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Draxtor & Jo discuss the recent tier & fee changes


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53 minutes ago, Alyona Su said:

Regarding impartiality with any journalist, that's a matter of perspective, etc. - not only of the journalist but also of their audience.

Yes indeed, everybody develops their biases about who is biased..lol.
For example, take our representative Hamlet. On the surface it would seem he's identified with 'the powerful' due to what we see on the surface. But what if he experienced prejudice due to his Asian heritage, and so identifies as much or more with 'the little guy. Or what if he came from a poor background and will always remember and have sympathy. Or what if he sees the increasing homelessness in SF when he walks the streets, or read a particularly compelling journal piece on one homeless individual that caused him to see their viewpoint a bit more.

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A bit off topic but it seems to have veered a bit anyway.

In defence of Hamlet Au (not that they need any from me) I have been reading NWN since - well since a few months after he ceased  to be an LL employee embedded reporter and he's never hidden that part. Not sure about linking rools but this was the farewell https://secondlife.blogs.com/

What I have always liked is that there is coverage of other stuff that is of interest to an SLer. Now @Beth Macbainis right that there is the regular 'Adult == Bad (cos not mainstream)' period but have always taken that with a grain of salt. Balance that with the record of going 'this is the next big thing' followed by .. oops  they folded' threads (Blue Mars coff coff) its still the one that has been the main read of my SLness - because he still covers it after all this time and on the whole - a plus for SL.

Now Drax? Very little contact and to be honest while I can happily listen to an archive of Alistair Cooke (you young ones might need to look that up) I am not wasting an hour on any SL podcast that does not come with at least a time line of points (transcript by preference). No dis to Drax but that is how I view all 'talking head/radio talk' stuff these days. I don't watch it on the telly and I do not listen on radio and no way am I going to do web versions of either.

 

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If we're back talking about Hamlet, the only impression IMO he has ever managed to successfully convey is bitterness towards LL and SL for not doing everything the way he wanted and taking away his meal ticket. He has attracted quite the following of equally jaded malcontents, whom for some reason had a bad time in SL and need someone to blame. Bad LL, shame on you for not managing these people's expectations & making them ungodly rich/attractive/popular/relevant.

He is almost single handily responsible for the ongoing trope that SL is awash with weirdo perverts doing all kinds of unspeakable things, at any moment, anywhere. Why, you could be happily roaming around feeling positively magellan, only to find yourself scarred for life .. Although he's never clear if it's the actual roleplay, the roleplay locations, his inability to avoid A rated locations, or just the idea of roleplay in obscure far away entirely imagined locations.

His lack of gushing over Sansar might well have more to do with him not being paid to talk about it, than it seeming to meet his ideals of what a virtual world should be. That might be overly cynical, but then he did open the year with a post titled "Linden Lab Should Sell Off Second Life To Focus On Sansar, Return To Being More Like A Lab" because someone in his comments pointed out minecraft and fortnite was more popular, going on to speculate that SL could be sold off for a paltry $250million.

Edited by CoffeeDujour
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On 6/11/2019 at 1:57 AM, Jo Yardley said:
Listen to Drax and I discussing the recent tier & fee changes in SL;

 

A Transcript or timeline would be nice for podcasts, Frau Yardley.

 

20 hours ago, Beth Macbain said:

(This is rambling and I jumped all over the place with it!)

I agree with you as well. I have been in SL for many, many years, though not as long as the oldest oldies but well over a decade and you're correct that most people have no idea who Drax or Jo or Berry are, especially within the SL that I tend to inhabit.

In the SL I inhabit, people know about Drax, Frau Yardley and Berry.  Of course the SL I inhabit is full of oldbies, steampunks, vintage fans, and fashionistas.  When I first  heard of Drax he was working with Pooky Amsterdam (former SL machinima producer, accent like Lovey Howell of Gilligans Island), this was what...2012?  Frau Yardley I know from NWN/SLU/VVO and most of us old-timey region visitors know about Berlin.  I don't visit Berlin because the 1920's is my LEAST favorite decade for fashion.  I've virtually rapped Jo's knuckles when she's gone a little too far on her comments about us "Barbies".  Berry is Berry, if you're a fashionista in the big groups and who follows the blogs/flickr, you know who Berry is.

