Sunday, March 20, 2011

We're all Cash Cows now....

Well, the do-gooders have managed to ruin something else. My Second Life is infested with them, and all the other grifters, cons and peeps who have figured out that you can get *real* money out of it.

Every time I turn around these days, inworld, somebody has their grubby little paw out for money. Tip this, donate to that. It is hoped that I will slip 50 lindens to some person who does nothing more than greet me when I rez into a sim. I'm sorry....what?

Everybody has a pet cause and they *all* expect everyone they come in contact with to donate to it. I'm suspicious of all but a very few SL charities because you don't have a way to fact check the people collecting the money. They will promise you that every cent goes to whatever charity they are collecting for at the moment, but they are telling you this while their AV is wearing a 2000L (about $10 usd) couture gown and another 5000L worth of designer jewels. It just makes you wonder where the money really goes.

I went to a "charity" concert inworld today and was subjected to some woman lecturing me in a flat, midwestern accent, who obviously was speaking with no idea where she was going with it, didn't really know where she was, didn't know what instrument the act before her played, and then put up a graphic slide show of pathetic Japanese tsunami victims while she told us all why we should give 'til it hurts. Evidently she doesn't care that she's the umpteenth do-gooder to ask me for money for the cause du jour. I'm charitied out, ya'll.

Then there are the sim owners who harangue every patron in their sim to tip the venue....everybody wants a piece of that Linden Lab money pie, and average users are coming more and more to be seen as nothing more than a source of revenue. I'm sorry, if you want to own a money pit, don't expect me to pay for your dream. I have my own dreams and they are more realistic.

I've also noticed a disheartening trend in the music venues, i.e., musos who only come into SL to play for large fees and tips. They do not really belong to the SL community, they have crappy AVs because to them an AV is a means to an end, and they're only there to collect whatever money their music will bring in on any given day. I'm very disappointed in what seems to me as the sort of attitude that their fans in SL are no more than cash cows and not to be interacted with outside of a gig.

When I started 4 years ago this wasn't the case. The musicians were a part of the community and the oldest ones still are. I do see some musos who support the other musicians and turn up at gigs other than their own but they are much fewer in number than the ones who just show up to play. The old school musos in SL were there to share their music and it wasn't about the money....it was about the music. Its not that way so much anymore.

Now we are all cash cows.