review, but I already know from past experience (here, here, and here) that they’ll just get flagged again by this stupid, overly-sensitive algorithm.
Even worse, I am completely unable to even access the policy violations using my Google AdSense dashboard via any web browser on my desktop computer. I actually have to load them up on my iPad to actually find out which blogposts tripped the censor-bot. (Pain. In. The. Ass.)
*shrugs* WHAT-ever. So I lose a few pennies of ad revenue. I’m sick and tired of playing this ridiculous game of Whac-A-Mole.
Yes, I can laugh about it, today. But only because I’ve also had a really good cry about it this week. By all reports, the Sansar project is struggling, and I’m still feeling devastated and upset at the news.
I’ve written before about my soft spot/blind spot when it came to Sansar, after I responded so strongly to the first big layoff of staff in October 2019, flip-flopping back and forth like a fish out of water about whether or not to continue writing about the social VR platform, which of course was my whole reason to start this blog in the first place. (And yes, I’m still flip-flopping, obviously. But I will not be writing about anything currently going on at Linden Lab with respect to Sansar, beyond what I have already reported. Expect nothing but radio silence on that matter.)
The backlash to my blogpost about the second round of layoffs (including a fair share of hate messages), triggered a downward spiral where I landed up spending a good chunk of this week lying in bed, in a black pit of depression out of which I am only now starting to crawl.*
Ryan took a lot of heat for that blog post — some from Sansar Discord account holders. He followed with an apology and last night he stated that he was closing his blog.
I can’t say that I applaud his blogging methodology; it certainly wasn’t responsible journalism. Ryan has stated (via Discord) that he is not a journalist, only a blogger. But that isn’t cutting it with me. We are ALL responsible for what we say and what we do — as well as the manner in which we do it. That being said, the “facts” put forth in his article have not been officially refuted as of this writing and I have publicly defended him on that count. That same public — and especially the people in Sansar — do have a right to know what is going on. I hope that Ryan rethinks his position on closing.
Yes, I have indeed rethought my position on shutting down this blog. I have been heartened by the small outpouring of support and encouragement I have received this week from numerous people, including one very well-timed pep talk from Lorelle VanFossen, blogging evangelist and organizer of the Educators in VR group, when I was ready to pull out of speaking at their upcoming conference. (Thanks, Lorelle.) The overwhelming message I got back was that people did not want to see me stop blogging. So I won’t.
And, of course, Chic is absolutely correct. Whether or not I call myself a journalist is beside the point; what matters is how I do my job as a blogger, and I made several grievous errors in judgement this week. I rushed to publish a story without taking into consideration its potential impact to Sansar users, Sansar content creators, and Linden Lab employees. I should have reached out to Linden Lab for a comment before publishing the story, particularly to double-check that Sansar was indeed shutting down (as I had originally, and erroneously, reported).
I fucked up royally, and I’m sorry.
I realize now that I have an obligation to you, my blog readers, to get the facts of the story correct, and to provide as many different perspectives as possible in covering that story. I know that many of you come to this blog to get your news about social VR, virtual worlds, and the metaverse—I now get between 600 and 6,000 views per day—and I have a duty to use that growing power and influence responsibly. This is not just a hobby blog, not any longer. I am a journalist, whether I like it or not.
And my talk next Saturday at the Educators in VR conference will be slightly different from what I originally planned. The moderators have given me permission to talk about whatever I like, so in addition to speaking about social VR and libraries, I will also share some lessons learned the hard way in my two-and-a-half years of writing this blog. Think of it as two talks for the price of one!
And I will slowly be easing back into blogging over the next two weeks. I still think that I need to take a break, but of course the world does not stop. February 20th, 2020 will see both the official public launch of Decentraland and the relaunch of version 2.0 of Somnium Space, for example. I will try to report on various news and events as they happen.
And thank you to all the people who did reach out to me, to express their concern, constructive criticism, encouragement, wisdom, unbiased third-party perspective, and support. Sometimes it takes a crisis to find out who your friends and supporters are, and it would appear I have many that I did not realize I had gained over the past 2-1/2 years. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you.
