Should This Topic Be Deleted for everyone’s sake? Take the poll if it shows up…

Citizen

Sadi235

Level 42
Sex Appeal 55376
Reputation 21369
Posts 168

07.11.2023 12:52:30
Sadi235

To Susan
Hamas massacre has not helped Palestinians a bit, it has further made them the worst target of insufferable attacks in modern history. It could have been dealt through ground forces, personally checking the houses of residents, using intelligence agents which like USA did while finding 9/11 culprits.
The israel government is allowing them to leave the country, but where. The neighbouring countries have washed their hands over this matter. They send burial coffins for the dead. The Palestinians are cursing the Arabs more than the Israelis.
So, everyone verbally supports them, but none have the courage to protect or fight for them.

07.11.2023 12:52:30

Senator

Susan Slutzky

Level 257
Sex Appeal 16244105
Reputation 407906
Posts 3910

8

07.11.2023 14:38:07
Susan Slutzky

To Sadi:

You make some good points. It’s true that the Oct. 7 massacre has only increased Palestinian suffering. Which makes one wonder why Hamas decided to do it in the first place.

Any theories?

07.11.2023 14:38:07

Citizen

Ascelina

Level 70
Sex Appeal 271298
Reputation 12724
Posts 200

26

07.11.2023 17:35:47
Ascelina

I think the Palestinian ambassador Husam Zomlot said it best in this video.

We all can agree that killing innocent people is bad. Hamas does not represent all of Palestine, and while the Israeli government does not represent every Israeli, there is a difference between a countries government advocating for the killing of thousands upon thousands of innocents, a large portion of which are chirdren, and an oppressed group acting in retaliation against their oppression.

I would pose that Hamas would not exist if Israel was not invading and attempting to completely ethnically cleanse Palestine. If the Palestinians were not being bombed, families and entire communities eradicated, histories erased, there would be no Hamas, there would be no need for retaliation. If at any point in the decades of war and murder we stepped in to prevent further crimes against humanity being committed by the Israeli government against Palestine, you would not have a Hamas to scapegoat.

07.11.2023 17:35:47

love you ~

Citizen

Pollyx

Level 127
Sex Appeal 1622074
Reputation 66316
Posts 1434

30

07.11.2023 18:25:56
Pollyx

frogbimbo wrote:

For people who are trying to spread real info about what is happening, do not waste your time with people who only want "a hot debate" in which, despite receiving truthful arguments/proof, they only want to impose their vision of things and therefore misinform other people. The proof provided is clear, whoever doesn't want to see it is because they don't want to.

For all the people who read unfair things but don't have the courage or feel capable of supporting the cause right now for whatever reason, it's okay!! By sharing/liking you already do a lot, take care and stay safe ( ˘ ³˘)♡

Coming here again to echo this! Susan has shown over and over she isn't interested in learning. She came to this discussion with a particular viewpoint and will not be swayed otherwise. She is spreading misinformation (which my sources explicitly disprove) as well as posting about shock value stories that have been proven false, such as the beheaded babies. Actually, across history the FALSE idea of "ritualized cult murder of children" has actually been directed against Jews, and was one of the talking points used by Nazis in the Holocaust. You can read more about the history of blood libel here (yes, Wikipedia link, but you can check Wikipedia's academic sources for where editors have gotten this information). Using this kind of false reasoning and fearmongering is one of the longstanding tactics of those looking to defend genocide.

Please do not interact with her arguments. She goes against anything anyone says and ignores what does not fit into her worldview, and when any of us bring up important sources and factual information she acts as if these arguments are built on nothing and evades the conversation (such as saying "Another fascinating opinion" when confronted with the idea that anti-Israel sentiments are disconnected from antisemitic sentiments). Many of us have provided reputable sources disproving these opinions.

While we're here, though, as one last note to fight the misinformation being posted, I do want to just bring up some information surrounding Hamas and PLO, as Susan has repeatedly stated that these groups work with the express purpose of eradicating all Jews. This is absolutely false and even the quote Susan posted to defend this actually helps us to understand why it's not true. Here is the quote:

“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it" (The Martyr, Imam Hassan al-Banna, of blessed memory).

