On Leaving a Mainland Sim

[Prokofy Neva]

So, today, I put some land for sale to leave a sim that I had liked last year, but kinda went downhill. I love following what happens to sims, it's fascinating. Come along with me.

So last year was it? I decided I hadn't done enough exploring in other continents, some I haven't hardly been in since they were born, so why don't I buy a few parcels here and there, see what happens. I particularly like the old macadam beach road in this one sim, so I bought the two roadside parcels for sale for $2/m, despite being roadside, after first researching the sim.

The biggest problem it had was a large red -- shall we say "clubhouse" -- called something like Candyland -- which actually was an escort service. It had dance poles. It had signs for girls and such. This was in mature. It wasn't a bad build per say, but it was awfully firehouse red, and it had candy canes around it and a billboard on top. That doesn't faze me, I usually rent roadside to stores, and who knows, maybe someone wants a store next to a thing like that, or maybe they can de-render it, as people do, although I don't live my life by the de-render code. I use the bog standard SL Viewer without de-render, and I believe in making Mainland better, so that it doesn't require de-rendering, which means we no longer live in a shared virtual contiguous interactive world, but in silos.

So I buy the land and  put it to rent for a modest price, and I IM the candy store just to say "Hi, I'm your new neighbour". This serves serveral purposes. For one, if they never answer, I can see they may be abandoning soon and in 30 or 90 days, perhaps I have an opportunity for a land purchase, not a troublesome build next to me. You never know. Much in SL does change in 30 days. Another purpose to such neighbourly exchanges might be, "Hey, can you remove the billboard off your roof? It's kind of an eyesore for my tenants and I don't think many see it". In exchange I might offer...hmm...I don't think I can offer him placement of his ad boards in any of my stores because, well...Or I could put up a giant rock wall that will block the view of his ad board at least on one side, but that takes up prims and itself can be an eyesore of sorts. Hmm. Well, he never answered so I didn't have to come up with anything. Yet he stayed and is still there.

Next, I looked around and saw one of the reasons people were abandoning their land nearby. On the next sim over was a corner build that had a huge pile of junk on it. The centerpiece of this junk was an old Ryan Linden cabin of the kind you couldn't live in as it was too cramped, but I used to put geranium pots on it. This guy had left his land on 0 autoreturn and it had a huge collection that sampled people with birthdates going back to 2006 who were no longer in the people list, and himself, not in the people list, making me hopeful it could be declared "abandoned" and then purchased or at least left abandoned. I wasn't going to purchase it; I just wanted the view out back to become better. So I filed a ticket and was told, as I all too often am, that this parcel was "supported" as their phrasing goes. That it can't possibly be supported by someone from 2007 who paid their tier that far in advance doesn't matter. You know I believe that it works this way: they gave out industry freebies or staff freebies years ago (other than the Charter Members' 4096s which are clearly marked accounts) and here we all are, and they aren't.

So I asked the Linden who replied that it wsa "supported" if she could consider that the builds on there were like the cutting of a tree trunk with rings dating back to 2006 or earlier, when the Lindens had their freebie board with backpacks and jetskis and the like. So she did the right thing and put it on autoreturn. So that was helpful. Then I saw even the Ryan Linden cabin was gone (I've had them do that before, too). It was just pure "supported land" but at least with no build on it. Progress! Months went by, and then one day I saw that land with a new owner. I don't know how that happened, but it doesn't matter.

This sim has a nice Linden dock and coast helpfully marked "Coastal Area" like zillions of others, so I renamed it "Coastal Area Near My Rentals" and put a teleport thingie in the front yard. I had two lots, so on one, I put my little "Palm at the End of the Mind" clubhouse with recordings from Wallace Stevens. I put a phoenix bird out front in a tree, with his fire-fangled feathers dangling down. I then thought better of it and re-named it "Palm NEAR the End of the Mind" -- I don't want to be untruthful about my little rentals now, do I?

