Mainstream failure of SL & Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

[Love Zhaoying]

1 minute ago, Persephone Emerald said:

I was just about to post something to the same effect. 

I think Coffee is in "attack mode" so will not be listening or taking my posts seriously. Perhaps other people will post similar things and she will read those.

 

[CandyCole]

22 minutes ago, Persephone Emerald said:

animesh sex bots

Tell me more (please include links).

Asking for a friend.

[Coffee Pancake]

1 minute ago, Persephone Emerald said:

I was just about to post something to the same effect. 

I don't see anyone on this thread saying they're enjoyment of non-sexual activities in SL makes them "better people" than those who enjoy sexual activities in SL. Some of us even enjoy both sexual and non-sexual activities. Some of us don't enjoy SL sexual activities. That doesn't make us better or worse people.

"better people" is not literal better people, it's a fictional cohort that LL have bet the farm on more than once, and the same fictional cohort that Meta just crashed and burnt trying to attract.

They don't exist.

There is no magical group of people who want to dump huge amounts of time and money into a virtual world without social cohesion, a core feature of which is adult interactions and content.

We all do other things, and it's just as insulting to suggest those here for the sex are only here for that, or that they should be shunned and attacked for it.

 

[Coffee Pancake]

3 minutes ago, Sam1 Bellisserian said:

Wasn't this thread closed already? How did the subject of promoting adult content in SL crop up in another thread? 

because some people drag the discussion back to all the sex they don't want and people respond in good faith.

[Love Zhaoying]

18 minutes ago, Sam1 Bellisserian said:

Wasn't this thread closed already? How did the subject of promoting adult content in SL crop up in another thread? 

Maybe it is something like a "one-track mind" syndrome?  Alternatively, when the current topic wonders back to a previous topic, it can reveal the true motive of the current topic.

I made sure to post one of my on-topic ideas in the Adult section in agreement with, in response to Coffee's arguments.  A separate idea, I posted in General as it seemed OK.

 

Edited July 2, 2023 by Love Zhaoying

[Caeruleiae]

45 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Every niche and "better people" community gets talked up and written about ad nauseam

No every other community hasn't been talked up and written about by ll. By other people outside of ll's employees-sure. Ll has only in recent times started actually discussing ANY community within sl-because they completely and utterly fail at marketing. Other people have talked about the adult community-but not ll-on that we can agree. Where we disagree is the level to which they've talked up any community. I simply don't see them-until recently-having talked about ANY. I see plenty of other people-residents-who have talked about different communities in sl though. I do agree they need to do better on the marketing front-but I think the WHOLE marketing front-which includes the adult community.

 

[Caeruleiae]

2 hours ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

Your first sentence tells me you didn't even bother to read any of my posts. You've wasted enough of my time.

Please go back and read the post I had responded to. I DID read your post and addressed it. Someone else said that they didn't think ll should implement something-I am not the one that said it. There is no need for hostility. If you actually read any of my posts at all you will see I am all for ll promoting ALL communities and ALL interests in sl. I always have been-and I've gotten a lot of flack from people right on these forums for saying it.

In fact coffee is one of the people that jumped on my ass when I said that ll doesn't spend enough time in world-ad therefore doesn't understand their userbase. I have said it countless times-ll does NOT know its audience-nor how to market it-let alone market to a future audience. 

[Kathlen Onyx]

5 minutes ago, Caeruleiae said:

I do agree they need to do better on the marketing front-but I think the WHOLE marketing front-which includes the adult community.

 

What part of the adult community do they need to market? That's the problem right there. There are as many different "adult communities" as there are people and some of the adult activities are not something I'd want SL to promote. So who gets to choose?

Edited July 2, 2023 by Sam1 Bellisserian

[Chery Amore]

What a read.. or a skim anyway. 
I thought the topic was interesting as presented way back on page one and had some thoughts on the hierarchy and how it related to my sl enjoyment and why I keep coming back. But after reading the deterioration I might as well boil it down because I somehow feel compelled to do that.

I think my homes in SL give me the security and safety feel basically. Without a homebase that I could rez stuff in,  I have no doubt I would log in less and less.
Belonging and love needs are also met. Which does includes friendship and for me anyway (oh no) sex.. Yes I know, say it ain't so Joe! 
Esteem needs can be met by all sorts of things for me, for instance having a group or being in any successful (to me) enterprise, business or just doing something that is appreciated by others. 
Self Actualization is always in flux, but basically if I'm enjoying myself here and happy with myself and what I'm doing I guess I'm there. 

