So instead of people making secrets, I’ve received more contact forms with gossip in it than before. I always reply “make a secret about it”. In fact, the gossip that I was sent in that I will be talking about today my first response was “Make a secret about it”. Then I spoke with a trusted friend privately and told them this story that I received in an e-mail and they replied, “You need to post that”.
So without further ado, I present to you the tea from Relay for Life in SL.
6/6/2020 11:05PM
Message Body:
My group had a spot at Relay For Life in SL. Today was the march for survivors, and I walked by myself carrying a board. That board over my head, acknowledged one of the top Doctors we have today in the cancer research circle. Dr. Hadiyah-Nicole Green ( https://oralee.org/drgreen/ ) , and noted her website as well.
As I rounded a bend, someone had apparently IMed me. I didn’t think much of it until I was ejected. The message asked that I remove the board that I was wearing. As I stood at my home, I responded with a link to Ora Lee and closed the conversation. I was too angry to respond about what just occurred.
I wanted to head back to the sim and speak to the person in charge, but I then realized I had been banned, so I logged into another avatar and headed for the sim. My goal was to have a polite conversation with whomever the group lead was, and understand why someone felt the need to eject and ban me.
When I arrived, I was unsure on who to contact. So I joined the ACS group listed on the prims from the sim (it was free to join) and checked the members. I still could not figure out on who to contact, but I did see there was a website (https://www.slacsinfo.com/about). I was able to retrieve the name of the person in charge. I saw that the person who originally ejected me was also listed on the website. I messaged Stingray9798 since he was on sim and politely asked him a series of questions. Those questions, verbatim, are noted below – the spaces indicate his responses – (responses from the person noted above have been removed out of privacy and in case anyone wants to say that I broke any TOS).
[13:37] Hey man, got a question for you.
[13:39] Hello – got a question. Does the SL Relay for Life and ACS, support all valid cancer research associations?
[13:42] Right, but do they support all valid cancer research organizations. You know, Doctors that are fighting to help cure cancer.
[13:43] I didn’t ask that.
[13:44] Allow me to re-phrase that. Does the ACS help support legitimate research for the cure to cancer. Support does not equate to money.
[13:45] I am asking you, because you guys are representing ACS in SL right now.
[13:47] Sorry, why did you eject me?
His responses seemed canned and elusive, not truly answering any questions I posed. His excuse for ejecting and banning me? He said I was griefing …..
He did however supply me with helpful information in the form of a phone number to the American Cancer Society. I contacted ACS, explained what transpired – and the rep stated (James) – they do not condone what happened. He apologized for my experience.
The interesting note, not only were my avatars ejected and banned, but it seems that my partner was banned as well. We guessed that perhaps they saw him in my partner box and proactively banned him. We tested this by logging into another avi – completely dissociated with the previous ones, and it too could not teleport to the RFL – he was banned as well. How did this group IP BAN us within a 10-15 minute time line? I would hate to think that Linden Labs condones this behavior and supports this group enough to allow them to use an IP BAN tool. Especially since those are banned from SL. It does however look to be the case.
I have asked the American Cancer Society to check on this group, measure that they are being held accountable for all monies collected (yes, I did donate at the sim for ACS) and simultaneously submitted a ticket through Linden Labs in regards to the scope of the issue (particularly the IP Ban). We tested the ban again, and have noted, that while it seems the IP BAN has been lifted, the actions of these individuals still does not support the scope of how the American Cancer Society would appreciate donors and survivors to be treated. I support most causes for the cure for cancer, as it has touched my life more times than I care to say. I would hope that ACS views the search for the cure, the same way.
In a brief moment of actually pretending to be journalism (Don’t panic, this is still a supermarket trash rag) I asked to see the conversation that is left out from above. Stingray9798 did not really answer their questions and treated the questions asked as ‘griefing’. Stingray9798 was polite.
The American Cancer Society is going to get back with this user regarding this incident.
Why were they so quickly able to IP ban the accounts?
Do you think that if the ACS organizer had a problem with the board advertising the Ora Lee Smith foundation that perhaps they should have addressed that instead of straight to kick/ban?
Did ACS provide any guidelines to people participating in the March for Survivors?
What do you think?
The ACS itself is a scam when it was outed as spending over 90% of the money they get in their own salaries already.