First of all, Susan accuses others of cherry-picking while doing some high level cherry-picking herself. But also, I think it's important to note that this quote mentions ISRAEL and not JUDAISM. The intent is to obliterate ISRAEL, not all Jewish people in general, and this quote is not defending or even suggesting mass murder. It is describing Hamas' intent to get rid of the state of Israel. As has been sourced and discussed MANY times in this thread, Israel is a settler colonial state. It was created by powerful nations by displacing and subjugating the people who actually lived there at the time of Israel's establishment, and since then Israel has been taking over more and more Palestinian territory in an attempt to assert absolute dominance. Israeli settlers have displaced Palestinians out of their own homes and establishing a legal precedent that Palestinians can not return to their homeland, even if they were born there! If some of these liberation groups are calling for Israel to be removed, deestablished, obliterated, etc. that is referring to the STATE of Israel and the apartheid rule. it is NOT a call to massacre and exterminate Jewish people. That is just objectively untrue, though in case anyone wants to try to pick out details in my statement, it should be obvious that in large groups and populations, INDIVIDUALS may feel differently and hold individual biases or even violent intentions. That is on the individuals, not the group, and CERTAINLY not on Palestinians in general.

It is true that Hamas is a religious group. It is also true that they are the predominant Palestinian liberation group currently BECAUSE of the interference of Israel's government. Israel viewed the more varied, secular liberation groups as more of a threat and gave power and support to Hamas in order to destabilize these other more mild, secular groups. This is also a big reason why Hamas won the election in 2006—Israel had worked to disempower the more secular, non-violent groups.

Here is more of a quote Susan cherry-picked from Hamas, including the second half that she cut out:

“Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors. The Palestinian people know better than to consent to having their future, rights and fate toyed with.”

This perspective exists because of the historical precedent of Israel not honoring their agreements with the Palestinian people. They have left no other choice for Palestinian liberation because Israel fundamentally wants to control all of Palestine and displace its people. This quote from one of the Hamas Leaders Khaled Mashaal (2012) is also helpful:

“The state will come from resistance, not negotiation. Liberation first, then statehood. Palestine is ours from the river to the sea and from the south to the north,” he said in a speech. “There will be no concession on any inch of the land. We will never recognize the legitimacy of the Israeli occupation, and therefore there is no legitimacy for Israel… We will free Jerusalem inch by inch, stone by stone. Israel has no right to be in Jerusalem.”

It has been proven over and over across history that when words and negotiation fail, as they have in the liberation of Palestine, violent resistance is one of the most effective ways of forcing change. We have seen this in the US, during the civil rights movement and in LGBTQ movements such as what was started with Stonewall, that when the dominant power does not see certain groups as people and turns a blind eye to or is actively complicit in their murder and suffering, peaceful negotiation will not work. This is not me excusing the deaths of Israeli people on October 7th. I never want anyone to die, and Hamas' tactics only hurt Palestinian people. However, Israel has left no other group standing. There is no choice of another resistance group. They have no power. They are being slaughtered due to movements of power they have no control over, especially since 40% of Palestinians on the Gaza Strip are children. This situation has been intentionally engineered by Israel.

And another quote which makes it clear that Hamas intent is NOT to exterminate all Jews, a blatantly false and DAMAGING claim Susan has repeatedly posted in this forum which I think is really important to correct.

However, without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity and without relinquishing any Palestinian rights, Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus.” Second, it attempted to distinguish between Jews or Judaism and modern Zionism. Hamas said that its fight was against the “racist, aggressive, colonial and expansionist” Zionist project, Israel, but not against Judaism or Jews. The updated platform also lacked some of the anti-Semitic language of the 1988 charter. Third, the document did not reference the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood, from which Hamas was originally an offshoot.

All of these quotes are from this article which discusses and includes the Doctrine of Hamas. I would strongly encourage you all to read through the entire page, as it helps dispel some common misconceptions and lies about Hamas. It's not all positive for Hamas! A lot of it is not! But it also deconstruct some common (and false) Zionist talking points. Another important quote from the doctrine:

It strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine, for under the wing of Islam followers of all religions can coexist in security and safety where their lives, possessions and rights are concerned. In the absence of Islam, strife will be rife, oppression spreads, evil prevails, and schisms and wars will break out.