As an aside I do think having an adult area at the Shop and Hop was a good move. I was happy to see it and felt it was a move in the right direction.

I've brought up the subject before with friends that if there was another social platform that did .. err intimate animations better and smoother with high quality avatar customization and other social and creative outlets to engage in I'd dump SL to be there as long as it wasn't cost prohibitive.

[Caeruleiae]

31 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Fiscally. No they aren't. Even if no one visits either location, a region owner is measurably more important to the bottom line

Most of the people I know who own regions-and multiple regions-don't run sex clubs on them. Your idea that only regions with sex clubs are bringing in the money is hyperbole at best. I am fairly certain that people who own multiple regions-typically large rental companies-are bringing in more money for ll than all of your sex clubs combined. MOST of the sex clubs and adult venues I have been to-because even if I am not necessarily interested in them I do wander around sometimes-are on RENTED lands not full regions the club owner owns. This is the case with quite a few places-even some of the busiest clubs in sl are actually on rented land. It may not always look like it-but it's true.

[Love Zhaoying]

1 minute ago, Chery Amore said:

What a read.. or a skim anyway. 
I thought the topic was interesting as presented way back on page one and had some thoughts on the hierarchy and how it related to my sl enjoyment and why I keep coming back. But after reading the deterioration I might as well boil it down because I somehow feel compelled to do that.

I think my homes in SL give me the security and safety feel basically. Without a homebase that I could rez stuff in,  I have no doubt I would log in less and less.
Belonging and love needs are also met. Which does includes friendship and for me anyway (oh no) sex.. Yes I know, say it ain't so Joe! 
Esteem needs can be met by all sorts of things for me, for instance having a group or being in any successful (to me) enterprise, business or just doing something that is appreciated by others. 
Self Actualization is always in flux, but basically if I'm enjoying myself here and happy with myself and what I'm doing I guess I'm there. 

As an aside I do think having an adult area at the Shop and Hop was a good move. I was happy to see it and felt it was a move in the right direction.

I've brought up the subject before with friends that if there was another social platform that did .. err intimate animations better and smoother with high quality avatar customization and other social and creative outlets to engage in I'd dump SL to be there as long as it wasn't cost prohibitive.

I like your approach! Is it fair to say, that to you - the fact these needs are met is a "good thing"?  

 

 

[Prokofy Neva]

In fact ll does a really piss poor job of promoting-or selling as you put it-anything at all.

This is a widespread belief among the forums crowd at least, if not among the bien pensant in general, and in the recent Lab Gab (summarized by Inara Pey), Brett Linden took this up squarely:

Many misconceptions tend to be the result of people’s focus. For example, if they see SL paid ads, they assume the Marketing Team only does paid ads.

The overall strategy is far broader – wrapping into the Public Relations (including the use of an external company), the involvement in user acquisition and retention, etc.

Would also point out that Marketing is only one team within SL. They work extremely closely with Product and Product operations in particular, but this is sometimes misconstrued by users as to which team is doing what; sometimes Marketing will be operating in support of initiatives led by the other teams, sometimes they will actually be leading initiatives which may be perceived as being run by other teams

So I could point out that if there's a misconception, it's because LL doesn't explain enough to its core user base what it is marketing does. I was surprised that Brett Linden said he has been in SL for 16 years, because I personally don't really understand what he has been doing all this time. Perhaps it's because I associate outside media covering SL with the work of not Marketing, but Global Communications, which used to be run by Peter Linden/Peter Gray, who left in 2018 (and I don't know who does that job now). 

If anything, the forums commentators complain that SL doesn't do ENOUGH outside media ads. I see them now and then but I think even if they increased them 100 fold, that's NOT how they will make revenue for themselves, which is, after all, what this is all about. That's because I think there are some hard and fast rules now in our cultures, whether Calvinist legacy in the US (a feeling of guilt about pleasure) or socialist legacy in Europe (a feeling that wealth is unfairly distributed) and other such cultures around the world related to a sense of duty -- a good thing! -- that all mitigate against enjoying virtuality, which will always seem like hedonistic abandonment -- until it won't, when all the parts merge up.