Quote

I've spent more on a single color set of lingerie than I have on some t-shirt fatpacks. I have mesh nips. Do PG people bother with those, as well as other bits and add-ons? And, um... systems that do... things? Spankers? Hair-pullers? Collars?
No idea if there is a way to see what those numbers are, but I've long assumed that the adult side of SL was holding up the Linden economy with very little thanks for it. Purely anecdotal, of course. 

I've spent a lot on lingerie, which I rarely use.  I don't use mesh nips, most of us PG people don't bother with them or other "private bits" addons, let alone spankers, collars and so forth.  As for what portion of the economy the sexy side is?  I think the general fashion economy is holding SL up with the adult stuff being part of that.  Maybe 10 percent, enough that it would be missed.

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On ‎6‎/‎12‎/‎2019 at 11:18 AM, ItHadToComeToThis said:
On ‎6‎/‎12‎/‎2019 at 10:41 AM, Luna Bliss said:

It seems SL is turning less and less into what it was -- a place of creativity where most can earn at least enough through their creative efforts to pay for their lives here, and even a bit more if they put in enough time.

This. I have been preaching exactly this now for the longest time. It started when they released mesh. Before that anyone could come to SL and start developing immediately using the in world tools provided. Even sculpture developers created sculpt packs that other developers could texture and mix up to create something new and unique. These days however it’s a market filled with 798373 versions of the same item with the top tier developers monopolising content and a distinct lack of potential developers due to the sheer learning curve now required to simply create say...a top. I love mesh, but I do miss the pre mesh days when everyone would have a go at creating, not just the select few and when there was more diversity than there is now

mesh is nice looking, but seems a mistake for second life.

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40 minutes ago, CronoCloud Creeggan said:

In the SL I inhabit, people know about Drax, Frau Yardley and Berry.  Of course the SL I inhabit is full of oldbies, steampunks, vintage fans, and fashionistas.

And that's how it is. Lots of people are well known within certain segments in SL but no names are familiar to a large portion of the population. Even a name like Onyx LeShelle won't ring a bell to many.

There may have been a few household names in the past - Phiip Linden and Cory Linden in the beginning, Torley Linden and maybe Yadni later - simply because you had to run across their names if you were in SL. But Philip and Corey are gone, nobody watches Torley's videos anymore and Yadni's Junkyard has moved to a different grid. They were all but forgotten the moment they left.

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30 minutes ago, CronoCloud Creeggan said:

In the SL I inhabit, people know about Drax, Frau Yardley and Berry.  Of course the SL I inhabit is full of oldbies, steampunks, vintage fans, and fashionistas.  When I first  heard of Drax he was working with Pooky Amsterdam (former SL machinima producer, accent like Lovey Howell of Gilligans Island), this was what...2012?  Frau Yardley I know from NWN/SLU/VVO and most of us old-timey region visitors know about Berlin.  I don't visit Berlin because the 1920's is my LEAST favorite decade for fashion.  I've virtually rapped Jo's knuckles when she's gone a little too far on her comments about us "Barbies".  Berry is Berry, if you're a fashionista in the big groups and who follows the blogs/flickr, you know who Berry is.

*I* know who they all are, but thank you for the tutorial. The SL I inhabit is full of oldbies, perverts, porn fans, and trollopistas. We know Stroker, Sylva (RIP), and Jennnnna. 

59 minutes ago, CronoCloud Creeggan said:

I've spent a lot on lingerie, which I rarely use.  I don't use mesh nips, most of us PG people don't bother with them or other "private bits" addons, let alone spankers, collars and so forth.  As for what portion of the economy the sexy side is?  I think the general fashion economy is holding SL up with the adult stuff being part of that.  Maybe 10 percent, enough that it would be missed.

You're forgetting, though, about the furniture and land. Though I have no doubt far more people buy bras than a Bento MMF femdom/fetish cuckold couch with built-in Aeros/It'sNotMine compatibility, AND auto-attach props, the cost for that bra (with panties!) is probably around L$250 compared to L$7,500 for that couch, and there are still A LOT of people buying those couches. 

I don't know if there is any way of knowing, really, but my guess is that things with the dreaded scarlet letter attached to them account for more than 10% of the SL economy if you take land into account as well. 

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37 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

And that's how it is. Lots of people are well known within certain segments in SL but no names are familiar to a large portion of the population. Even a name like Onyx LeShelle won't ring a bell to many.

