Another Fake First

Your faithful correspondent outside the SLH Vendor in Grace, ready with a rolled-up copy of the famous real actual first virtual tabloid, ready to bop fake firsts. IM Prokofy to get yours today!

By Prokofy Neva, Dept. of Flak-Catching and Hypervent Harangues

Oh, dear. Paging Uri, get on line, quick! You have to see this one!

Another fake first. None other than Axel Springer himself, the RL news magnate, is actually buying and launching what the Guardian is calling "the first tabloid in SL."

*Cough*. Ahem! We beg to differ! The SL Herald, founded as the Alphaville Herald back in the days of The Sims Online, and covering SL since 2003, has been the avatars' tabloid of choice for AGES!

Why, we pride ourself on not only covering the news but making it if we have to, on a slow news day! We're the original "Always Fairly Unbalanced" gang here! We're the go-to guys on all the skinny on all the thugs and slugs...from our favourite game company execs all the way down to our local camp-chair Dwellfare Queens. When are these big businesses going to get it? There are people here *already*.

Comments

[john smith]

Just to let you know, Axel Springer is no longer a media magnate. He died in 1985. But as good tabloid journalists, i'm sure you knew that anyway! ;)

[Prokofy Neva]

Duh, I go back that far and remember that day well : )

It's the business that is named Axel Springer, and it is referred to in that fashion, including in the Guardian.

[Prokofy Neva]

"Mr Springer plans to construct an online editorial office for SL News," says the Guardian -- that's a kind of convention.

Yes, anyone can have a Second Life. Including dead people : )

[Walker Spaight]

wow, this is outrageous. I'm actually going to get in touch with some people at the Guardian and try and get this corrected.

but um ... when did we get kiosks for the Herald?

[eva]

oh no they didn't.

i can't even imagine the hell fire uri is or will soon be stoking for these poor unfortunate souls.

[urizenus]

We are so going to tear them a new one.

This.
Will.
Be.
Epic.

[Prokofy Neva]

We've always had kiosks, Walker? There in the info hubs and Prokland malls and such. In fact, the one Uri made was kinda lame so I think Carl Metropolitan re-did it but it's around at NCI, for example. I'll send you one. It could use a makeover. But it's glaring white lights-on texture is a beacon of hope in a hopeless virtual world...

[Urizenus]

Yes I like the bright white Herald vendors. They remind me not a little of the lamps that Dyerbrook used to deliver to those regions of Alphaville that had fallen into the shadows of darkness.

Obviously we need to distribute them more widely. Does someone have a plan?

[Prokofy Neva]

Erm...do we ever plan here at the Herald, Uri? *Looks around wildly*.

I suppose I could leave them around places until people IM'd me outraged that I left bright white boxes on their bars and clubs lol?

Um, can I get a budget of $935,900 to do this right, Uri? I could buy up all the Mr. Lee's Hong Kong spots and put out the Herald kiosks?

[Urizenus]

well, I do have a lifetime acct., which means lots of rent-free land that is currently all in one place in Jessie. If I liquidate that can we buy up little parcels all over tarnation and put down kiosks?

[Urizenus]

well gopod bless Tateru Nino of the Blingsider for speaking truth to fucktards on this one:

http://www.secondlifeinsider.com/2006/11/07/not-the-nine-o-clock-news/

[Walker Spaight]

They don't have an RSS feed or anything in them, do they? That's what they need, then we can just hire someone to go around offering them to vendors on the idea that people will drop by to read the latest Herald headlines and subsequently buy their stuff.

[Barney Boomslang]

Be prepared for new lows on "journalism" by them. They aren't exactly known for getting anything right, but more for getting anything wrong. Oh, send me a herald box, please? I can put one in yongnam on my event platform. an event every sunday there, so ppl might notice it :)

[Walker Spaight]

First overtures to the Guardian have been made. Initial response: sympathetic. Deliverables? We'll see.

[urizenus]

Well Walker, whatever they might deliver it is too fucking late. That story is of course being picked up as gospel all over the new media blogosphere without the slightest hesitation.

I am currently working on a new Herald feature, the Fucktard of the Week Award, to be given to the reporter, marketer, or PR flack that got shit the most wrong during the past week. Let's just say that the competition this week as every week is stiff, but Jess Smee of the Guardian is in the lead as we move into the stretch.

[Cocoanut Koala]

I want one of these for my shop. And Prok, I want another of the Infonut.

coco

[Rez]

Calling someone a fucktard is hardly epic. It's laughable that you're a professor of philosophy and yet that seems to be the extent of your vocabulary, although I certainly understand your ire at the false claims of 'first'. But using fucktard as your only real comeback makes you seem as limited in diction as you could be said to be in your vision.

[Urizenus]

Well clever Rez, I'm one of those old fashioned guys that call cats 'cats', dogs 'dogs', and achidnas 'achidnas', and for that reason I call 'fucktards' fucktards. You are probably one of those guys that likes to switch up your nouns. Not me. If I have an apt term I stick with it. We all do. That's how we roll at The Herald.

[Urizenus]

oops, I meant to say "call fucktards 'fucktards'." Got the quotes wrong. Silly me.

[eva]

Hey Uri:

then what's a spade....?

[Random Writer]

A club?

[Urizenus]

dunno, but I spelled 'echidna' wrong, and no blog language cop stepped up to correct me. Standards are slipping everywhere I guess. My theory is that there are now officially more asses than broomsticks.

[Rez]

Misspellings are commonplace, thus, you only get a warning for those. But you caught it before any blog language cop could find you, so you're safe.

[Kami Harbinger]

Fucktard Of The Week is true enough, but it misses that special something that indicates what *kind* of fucktardry they're indulging in...

FIRST Fucktard Of The Week.