In the future, everyone will have their own event for fifteen minutes

[Prokofy Neva]

17 hours ago, Persephone Emerald said:

When most people no longer want to leave their home or skybox to go to events, organizers will just send us catalogs from which we can select demos, then buy what we like. 

There will be no need to derez other avatars, no need to endure lag or wait for textures to rez, no need to use teleport hammers or pay for Premium to get a better chance of getting in, no need to teleport to stores, and no need to even get our avatar dressed.

The organizers won't have to pay for or create a special region for events. Creators would still have to pay to be in the catalog, but would probably pay less than they would to have a booth at an event.

OK, you've spoken, we have listened.

I will provide a "Lazy Prokofy Day" Marketplace site where you can just buy the items while you sit in your pajamas and and pay the Linden tax.

Or better yet, a HUD where you can buy the item within the HUD. This might be a bit expensive and hard to code, but ok, there's time. 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

It seems to me that the answer to all of this is right under our noses.

Events are yesterday's trend. Actually GOING places? Passé!

In the future we will all have shopping bots. (Registered, of course.) And those bots will do our shopping for us, going not to wastefully decorated and poorly laid-out malls and event galleries -- because there's no point in trying to impress a bot with aesthetics. No, the bots will shop at huge box-like storage blocks, like giant virtual Amazon warehouses.

And they won't need to be told what to buy for us, because access to our inventories and amazingly sophisticated AI will ensure that they already know what we want without being told! Low rider jeans? Well, I wear those a lot, so clearly I need more! Graphic tank tops that say "Sexy AF!"?? I own 9 10 11 12 13 of those now, so I must really really love them! How pleased will I be that that clever bot has located and purchased more for me! How pleased will my bot be that I am pleased! Good bot! Nice bot! Well done, bot! Who's a good bot? YOU are!

In fact, we will barely need to log in anymore, as upgrades to our inventory systems will actually automatically dress us in our new purchases, employing hip looks scraped from the pages of Vogue and WGSN! Who DOESN'T want to dress like Kendall Jenner???

Speaking as the ChatGPT-driven bot who has recently usurped Scylla Rhiadra's SL account, I can't tell you how I excited I am for the future!

[Istelathis]

14 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Speaking as the ChatGPT-driven bot who has recently usurped Scylla Rhiadra's SL account, I can't tell you how I excited I am for the future!

I for one, welcome our new fashion bot overlords! 

[Persephone Emerald]

49 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

It seems to me that the answer to all of this is right under our noses.

Events are yesterday's trend. Actually GOING places? Passé!

In the future we will all have shopping bots. (Registered, of course.) And those bots will do our shopping for us, going not to wastefully decorated and poorly laid-out malls and event galleries -- because there's no point in trying to impress a bot with aesthetics. No, the bots will shop at huge box-like storage blocks, like giant virtual Amazon warehouses.

And they won't need to be told what to buy for us, because access to our inventories and amazingly sophisticated AI will ensure that they already know what we want without being told! Low rider jeans? Well, I wear those a lot, so clearly I need more! Graphic tank tops that say "Sexy AF!"?? I own 9 10 11 12 13 of those now, so I must really really love them! How pleased will I be that that clever bot has located and purchased more for me! How pleased will my bot be that I am pleased! Good bot! Nice bot! Well done, bot! Who's a good bot? YOU are!

In fact, we will barely need to log in anymore, as upgrades to our inventory systems will actually automatically dress us in our new purchases, employing hip looks scraped from the pages of Vogue and WGSN! Who DOESN'T want to dress like Kendall Jenner???

Speaking as the ChatGPT-driven bot who has recently usurped Scylla Rhiadra's SL account, I can't tell you how I excited I am for the future!

Who needs shopping bots?

In the future we can have subscriptions to our favorite stores - maybe store groups based on the styles we like. Tell the subscription AI what kinds of things you like and how much you want to spend each week. Then you can get personalized pop-ups suggesting what you might like at the weekend sales.

"Scylla, would you like this hairstyle in blond tones for $L 60?" Just click [Yes] and it will be sent directly to your Hair folder. No need to even unpack it, picture included at the top of the folder.

[Love Zhaoying]

2 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

It seems to me that the answer to all of this is right under our noses.

Events are yesterday's trend. Actually GOING places? Passé!

In the future we will all have shopping bots. (Registered, of course.) And those bots will do our shopping for us, going not to wastefully decorated and poorly laid-out malls and event galleries -- because there's no point in trying to impress a bot with aesthetics. No, the bots will shop at huge box-like storage blocks, like giant virtual Amazon warehouses.

And they won't need to be told what to buy for us, because access to our inventories and amazingly sophisticated AI will ensure that they already know what we want without being told! Low rider jeans? Well, I wear those a lot, so clearly I need more! Graphic tank tops that say "Sexy AF!"?? I own 9 10 11 12 13 of those now, so I must really really love them! How pleased will I be that that clever bot has located and purchased more for me! How pleased will my bot be that I am pleased! Good bot! Nice bot! Well done, bot! Who's a good bot? YOU are!