This is definitely a religious statement upholding Islam as the religion that "should" predominate in the region. I'm not defending this. However, like I've given sources for over and over and over, Israel chose to lift up Hamas as their Palestinian liberation group of choice. That was on purpose. There would be more secular options available if Israel had not destabilized them. It's also important to note that while this quote is religious, it does NOT say that everyone in Palestine will need to be Muslim. It actually says the opposite, discussing a desire for all religions to coexist in a way that the rights and possessions of everyone are respected. Does this really sound like Hamas is coming to the table with "the sole purpose of killing every Jewish person who lives there" (from Susan)? It sure doesn't to me. AGAIN, this is not me defending the murder of Israelis on October 7th, though settlers participating in a music festival right next to the world's largest open air prison (CREATED by their country) are pretty actively benefiting from settler colonial violence. I just want to provide some information about how ARMED RESISTANCE TO OCCUPATION differs from TERRORISM.

Here's the PLO charter, since Susan claimed they also wanted to "exterminate all Jews." Also an amazing and helpful read, and a primary source at that. Here are some relevant, insightful quotes from the covenant:

"The liberation of Palestine, from a spiritual point of view, will provide the Holy Land with an atmosphere of safety and tranquility, which in turn will safeguard the country's religious sanctuaries and guarantee freedom of worship and of visit to all, without discrimination of race, color, language, or religion. Accordingly, the people of Palestine look to all spiritual forces in the world for support."

"The liberation of Palestine, from an international point of view, is a defensive action necessitated by the demands of self-defense. Accordingly the Palestinian people, desirous as they are of the friendship of all people, look to freedom-loving, and peace-loving states for support in order to restore their legitimate rights in Palestine, to re-establish peace and security in the country, and to enable its people to exercise national sovereignty and freedom."

"The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, and everything that has been based upon them, are deemed null and void. Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong."

"The Palestinian people believe in the principles of justice, freedom, sovereignty, self-determination, human dignity, and in the right of all peoples to exercise them."

"Zionism is a political movement organically associated with international imperialism and antagonistic to all action for liberation and to progressive movements in the world. It is racist and fanatic in its nature, aggressive, expansionist, and colonial in its aims, and fascist in its methods. Israel is the instrument of the Zionist movement, and geographical base for world imperialism placed strategically in the midst of the Arab homeland to combat the hopes of the Arab nation for liberation, unity, and progress. Israel is a constant source of threat vis-a-vis peace in the Middle East and the whole world. Since the liberation of Palestine will destroy the Zionist and imperialist presence and will contribute to the establishment of peace in the Middle East, the Palestinian people look for the support of all the progressive and peaceful forces and urge them all, irrespective of their affiliations and beliefs, to offer the Palestinian people all aid and support in their just struggle for the liberation of their homeland."

Thanks for reading, if you got this far. My point here is NOT to argue with Susan, because again my suggestion is to generally ignore her and not try to personally change her opinion because it's not going to happen. She has shown over and over that she believes Israeli lives to be fundamentally more valuable than Palestinian lives, and she has excused the genocide of Palestinian people while sharing numerous lies about the circumstances which led to October 7th. Her misinformation (especially including the false story about beheaded babies) is very dangerous! That's why I'm sharing this. I hope it can help shed light on some things that might have seemed clear while also deconstructing several of Susan's points that some might unwittingly believe are true despite their factual inaccuracy.

Much love to everyone, take care of yourselves, and thank you for supporting the Palestinian cause.

