Rant about LL

I know I shouldn’t take time to post this, but sometimes things happen that makes you want to air your opinions and blow off some steam. Those of you who knows me or read my blog regularily knows I’m having financial troubles in RL. I have had to close down everything that cost anything in SL, sold my land, and I have downgraded my premium account. Now LL have taken tier money from  me. I have a basic account and can’t even use the land I have payed for.

I thought that if I sold my land, withdraw my contribution to the land group and downgraded my account I wouldn’t have to pay tier, but obviously I was wrong. :( Those money was drawn from my bank account and even though most ppl wouldn’t think it’s a lot of money, to me it is. Now I won’t have enough money to pay for one of my RL bills. And I will end up paying a penalty fee for being late with it. All for a tier that I can’t use. I have lost my store but still have to pay for the land.

Now I thought that I might be able to talk some senses into LL so I tried to file a ticket as I’ve done in the past. That wasn’t possible however since I don’t have a premium account. Basic account can only get help with simple stuff that I already know about. Someone once told me that poor people shouldn’t play SL and it seems like it was true. I only hope that I won’t have to pay anything next month as well. What can I do against the mighty LL people? Nothing of course.

My Second Life – a summary

Today is the last day I’ll spend online. Well if you’ve read my other posts, you’ll know I won’t take a complete break. You’ll still find me in worlds once a week and in between that, I might pop in to fix acute situations. What will change is my focus. SL has taken a big part of my life, both socially and practically and that won’t be possible to continue. I need to take care of my self now and my RL.

I’ve met very good friends in SL and I’ve had a wonderful time during my years there. And I’ve lived my SL life as I live my RL. I care about other people and causes. A (former) friend of my said once that I’m pushing people away because I’m too serious. I don’t know exactly what she meant but I think she was right. But if that means I have to change who I am and to stop caring, then it’s no use. I don’t want to change and I don’t think it won’t be possible for me to.

My SL life has been very intense at times and at other times it can be long between my visits, but I guess you can’t stay just as interested in something for several years. First few months in SL I almost replaced my RL with my virtual one. I spent every waking our there. Of course it was an amazing world I had discovered but it probably said more about how I felt at the time. I had starting to see the first symptoms of my depression and me being overworked. Those two aspects of my RL has been following me during my SL life too.

I also discovererd SL related forums. Those too replaced a social life that I didn’t have the strenght to keep up in my RL. Being part of a community has given me so much good things and I’ve found some really good persons I can call my friends. I’ve also experienced the opposite. I know that you shouldn’t let word affect you, but no matter if it’s spoken or written words, they can have a huge impact on you. I’ve become a lot better at not letting it affect me, but on the same time, I can’t really enjoy it as much. I lose something else.

What’s always been the biggest part of my SL life is the creative part. I love playing in Photoshop and in 3D and in SL I could do both. Economically, my creativeness hasn’t been a great success. Only a few of my products sell and only at short periods of time, it’s been worth having an in world store.  Except the fact that I really would need some extra cash for my RL, it’s never been a main goal to make any money on my creative work. I love doing it and that’s always been enough. Before I got my stores, I used to give away my products and I always loved seeing them used.

Now I’ve sold my land, downgraded my account to basic, got rid of my stores. All this because I can’t afford keeping it. It feel sad in a way, but very necessary. It’s now come to the next step. I need to move my focus to my RL to save what’s possible to save. That means not writing this blog for a while and it also mean I won’t be reading the xstreet forum and not post anything there. I’ll still have my products listed at xstreet. If I sell something, that’s really good, if not, that’s ok too. I’ll also still be going to the salsa dance every sunday which is hosted by my oldest and best friend in SL. Look me up and say hi if you want.

This will be my ‘I’m taking a break, but will be back’ post. The last post on this blog before my RL is taken care of. Take care everyone and thanks for reading my blog. If you want, then post some nice comments here. I will read those. See you.

Oh no, beware of the robots!

Robot attackAre we treating the poor robots badly? Have we pushed them too hard making them work in our factories? Or are then plotting to take over the world? Should we start fighting back?

Today is exactly 2 years since the first attack. What happened was that one of the employees in a factory based in Stockholm was called in to repair a faulty robotised machine. Before he went in, he cut the power so he could safly enter the area. When he got close to the robot it suddenly came to life and grabbed his head. He was able to fight it off and escaped with only four broken ribs.