At the very best, RFL in SL sends them that money that then spend on paying themselves but I very much doubt that goes clean as well as I’ve heard plenty of reliable accounts of that donated money being cashed out for the SL representatives.
Boggles the mind how many people just throw their money away, if you actually wanna make a difference SAVE YOUR MONEY in case a close friend of relative ever gets cancer and give it to them directly for medical bills, not ANY of these organizations that are nothing but shades of grey and produce NO visible results. Just look at how much money was donated for breast cancer research over the last 30 years and then see what difference did that made, none at all.
Do not let your emotions cloud your best judgement, do not feed a group that cares about NOTHING but money.
ACS has partners they sponser and work with. Make sure to check their website. When creating an event or anything for ACS on SL, make sure any donation boxes or anything are being linked to their actual website. If there is a foundation you feel would work well ACS, then you need to have that foundation go to the website and look how to get involved. Also check ACS site to read more about ACS on SL and what their guidelines are.
IP ban tools are still consistently used throughout the grid. LL is fucking stupid and can’t do their damn jobs.
I’m not surprised. I was part of RFL years ago and found they were scamming.
Sad to know people still fall for this . They’ve banned many over the years.
Donate in RL never in SL
The entire RFL of SL organization is one big cult. The way people eat into it, over and over. They will donate their last real life money to an organization in SL that only cares about the money. I am a former relayer and I saw how my small team was treated, as well as everyone on it. We were always harassed to get people to donate more and when our helpers reached out to us, it was always a suggestion of how to raise more money. The same teams win all of the awards and get the applause year in and year out. If you are a medium and/or small team forget it. As for the banning of the individual no surprise there as it seems the number of bans this year has gone sky high. If you even ask a simple question you get shouted down or treated as if you are stupid. If you dare mention another cancer celebration or group you get banned or hushed in a corner. Not to mention they always treated the LGTB community as if we had a disease. Several would snicker at 2 gay men dancing or kissing each other, same with 2 women, yet the Gorean team was applauded and lets face it Gore is nothing but abuse basically. But the difference is the Gorean teams raise a great deal of money and our team didnt. And as for the donations, lets see, Stingray is the only one who can take out the money that is donated via lindens. You never ever see any receipts that it actually goes to ACS. If you are forced to only relay in SL, then I suggest donating online to convio where it goes to ACS directly but lets face it, ACS in real… Read more »
That Ora Lee org has the right idea. I actually just started working for them as a strictly volunteer worker. Everyone, including Dr Green, works entirely as volunteers. I am waiting for my one on one meeting with her to see where I can help out!
an IP ban happens automatically for 1 hour if you try to tp in multiple accounts from the same IP to help prevent greifing….if you wait out the 1 hour limit you can tp in alts to your hearts delight!
so love that they banned someone for trying to fight CANCER of all things. is there an actual reason they were banned though? or just cos of the doctor they were talking about
My guess was, in reading over the story carefully and talking to the submitter, was that their board advertised another foundation that did cancer research. When posed the question, “if you were asked to remove the board because of the url would you have?” And they answered yes. Unfortunately they weren’t given any guidance on the matter or an answer. Hope that helps.
Ban by IP is in the region controls. All they had do was estate mgr or owner do it. It’s an LL given ability, though they never actually see your IP.
Ban by IP is soooo easy to overcome with a good ‘tunnel all VPN’
if you change your ip address and make a new account or buy one you can get back on the land
No it doesn’t ban specifically by IP, but LL will place a temporary IP ban for about 30 mins to prevent alts from coming in. Estate managers and owners can only still ban by individual account.
I didn’t know you could do that, but then again, I have not played with region access in a long time. Deserves testing today!
So they have updated the Estate Tools? That’s pretty nice.
It never used to be a user-based thing via Estate Manager tools, only a thing that LL could do. Looks like they’ve made upgrades then.
To be fair, I have thought of the whole ACS SL presence to be shady at best throughout the years and prefer to donate any money to cancer charities directly to them, not via some pseudorepresentative “approved presence” in a virtual community. But, that’s just me.
RFL in real life does not put enough of the donations collected to cancer research. (The links I am sharing are a bit old but the info is good).