07.11.2023 18:25:56

(full version with links in other tabs of my profile as well as my xeets) Hey all, this is your Minister of Fashion
Pollyx! I can be wordy, and am here, so here’s a TLDR for those who
trust me and just want to know the gist of it: Seriously, for real,
actually this time, cancel your Senatorships. Do not spend money on the
site. Remove the site’s access to your paypal. Do not volunteer for the
site or run for public office. This includes designing for the shop! Designers and prospective designers, I absolutely love you all to death, but this has got to stop.Anyway, the longer version:SweetasNuts,
the owner of this site, is an abusive person and known cheapskate who
refuses to hire new staff or adequately pay his existing staff in favor
of exploiting free labor from his users. Those who DO volunteer for him,
sometimes paying for the privilege of doing so, are treated
abhorrently, subjected to gaslighting and emotional abuse both publicly
and privately. I have personally experienced rampant mistreatment from
SweetasNuts (as have many others) as recently as today!If
you want an example, check any SweetasNuts thread and read it. I don’t
feel a need to drop a bunch of receipts below when it’s overwhelmingly
clear, but I hope those of you who know the love I’ve put into this site
will take me at my word. I have loved Ximboland and love it
still. At various points I have put more than full time hours into this
website and the shop in an attempt to make things better—usually
completely unpaid, as I did a lot of work before I became Minister of
Fashion. The saddest part, at the end of it, is that no matter how much I
work and how much love I put in the site will always get worse on
average or nosedive into oblivion (as we are seeing right now) due to
actions of trolls, hackers, or most primarily—Chris himself.There are numerous sources online which discuss Chris’s behavior as a business owner in-depth, both on this site and on its previous iteration, Miss Bimbo. It’s pretty clear the guy is a troll who likes when people get upset and throw a fit. In that sense, he may love this post!If
you’d like one recent example of someone bringing up issues to Chris,
being subjected to abuse, and being unable to sway Chris away from
terrible decisions, here’s one from a little over a year ago!
And yet nothing changes—the same cycles continue. New people join, they
see the community is lovely yet has a few flaws, perhaps some bad eggs
(rampant trolls), or maybe someone in the Pink House seems like they’re
abusing their power. They work really hard to rise up, join the
government, fight the “enemies” of the day, etc. and the whole thing
just causes chaos and misery for the most part and the site owner sits
back with popcorn.Oh wait, I forgot when Chris put numerous
ximbos (some who disagreed with him, others unprompted to my
understanding) on trial last year for having “bad fashion”! Here’s the trial for Melpomene, renowned designer, shop worker, and previous Antitheocra SM. Here’s the trial for KittyOnyx, who criticized Chris’s behavior. This one’s for Dean Winchester,
who made the grievous mistake of wearing a pink thong as a himbo.
Egregious, right! How dare a man dress in pink? Anyway, moving on.
Anyone care to share older “Chris is consistently a huge jerk to his
players and volunteers and never listens or fixes the site” examples
below?Now, when I talk about “volunteering” for the site
(aka what I am trying to convince you not to do), here are the positions
I mean:Partially paid (larger treasury cut, in theory, but extremely overworked):Prime XimboPartially paid (meager treasury cut —pennies on the hour):Minister of Fashion (gets meager treasury cut—pennies on the hour—so still a volunteer position)Minister of Entertainment (gets meager treasury cut—pennies on the hour—so still a volunteer position)Minister
of Foreign Affairs (gets meager treasury cut—pennies on the hour—so
still a volunteer position, plus you’re doing marketing for free. Not
super fun!)Minister of Justice (gets meager treasury cut—pennies on
the hour—so still a volunteer position, plus you’ll be absolutely
exhausted by the effort of moderation and part of the userbase will hate
you no matter what you do)No promise of payment/unpaid:Fashion Police (exhausting moderation work, now with kneecapped abilities to even stop abuse thanks to SAN)Fashion Worker (the people who upload items to the shop)Fashion
Designer (those who design for the shop—believe me, I have tried very
hard to convince SAN to reward this position in any way but was
unsuccessful)Not only unpaid, but PAYING to do this position:State
Minister (have to pay for Senatorship plus pay for all of the prizes
out of their own pocket—when you receive prizes from an SM, it’s because
they paid for them with real-world money)Please don’t do any
of this! I have been in the Pink House since October 2023 and am very
close with those who have been in or around the PH even longer or in
different time periods. Nothing changes. Talking to the site
owner doesn’t work. It doesn’t matter how you explain it, he won’t
listen and he doesn’t care because he continues to make enough passive
income to ignore people’s complaints. So what now?Well, first, let’s stop giving him that passive income, especially
given the recent major hacking incident has proven AGAIN that the site
is not secure. Chris is a liar—do not trust him when he says your