The prosecuter on the case says the man was very lucky to get away from th encounter alive. “I’ve never before heard of a man being abused by a robot in that way”, he tells one of the biggest morning papers in Sweden, but he adds, “the man is partly to blame”. The article says nothing about what the man did to the robot and what happened to it after the incidence.

Fact: This incidence is actually true, at least according to one of the biggest morning papers in Sweden.

My SL

It’s always been ups and downs for me in SL. At times I love it. I spend all my spare time there and I have lots of friends. But those times have become shorter and shorter and further apart. Lately I don’t seem to find much in SL interesting. Not even the creative part is appealing anymore. I’ve been hanging around reading and posting on the xstreet forums for a while, but that too has ceased to interest me.

Because of my RL financial situation I will have to downgrade my premium account and sell my land. At June 26 th the latest, I need to have sold my land and I’ll concider that date as one where I cut down on SL related things alltogether. And online time as well. It’s time to take care of RL. I still have a few days left in the virtual world but after the 26th, I’ll take a break. I still might have time to make a few new products, and write a few blog post, but after that I’m off to RL.

Another update!

A while back I posted a help post in the xstreet forum and the response was almost overwhelming. I tried out most of the suggestions and I think I have the result of my efforts now. I posted 2 classifieds with SL and got 3 visits to my store from that. I had them a few weeks and payed 100 lindens for each. So, no more classifieds for me. Then I payed for a start box for an ad system. That didn’t give any visitor at all.

Someone was very generous to let me have a store for free. The result of that. No sales. Another one contacted me telling me about a good place to rent. I tried that and payed the rent for a few week. No sales there either. And no sales at all in my main store.

I rented a small store, very cheap before I asked in the forum and in that I actually sell a some. The profit covers the rent and a little more.

Another thing I tested was to pay extra to have one of my products to show on the first page at xstreet. I think the total views for that was 25 hits and 2 sales. And I didn’t get my money back from that.

I had land in SL that I really couldn’t afford. It’s on the main land so I have to have a premium account to keep it. And since I need to downgrade now it was important to sell the land. No one was interested so I had to lower the price more and more. In the end I managed to sell off half of it, but I almost didn’t get anything for it.

I know that other people can make a profit on the products they make in SL, but I can’t. I was hoping that I could change  that when I asked for help in the xstreet forum but it didn’t. Now the only thing I have left it to lower the cost I have for SL and with that all the fun will go away. It doesn’t help that there are some posters in the xstreet forum that seem to have taken upon themselves to make me sad.

I won’t stop playing in SL, but the fun is gone and I won’t stop reading and posting at the xstreet forum, but the fun is gone from that too. I’ll have a break (yes, again, I know) from both SL and the forum. Trying to charge my batteries and hope I’ll find it fun again to be there, to create things (which was the reason I came there).

I know after all my efforts that my products isn’t what people want, so why bother.

This is SL for you…

Mymble

I was at a beach in SL with my alt. She’s a tough looking girl and usually people don’t approach her. This time though a guy IMd her and at first I thought he needed help, but as it turned out it wasn’t that kind of help he was after ;). For some reason I found the encounter really hilarious.

[5:01] h. guy: hi mymble

[5:02] h. guy: are you in, making love?

[5:02] my alt: hi

[5:02] my alt: what do you mean?

[5:03] h. guy: fuck

[5:03] my alt: if that was an offer, no thanks

[5:03] h. guy: pitty

[5:03] h. guy: bye bye

[5:03] my alt: bye

An update

The last few days have been overwhelming, but in a really positive way. I had no idea that people could be so nice. So many people I had never met before was willing to help me. Help with tips, with free land, with discounts etc.

I’m only at the beginning of my road towards a successful business in SL but I’ve started. What I’ve done so far is going through my possibilities about having an in world presence. Since I can’t sell my land without almost giving it away I will try to keep it and see if it’s possible to earn enough to pay the tiers and maybe get some profit tool.

Another thing I’ve started to explore is advertising. I tried out a few inexpensive ads. Maybe it needs more and then I have to find other ways to make my products known than advertising. Ah well, it hasn’t started to pay off yet, but I’m sure it will. I think I have good products that people want.