Soon I had a tenant who was kind of "Surf's Up!" and soon needed prims so I emptied out my "Palm Near the End of the Mind" (which I had picked up in a yellow box from the last sim we had to escape, which was waterfront, truly at world's end, in which someone built a giant -- and I mean truly humongous -- "Wendy's" replica, with a giant parking lot that extended to the beach. It was breathtakingly bad. I once IM'd the person and asked her why she didn't put a nice beach by her "Wendy's" for her customers (I never saw a soul there) instead of blocking the view with a giant macadam box on two sides going up some 20 meters to keep it on level with her burger  joint up the hill. I used to have more grit and determination in my youth; now I sell out even from prime waterfront and move on from situations like this, and it was promptly bought by "Wendy" who then extended out her parking lot -- and was rewarded by two other neighbours leaving. Breathtakingly awful, eh?

Meanwhile, on my new rentals, life continued along at an even pace, tenants came and went, some had wiccan fairies, some had motorcycles, some had nothing and stayed in the sky (rarely a bad choice in SL on the Mainland). Sometimes I might have to wait a week because new people came in, saw that Candyland hadn't moved, saw the abandoned land around them and worried, and left.

To be sure, somebody bought an enormous amount of land on that sim on the waterfront -- lucky! -- and kept growing, and put up ban lines. But since that was across the road, it didn't matter. I could still almost imagine, if I sqeezed my eyes tight a little bit, that Candyland was really just an old-fashioned General Store; that we were on Cape Cod, with the waves crashing, walking on that beat-up road toward Robin Hill Road, that there was Paine's Creek Landing up the road, and nothing but prime beach property and decent people all around.

Somebody had a store then in my rentals? I can't remember. I forgot to ask them why they left. Whenever people refund or don't renew, I usually send them an IM and say I saw they refunded, did they face any problems? Sometimes they say, "Yes, there was a giant car crashed on my lawn I couldn't remove". They could have, but didn't realize it. Or they didn't realize they had a group to join to prevent prims returning. Or they didn't realize when a fellow tenant put up a huge over-primming build that encroached on their land, I would remove it under my rules. In other words, fixable. Sometimes they would say, "No, I am moving to Belli". In which case I know they will be back one day. Or, "No, I just bought my own land" -- ditto. Or "My friend offered me a free spot and I couldn't pass that up" -- and again, ditto. In some cases -- they broke up with a boyfriend, they leave SL. Or they lost their job, they cease buying inworld. Again and again -- ditto, much of the time.

So comes this month or last month actually, and it has been a while, and I am just at the point of dumping this land. I open my eyes -- there is no General Store. There is no penny candy. There is -- well, pretend this is a Ryan Reynolds ad and hear his voice trail off.

I give it one last shot, put it in search, and some nice people move in to the one lot. They put out a nice horse farm and house. Then they need more prims -- the other lot is rented. All is well, they pay on time, they need no reminders. Months go buy and now it's today. And now their grace period has expired, and actually it's been 7 days. I check -- they have not logged in since 9/6. Hope they're ok.

I look around, and I see something new, which is the big beach spread has sprouted a big wall right in the view of my tenants -- and with stretched textures that look like hell. They are not going away -- would you, with prime beach land like that selling now for a fortune, I see? I'm kicking myself for not buying more down that channel, merely because someone had a photo-real board. I could have waited 30 days for it to go away like many things -- it did -- and I'd have a nice sailable beach land today worth a bunch. But now I see why my tenants may have left their rentals.

Needless to say, the, er "clubhouse" is still there, and next to it now is a giant macadam road of some width, leading from the Linden road back to another man-made road. At first I thought the Candyland was in clover and building out their little empire, although I never saw them -- ever. Or any young ladies. Or anything. Empty. But no, I checked, its owner was a rentals agent. Why a rentals agent would despoil a sim he has to rent to people on just baffles me -- especially when this giant road doesn't seem to lead to anything that he owns on the other side, i.e. the beach -- although I suppose he wanted his tenants to have access to this same old beach road to the Linden pier that was the reason I bought in this sim.