I’ll be all right. The blog will continue.
*It didn’t help matters that, over the past three weeks, I had taken on the extra burden of blogging daily updates about the Wuhan coronavirus (also known as 2019-nCov and then COVID-19), in an effort to get people to begin to prepare for a potential global pandemic. I worked and worried myself into an anxious, doom-porn-addicted, stressed-out mess, and as a result I took this blog into a very weird tangent that confused a lot of my regular readers. Lesson learned. I’m sorry.
I will leave the pandemic advice and counsel to the many experts out there. I don’t need to become the world’s self-appointed saviour from this coronavirus. (As some of my sassy gay friends would tell me: “Get off the cross, honey. People need the wood.” 😉 )
Note: This is a personal blogpost, one that I have written and rewritten a couple of times, and to which I have added and removed several paragraphs, trying to find the right words to express how I feel. I may still have missed the mark, and for that I will apologize up front.
I am still feeling upset and angry about certain situations, and I take this as a sign that I should take some time off over the Christmas holidays, recharge my batteries, and come back with a refreshed perspective. So don’t be too surprised if I do announce a break from this blog soon.
I will be the first to admit that sometimes, I do not have the best overall temperament, the best combination of personality characteristics, to be a social VR/virtual worlds blogger. I lead with my heart instead of my head, and while this passion ignites what I write about and how I write it, it can also get me into trouble, time and again.
Longtime readers of my blog can see this happen in certain blogposts where, indeed, “the field in which I grow my f*cks is barren”. At times my anger about a situation which I see as unfair has led to almost a scorched-earth response, where a less emotional writer would have backed down. Yes, I do get triggered. Yes, I do get upset. Yes, I do lash out.
I am mindful of at least two situations in the past couple of months were I became emotional over something, and responded by blogging about it. The first was reporting on the layoffs among the Sansar team at Linden Lab, something which brought me into conflict with a number of people who felt that I should have kept that news secret, and frankly which has probably put strain on some formerly good working relationships.
Would I have done anything differently then, knowing what I know now? No. I am hard-wired to respond with outrage to outrageous circumstances. It is what makes me human. It is what makes me, me. If you were looking for a dispassionate, clinical response to the pain and turmoil of a mass layoff, I’m sorry, but you won’t find it on this blog. Heart first, head second.
I am old enough to recognize that the things that irritate me most about other people are the very things that irritate me about myself. I am too quick to take offense at perceived slights, and I sometimes strike back in harsh criticism, sarcasm, or anger. I realize that this is a personal failing, one which I will continue to work on. And I am sorry.
I grew up in a family where I quickly learned that to become angry was to put yourself in danger of physical punishment. So as a result, I spent most of my younger adulthood repressing my legitimate anger, often having it turn into crippling depression as a result, which hindered my life and career more than if I had simply expressed the anger appropriately, at the right targets, at the right time. It is only through years of hard work and therapy that I have been able to acknowledge and express my own anger, and in some cases, the pendulum may have swung a little too far in the other direction.
Being a blogger means finding your authentic voice, and I think I have found mine here. But it also puts you into situations where you realize that you are not always as prepared, as cool and calm and collected, as you would like to think you are. So every so often you need to pause and reflect, and make adjustments as necessary. Now is one of those times.
My first, learned-in-childhood response to incidents such as I have described here is to suppress my anger, which is wrong. My second, more recently-learned response, is to lash out in anger as my father did, which is also wrong. What I need to learn how to do is ride out my first and second gut responses, and opt for a third one: a measured response which is still passionate but not overemotional, taking into account that there can be multiple perspectives to any situation, some of which might not be obvious to me at first (or even second) glance.
Life is a process, where you are usually presented the same lesson to learn, over and over again in different guises, until you finally learn it, and then the next lesson presents itself. So I can look at my responses to recent events which made me angry, and see them as learning opportunities.