But for a long time, it will always seem fake, wrong, an indulgence. As a result, or separately, some people just don't avatarize well. They don't "invest their consciousness in a toy," as Will Wright, inventor of the Sims, phrased it so well. And some people don't know how to make their own fun, or make things, period, so they need a structured world.

Meta and others didn't understand these hard and fast rules, and those that got more people in the door are either games or worlds structured very specifically for children like Roblox with more worlds or even more boutique worlds than SL like Sinespace.

So when Brett talks about Marketing successes, he means things like the Motown sim, which seems a success, or those  other partnerships whose names don't stick with me and which I didn't think were such a draw (some comic book with sexist stereotypes of women). But if those partnerships keep paying a fee, or at least keep paying tier, it's a win.

I think there's no question that Linden makes most of its revenue from land sales, and then the LindEx, and then content taxation on the MP. They want to get rid of the land model, because that's a big cost (AWS). I think they should embrace it and work towards the day when they sell SL in a box for people who can configure their own servers, and then figure out how to screen for SL hookup. But that's code and labour intensive, no doubt.

Also Brett speaks of helping other teams to position the product. I don't know if it is true (someone has quoted a Linden on this but I think the sourcing is poor) that LL breaks even on a Bellisseria sim because the cost of deployment -- I should think after the one-time cost of deployment it would keep kachinging ever after, isn't that supposed to be the beauty of virtuality? Except I suspect because of the quest for the ever-new, the war of Content and Discontent, as I call it, that Linden gets the same crowd leap-frogging to each new theme in Bellisseria and leaving empty sims behind. When I go back to some of the sims where I had gorgeous properties in Belli in the log cabins, which filled up, I see a lot of empty lots. That's anecdotal. In theory, they should be able to fill them in if they grow premiums just by a certain amount, no?

I think the Lindens have probably stood on their heads and tried everything they can, with a lot more RL expertise on this question than any of us have. Like others who complain in groups, I might personally feel I've done RL media placement or charity events organizing better than LL does but then I didn't attempt it at the scale and complexity they did.

Edited July 2, 2023 by Prokofy Neva

[Coffee Pancake]

20 minutes ago, Caeruleiae said:

No every other community hasn't been talked up and written about by ll. By other people outside of ll's employees-sure. Ll has only in recent times started actually discussing ANY community within sl-because they completely and utterly fail at marketing.

LL are very active with their blog, on social media and have been for some years (this is what Strawberry do). They're one of the top posters on the SL sub reddit I moderate.

The messaging is constant, and it doesn't work. No one cares someone stuck a train in a field with a skybox a decade ago, yes it;s pretty .. but no one cares enough to join in or go visit.

Everyone's playing dress up and hoping someone will hit them up.

6 minutes ago, Caeruleiae said:

Most of the people I know who own regions-and multiple regions-don't run sex clubs on them.

Of course .. I know people with regions full of breedables and nothing else. 

The point has never been that other things don't happen, the point is the main thing that does happen involving people is ignored. LL pretend SL is entirely about the top half of the pyramid.

Yes land rentals are the back bone of SL .. but what do people put on those rentals. Something less sex on the ground lots of very sex in the sky.

Go look at Belli and all the empty homes .. because people have elected not to use them, instead they build naughty skyboxes which due to the build restrictions are all very easy to find. 

LL are and have been focused on the empty homes. They wont look up .. where the people actually live.

Edited July 2, 2023 by Coffee Pancake

[Caeruleiae]

11 minutes ago, Sam1 Bellisserian said:

What part of the adult community do they need to market? That's the problem right there. There are as many different "adult communities" as there are people and some of the adult activities are not something I'd want SL to promote. So who gets to choose?

That is the hard part-I totally agree with you. This is why ll needs people that aren't currently employed by them to handle the marketing. They need people who KNOW how to get the answers to those kinds of questions. It's very clear that no one currently employed by them does. They don't even know what people get up to in sl most of the time-they only have a general idea. I certainly can't answer those questions directly either-but I'm not an ll employee. I can market for the company I work for and even our partners-but I know those businesses. I know the methods for gathering information we use. I know what our customers are doing-how they use our services-what they need from us. If I didn't know those things-the way ll doesn't seem to-I'd go find out. This is where ll begins to fail marketing-they put no real discernable effort into it from the start so therefore any action after is lackluster at best.

