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I had to wait until my blood pressure and emotions
settled a bit before I wrote this response. Right up front I have to say
that I feel betrayed, lied to, and slandered. The headline more or less
sets the tone for the article. Very sensational, attention grabbing. Although
Alexandra only got one piece of information incorrect in the article, I feel
the vast majority of the article was lying-by-omission. I have had the opportunity
to be interviewed by other news media since this appeared, with more scheduled
to come. And when asked how I felt about the article, I say
"Alexandra Alter lied to me. When she came to my house for an interview,
I was told the focus of the story would be on Dutch, his second-life, and
his businesses". This was hot enough topic for the Wallstreet Journal, that following phone interviews with my wife, Ms Spielman, and me, they flew Alexandra from New York to Phoenix for a weekend to interview my wife and me in person and see first-hand how SecondLife (SL) plays. They even followed up by contracting with photographers in both Phoenix and Calgary to do photo shoots to accompany the article - 4 hours in Phoenix, 2 hours in Calgary (where are any of those photos?). After Alexandra left our house on the first day, my wife was very upset that she spent the entire day only talking to me, because the focus had changed from what she had hoped for. It was with the intent of showing Alexandra SL and my businesses, that I showed her around for a day and a half. Obviously Ten and Dutch have discussed this article at length. With that being said I would like to comment on what Alexandra wrote. |
"... Their bond is so strong that three
months ago, Mr. Hoogestraat asked Janet Spielman, the 38-year-old Canadian
woman who controls the redhead, to become his virtual wife." Not at all correct. It was not Ric and Janet - it was Dutch and Tenaj.....and for the record Tenaj (Ten) proposed to Dutch ."The woman he's legally wed to is not amused.... "You try to talk to someone or bring them a drink, and they'll be having sex with a cartoon." I know this makes good copy. Taken on her word only. I don't recall saying anything to Alexandra about Dutch having "sex with cartoons", and Ten has said Alexandra was fishing for dirt, but didn't get it.".... according to a survey of 30,000 gamers conducted by Nick Yee, a recent Ph.D. graduate from Stanford University."; and "...according to the survey, which was published in 2006 by Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press's journal Presence. Why no correlation to studies done on the effect of excessive sports viewing or golf on relationships?"But since February, he's been spending six hours a night and often 14 hours at a stretch on weekends as Dutch Hoorenbeek" This is true. But Alexandra failed to mention that I was in almost constant pain during this time. I told her how I couldn't eat or sleep because of the pain of a failing gall bladder and the side effects of the medication for acid reflux which I had also been diagnosed with. Due to this, going to SL was about all I could do."He designs bikinis and lingerie, and sells them through his chain store, Red Headed Lovers." The WSJ is a business media source, I would have thought Alexandra would have mentioned the mall by name ( The Mall at Montliard ) and the other business names (Captain Jack's Night Club , RHL: The Club, The RHL Beach Club & Resort, SLarbucks Coffee, and Jack Beek's Grotto ). At the very least, she could have gotten the one she did mention correct. It is "Red Head Lovers" - not "Red Headed Lovers"."A full-blown dance party is under way. ... 'What took you so long, Dutch?' a dancer asks." First of all this party was by invitation - primarily for the Saints of Hell Motorcycle Club (SecondLife) of which Dutch and Ten are members - meaning these were female and male friends of Dutch & Ten. Where was mention of that? The party was scheduled to begin about the time we were beginning our face-to-face interview in the living room. So there was a delay in my arriving at the party. Of course someone is going to ask what took so long."Before discovering Second Life, Mr. Hoogestraat had bounced between places and jobs...". I believe this is generally thought of as career advancement , not bouncing from job to job. Alexandra and I talked at length about how I began my professional life as a school teacher and eventually became Coordinator for Instructional Technology at a large university, and how I came to be working in a call center. But Alexandra opted to not explain that, making me look very unstable and foolish. The full story is too boring I suppose."Everybody has their hobbies, but when it's from six in the morning until two in the morning, that's not a hobby, that's your life. ... The real Mrs. Hoogestraat is no stranger to online communities -- she met her husband in a computer chat room three years ago." Apparently my wife failed to tell Alexandra she had an "online addiction" at one point in her life - or if she did her, Alexandra neglected to include that. Without going into the sordid details, I will just say it included IM's on Yahoo Messenger and web-cam games (no need for "cartoon-sex" here). Up until the night before she walked out on me, my wife was still IM'img via Yahoo Messenger. The evening of the publication, she and I were discussing the article and the personal ramifications of it. During this conversation her phone rang, and she cut me off in mid-sentence by immediately answering the phone with a cheery, "Hi Bob!", and proceeded to step outdoors for a 45 minute conversation with him. Upon her return, I