Maybe he was building out -- I saw that 4 different people had abandoned their land all around him (if they hadn't before, they had now). They weren't alts -- I mean, it's hard to sound like a Texan on one alt and put another alt all in Japanese, you know? So those were different people and the claim dates were very different. Now he might build more rental lots with macadam road and primmy-looking wooden fence, in which he didn't have a theme, as I saw a Norse longhouse by Nomad parked next to Onsu's suburban house. PS this micro baron will never know who went before him, sacrificing much, braving the Lindens to get them to remove an ugly pile-up, and finally to abandon land that now he likely owns, or has purchased from another. Oh, well.

I never mind competition from other Mainland dealers because it truly does help create areas where more people come and want to rent. I was never going to buy any more in this sim -- too risky, if I couldn't get waterfront. So another rentals near me is a plus, actually -- unless their builds are obtrusive. This guy seems to like roads possibly more than he liked tenants? I didn't have to look behind me, of course, and ignore what was on the other side of the candy store.

Still, that was daunting -- to the side, the club, the giant road and more fences and roads coming, to another side -- a huge badly textured wall. To be sure, on the other side were some new neighbours, ever hopeful, who put nice, tasteful offices on this road. They are in for the long term. Behind me -- two abandoned lands that had been for rent for less than my rentals, then more than my rentals (think they changed hands) but -- now abandoned. That was risk of course -- the most likely being more macadam made-made roads and fences. To be sure, there was still the Linden pier, helpfully titled "Coastal Waterways" down the road, which my current tenants had indeed enjoyed.

Well, as the William Stafford poem goes, "I thought hard for us all" -- and I put this land to sale. With my tenant's things still on it. And with my unpaid rental boxes. This is a practice I dislike and don't indulge in, but now it's going to be an experiment. Will my tenants come back, and live with that wall? Will the rentals micro-baron buy them and put in more road? Will Candyland abandon? Will the nice people with the nice offices buy them? Or maybe someone will rent, despite everything? I will quickly then turn off sale. It's all fascinating.

What would you do?

PS In the 15 minutes I deliberated this -- actually less -- the icing on the cake. Two pod cars went by. Empty.

Edited September 20, 2020 by Prokofy Neva

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

Is that Brown? You're selling your land there? Ugh our experience of the mainland is way too affected by neighbours. It's one of the reasons that I like Sansar BUT you miss the continuous world idea in Sansar. 

[Prokofy Neva]

3 hours ago, Ingrid Ingersoll said:

Is that Brown? You're selling your land there? Ugh our experience of the mainland is way too affected by neighbours. It's one of the reasons that I like Sansar BUT you miss the continuous world idea in Sansar. 

No, it's not Brown, look at it closely, it has roads and textures nothing like Brown. I have sold some land in Brown now and then because it just doesn't rent, it is G, and it still has those dead palm trees, despite all the improvements Jack Linden made back in the day. I think it is still prized land as "Linden zoned" and land barons still buy and hold there. The problem with G as always is not that the Lindens chase you, they don't have the time. It's that your enemies chase you, entrap you, and AR you. So if you swear, or have a classic artwork in your home with an exposed breast, they can AR you and make your life miserable. There is one particular bad actor on that sim, himself the cause of ARs for legitimate reasons, who has done that to my tenants and they sometimes do it to each other. So it's not worth it.

The reason it may have seemed like Brown to you is that one rentals agent made all those roads inside the sim, and hedges. 

Edited September 21, 2020 by Prokofy Neva

[BilliJo Aldrin]

2 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

No, it's not Brown, look at it closely, it has roads and textures nothing like Brown. I have sold some land in Brown now and then because it just doesn't rent, it is G, and it still has those dead palm trees, despite all the improvements Jack Linden made back in the day. I think it is still prized land as "Linden zoned" and land barons still buy and hold there. The problem with G as always is not that the Lindens chase you, they don't have the time. It's that your enemies chase you, entrap you, and AR you. So if you swear, or have a classic artwork in your home with an exposed breast, they can AR you and make your life miserable. There is one particular bad actor on that sim, himself the cause of ARs for legitimate reasons, who has done that to my tenants and they sometimes do it to each other. So it's not worth it.