Sl would be much larger by now if they did a better job of marketing it all along the way. Starting to try now is a very good idea-but I don't know how much it can repair in the long term-with grabbing a larger audience and retaining them while still maintaining what they've got now. Slippery slope for a company that hasn't put the foundation in properly. 

[Persephone Emerald]

10 minutes ago, CandyCole said:

Tell me more (please include links).

Asking for a friend.

If I weren't so broke in RL I might buy one. I don't recall the name of the store, but a Search inworld on "animesh" will bring up a couple of stores that sell these. They include the same kinds of animations that are in Adult furniture, can be parked on furniture, don't require another avatar, and don't require tedious texting to be aroused and engaged. They also don't make assumptions about their user, don't change the animations on you, don't bother you with texts when they're horny, and are always available in your inventory when you might be.

I fear that after spending a few thousand lindens on one and using him a few times, he would then sit unused in my inventory, though, just as the rest of my Adult furniture and sex toys do. If I could afford a 2048 m Linden Home, maybe I could afford the Land Impact of a private play area, but until then I'd rather have a cute house on the ground level and just walk through the mostly empty better Adult sims, imagining what I might do if I were less shy and had better timing.

[Prokofy Neva]

8 minutes ago, Caeruleiae said:

Most of the people I know who own regions-and multiple regions-don't run sex clubs on them. Your idea that only regions with sex clubs are bringing in the money is hyperbole at best. I am fairly certain that people who own multiple regions-typically large rental companies-are bringing in more money for ll than all of your sex clubs combined. MOST of the sex clubs and adult venues I have been to-because even if I am not necessarily interested in them I do wander around sometimes-are on RENTED lands not full regions the club owner owns. This is the case with quite a few places-even some of the busiest clubs in sl are actually on rented land. It may not always look like it-but it's true.

The companies selling avatar body parts and clothing, plus the vehicles, breedables, houses, decor etc make way, way more than the adult oriented industry. There's simply a much larger population of people dressing up and hoping to find, as Coughran Mayo put it delicately, "Mr/Ms Right or Mr/Ms Right-Now" than the population who actually succeed at this.

[Love Zhaoying]

5 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Go look at Belli and all the empty homes .. because people have elected not to use them, instead they build naughty skyboxes which due to the build restrictions are all very easy to find. 

I totally agree on this! 

I was just thinking this morning, LL should provide "starter furniture".  (Maybe even "starter adult furniture!)

Sure, people can go buy a Premium Account for their "Bellisseria Home" - but it will be totally empty. 

Is your "need" really met for a "home" if you have an empty house with no furniture?

 

[Coffee Pancake]

8 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

think the Lindens have probably stood on their heads and tried everything they can, with a lot more RL expertise on this question than any of us have. Like others who complain in groups, I might personally feel I've done RL media placement or charity events organizing better than LL does but then I didn't attempt it at the scale and complexity they did.

They are afraid to offend anyone.

So for the vast majority of messaging, instead of love / hate that would be far more impact-full, we get beige or some artificial promotional guff that misses the mark so wildly it's just cringe. Pride is an obvious exception and LL do come out guns blazing for that, I just wish it translated into actual action more often (but that's a peeve with all corporate pride)

[Caeruleiae]

3 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

LL are very active with their blog, on social media and have been for some years (this is what Strawberry do). They're one of the top posters on the SL sub reddit I moderate

And outside of that subreddit? Like I said-until recent years ll themselves have not been actively talking up any community-they just haven't. They may have discussed sl here and there-and been on a very focused reddit-but beyond that? Strawberry was not always a linden employee. She did plenty of talking up different areas of interest and communities in sl yes-but again she did that BEFORE she was a linden employee. There are a lot of people who blog and have websites or participate other places where sl is discussed- none of them are ll employees though. It is residents who have done the bulk of marketing in this right-not ll.

5 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Everyone's playing dress up and hoping someone will hit them up.

No just no. I am not just here playing dress up hoping someone will hit me up. You should really get out of your own zone here on this one if you want people to understand where you're coming from. Not everyone is actually disagreeing with everything you say-the chip can go. You can't see the times when anyone agrees with anything you say because you're stuck in this being offended and angry mode and it makes it very difficult for anything you say to come across as anything other than nipping about unnecessary things.

