Born Free..
October has definitely been a month of polarised opinions and heated debate,
it seems. I ambled onto the fashion blogs last week and discovered Le Debate
as the French so charmingly put it, in full fig, raging across the grid.
What, I hear you ask, has caused such a furore and engaged so many people? I
wondered this myself given that some of the most amazing blogs out there in
ethernet land usually garner a laconic comment or six at the most and you
can practically guarantee that anything that gets more than that much
attention involves someone else's reputation lying twitching in a corner,
most often battered, bloody and bruised. But we are talking comments in the
dozens if not hundreds across a wide variety of different blogging sites on
this particular topic, and I must admit for the most part they're keeping
it nice. This is not always the case you understand, especially when
someone needs a large number of hits on their site and therefore decides to
decimate the reputation of some other poor soul in order to attract said
attention or possibly to inflate their pin-sized ego for a moment or two.
The debate, dear reader, is about Freebies. Now I could reiterate (or is
that regurgitate) the arguments to be found on the blogs and the passionate
and often faintly inflammatory responses. I stress, I could. However, you
can do that yourselves. If however, you wish to appear informed, articulate
and intelligent, I have kindly summarised some of the more interesting
aspects of the debate in order that you can chat about it amongst
yourselves.
It seems that a designer or two has taken exception to the amount of
freebies now available across the grid, the number of people that survive
solely on said freebies, the sheer volume of sim-hunts at any given point in
time and, I expect, the outstandingly poor manners of the majority of people
who do charge about hunting down freebies and never spending any of their
hard earned (or purchased) $L in the store of origin.
This has devolved into a number of most interesting streams of thought.
There are the bloggers of free items, who range from those who regard it as
a duty to report on every free item across the grid and cause stampedes to
all the good stores, to those who post up anything particularly noteworthy
thus presumably causing smaller but better quality avalanches of acquisitive
avatars.
There are designers who think freebies are fabulous, and dollarbies are
better, and if you sell enough dollarbies you can actually pay the rent (a
fine point I hadn't actually considered and have since decided is very
valid. After all, there is no point having wonderful goods if no-one comes
to your store at all and lets be realistic, 500 units moved at a $1 is
better than nothing moved at all.) There are designers who hate freebies and
refuse to give them out unless emblazoned with the store logo until one's
eyes water, and there are designers who have generous souls and contribute
lovely items to sim hunts and other such past-times, with the (in my opinion
quite realistic) viewpoint that if you hand out a quality freebie, people
will come back to you for something even nicer.
An interesting segue from this topic was the one that ventured into the,
shall we say, more socialistic arguments ranging about whether or not one
was a lesser class citizen or not, if one was not 'payment verified' and
spending the weekly shopping money on virtual shoes. This particular string
became quite interesting with those who were quite firm that everyone should
stop sponging off the freebies and start spending real money, and those who
were in a small panic in case people became so desperate to own the latest
fashion item that they might accidently spend the grocery money and have
starving dependents in RL.
Another favourite variation of mine was the one involving the 'fact' that
all bloggers get everything for free and photoshop everything to death
anyway. I can't remember who started that one, but all I can say is that if
that is the case I need to brush up my PS skills and start blogging, because
Editors don't seem to be on the list of people to send samples to!
A rather pertinent stream of thought moved onto whether or not manners are
actually just such a thing of the past that everyone is rude and grasping
anyway so why actually give them anything, and there was the deviation into
the whole sim-hunt activity and whether or not a sim-hunt was good, bad,
boring or ridiculous, and lastly there was a couple of quite interestingly
nervous posts from relatively new bloggers who aren't sure whether or not
they are now in trouble because they write tips for newbies which - again in
my opinion quite rightly - point out where quality items reside and how to
Look Good Almost Immediately After Arriving.
My conclusions at the end of a vastly entertaining week on the blogs are the
same ones I keep coming back to every time I have a good think about SL and
what it means to the average av.
Its all about personal choice. If you are a designer, either give away
freebies or don't. Its up to you, and you don't have to defend your
decisions. If you are a person who detests lag and hates other people, I'd
probably recommend you give up sim hunts. On the other hand, if you just
think the whole finding cute things concealed as tiny shiny lollies all over
someone else's sim is fun - enjoy. There are lots of them around and just
because several people have gone public with their hatred of the events, I
don't think they'll be stopping any time soon.
I'd hate to think that SL is also populated with fashionistas so conceited
that anyone who is wearing a freebie or isn't payment verified is somehow a
lesser being, but practicality tells me that intolerance is pretty global
both in and out of world. But I would urge the fashionistas to have a little
think about the following:
Amazing as it may seem, there is an enormous community in Second Life that
Doesn't Care About Fashion. After you've picked yourself up off the floor
and recovered from the shock, hold that thought. There are lots of people
who are here to have fun - and its not about the shoes.
M0lly.
Comments