The reason it may have seemed like Brown to you is that one rentals agent made all those roads inside the sim, and hedges. 

I avoid G sims like the plague. Its way to easy to be ARed there.

I don't know why stores ever locate on G sims, since the first thing you want to do when you get a demo is try it on.

[Rabid Cheetah]

On 9/20/2020 at 2:06 PM, Prokofy Neva said:

PS In the 15 minutes I deliberated this -- actually less -- the icing on the cake. Two pod cars went by. Empty.

BWWWAAAHAHAHAHAAHAHA!!!  All that stuff you wrote, half of which didn't make sense to me (I'm not a rental agent, sorry), was worth it, to get to this punchline.  Nearly spit my soda on the screen.

[Rabid Cheetah]

And I don't know what a Macadam Box is even after utilizing search engines.  The only Macadam I know is 4310 Macadam in Portland, where the Occupy ICE movement began.

Anyway, what would I do?  Well, not much I can do, beyond my parcel boundaries.  I didn't quite get most of your post, but I dunno:  I'd kinda like living next to the Little Devil place or whatever it's called.  At least it's a build.  But that's just me.  I like weird.  

[BilliJo Aldrin]

6 hours ago, Rabid Cheetah said:

And I don't know what a Macadam Box is even after utilizing search engines.  The only Macadam I know is 4310 Macadam in Portland, where the Occupy ICE movement began.

Anyway, what would I do?  Well, not much I can do, beyond my parcel boundaries.  I didn't quite get most of your post, but I dunno:  I'd kinda like living next to the Little Devil place or whatever it's called.  At least it's a build.  But that's just me.  I like weird.  

macadam

[məˈkadəm]

NOUN

broken stone of even size used in successively compacted layers for surfacing roads and paths, and typically bound with tar or bitumen.

[Prokofy Neva]

15 hours ago, Rabid Cheetah said:

And I don't know what a Macadam Box is even after utilizing search engines.  The only Macadam I know is 4310 Macadam in Portland, where the Occupy ICE movement began.

Anyway, what would I do?  Well, not much I can do, beyond my parcel boundaries.  I didn't quite get most of your post, but I dunno:  I'd kinda like living next to the Little Devil place or whatever it's called.  At least it's a build.  But that's just me.  I like weird.  

15 hours ago, Rabid Cheetah said:

BWWWAAAHAHAHAHAAHAHA!!!  All that stuff you wrote, half of which didn't make sense to me (I'm not a rental agent, sorry), was worth it, to get to this punchline.  Nearly spit my soda on the screen.

Oh, there goes another one. Empty.

[BilliJo Aldrin]

5 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Oh, there goes another one. Empty.

where is your place? I'll ride by in a pod car and wave atcha  😁

[BilliJo Aldrin]

Prokovy, the map link in your signature is wrong, but I found your place anyway.

Very nicely set up.

[Prokofy Neva]

18 hours ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

Prokovy, the map link in your signature is wrong, but I found your place anyway.

Very nicely set up.

I don't know what you're looking at but I don't have any signature or maplink that I can see. I seem to recall having one ages ago on the old forums.

[BilliJo Aldrin]

3 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I don't know what you're looking at but I don't have any signature or maplink that I can see. I seem to recall having one ages ago on the old forums.

This:

 

[Pussycat Catnap]

On 9/20/2020 at 2:06 PM, Prokofy Neva said:

Sometimes they would say, "No, I am moving to Belli". In which case I know they will be back one day

Perhaps. But the entire rest of your post is basically an article about why they should stay in Bellisseria...

Mainland just needs a tiny bit of rules. Not a lot, not even the full yet still tiny Bellisseria covenant... but something other than anarchy.

 

[Pussycat Catnap]

12 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I don't know what you're looking at but I don't have any signature or maplink that I can see. I seem to recall having one ages ago on the old forums.