asked who this "Bob" was - It turns out he is an online friend of hers. And yes we did meet in a online chat room. We were both looking for a suitable match for a reallife encounter - much different than my reasons for being in SL."Two weeks later, Mrs. Hoogestraat joined an online support group for spouses of obsessive online gamers called EverQuest Widows, named after another popular online fantasy game that players call Evercrack....Mrs. Hoogestraat's daughter ... says she and her two brothers have offered to help their mother move out of the house ... Mrs. Hoogestraat says she's not ready to separate." However, I have had SL friends tell me she posted to that group a week before she left me, that she was planning to indeed leave, and was just waiting for the right time."For a while, Mr. Hoogestraat, sitting at his computer, stares at an image of his avatar sitting at his computer." This made good press. The bloggers loved it. Being the WSJ is a business newspaper, I'm not sure why Alexandra failed to mention I was toggling back and forth between SL and an Excel spreadsheet I use to track my various SL businesses' accounts . Too mundane for readers of a business newspaper I suppose."The next morning, he's at his computer at 10 a.m., wearing the same black Harley-Davidson T-shirt...." Another piece of misinformation designed to be a little more sensational. I ride a Harley daily and I own many Harley t-shirts, and all are black, and most are faded. Apparently one resembled another to Alexandra ."From the kitchen, Mrs. Hoogestraat asks if he wants breakfast. He doesn't answer. She sets a plate of breakfast pockets on the computer console and goes into the living room...." This whole scenario had little or no bearing on the stated intent of Alexandra 's visit to my home. Made good press though didn't it? When she left me the food, it was during the time Alexandra wanted to see my avatar in action, hence the motorcycle ride, etc. Actually I thought it would have been pretty damn rude to sit and eat in front of her, so I didn't. |
There has been positive as well as negative fallout from this article. On the good side, over the weekend immediately following the publishing of this article, Ten and Dutch together received roughly 600 IM's - mostly from unknown SL "residents". All but two were positive, offering support and encouragement. And now, nearly a week later, together we still get three or four a day. Our mall visitation over the weekend sky-rocketed from an average traffic of around 2000 to just short of 10,000. I suppose people hoped to catch a glimpse of "the body". My stores, even spelled incorrectly in the article, saw a net income for two days of about 8,000 Linden dollars. And a grand opening party at Captain Jack's, planned several weeks before we knew of the publication date, had close to 100 in attendance. However, Ms Spielman and I, both as avatars and as "real people", have suffered from the negative fallout from this article. We each received an IM from the same avatar, a "Jered Andrew", who used vocabulary that would make a sailor blush in reference to us. We checked and noted his SL account creation date was 08/08/07 - two days before the publish date of the article. Because of references to knowledge he had of the situation, not stated in the article, we suspect he is the mysterious afore mentioned "Bob". Out of curiosity's sake, I Googled, "is this man cheating" . By Saturday morning there were several dozen hits - mostly reprints of the article and a few blogs. As of 1:30pm MST Wednesday, Aug 16, there were 11,800 hits using the same search criteria - virtually all blogs. I guess Andy Warhol was wrong! Even though we all know that opinions are like noses...we all have one, I (Ric not Dutch) am being raked over the coals in the blogs because of the careful omissions in Alexandra's article which make me "heel" and my real life wife the "poor abandoned gamer widow". 
To help counter this, we are took the sage advice of Jimmy Buffet,
who said in song, "If we couldn't laugh we would
all go insane" . There is total mockery of the WSJ happening
in our corner of SL. For the above mentioned party at Captain Jack's,
I created and hung a couple of 10 meter by 6 meter (scale) reproductions
of the front page of the Weekend Journal on the glass walls of the club.
All one had to do was to click the article and they would receive a notecard
with the article in it's entirety, along with a link to the actual webpage.
And a special commemorative t-shirt was created with a likeness of Mickey
Mouse and a play on the name of their fine newspaper.Ms Spielman and I have weathered the situation fairly well, despite the fact my real life wife packed up her stuff and left me the day following the publication. But the situation has now turned uglier. Ms Spielman is now receiving hurtful e-mails from friends, family, and former business associates. Was this Alexandra's intent? When I first read the article I was hurt by her betrayal and lying-by-omission, now I am angry ... very angry. Alexandra's National Enquirer -like article has dragged Ms Spielman into a situation that is none of her making. Because of some sort of vendetta that Alexandra and my now ex-wife apparently have...a close friend has been hurt. Alexandra, that is unforgivable, unforgettable, unconscionable, and irresponsbile. |
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If you wish to contact me, my email is
[email protected]
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Or IM me in-world. If you want to send a string of obscenities or further rake me over the coals... don't bother. I have been hurt enough by this. |