payment information is fully secure just because of Paypal, that is not
necessarily true. Remove your Paypal from XL (on the Paypal end) and
consider removing your bank accounts from Paypal for the time being,
better safe than sorry.When you spend money on this site, it
does not go to the people running it, to those who put in love and time
into moderation, the shop, contests, and even advertising the site. It
goes to Chris, who does not pay his staff properly and does not improve
the site. He only makes it worse based on his agenda. A small amount of
Senatorship goes to the government ministers, sure, but the amount is
not significant enough to matter (and there’s decent evidence that the
treasury doesn’t even reflect what it should be—⅓ of the cost of all
Senator subs). Besides, half of the treasury this term will go to
KatieBoutique (since she and her alt Slayyyocrates are both ministers),
and if any of you have been paying any attention to Katie that will
likely ruffle your feathers.It’s not worth contributing to
this place financially. It does not help the site grow. It does not go
to fixing bugs. It does not go to adding a mobile scroll bar. It does
not pay your favorite designer. It does not fix minigame glitches. It
likely won’t go to refunding people’s State Wars purchases after the
hack or restoring corrupted outfits (IF restoring them is even
possible). Cancel your Senatorship, never buy top-ups, don’t volunteer
your time for the site, and turn on ad block! Don’t let Chris get your ad revenue either!That’s
pretty much it. I do have some last thoughts if you’re interested, but
if you don’t care feel free to leave. It’s up to you to decide what to
do now. You can still help the site if you want to, but I strongly
believe it’s really only going to degrade, and as shown by the hacking
incident, this site really isn’t secure. It’s built on popsicle sticks.
You could lose all of this at any moment. Are all these users who lost
their outfits ever going to get them back? It’s really hard to say.Secondarily,
if you want to make a difference in the world there are a million
better places to do it than on XL. If you want to make art in a
community, lots of ways to do that too. Art Fight, a yearly event, is
great for this. You could make a game, write a novel, make outfits in
the Sims, join another dressup game (I hear some people here are making
one), generally touch grass. We should all touch grass. If it’s about
making the world a better place for you, maybe you could join a local
chapter of an organization that means something to you or donate what
you WOULD have spent on top-ups to a good cause. Join a rally, write an
op-ed, talk to people you love about what matters.If you want
to keep in touch with me, feel free to message anyone on XL you have on
Discord and they can probably connect us, I’ve got a lot of people
added.Alright, and now that we get to the end I just
want to shout out the users who have spent a lot of time showing love to
the users and uplifting the site as a whole. None of them asked for
this or even know that I’m doing this, so I won’t list them by name as
much as category. I may have individual personal issues with some people
on this site (not most), but I think this is kind of beyond that. We
are all victims of an exploitative site owner who constantly sets the
site up for interpersonal conflict because he finds it hot. He gets off on all these sexy bimbo avatars going at each other’s throats. So this is kind of an act of solidarity in that.Thank
you to all past and present government ministers, prime ximbos, state
ministers, fashion police, fashion designers, fashion workers, and
anyone else who has run contests or events.Thank you to the
active duelers staying up late into the night, the state generals and
citizens fighting for their state, those who help others get their
curious badge, those who leave comments on all the new players’
profiles, those who share gifs on weird gif wednesday, those who share
support when someone says they’re struggling or upvote posts in
Reputation Points Helper thread. Thank you, even, to those
I’ve fought with, those I’ve made up with, those I still dislike, those
who grate at my nerves. You’re part of the site, too, an ecosystem we
all exist in—this insular little community. Though of course I
will be leaving this community now, probably permanently. Not sure
about emigration yet—we’ll see. But I’ve got big things coming up soon
in my life and I can’t have this site’s nonsense messing with my groove.I’ve
loved growing as a person through my interactions with each of you and
I’ve loved designing and adding for the shop and running events and
making outfits and all of it, but I hate the way the site is run by
Chris (which is: generally not run at all, and if it is it’s done
maliciously). I hate receiving constant abuse from the site owner and
trolls and hackers and I hate seeing other people experience that too. I
hate that this site many of us feel is a second home has become so
foul, is rotting from the inside because of neglect and mistreatment
from the site owner. I had enough mold in my real life home last year,
as many of you know, and find myself uninterested in choking on the
spores here.Anyway, so much love, care about you all (except
in those few cases where the feeling of dislike is mutual, in which case
I say one last hearty “fuck you!”). Stay slutty, babes.

