Liars!
The UNI Global Union web site claims that the virtual strike by IBM workers in Italy had a fantastic turnout, saying
“More than 1’850 - real- people protested behind their computers in over 30 countries to show solidarity with IBM Italy workers.
The protest took place at 7 IBM locations, and in particular at IBM Italia and the IBM Business Centre in Second Life.
Italy’s national TV station highlighted the event in the evening news during 5 minutes, showing screenshots from Second Life and its almost 2’000 protesters.”
First of all, this was one of the dumbest things that I’ve ever heard happening in Second Life. Striking against a real world company for better wages by carrying picket signs at their virtual locations? WTF?
Where I’m calling “bullshit” on the whole story is where they say that screenshots of almost 2,000 protesters were shown on the evening news. First, try getting more than (or even close to) 80 people into one sim. Can’t be done! Then, even if they wanted to count all 7 locations where the protests took place, it doesn’t add up, at all. At the most, 7*80=560. I imagine that there weren’t a lot of people logging in and out, since it “was” a picket line, so the chance of having many more than that is absurd. In this Flickr set, there were no more than 14 avatars seen on one of the photos.
This same story also says:
“Many Italian IBM workers joined the event after work, from 7pm to 10pm Rome, Italy time.”
Well, hello?? Are these people IBM workers in real life, also? If so, way to go for actually going to work before you picket. If not, why the hell are they bitching at a company that they work for in SL, when they already have real jobs, anyway?
How do you say “Get a fucking clue” in Italian? “Siete stupidi, o giusto giocate uno in SL?”… Close enough.
Another thing, this story refers to this as a “success”, when the story clearly says “IBM did not officially react to our protest so far.”. How the hell is that a success? I’ll ask again: What was the point??
ADDED: Men’s News Daily feels the same.
Malignant Narcissist @ September 29, 2007