There may have been a few household names in the past - Phiip Linden and Cory Linden in the beginning, Torley Linden and maybe Yadni later - simply because you had to run across their names if you were in SL. But Philip and Corey are gone, nobody watches Torley's videos anymore and Yadni's Junkyard has moved to a different grid. They were all but forgotten the moment they left.

Does it make me a bad person if I've never watched any of Torley's vids?  

Yadni's and Jopsy Pendragon's Particle Laboratory are where many of us got our start in building. I don't remember now if Jopsy did shut the lab down or not but I know he mentioned having/needing to do so a year or two ago. According to this post the lab was still there in April of last year. I'd post a link to where Jopsy mentioned shutting down but the SLU archives are not up yet. Still. I don't think it was mentioned on VVO but it may have been after the move if anyone wants to go look.

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1 hour ago, CronoCloud Creeggan said:

A Transcript or timeline would be nice for podcasts, Frau Yardley.

This came up earlier too. I'm thinking the podcasters who didn't invest the considerable effort in supplying timestamped transcripts were just prescient, given that Google is on the very verge of releasing this ability, automatically created, for every recorded speech audio.

(If you haven't played with Google's real-time transcription app for Android, intended to help the hearing disabled, it's amazing. It's like their real-time translation app, but even more real-time and uncannily accurate. I'm old enough to remember IBM experimenting with "The Listening Typewriter" when speech recognition was very new and very poor, where they used a human to pretend to be a perfect machine transcription device, just to see how folks would use it if it existed. This is a hundred times better and faster than that was.)

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6 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

Yes :P

 

lol

I tried. I really tried. I could never get very far beyond the "friendly greetings" without either falling off my chair or spitting coffee all over my keyboard and screen before stopping the vid. It's not his fault. He helped a lot of people. I'm just not cut out to benefit from his method. I like cream and sugar in my coffee but not that much. lol

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2 hours ago, Beth Macbain said:

*I* know who they all are, but thank you for the tutorial.

 

My apologies, I didn't mean to imply you didn't know, just following on from your comment about the folks in your community not knowing.

Quote

The SL I inhabit is full of oldbies, perverts, porn fans, and trollopistas. We know Stroker, Sylva (RIP), and Jennnnna. 

Most of the folks I call "fashionistas" are also a little bit "Trollopista" now and then.  After all, one of the early fashion bloggers had the last name "Trollop".  I know Stroker, as most oldbies do, but I don't know the other two.

Quote

You're forgetting, though, about the furniture and land.
I don't know if there is any way of knowing, really, but my guess is that things with the dreaded scarlet letter attached to them account for more than 10% of the SL economy if you take land into account as well. 

Including land and furniture?  Up it to 20% easy.  As you said, Adult furniture is PRICEY..and well...even some of us PG people have a adult bed or two. I've got the Dutchie Lesbian Gustavian, and I know I've got the full old SexGen setup somewhere in inventory.  Yes...I've got a L$4500 sex bed that doesn't get used as a sex bed, I jokingly call it my Lesbian "Photoprop" bed.  I think I've got an ExCite something-or-other in inventory as well.

1 hour ago, Selene Gregoire said:

Does it make me a bad person if I've never watched any of Torley's vids? 

Yes.  😛 Torley's videos are why I say "Friendly Greetings" whenever I see a Linden.  Admittedly, he is an acquired taste.

Edited by CronoCloud Creeggan
added smiley because I'm not serious about the "yes"
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1 hour ago, CronoCloud Creeggan said:

Yes.  Torley's videos are why I say "Friendly Greetings" whenever I see a Linden.  Admittedly, he is an acquired taste.

You admit he is an acquired taste, something which is not for everyone, yet, I'm a bad person for not being able to watch something that is an acquired taste. Alcoholic beverages are acquired tastes so, by your reasoning, I'm a bad person because I don't particularly care for the taste of most alcoholic beverages. Hmmm. That means, I'm a bad person for not liking whatever everyone else likes. Then, so be it.

Edited by Selene Gregoire
false alarm
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3 minutes ago, Selene Gregoire said:

You admit he is an acquired taste, something which is not for everyone, yet, I'm a bad person for not being able to watch something that is an acquired taste. Alcoholic beverages are acquired tastes so, by your reasoning, I'm a bad person because I don't particularly care for the taste of most alcoholic beverages. Hmmm. That means, I'm a bad person for not liking whatever everyone else likes. Then, so be it.