Senator

Susan Slutzky

Level 257
Sex Appeal 16244105
Reputation 407906
Posts 3910

7

07.11.2023 20:45:49
Susan Slutzky

To Ascelina:

I agree with Abassador Hussam that the international rule of law should be applied equally to everyone.

And I agree with you that killing innocent people is bad — always. But if one makes the sweeping judgement that an entire population of people, by definition, can never be truly innocent (as some people here have done to Israelis) then those moral obligations to respect basic human rights are conveniently swept aside. I find that behavior abhorrent, and more than a little hypocritical coming from so-called progressives.

Regarding your notion of applying a double standard to Hamas’ actions in comparison to Israel’s — I fail to understand your logic. Hamas is not simply a “resistance” group. It is the legitimate government of Gaza, its authority derived from a free and fair election in 2006 — the last election Hamas has ever allowed its citizens to participate in. They are responsible for Gaza’s infrastructure and the security of its citizens — and Hamas recieves considerable international aid to assist them. Is it surprising that this government which does not allow elections, a free press, dissenting opinions or legal due process is never held accountable for how it misuses that aid to purchase weapons and plan attacks like the Oct. 7th massacre? Or how it places military targets in densely-populated civilian areas in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions?

International rule of law? Yes, let it apply to everyone. You may be surprised by the results.

07.11.2023 20:45:49

Citizen

KirstyD8

Level 165
Sex Appeal 3573636
Reputation 434028
Posts 5063

26

08.11.2023 02:28:11
KirstyD8

Forum rule number 1

Treat everyone with respect. Insults, slandering, personal attacks, any kind of language that incites and promotes discrimination, hatred or violence towards single person or a group are not allowed.

Please be mindful of this rule in your dicussion.

08.11.2023 02:28:11

Beautiful in my own way❤️

Citizen

Honey Beee

Level 212
Sex Appeal 7612533
Reputation 135543
Posts 2706

23

10.11.2023 17:11:58
Honey Beee

I’m happy to see that the Palestinian reporters on the ground are still alive and posting! Motaz, Plestia and Bissan seem to be as well as they can be

10.11.2023 17:11:58

Citizen

Sadi235

Level 42
Sex Appeal 55376
Reputation 21369
Posts 168

22

10.11.2023 18:07:24
Sadi235

Yes, these journalist are really helpful to the English speaking crowds. They also translate Arabic spoken by locals so that we can understand.

10.11.2023 18:07:24

Citizen

Pollyx

Level 127
Sex Appeal 1622074
Reputation 66316
Posts 1434

23

15.11.2023 22:43:26
Pollyx

Hi everyone, it's been a bit since this thread has been used and I just wanted to say that if anyone wants to talk my DMs are open. The state of the world right now is horrifying in more ways than one. Of course, the center of this is the genocide occurring in Palestine with a situation that only seems to worsen and governments that are not calling for a ceasefire. I know many people use this site as a place of comfort and to get away, especially when mainstream social media is so completely consumed by such horrible world events and individual painful moments. The human mind is earnestly not meant to bear this kind of suffering.

While I do still feel it is important and valuable to spread information about Palestine, especially when there is so much propaganda and false info around, I also recognize some people can't interact with this, can't share this everywhere here, may be spreading the word IRL or on other forums. It also takes a huge toll on mental health and the sense of powerlessness is painful. I'm not a counselor or anything like that (and this would be a bad place to use those skills even if I was, lol), but I'm happy to listen if anyone wants to privately talk. It's hard, and I am very sad, as I'm sure many of you are too.

If anyone has stories of hope or ways they are coping, I think it's always a good idea to share those too! This is the more serious version of the Rep thread but this community is honestly amazing and I just think we can do a lot to support each other.

I just wanted to share a few poems I have recently found meaningful that I wanted to share as one of my ways of coping. The first two are more sad (but not intense), and the second two are, in my opinion, more hopeful, but poetry is weird and you may not feel the same. I think they're all pretty approachable even if you find poetry hard to read, but no pressure, just sharing.

Roger Reeves - "Children Listen" (sad but very readable, short, and explicitly relevant to the cause of Palestinian liberation)

Joshua Jennifer Espinoza - "EVERYBODY AT THE SAME TIME IS BEGINNING TO UNDERSTAND THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A SELF" (TW for a homophobic slur and mentions or parental abuse, but it's very vague)

Dana Levin - "Ars Poetica (cocoons)"

Cynthia Manick - "There Are No Unsacred Spaces"

Lots of love to you all and I hope everyone is coping alright. Again, I'm active fairly often and am always here to listen.