7 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Yes land rentals are the back bone of SL .. but what do people put on those rentals. Something less sex on the ground lots of very sex in the sky

Nope-again not even remotely correct. Just because people have furniture in their homes that might have adult animations in them doesn't mean that's all they are there for. Again-get out of your own bubble and stop associating everything around your own personal vicinity with everyone else on the grid. You're never going to make a point about how crappy ll's marketing-GENERAL ALL ENCOMPASSING MARKETING-if you keep harping about adult this and adult that and sex pays ll's bills and that rubbish. People who own multiple regions often rent parcels out to individuals-what those individuals do on those parcels is irrelevant. The money ll makes comes from the land owner themselves-period. Rental companies bring the bulk of money to ll. Second to that-people who want premium-their reason for such is irrelevant-as it is a steady stream of income. That some may engage in adult activities-or any other activity-after buying premium also does not matter. It's not the sex bringing money in-it's the credit cards and bank accounts attached to the very real people behind the screen. 

11 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Go look at Belli and all the empty homes .. because people have elected not to use them, instead they build naughty skyboxes which due to the build restrictions are all very easy to find

So? I have adult furniture and I've never even used those animations. So are you saying the money ll has gotten from me was from sex too? That's just ridiculous. I don't even have naughty bits with which to get naughty in the first place! 

The rest of the drivel is just you continuing to pull the-but look at how maaaaaaaaaany people engage in adult activities as if no one else knows it. Of course we know it-people are just refuting some of the more ridiculous claims you're making. They're not refuting that sex is widely available in sl or that there is a big market for it or that ll has put absolutely zero effort into marketing it. 

[Prokofy Neva]

2 minutes ago, Caeruleiae said:

That is the hard part-I totally agree with you. This is why ll needs people that aren't currently employed by them to handle the marketing. They need people who KNOW how to get the answers to those kinds of questions. It's very clear that no one currently employed by them does. They don't even know what people get up to in sl most of the time-they only have a general idea. I certainly can't answer those questions directly either-but I'm not an ll employee. I can market for the company I work for and even our partners-but I know those businesses. I know the methods for gathering information we use. I know what our customers are doing-how they use our services-what they need from us. If I didn't know those things-the way ll doesn't seem to-I'd go find out. This is where ll begins to fail marketing-they put no real discernable effort into it from the start so therefore any action after is lackluster at best.

Sl would be much larger by now if they did a better job of marketing it all along the way. Starting to try now is a very good idea-but I don't know how much it can repair in the long term-with grabbing a larger audience and retaining them while still maintaining what they've got now. Slippery slope for a company that hasn't put the foundation in properly. 

I think you're mistaken about this. Look at the resumes and corporate descriptions of LL on lindenlab.com and other business sites and you will find some pretty impressive resumes and experience

I've already explained why I think, despite the best marketing minds and skills thrown at this, SL is a hard sell.

What I do think they are wrong about is their unwillingness to cut the resident population in on the deal, which I think would grow the platform for both parties.

That is, they pick and choose *some* residents who are their pets to get a coveted berth in the Web Hub Shopping District, or Shop 'n Hop, or other opportunities, but they don't open this up for simply cash. That was how Anshe Chung grew the telehub markets which is where most of the revenue of SL was made in the early years (not now). She simply democratically made it available for a price. While it's true not every poor person from every poor country could come up with that cash price, some entrepreneurial poor people could, at least for a time, and that's how they got eyeballs for their wares.

The Lindens used to provide ad space on pillars at all telehubs for a two-week period. When the telehubs were removed, they took this away. I think they should emphatically bring it back, make it a reasonable fee, and not worry overly about "adult content". 

I think they should have networked roadside billboard space for rent as in RL, and that would help improve the view and make the ugly extortionist stuff have to recede because the business community would have attractive, reasonable advertising space instead of the blight they have. I directly asked Brett about this in one town hall and he said ugh, we don't want billboards, because he couldn't really envision how this could be done WELL. But it certainly could. Any Linden content is perceived as better by the population at large; that's why "Linden protected" is still a real estate value. Make advertising Linden-protected!!!

They could sell space on the splash screen -- they have done that periodically but don't stick with it.