I'm sorry, I meant for you to take the "yes" tongue in cheek like ChinRey's Yes, not literally.  I should have added a smiley, my fault.

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1 hour ago, Selene Gregoire said:

lol

I tried. I really tried. I could never get very far beyond the "friendly greetings" without either falling off my chair or spitting coffee all over my keyboard and screen before stopping the vid.

Me too but I did actually manage to watch three or four of them in full. We can make fun of them today but outdated s they are, they must have been very good introductions to SL as it was back when they were made.

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Just now, ChinRey said:

Me too but I did actually manage to watch three or four of them in full. We can make fun of them today but outdated s they are, they must have been very good introductions to SL as it was back when they were made.

They were. Most of the people I heard about them from had nothing but praise for them.

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2 hours ago, CronoCloud Creeggan said:

Yes.  😛 Torley's videos are why I say "Friendly Greetings" whenever I see a Linden.  Admittedly, he is an acquired taste.

Awwwww . . .  Torley.

/me looks a little misty-eyed for a moment.

Yeah, he was cheesy as hell. But a sweetheart.

3 hours ago, CronoCloud Creeggan said:

In the SL I inhabit, people know about Drax, Frau Yardley and Berry.  Of course the SL I inhabit is full of oldbies, steampunks, vintage fans, and fashionistas.

I'm always amazed -- and used to be even more so in the "old days" -- how little impact "SLebrity" actually has in-world. I doubt a tenth of the people I knew in-world in 2009 would have recognized names like Torley, Prok, or Stroker. They might have watched the videos, or rented land in Ravenglass, or bought a SexGen bed, but the identity of the people themselves would have drawn blanks.

That may be even more true today. I don't think most residents have anything more than the most passing acquaintance with the SL blogosphere, the various forums, and so forth.

Edited by Scylla Rhiadra
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1 hour ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

I'm always amazed -- and used to be even more so in the "old days" -- how little impact "SLebrity" actually has in-world. I doubt a tenth of the people I knew in-world in 2009 would have recognized names like Torley, Prok, or Stroker. They might have watched the videos, or rented land in Ravenglass, or bought a SexGen bed, but the identity of the people themselves would have drawn blanks.

That may be even more true today. I don't think most residents have anything more than the most passing acquaintance with the SL blogosphere, the various forums, and so forth.

I wonder what sets those residents apart from us, that's the question.  Most of us here are REALLY engaged.  Blogs, flickr, active in in-world groups, the forums here, SLU/VVO, machinima.  We're what Gwyneth Llewelyn called "The 100000":  

https://gwynethllewelyn.net/2008/10/13/the-hard-facts-about-the-second-life-economy/

Yeah it's old, and multiple pages, and written pre-mesh and pre-marketplace, but it has a good description of the various elements of the SL economy and userbase, especially this page:

https://gwynethllewelyn.net/2008/10/13/the-hard-facts-about-the-second-life-economy/6/

Though I would say it's closer to "The 200000" now, I would say MORE people are engaged in the economy and shopping like madwomen than before, in part due to mesh.

 

 

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I was one of those who learned a lot from Torley's videos. I admit I was a bit star struck when I first met him over in Sansar. He is one of the nicest most genuine people I've met in SL. I admire his ability to stay positive even when those around him are being snarky. Personally I think we could all benefit from a few more Torleys!

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I've only been active on these forums now for something like a month, but one thing I have noticed here is the abundance of "oldbies".  I don't mean this in a derogatory way, but I have a good idea of how long most of you have been in SL because you really, really, really like to let people know you've been here since the dawn of time. 😝

I think a lot of residents that aren't quite so ancient, or don't cling to their longevity as a status point, simply use other ways of communicating outside of the official forums, or the older blogs like Hamlet's, etc. There are huge numbers of residents with a Facebook presence, Plurk, and Flickr, of course, but also Skype, Instagram, Twitter, and Discord. Even though I'm quite enjoying my time here on the forums, my SL friends congregate elsewhere when not logged in, and sometimes even when we are logged in because Skype is more dependable for voice than SL. 