15.11.2023 22:43:26

(full version with links in other tabs of my profile as well as my xeets) Hey all, this is your Minister of Fashion
Pollyx! I can be wordy, and am here, so here’s a TLDR for those who
trust me and just want to know the gist of it: Seriously, for real,
actually this time, cancel your Senatorships. Do not spend money on the
site. Remove the site’s access to your paypal. Do not volunteer for the
site or run for public office. This includes designing for the shop! Designers and prospective designers, I absolutely love you all to death, but this has got to stop.Anyway, the longer version:SweetasNuts,
the owner of this site, is an abusive person and known cheapskate who
refuses to hire new staff or adequately pay his existing staff in favor
of exploiting free labor from his users. Those who DO volunteer for him,
sometimes paying for the privilege of doing so, are treated
abhorrently, subjected to gaslighting and emotional abuse both publicly
and privately. I have personally experienced rampant mistreatment from
SweetasNuts (as have many others) as recently as today!If
you want an example, check any SweetasNuts thread and read it. I don’t
feel a need to drop a bunch of receipts below when it’s overwhelmingly
clear, but I hope those of you who know the love I’ve put into this site
will take me at my word. I have loved Ximboland and love it
still. At various points I have put more than full time hours into this
website and the shop in an attempt to make things better—usually
completely unpaid, as I did a lot of work before I became Minister of
Fashion. The saddest part, at the end of it, is that no matter how much I
work and how much love I put in the site will always get worse on
average or nosedive into oblivion (as we are seeing right now) due to
actions of trolls, hackers, or most primarily—Chris himself.There are numerous sources online which discuss Chris’s behavior as a business owner in-depth, both on this site and on its previous iteration, Miss Bimbo. It’s pretty clear the guy is a troll who likes when people get upset and throw a fit. In that sense, he may love this post!If
you’d like one recent example of someone bringing up issues to Chris,
being subjected to abuse, and being unable to sway Chris away from
terrible decisions, here’s one from a little over a year ago!
And yet nothing changes—the same cycles continue. New people join, they
see the community is lovely yet has a few flaws, perhaps some bad eggs
(rampant trolls), or maybe someone in the Pink House seems like they’re
abusing their power. They work really hard to rise up, join the
government, fight the “enemies” of the day, etc. and the whole thing
just causes chaos and misery for the most part and the site owner sits
back with popcorn.Oh wait, I forgot when Chris put numerous
ximbos (some who disagreed with him, others unprompted to my
understanding) on trial last year for having “bad fashion”! Here’s the trial for Melpomene, renowned designer, shop worker, and previous Antitheocra SM. Here’s the trial for KittyOnyx, who criticized Chris’s behavior. This one’s for Dean Winchester,
who made the grievous mistake of wearing a pink thong as a himbo.
Egregious, right! How dare a man dress in pink? Anyway, moving on.
Anyone care to share older “Chris is consistently a huge jerk to his
players and volunteers and never listens or fixes the site” examples
below?Now, when I talk about “volunteering” for the site
(aka what I am trying to convince you not to do), here are the positions
I mean:Partially paid (larger treasury cut, in theory, but extremely overworked):Prime XimboPartially paid (meager treasury cut —pennies on the hour):Minister of Fashion (gets meager treasury cut—pennies on the hour—so still a volunteer position)Minister of Entertainment (gets meager treasury cut—pennies on the hour—so still a volunteer position)Minister
of Foreign Affairs (gets meager treasury cut—pennies on the hour—so
still a volunteer position, plus you’re doing marketing for free. Not
super fun!)Minister of Justice (gets meager treasury cut—pennies on
the hour—so still a volunteer position, plus you’ll be absolutely
exhausted by the effort of moderation and part of the userbase will hate
you no matter what you do)No promise of payment/unpaid:Fashion Police (exhausting moderation work, now with kneecapped abilities to even stop abuse thanks to SAN)Fashion Worker (the people who upload items to the shop)Fashion
Designer (those who design for the shop—believe me, I have tried very
hard to convince SAN to reward this position in any way but was
unsuccessful)Not only unpaid, but PAYING to do this position:State
Minister (have to pay for Senatorship plus pay for all of the prizes
out of their own pocket—when you receive prizes from an SM, it’s because
they paid for them with real-world money)Please don’t do any
of this! I have been in the Pink House since October 2023 and am very
close with those who have been in or around the PH even longer or in
different time periods. Nothing changes. Talking to the site
owner doesn’t work. It doesn’t matter how you explain it, he won’t
listen and he doesn’t care because he continues to make enough passive
income to ignore people’s complaints. So what now?Well, first, let’s stop giving him that passive income, especially
given the recent major hacking incident has proven AGAIN that the site
is not secure. Chris is a liar—do not trust him when he says your
payment information is fully secure just because of Paypal, that is not
necessarily true. Remove your Paypal from XL (on the Paypal end) and
consider removing your bank accounts from Paypal for the time being,