-The American Cancer Society (ASC) that sponsors relay for life spends on average $600 million a year on employee pensions. This well over four times the amount the ACS spends on cancer research annually.
-Retired CEO Donald Thomas’ salary was over $1.4 million, and VP of Divisional Services William Barram was making over $1.55 million.
-In the same year that the ACS was forced to cut budgets for “economic reasons,” the CEO’s salary doubled to over $2.2 million.
-In fact, roughly 95% of their overall donations go towards salaries, leaving a meager 5% to go towards “the cause.”
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-agin/friends-dont-let-friends-_2_b_2759403.html
https://www.theodysseyonline.com/nobody-should-support-relay-life
The figures you state for employee benefits are simply made up and are not reflected on their own documentation. I’d also add money paid out of the defined benefit scheme are from scheme assets.
some time ago there was comments on the income of the CEO at the sl forums .. those got removed by LL, followed by a post of Patch, putting boiling oil, tar and feathers on them who DARE to comment on LL’s partner .. We see it now too, LL isn’t able to keep personal preferences out of their bussines.. quite a chance that will fire back to them.
Its a damn shame when the people that accept money, use more money on their personnel than the real cause. I will not donate to them any longer.
So, according to the SL ACS website, they have “security” in place. As seen in their Google DOC here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1q3owN0s1_tZd65SmoYbqkXCfFodH-4D6VgphTsuUEp8/edit#heading=h.um9jeth49rrb – – – – Look under “Fundraising Security”.
Though it mentions that the American Cancer Society has had this one avatar since 2005, its funny how they do not mention the name of said avatar. I would think with the need for transparency on this, they would want a checks and balance to denote exactly what that name is so that if you click on one of their approved devices, you can confirm the avatar its in the name of? Just a thought. Worthy of testing it out to keep them in accordance with their own guidelines.
No matter what, there are far better organizations to donate to for the research.
You also gotta wonder if ACS would attach their logo and vision to some of the “sponsors” and their sponsor activity on the sims. There is a huge Gorean presence with a big “Gorean Fest” that goes on during the RFL there. Tugging around slaves and participating in your kink on a fundraising region – kinda weird? It’d be fine if they participated minus the roleplay aspect, I am just not sure that ACS would actually approve of that in real life.
They wouldn’t. The SL version of relay for life is supposed to reflect the real life version which has conduct standards. I support the SL event emotionally, Include a small linden donation, But my real financial support is donated in real life because the SL version lacks transparency.
Ask yourself this. Would ACS accept funds raised by a leather pride group at Folsom Festival in San Francisco. I think they would. I believe ACS actually operates a stand there. Do you think they’d turn down funds or refuse to have a tent there because people parade slaves around on leashes, and M/s culture is a fairly significant element of Folsom? Moreover even if they did turn their nose up, do you think that would be okay, that there wouldn’t be outcry about it. I don’t particularly love Gor, but the real world is different than it was a decade ago, and BDSM and Leather Pride are normal elements of many pride activities and community activism, including charitable fundraising.
Would ACS want an orgy at a fundraising event where they rented the hall and paid for the catering? No. But would they put a booth or jar out at a public event that included presence by Leather Pride groups, or other sex positive Groups. At least in my city, they do.
The Gorean community creates the LARGEST donations to RFL in Second Life. Just thought I would point that out.
According to the ACS website – the MC community donates the most. But that’s aside from the point noted above.
Actually – the MC community looks to be the largest contributor. See here – https://www.slacsinfo.com/news
The point was actually about participating in your kink or roleplay DURING festivities. Point in case, I am sure that if the Federal Swinger’s Association wanted to donate to ACS in a real life event, ACS would happily take their money, but not want a sex orgy relay to go on. Not saying that anyone was having sex, but right now, the thought of a bunch of guys walking around with leashed ‘slaves’ at a relay….. pretty sure that is not the image that ACS would want contributed to their events. Food for thought.
LMAO Sometimes “no” means “not now”.
6. Fundraising isn’t all we do, but all we do depends on fundraising. Set a team goal, communicate often w/ your team, plan and delegate, don’t be afraid to ask for donations. Don’t take it personally if someone says “no.” Often, “no” means “not now.” Promote your team fundraising events.
I was thinking the same thing. ” Is the money actually going to ACS”