There are 10 zillion fashion blogs, but creators all have Flickr and FB accounts I can follow so I don't need to look at the blogs to see what's coming out, not to mention the inherent and continuous drama that goes along with the fashion bloggers. The SL-endorsed SLebrities are just really not of interest to most people in SL. Berry had a good thing going because her tutorials were really helpful and it used to be very interactive with her Meme Mondays and things like that. It was fun but then she got married, and pregnant, and super-crazy--busy as happens in RL and the more fun things were understandably too time consuming for her to keep up with. 

These forums, that other one that I haven't visited forever that changed (SLuniverse or something?) and, oddly, Reddit, seems to be comprised of a lot of people who hold a lot of negativity towards LL. I don't see that same level of vitriol towards them on FB or Flickr. No one that I know outside of these forums has even really noticed, much less cared, that the premium cost is going up. Most of them had no idea about Bellisseria until I told them. 

I think what I'm getting at is that most residents, in my experience (and I've been around a damn long time, too), don't really give a hoot about most of the things people on these forums or the blogs like Hamlet's or Drax's, care about. They log in, shop, dance, rent a parcel, take pics, decorate, have sex and go on about their day. They aren't trying to make money or run a business (outside of some clubs that aren't going to make any money, either). It's simply entertainment for them and they care more about the social fun aspects than whatever is pissing someone off on any given day here because LL has done something they don't like. 

They're just as engaged as the people on these forums, but in different, newer ways, I think.

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5 hours ago, CronoCloud Creeggan said:

Gwyneth Llewelyn

wow! there's a name

i loved her writings. Gwyneth never used 1 word when 10 would do. Great long reads that takes the reader on a journey. Up hill, down dale, down the river, across the ocean, round all the corners and back again. To end up at the point of the story. I still check her blog out now and again but Gwyneth doesn't post much anymore. RL stuffs probably I think

Dusan Writer was another great wordsmith. His style was quite cerebal. Yet all done in a easily read style, mixing in philosophy and often showing quite complex different perspectives on even quite ordinary things. Dusan doesn't blog any more either. He used to blog regularly then one day it stopped. I worried that maybe something happened to him RL. I hope not but I will always be grateful for his writings and and what they meant to me

Ordinal Malaprop also. I loved her blog. And her talks at gatherings in the drawing rooms of the citizens of Caledon from time to time.  Period formal dress gatherings even. At which Ms Ordinal Malaprop would explain the SL physics system and how with LSL this could be used to enhance our SL experiences for the better. And Ordinal was apt to demonstrate on occasion, the usefulness of all this when incorporated in a fashionably-appropriate garter pistol. A demonstration on any attending unruly gentleman who might dispute the usefulness of such pistol. Much to the merriment of everyone attending the gathering including said unruly gentleman who eventually did make their way back, rather apologetic and chastened

there are lots of other people from the past who still blog regularly, and lots of newer since, who I check also because of their writing style, knowledge and understanding of the topics. Is really rich and diverse the blogs of all the people of SL, and is something else I am grateful and thankful for

 

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7 hours ago, CronoCloud Creeggan said:

I wonder what sets those residents apart from us, that's the question.  Most of us here are REALLY engaged.  Blogs, flickr, active in in-world groups, the forums here, SLU/VVO, machinima.  We're what Gwyneth Llewelyn called "The 100000":  

https://gwynethllewelyn.net/2008/10/13/the-hard-facts-about-the-second-life-economy/

Yeah it's old, and multiple pages, and written pre-mesh and pre-marketplace, but it has a good description of the various elements of the SL economy and userbase, especially this page:

https://gwynethllewelyn.net/2008/10/13/the-hard-facts-about-the-second-life-economy/6/

Though I would say it's closer to "The 200000" now, I would say MORE people are engaged in the economy and shopping like madwomen than before, in part due to mesh.

 

 

Interesting article! A little dated, as you note . . . it would be interesting to see a similar analysis applied today, for sure.

I'm sure it's reasonably accurate, but it actually doesn't reflect my own case; I sort of piggy-backed on the educators who swarmed in around 2007-2008 -- not that I was an educator myself, but I was brought here, mostly, by ones that I knew.

My introduction to the "big picture" in SL was mostly through here, on the forums, in 2008. I've never been premium, I've never owned land (although I rented for a number of years), and I was a merchant/content creator in only a really very small way (I had a bookstore for 4 years -- not exactly something for which there is a really high demand in SL). So I'm a bit untypical, I guess, in terms of this picture. I think that there is a kind of community-oriented category that's missing here, maybe.

Again, though, it would be interesting to see how things have changed.

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