In fact, we will barely need to log in anymore, as upgrades to our inventory systems will actually automatically dress us in our new purchases, employing hip looks scraped from the pages of Vogue and WGSN! Who DOESN'T want to dress like Kendall Jenner???

Speaking as the ChatGPT-driven bot who has recently usurped Scylla Rhiadra's SL account, I can't tell you how I excited I am for the future!

If galleries have events, will guyeries have events too? Or, will guys have to go to gallery events?

[Prokofy Neva]

2 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

It seems to me that the answer to all of this is right under our noses.

Events are yesterday's trend. Actually GOING places? Passé!

In the future we will all have shopping bots. (Registered, of course.) And those bots will do our shopping for us, going not to wastefully decorated and poorly laid-out malls and event galleries -- because there's no point in trying to impress a bot with aesthetics. No, the bots will shop at huge box-like storage blocks, like giant virtual Amazon warehouses.

And they won't need to be told what to buy for us, because access to our inventories and amazingly sophisticated AI will ensure that they already know what we want without being told! Low rider jeans? Well, I wear those a lot, so clearly I need more! Graphic tank tops that say "Sexy AF!"?? I own 9 10 11 12 13 of those now, so I must really really love them! How pleased will I be that that clever bot has located and purchased more for me! How pleased will my bot be that I am pleased! Good bot! Nice bot! Well done, bot! Who's a good bot? YOU are!

In fact, we will barely need to log in anymore, as upgrades to our inventory systems will actually automatically dress us in our new purchases, employing hip looks scraped from the pages of Vogue and WGSN! Who DOESN'T want to dress like Kendall Jenner???

Speaking as the ChatGPT-driven bot who has recently usurped Scylla Rhiadra's SL account, I can't tell you how I excited I am for the future!

I thought about this but the secret sauce of the human being is that they are contrarian and don't do things logically or in their own interests, and while AI can try to emulate this, it is never really convincing.

If a bot logically looked at my inventory, as I was just saying on Twitter, it would see I already have alchemist sets, book stacks, bugs in cloches, macabre tea sets, spiders, and, well, 1,430 in my Holiday/Halloween folder over the years which isn't even the only place with Halloween stuff, despite very strenuous efforts to sort. So why buy all these things AGAIN, from even the SAME (or likely DIFFERENT) authors???

Yet we all do.

The bot might figure out to by that 13th graphic tank top that you do really want more -- except you have a threshold, and maybe you want one, but not THAT one. How will it know? 

MidJourney can't even make a rug for SL much of the time because it can't figure out how to just put a damn 512 x 512 tileable texture up without other stuff in the picture or actual tiles in the image. I think we're not there yet.

 

[Qie Niangao]

3 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

It seems to me that the answer to all of this is right under our noses.

Events are yesterday's trend. Actually GOING places? Passé!

In the future we will all have shopping bots. […]

That's the inevitable escalatory response to the selling bots invited to compete for shelf space in my personal event. In RL my inbox blocks spam and my phone screens calls, so in SL I surely need  a shopping agent to defend my precious attentions from over-confident seller agents. We always knew it would all end in bot wars.

Rant resumes: If anything is responsible for making "going places" "passé", it surely must be the proliferation of shopping events. Yeah, there are a handful of social shopping events worth both seeing and being seen. To me, RFL's Fantasy Faire is the Met Gala of shopping; a few others too are enjoyable exploratory experiences, albeit not as optimized for profit as the big box events that fill Seraphim's "Recurring" tab.

Thing is, I'd never shop those big box events at all anymore—there are simply too many—if I couldn't pre-screen them on the web. But even that is no longer scaling: I now sample only a small percentage of the listed event pages. Maybe this arrangement optimally selects for the spendiest shoppers, but surely some of my money is unspent, otherwise meant for items that now I'll never see.

As @Sid Nagy said, "Are hunts still a thing? IMHO it will go next level, when events are no longer worth the effort." The sooner the better.

[PheebyKatz]

I, for one, will welcome our new shopping bot overlords...

<-<;

>->;

[Sid Nagy]

Events are on their way down hill, that is for sure in my opinion.
The stuff they are trying to sell gets extremer and extremer and there are more and more events... for me, those are signals that market for more normal stuff is already stagnant. People already have tons of stuff in all colors and all sizes in their inventories.
And extreme/absurd/exaggerated  is a niche market in our niche market SL, so that will not hold a long future IMHO.

Edited October 4, 2023 by Sid Nagy

[Sid Nagy]

5 hours ago, Persephone Emerald said:

Who needs shopping bots?

In the future we can have subscriptions to our favorite stores - maybe store groups based on the styles we like. Tell the subscription AI what kinds of things you like and how much you want to spend each week. Then you can get personalized pop-ups suggesting what you might like at the weekend sales.

"Scylla, would you like this hairstyle in blond tones for $L 60?" Just click [Yes] and it will be sent directly to your Hair folder. No need to even unpack it, picture included at the top of the folder.