Some lawyer type, perhaps among the new owners, has injected this fear of brand confusion or appearing in a space with resident brands that might drag them down -- hence the utterly unjustified and stupid requirement forced on us in recent years among the SL Exhibitors spaces that we cannot show our logo, much less have a tip jar. Let people have logos and tip jars, and you will the quality improve, not worsen, as most quality brands in SL don't bother with a space where a) they can't display their logo or advertising b) make any amount of cash.

There is an inherent fear of commerce among the technocommunist ideologues of Second Life, and a fear of "any business but my business" among the technolibertarians who tend to prevail today. That's not the American Way, and frankly, not even the European or Asian way, where there is less tolerance of free commerce. 

The Lindens used to share the newbie stream at least with their pets, the FIC or even the resident-run Linden infohubs, to some extent. Then they were disappointed when their cramped A/B tests showed that no, going to Cubey's airfield or even Prokofy's Casablanca type sim didn't increase retention. I think A/B is not how this should be studied, and it also has to be done not with random scripts (the set of targets is too small to randomize well) and more openly -- anyone can PURCHASE a piece of the newbie stream on a billboard, an ad, an event, something. When the Lindens go back to welcoming and not fearing their co-creators of the world, they will do better. For that, they will have to close their ears to the forums complainers.

 

[Caeruleiae]

11 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

The companies selling avatar body parts and clothing, plus the vehicles, breedables, houses, decor etc make way, way more than the adult oriented industry. There's simply a much larger population of people dressing up and hoping to find, as Coughran Mayo put it delicately, "Mr/Ms Right or Mr/Ms Right-Now" than the population who actually succeed at this

All quite true. I don't know why anyone would think sex alone brings in the most revenue-it just doesn't there are too many other variables. 

[Quistess Alpha]

1 hour ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Please feel free to list all the successful PG sandbox virtual worlds.

Minecraft, Roblox. . . GTA5?

and of course, yes you can "but it doesn't XYZ" to disqualify them, but those are the only vague qualifiers (and GTA5 is only a honorable mention because my first SL friend said she did some work in the modding scene there) unless you count all the things without user-generated-content.

[Coffee Pancake]

8 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

The companies selling avatar body parts and clothing, plus the vehicles, breedables, houses, decor etc make way, way more than the adult oriented industry. There's simply a much larger population of people dressing up and hoping to find, as Coughran Mayo put it delicately, "Mr/Ms Right or Mr/Ms Right-Now" than the population who actually succeed at this.

Of course .. Everyone needs hair and shoes, even the people who aren't here for other people.

The adult side of SL by its very existence allows "Mr/Ms Right or Mr/Ms Right-Now" to exist as a possibility and that alone is a strong motivator (and certainly one from the lower half of the pyramid).

Sansar and other PG worlds fail socially because the lack of sex means people self censor. Flirting might be fine and within the rules, but people don't though an abundance of caution. If people feel they can't engage in that way, most conversations are dead before the start.

[Love Zhaoying]

Just now, Quistess Alpha said:

Minecraft, Roblox. . . GTA5?

and of course, yes you can "but it doesn't XYZ" to disqualify them, but those are the only vague qualifiers (and GTA5 is only a honorable mention because my first SL friend said she did some work in the modding scene there) unless you count all the things without user-generated-content.

Is there no "Sims" example? I am ignorant, but I thought there used to be a "Sims Online".  

I think that @Silent Mistwalker has written about Sims a lot. Silent, if that was indeed you - can you confirm there was - or was not - a "PG Sandbox" versions of "The Sims"?

 

[Prokofy Neva]

5 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

They are afraid to offend anyone.

So for the vast majority of messaging, instead of love / hate that would be far more impact-full, we get beige or some artificial promotional guff that misses the mark so wildly it's just cringe. Pride is an obvious exception and LL do come out guns blazing for that, I just wish it translated into actual action more often (but that's a peeve with all corporate pride)

I don't understand this.

I think a lot of their messaging about "enjoy summer" or the current splash screen, even if cringe-worthy, is based on the idea that they need to appear to furries. Or Blacks. Or LGBT. Or some demographic that they identified as being more prevalent or at the growing tip of SL. So that means everyone who is NOT a furry who comes to the current join screen is going to back away. I think they go niche in a world where niche politics seems to work, but Hakim Jeffries wouldn't be trying to subdue a lot of the NY Dems now if niche identity politics really worked. The Lindens, like Hakim need to get back to bread and butter issues. Housing. Anti-Crime. Jobs. That sort of thing.