What's funny to me, as the inventor of this term in that forums post, is to see how unconsciously, Cory and others in fact exemplify the FIC concept even as they believe they are condescendingly repudiating it. Cory admires this "role-playing" group that he imagines got "one-up" on what he might imagine to be the poor, disgruntled conspiracy-nutter who dreamed up the term. Hamlet blessed this "role-playing" by featuring "in world conceptual art" by Forseti Svarog and everywhere people are genuflecting at the veritable outburst of FIC swag and memorabilia -- signs, posters buttons, caps, rings, etc. (What did all these creative people make before I invented the term?)

But in admiring the "role-play" and blessing the art, Cory and Hamlet and the others are merely unconsciously engaging in yet another meta-level of the feting. They are feting by claiming that there is no feting and feting the satirists-- the most arch feting of them all. Feting is endless, just like humility ought to be...

And it's not even the bank, or the IRC channel that bears out my FIC theories, it's stuff like Aimee Weber yet again on the front page, this time sticking her tongue out at the people who are willing to jump into Second Life for free accounts...and numerous other endorsements, referals, steerings that take place in and out of the game. It's an Ayn Randian world of brutal social Darwinism at times when it comes to "excellent" and "art", but the only reason some of the People are clamouring on the forums now for open bids is due to a basic reality, that without a public to examine and criticize even a merit-based elitist art and commerce, such an elite will stagnate and corrupt.

All eyes are on Pathfinder's in-world open-bid building contest for the new recruitment center. Leave aside the creepiness of disrupting the immersiveness of the game with open cattle calls for work on its underpinnings. The brutal time-table for the entry and execution of this contest made it guaranteed that only the bravist or most foolish contestants will enter. I suppose nothing short of an avatar named nOOb Plywood winning this contest now would convince some people that the Lindens operate in good faith...