Yesterday my reader feed blew up with posts about an article on moviepilot.com about SL.
Now, since moviepilot.com on its ‘about page’ says its mission is to ‘to revolutionize the way movie fans discover and talk about upcoming movies,’ I’m not really clear on why they’re writing about SL in the first place.
I’d post a link to the article, but frankly, it’s terrible and I don’t want to give them any more traffic. It’s poorly written, poorly researched (the pictures used date from 2007-2010, including one photo that is from IMVU, not SL), and it’s clearly an article written just for sensationalism. The sad part?
It’s working.
People who play in SL have left comment after comment after comment about how wrong the article is. In fact, the author (and I use that term loosely) focused solely on what kink is available in SL. Furries, unicorns, and bears, oh my!! I found the whole article laughable.
My advice would have been to ignore it. Instead, users have been flocking to leave comments about how wrong the author got it.
They’re missing the point. The author (and company) clearly does not care whether their story was accurate. Their goal? Traffic, plain and simple. And what did they get from all the SL users who flocked to complain and leave comments?
Traffic.
Like any other internet troll, the best response would have been to ignore the post. As I’m sure, most of the rest of the world will. I’m afraid that now, there may be additional posts (likely with the same pathetic degree of accuracy) trying to repeat the spike. (By the way, the author of this *ahem* article also posted 14 more articles on the same day. I’m sure they were all well-researched as well.)
Don’t feed the trolls. 😛
A Kat and A Mouse 