I LOSE! And Buy Hair

 
Location: Discord Designs Main Store

Wrong wrong wrong. I was wrong, so instead of being the bully that one commenter said I have been, I put my 1000L where my big mouth is.

CronoCloud has a point that SL is about fashion and playing dress-up, and she's not only won 1000L but also convinced me that...I am a fashionista. There is simply no easy way to refute her point or prove mine that RP and other uses of SL outnumber the fashion-minded.

But if I am a fashionista, so worried about his damned fake hair, then so are many of my female colleagues in VWER. They love dressing up. Now stay with me and reason it out.  If anyone who cares about avatar appearance is a fashionista, then...Cronocloud is correct.

So, with a tip of the tophat to her, I went in search of low-ARC dreadlocks at a shop she recommends.



And I gave up. To hell with ARC! Every dread I tried bumped me up from 33K to over 55K, but dahling, it's all about me and my look right?

Since I do love my Mystical Designs Dreads, and the creator,  Mystikal Faddool, has apparently left SL, my old doo is staying on my fake skull.

But then, across a nearly empty showroom (and looking right past a nearly naked SL girly-girl) I saw....FACIAL HAIR. Creator Kallisti Burns clearly understands the appeal. She has a Dali mustache that is priceless (and a steal at 45L for one tone or 90L for a range of them).

But I had other things in mind (though I may have to appear as Dali soon at an arts event).



Now I'm all set, and thanks to CronoCloud, I have some synchronicity going. My circle of wags has been discussing the origin of Frank Zappa's album "Weasels Ripped My Flesh," ever since we discovered it to be the name of an infamous tale of survival published in a 1950s men's pulp magazine.

Now I've got the 'stache for the new chin-wagging session. Rock on, fashionistas!  You do keep SL alive!

Hell Hath No Fury, Like a Fashionista Scorned

Location: Duck, Cover, Rant

Especially when, in her blogger profile picture, she sports a tiara. My loose-cannon mouth has gotten me in trouble, again! Yay, me.

At Hamlet Au's post about the impending closure of a sim based on Firefly, I ranted without any evidence that if RP goes out of Second Life, Linden Lab will have to close the doors:

• For all the fashionista angst over mesh doo-dads and the right eyeshadow, I'd wager that there's not enough XXX and play-Barbie customer base out there to keep the Lab open. 

I'll quote and, I hope, answer CronoCloud Creegan's return rant, with me as straw man taking a beating for all the "cranky oldbies" of SL who like to build stuff, increasingly prefer Open Sim, and once had, like many male educators in SL, epic bad taste in fashion and hair (our picture today is a fashion disaster that happened to me in the OpenLife Grid some years back).

Tophat v. Tiara, Round One:

It is partly true that I'm a cranky oldbie, because I'm actually a "midbie" who came into SL in early 2007, smack-dab during the Hype Era. Still, CronoCloud misrepresents me badly in some regards. I don't actually think women are 10% of the Internet or SL; in VWER, they represent more than 50% of the attendees and, yes, they are RL women too because they have First-Life info in their profiles and care about hair, clothes, and shoes.

But this post is not about me, or even women in SL, darn it! It's about how Linden Lab pays its bills. And at the end, I'll offer to place a bet with CronoCloud.


The Numbers, PLEASE!

I faced this claim at CronoCloud's blog:

• Oh Iggy, the hardcore RP community in SL is miniscule. the clubgoing howlzers outnumber them 10 to 1 at least, even in the old days hardcore RP was a niche.

10-to-1 is a big margin. And not all "clubgoing howlzers" are fashionistas. That said, evidence please?

Let's begin with a journey to the bare-chested macho men and naked slave girls (does good skin make one a fashionista?) of Gor. The numbers may have changed, but over a year ago I encountered a statistic that 300 Gor-RP sims exist in SL.

As of yesterday, Tyche Shepherd's Grid Survey for Oct. 2010 (latest available data) shows this:

• 17153 Moderate-Rated Private Estates and 2853 Adult-Rated Ones
• 56.5% of Private Estate regions are Full Regions, 42.9% are Homesteads, 0.6% are Openspaces
• 43.2% of Mainland owned directly by Linden Accounts (Contiguous Mainland is 6723 regions including Linden Home regions)

But back to Tarl Beefcake and his clingy Kajirae: Goreans must all use private estates and not mainland because of the adult-focused content of Gorean RP.  I suspect that many other RP regions are on the mainland, and they won't ring in at $295/month. I have not visited Zindra but I suspect that the Adult-rated continent does not include Gor sims.

Using my 300 as a baseline and Tyche's percentages, that means that 169 Gorean Sims are full regions (169 @ $295/month means $49,855 / month income to the Lab). The other 131 Gorean Homestead regions bring in, at $195/ month,  $25,545. Total for Linden Lab: $75400 per month.