better safe than sorry.When you spend money on this site, it
does not go to the people running it, to those who put in love and time
into moderation, the shop, contests, and even advertising the site. It
goes to Chris, who does not pay his staff properly and does not improve
the site. He only makes it worse based on his agenda. A small amount of
Senatorship goes to the government ministers, sure, but the amount is
not significant enough to matter (and there’s decent evidence that the
treasury doesn’t even reflect what it should be—⅓ of the cost of all
Senator subs). Besides, half of the treasury this term will go to
KatieBoutique (since she and her alt Slayyyocrates are both ministers),
and if any of you have been paying any attention to Katie that will
likely ruffle your feathers.It’s not worth contributing to
this place financially. It does not help the site grow. It does not go
to fixing bugs. It does not go to adding a mobile scroll bar. It does
not pay your favorite designer. It does not fix minigame glitches. It
likely won’t go to refunding people’s State Wars purchases after the
hack or restoring corrupted outfits (IF restoring them is even
possible). Cancel your Senatorship, never buy top-ups, don’t volunteer
your time for the site, and turn on ad block! Don’t let Chris get your ad revenue either!That’s
pretty much it. I do have some last thoughts if you’re interested, but
if you don’t care feel free to leave. It’s up to you to decide what to
do now. You can still help the site if you want to, but I strongly
believe it’s really only going to degrade, and as shown by the hacking
incident, this site really isn’t secure. It’s built on popsicle sticks.
You could lose all of this at any moment. Are all these users who lost
their outfits ever going to get them back? It’s really hard to say.Secondarily,
if you want to make a difference in the world there are a million
better places to do it than on XL. If you want to make art in a
community, lots of ways to do that too. Art Fight, a yearly event, is
great for this. You could make a game, write a novel, make outfits in
the Sims, join another dressup game (I hear some people here are making
one), generally touch grass. We should all touch grass. If it’s about
making the world a better place for you, maybe you could join a local
chapter of an organization that means something to you or donate what
you WOULD have spent on top-ups to a good cause. Join a rally, write an
op-ed, talk to people you love about what matters.If you want
to keep in touch with me, feel free to message anyone on XL you have on
Discord and they can probably connect us, I’ve got a lot of people
added.Alright, and now that we get to the end I just
want to shout out the users who have spent a lot of time showing love to
the users and uplifting the site as a whole. None of them asked for
this or even know that I’m doing this, so I won’t list them by name as
much as category. I may have individual personal issues with some people
on this site (not most), but I think this is kind of beyond that. We
are all victims of an exploitative site owner who constantly sets the
site up for interpersonal conflict because he finds it hot. He gets off on all these sexy bimbo avatars going at each other’s throats. So this is kind of an act of solidarity in that.Thank
you to all past and present government ministers, prime ximbos, state
ministers, fashion police, fashion designers, fashion workers, and
anyone else who has run contests or events.Thank you to the
active duelers staying up late into the night, the state generals and
citizens fighting for their state, those who help others get their
curious badge, those who leave comments on all the new players’
profiles, those who share gifs on weird gif wednesday, those who share
support when someone says they’re struggling or upvote posts in
Reputation Points Helper thread. Thank you, even, to those
I’ve fought with, those I’ve made up with, those I still dislike, those
who grate at my nerves. You’re part of the site, too, an ecosystem we
all exist in—this insular little community. Though of course I
will be leaving this community now, probably permanently. Not sure
about emigration yet—we’ll see. But I’ve got big things coming up soon
in my life and I can’t have this site’s nonsense messing with my groove.I’ve
loved growing as a person through my interactions with each of you and
I’ve loved designing and adding for the shop and running events and
making outfits and all of it, but I hate the way the site is run by
Chris (which is: generally not run at all, and if it is it’s done
maliciously). I hate receiving constant abuse from the site owner and
trolls and hackers and I hate seeing other people experience that too. I
hate that this site many of us feel is a second home has become so
foul, is rotting from the inside because of neglect and mistreatment
from the site owner. I had enough mold in my real life home last year,
as many of you know, and find myself uninterested in choking on the
spores here.Anyway, so much love, care about you all (except
in those few cases where the feeling of dislike is mutual, in which case
I say one last hearty “fuck you!”). Stay slutty, babes.

Citizen

ButterfIy

Level 61
Sex Appeal 176742
Reputation 47905
Posts 2316

12

16.11.2023 08:17:38
ButterfIy

Moved from "Reputation points helper thread", originally posted at 2023-11-15 22:42:51

I've been pretty depressed lately. I am so scared for my Israeli brothers and sisters it's unreal. Praying for an end to the terrorism they have to face everyday...

16.11.2023 08:17:38

I am pro-Israel, DNI if pro-Palestine, thank you!

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