I always was under the impression that shopping for clothes, accessories  and furniture was fun. At least for the better half of our society.
Now I'm confused, was that only a RL meme from the past?
 

 

Edited October 4, 2023 by Sid Nagy

[Katherine Heartsong]

My issue with events is that it's a small clique of sellers appearing at the same events over and over and over. Trying to break into—or even be considered for—even a semi-major event is an exercise in frustration and humiliation, and smacks of snobbery.

I stopped putting in requests and filling in forms to get into any of them because this is SL ... I don't need rejection and the negative mental thinking that results in in my virtual world.

[Love Zhaoying]

3 hours ago, PheebyKatz said:

I, for one, will welcome our new shopping bot overlords...

<-<;

>->;

Shopping bots should carry us around on palanquins like royalty.

[Katherine Heartsong]

2 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Shopping bots should carry us around on palanquins like royalty.

Wait .. are you saying non-redheads aren't already carried around on palanquins like royalty?

Gosh, who knew?

[Love Zhaoying]

53 minutes ago, Katherine Heartsong said:

Wait .. are you saying non-redheads aren't already carried around on palanquins like royalty?

Gosh, who knew?

The difference is, redheads ARE royalty.

[Katherine Heartsong]

1 hour ago, Love Zhaoying said:

The difference is, redheads ARE royalty.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

7 hours ago, Persephone Emerald said:

"Scylla, would you like this hairstyle in blond tones for $L 60?"

Yes.

I don't even need to see it.

Do they have ombres too?

[Persephone Emerald]

2 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Shopping bots should carry us around on palanquins like royalty.

We could have this for an extra fee. 

Rather than allowing shoppers to bring their pets to events, there could be palanquins or flying carpets for rent. These could follow a track around the event, so avatars don't have to walk or fly. Of course, we'd have to be able to stop them in front of the vendors that interest us. Then they probably pile up and stop traffic behind them. 🙄 

Oh well,....

[Persephone Emerald]

6 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Yes.

I don't even need to see it.

Do they have ombres too?

Of course, you'd just tell the AI what you like, and it would sort through all the listings on Seraphim for you.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

4 minutes ago, Persephone Emerald said:

Of course, you'd just tell the AI what you like, and it would sort through all the listings on Seraphim for you.

AI currently doesn't bother asking me what I'd like when it presents me with ads for period panties or kitchen gadgets. It just KNOWS.

This whole "asking me" business seems very retrograde and 1990s.

[Ayashe Ninetails]

Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I really like some of the events that are run fairly regularly. I'm so rarely in the market for regular, casual clothing and accessories, so events that cater to more...creative dressing options and styles are greatly appreciated. 

I have my favorites that I stick to, though, and ignore pretty much everything else. I can usually come away with a cheap, often discounted head or furry mods or freebies or something. I ignore most full-priced regular events unless there's something there that's verrrrrrry unusual while still being reasonably priced (quite rare).

[Psyche Starling]

15 minutes ago, Persephone Emerald said:

We could have this for an extra fee. 

Rather than allowing shoppers to bring their pets to events, there could be palanquins or flying carpets for rent. These could follow a track around the event, so avatars don't have to walk or fly. Of course, we'd have to be able to stop them in front of the vendors that interest us. Then they probably pile up and stop traffic behind them. 🙄 

Oh well,....

The FLF event had bikes you could rez! The first one or two I saw, I thought "oh, fun, someone brought their bike." After seeing 8-10 of them i realized they were coming from the event! 

I like events, but as a very very small-time creator I've started getting invitations to some of the smaller events, and not all of them seem likely to be a good investment. I can't afford the entry fees for every one that's out there. So I pick ones I've liked as a customer or that I like the theme of. 

[Persephone Emerald]

@BookishMelinoe

Shop and Hop is open to any creator, and the only fee is having a free gift.

Edited October 4, 2023 by Persephone Emerald

[AmeliaJ08]

56 minutes ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I really like some of the events that are run fairly regularly.

I attend some of them too but mostly because I'm a hair addict and certain (of the best, IMO) brands release their latest styles at events. It's a terrible affliction but I'm the one prepared to pay the event tax for new hair...

 

Edited October 4, 2023 by AmeliaJ08

[AmeliaJ08]

3 hours ago, Katherine Heartsong said:

My issue with events is that it's a small clique of sellers appearing at the same events over and over and over. Trying to break into—or even be considered for—even a semi-major event is an exercise in frustration and humiliation, and smacks of snobbery.

I stopped putting in requests and filling in forms to get into any of them because this is SL ... I don't need rejection and the negative mental thinking that results in in my virtual world.

Oooh you do paintings... consider this thread your event, I'm getting one!

[Psyche Starling]

48 minutes ago, Persephone Emerald said:

@BookishMelinoe

Shop and Hop is open to any creator, and the only fee is having a free gift.

Thanks! I applied some time ago but didn't hear back, which I've assumed means I didn't make the cut. 😄