AnnabelleApocalypse

Comparing an individual banning another individual from making purchases in their store is of course comparable to Soviet Russia. How silly for the rest of us not to have seen this breathtakingly obvious comparison sooner. Thankfully by your logic, these huge SL brands that practice such Stalinist banning's must be mere weeks or months away from total collapse.

To be human is to attempt to seek or create meaning in an inherently meaningless and indifferent universe. That's why we spend so much time in forums saying things like "No, YOUR missing the point!".

I'm Trans, and I also consider myself "normal". I have a face. I breathe air. Am I allowed to be normal? That would be nice. You do know that technically the acronym is LGBTQIA2S+ these days? Because people are insane. And the dual temptation of putting people into easy to understand tribes AND a stupid acronym is too much for our hyper-advanced monkey-brains to resist. So how about.......uuuuuh...... Lets Get Busy. Tequila. Quaalude. I'm Absolutely 2 Sh*tfaced.............. + Or something?

Kinda leaves out........everyone but Transgender people though, doesn't it? lol Cant see many Lesbians using it if I am honest. But if #TransPower ever takes off like White and Black has in recent years, you may be onto something. Excluding people does seem to be a growth industry these days. Though in that case, I would phrase it more like: "Love IS better with Transgenders. No Questions!" And we send anyone who disagrees to the Glitter Gulag to make disco balls and high heels. Honestly, the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. Here, I already designed the inmate of the month uniform.......

That's normally how it goes down for me too. I recently bought a top on the MP that had some clipping issues at the back. I could have review-bombed the seller. Like a jackass. But I just messaged them, explained the problem, they apologized, were really nice, we had a chat, they took a look and fixed it. Now I had a part in making the world better for me, for them and for their future customers. Zen moment for the day achieved. And needless to say, I gave them a 5 star review, AFTER I had given them an opportunity to fix my issue. I always feel like a negative review is the "nuclear option" when all other options have gotten nowhere.

Fun fact: If you refund someone fully on Etsy (EDIT: Dont refund, cancel the entire order), they lose the ability to leave any form of review. They also don't allow you to leave a review immediately. So while you cant strictly speaking "block" someone, you can make it virtually impossible for them to get up to any shenanigan's. .......Not that I have an Etsy store or anything please stay away!

Strip away the superfluous verbiage about returning the world to the pre Enlightenment era, and your point seems to boil down to this. I would say - you cant please everyone and to try to do so is foolhardy. At some point, a customer with an issue becomes more of a drain on your time resources than the actual sale is worth. And time is money. From a small boutique perspective, its better the focus your energies on your customers that are happy than the few who are/appear they may cause problems. You seem to be assuming that they NEED your money. While that may be true in some cases, most are not THAT desperate for a sale. Especially if they can foresee from prior experience that the customer may cause them issues. Then clearly you didnt do even a perfunctory Google search and find the official eBay page where it explains exactly how you do that. Ebay gives you a block list. You just drop the account name into the list, click update and done. And its been that way since Ebay has existed. Amazon does not have a direct function to do this. You have to report the customer to Amazon and they take action if they deem it necessary. The very concept of Capitalism is predicated upon the idea of businesses and individuals voluntarily transacting with each other for mutual benefit. No, because your review still stands. You had your say. Isnt that enough for you? Also, if that Etsy seller offered you a full refund, where is the problem? You get your money back + some free stuff. Why potentially ruin someone's livelihood? Have a little compassion maybe? They did the right thing by offering a refund. Scrubbing reviews is an entirely different issue and one I don't agree with. But a merchant is perfectly entitled to pre-emptively avoid a transaction they feel has a high likelihood of going bad, or from a customer who has already proven difficult for them to please. You cant force someone to sell you something if they dont want to. P.E.R.I.O.D. Its a very basic principle. I have thing you want to buy. You have money. Its MY choice whether I sell to you or not. That decision can be based on any number of factors. The market value, do I want to ship to your location, my previous experiences with you and/or how I perceive you. So long as I dont make it arbitrarily personal (Eg: not selling to you because "I dont sell to women" or "you have a Hispanic surname"), I am within my right.

Even us Cybergoths are smiling these days....kinda.

IMHO absolutely. Just like in RL, the business owner gets to decide who they do business with. Period. No further reasons or justifications need be given. Right? Or have I been fundamentally misunderstanding the way the world works for my entire life? They are providing a service to you. Not something your automatically entitled to. I have a couple of friends who are involved with RL online retail, and they say its perfectly standard to pre-emptively ban a customer even if they ask a question that comes off like they may be a "problem customer" in future if they make a purchase. For example, asking too many very exacting questions about quality, or even just speaking in a "generally negative" tone. Happens. All. The. Time. Places like Amazon and Ebay (and to some extent our very own SLMP) are more of a free-for-all because the companies running them are just middle-men. They don't give a crap about any of us so long as they get that sweet sweet % cut. They generally only take action against problem customers when the abuse is absolutely clear and/or the law requires. Nothing more. But small companies especially will go out of their way to avoid problem customers. Because they are small, a little negative press can sink them easily. And barring maybe a dozen of SL's hugest brands, EVERY merchant is a "small company". Sorry folks, that's them Capitalism's for ya.

Can I surmise this thread as "I want to have a tantrum because nothing in the latest patch is directly relevant to me"?. Or is there more nuance here that I am missing?