You may have just turned off your visibility of it:

• 

- it's there at the bottom of the image.

 

[Prokofy Neva]

4 hours ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

You may have just turned off your visibility of it:

• 

- it's there at the bottom of the image.

 

No, because it's not there on my view of the page, see below, it's just a blank space at the bottom.

I remember it used to be in the view when we had the old forums and people put those tags on; then the forums were changed and it went out of the view. Perhaps it's only out of the view for *me*, and others see it, and that's fine, but I don't see anywhere on my account where it can be changed. 

I also don't see tags for anyone else, BTW.

I'm on Chrome.

When I go to look at my account settings, nothing in the "about me" or "photo" or anything has the text of a tagline in it; nor do I see where I could put in new text that might override that old text. It's just blank. That old tag goes to my office which was changed something like 2 years ago.

 

 

 

Edited September 24, 2020 by Prokofy Neva

[Prokofy Neva]

3 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

No, because it's not there on my view of the page, see below, it's just a blank space at the bottom.

I remember it used to be in the view when we had the old forums and people put those tags on; then the forums were changed and it went out of the view. Perhaps it's only out of the view for *me*, and others see it, and that's fine, but I don't see anywhere on my account where it can be changed. 

I also don't see tags for anyone else, BTW.

I'm on Chrome.

When I go to look at my account settings, nothing in the "about me" or "photo" or anything has the text of a tagline in it; nor do I see where I could put in new text that might override that old text. It's just blank. That old tag goes to my office which was changed something like 2 years ago.

 

 

 

 

[Prokofy Neva]

4 hours ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

Perhaps. But the entire rest of your post is basically an article about why they should stay in Bellisseria...

Mainland just needs a tiny bit of rules. Not a lot, not even the full yet still tiny Bellisseria covenant... but something other than anarchy.

 

No, because here's what's wrong with Belli:

o Some lucky people get really good waterfront parcels or parcels with mountains and pristine ponds back of them or easements in terms of Linden land next to them with camp fires or some fixed content.

o Most other people are in at rather close quarters with other people smack upon them, to be sure, with easements like roads and Linden border land but still, they aren't the most prized lost.

o There is a hard stop in terms of prims -- you can't add more -- even if you were lucky enough to land two LHs on the same sim, you can't combine their prims, you can't put them in group land.

o You can't put your land in search.

o You cannot sell anything on the land, even if it is just a painting inside your home or a tip jar.

o You cannot consciously turn your parcel over to another person, they'd have to try their luck refreshing the page and trying to sync with you abandoning your land, which can work but which isn't guaranteed because of the huge number of people refreshing the pages.

o It can be laggy - lots of houses on one sim.

o While you can be on what seems like waterfront, it's not a rez zone necessarily so to put in a boat you have to try to edit it into place and it rubber bands a lot.

o The trees, while nice, and better than old trees, are flat planar trees and not mesh with a more robust look

o There is some fixed Linden content that gets annoying. I personally hate the butterflies. Somebody else might find intolerable the random inner tubs with watermelon design spaced around oddly (given that my area has no rez zones, I appreciate it, but wish it wasn't so brightly coloured. But I suppose they wanted it to be findable.

o There are rules, like you have to have Christmas go away by a certain time, you can't be "out of season," etc. I'm glad they have an orb they supply that doesn't bounce home, but so many people use their own orbs and there are so many of them that you can't expect the Lindens to chase everybody, even with an AR -- even with their threat to return all non-Linden orbs.

o There's that Trumansville effect. I once thought I was clever putting out some content in front of my house so I could find it again. But imagine, someone made the exact same house colour and put out the exact same content out to find it again so I remained lost. Yes, you can go up to "my land holdings" but if you are sole owner of other parcels or have parcels for sale, it's a scroll.

So I appreciate Belli. But it has its limitations. I am personally enjoying my LH now, but I let go others that had too many of these problems. I don't mind a prim limitation on a camper or boat. But once it gets to a multi-story house, it becomes a challenge.