I have always rented from letting agencies/ land barons, and every place I have ever rented has a little stand where it shows you a few stats about the land, including how many "prims" you get, but this invariably means the Land Impact (LI) or Prim Equivalence (PE). Interchangeable terms that mean the same thing. And so long as your bath costs 1 "prim", even though its made of two parts, this should not matter to your landlord, as the server counts the combined object as 1 prim. Period. So yeah, smells like a jerk landlord to me. This is certainly not the case if you rent a bigger parcel from one of the larger land barons. I have never had dealings with the smaller ones. Your landlord may have mentioned this prim restriction in their terms/land covenant. If the price seemed too good to be true, this is probably why. I would guess they are using the extra headroom to squeeze in more rentals and therefore more profit per sim/area.

I like that idea. A little spontaneous memorial gathering. Ill be along shortly!

Terribly sad to hear this I never had the pleasure of speaking to him personally, but he always seemed to be a lovely, genuine and enthusiastic person who really cared about our little weird corner of the internet. I think it is safe to say one of the most highly regarded CEOs since Philip left. My heart goes out to all his family and friends. xox

Its because they know they can just chuck some basic slex anims in there and charge (At least) 1000L$ more.

I definitely think there was a period of time when LL were ashamed of the adult content side of things. There were some rather unfortunate scandals. The FBI got involved if I remember correctly? Nowadays I think they are much more at peace with it, but that's not the same as actively promoting it. Which they definitely don't do.

I do think a big hurdle for most people is getting your avi looking good. Or at least not noobish. The feeling of connection to your avatar is a big "moment" on the path of becoming hooked on SL, but many never reach that point. I came back after a few years away fairly recently and everyone had changed over to mesh bodies in the meantime. I was sooo confused with it all. If I was a total beginner and was confronted with that. pretty sure I would have given up in frustration.

Its been nearly an hour and they didn't respond. How rude.

So why bother doing anything, ever, right? Even if you do something well, you'll eventually become complacent. So best not to even start.

To a great extent, in an ideal world I agree with you 100%. But the response so far has proven that we are not in an ideal scenario. But my opinion is based on how this pandemic has unfolded so far, from my perspective here in the UK. Test, trace and quarantine have failed to stop a single variant entering the country. This is just a fact. Various scientific and international health bodies have been shouting for years about the possibility of a pandemic just like this one. Governments didnt listen. We could have had all the infrastructure in place to better deal with this. But, money. So we didnt.

Power is not the same thing as competency. Not sure the point your getting at. EDIT - and no government 100% controls what goes on within their borders. They just present that illusion. I think the definition of a failed state is a little more complex.

Well, yeah but then you need your political class to recognize that and let those people do their job. Same difference. Ummmm, ok? I feel you went off the deep end just a teeny tiny bit there. lol And you do still need a competent government to ENFORCE IT. Not to tell you what to do. That's a different issue. But to ACT on the advice of bodies like the WHO, no? Or do we also give the powers of enforcement to the WHO too?

The thing about quarantine is you need a competent government to enforce it. Its much more complex than simply banning flights. New Zealand, Japan, Australia and a few others seem to have managed this well. Others not so much. See my previous post about the indian variant in the UK.

Governments and international bodies like the WHO have all responded with varying degrees of effectiveness. I didn't say anything either way about the WHO. The UK and US governments have been a clusterf*ck too. In the UK, the Indian variant is now exploding here, just as were starting to lift lockdown. And we didnt stop arrivals from India, even though we know (EDIT: rather, we KNEW several weeks ago) positive cases were 50% higher in Indian arrivals than from any other county. Pure. Insanity. to me, closing the borders to international travel should be the first priority. Trade is a much harder proposition as we are so interconnected now. But I was more responding to the idea that its more logical that it came about in a lab rather than through the effects of globalization and environmental degradation. I find that kinda silly since we have tons of examples of viruses jumping from animals to humans. Labs......not so much. Dont get me wrong, it totally happens. But Ive not seen any good evidence (so far) in this case.

So....ummmmm......did you read the quote bit from the UN report which says: yes absolutely and we have tons of previous examples. ....? If were talking logic, its totally logical that a more globalized and interconnected world allows for faster virus transmission. I dont see how that is arguable on any level. This was known in medieval times. Towns would seal themselves up to either keep the plague out or in some tragic cases, keep it in. So even back then we knew that travel and trade somehow spread disease. Look up the Eyam Plague. Encroachment is more arguable I guess. But again, it seems logical that as we put greater pressure on creatures health and environment, they will become more susceptible to disease. Which will knock-on to us in some form or other. I think modern "agriculture", especially battery farms play a big role in hothousing some viruses. But to say it doesnt seem logical for it to suddenly jump from bats to humans.......thats kind of what viruses do. Viruses mutate and some of those mutations through selection pressure or sheer genetic fluke grant them the ability to infect new species. And again, we have tons of previous examples. Bird Flu, Swine Flu, AIDS/HIV, West Nile, Rabies, Lyme Disease etc, etc........etc etc. According to the CDC, six out of every 10 infectious diseases in people are of zoonotic origin. No lab needed!

In retrospect I think it was (a misguided attempt) to stop people totally freaking out. Think back to when it was all kicking off. Shops were getting stripped. Toilet paper was £50 a gram. People were on edge. Maybe they thought adding "Oh sh*t its airborne!" might have created a real panic. This was re-enforced for me by watching the news. At least in the UK, when they talked about transmission they would explain the mechanics (EG: "the virus can hang in the air for several minutes, and air currents can carry it across significant distance") but without ever actually saying "airborne". It was like the forbidden word. You could describe it but never say it. I clearly remember it because it was so ridiculous. EDIT I know: conspiracy theory, no proof