I don't like Gorean philosophy or RP, but that's a tidy sum.  And how does income from Marketplace fees stack up against the sort of income that even 17K moderate regions generate?

Tiara v. Tophat, Round Two?

I'm going to assume that not too many fashion-related regions are Adult-rated and that all of the Gorean ones are. CronoCloud, show me those 3000 fashion sims!  It's possible, perhaps, that 17.4% of SL regions rated Moderate are for "clubgoing howlzers" who go shopping.

But I'd like more evidence.

Let's continue:

• But, Iggy, The Barbie girls...they outnumber you and the people like you by a HUGE margin. Haven't you SEEN the HUGE number of SL fashion blogs?  

I have. I don't read too many, beyond Iris' posts at NWN and, on occasion, Slipsters and Juicy Bomb. I love shopping for suits and shoes. But I doubt that I spend more than 2000L annually on clothes or accessories for Iggy.  My skin is ancient! In 2007 (ah! where's my fake walker and wheelchair!) fashionistas pointed me to hair and skin stores to get rid of my early "Frankenstein Monster" starter look.

I suspect CronoCloud is correct about the "Barbie girls" outnumbering the rest of the SLers. But not about the role of land-income that goes to Linden Lab. Hamlet Au ran some data recently about Minecraft's success, and in that post he cited these numbers from about a year back: using Tyche's numbers at the time, he estimated that for Linden Lab's cited profit of 75 million dollars consists of 72 million from land, 3 million for everything else.

The Bottom Line: Tier is the Thing

So, I want some economic stats to show that fashion-focused SL residents exist in numbers that correspond to an income-stream capable of keeping SL viable, long term. That was my original point in replying to Hamlet's post. Even though I poked fun at virtual fasionistas, my claim was really about the economy.

• Do you not realize that avatar appearance enhancements, drive the SL economy? In other words, the Fashionistas basically run SL behind the scenes. They have for quite a while now. They're the ones spending the money. Skin Fair? Hair Fair? Sin Fair? Fashion for Life? Vintage Fair? Fantasy Fair?

I love Hair Fair, and though I've not been in a few years, I really enjoyed the Locks for Love promotion done a few years back. I need lower-ARC dreadlocks, however. This will be part of my bet, if I am proven right.

But you are not correct when you say "drive." Even if fashion is the be-all and end-all of SL, it is tier that drives the SL economy. Otherwise, the Lindens would have cut it long ago to swell the number of residents owning regions.

Fashion might be the indirect driver of tier (places to shop, socialize, or just strut), but I need evidence. Fashion creators may or may not be renting server space, depending on how deeply Marketplace has affected their in-world traffic.

Without tier from sims and parcels, SL won't survive.

• There's tons of old fashionista centric regions STILL going strong. Because unlike college students popping into SL for a class project. . .fashionfolk spend money. A LOT of money. 

I agree here. But enough to keep the doors open at LL? Evidence please?

As for college students? They are already young and fashionable, in my experience. They spend a lot of money, too, in the physical economy. They don't need avatars to be glamorous because they are avatars with profile info groomed fanatically at Facebook. But this is a digression in my counter-rant.

What I still need to be convinced of CronoCloud's arguments would be numbers.  How much money goes to LL, directly from Marketplace fees or tier from land rented by fashionistas or their suppliers? How does that compare with the RP community? Builders?

Can we even find out? Or do we keep swapping competing and sweeping generalizations?

The Wager: Dreads or 1000L on the Line!

This is fun. Let's see if we can get some answers, CronoCloud! What does it cost to keep the lights on?

Here are more numbers, in the form of a friendly wager. 1000L if you can get some hard numbers, so you can go on a shopping spree. If I am correct, you buy me some new dreadlocks at a hair store of your choice.

New Pair of Shoes

 
Location: Jeepers Shoe Store

Surrounded by well dressed female avatars at the recent VWER meeting, I realized that my shoes are SO 2007.  All of the guys were getting some much-needed ribbing about our lack of fashion sense.

Educators--especially we guys--are not known in-world as fashion plates. So after a scolding by the ladies, for whom shoe-shopping is apparently a big deal in SL, I used the revised (and useful) search feature in Firestorm, my choice for a Viewer-2 compatible SL experience. I'm making an effort IRL to dress up more on campus, so why not in SL? Baby needs a pair of shoes!

Pretty close to a favorite RL pair of Sketchers boots I love

Without turning this blog into the skid-row version of Iris Ophelia's dispatches, I'll add that I enjoyed the experience of buying shoes in world. I love shoes IRL and buy nice ones, so I'm not a typical male shopper. I look for certain European-style dress shoes or tough-guy boots, in both SL and RL. In those regards, Jeepers Shoes (teleport link) does not disappoint.

I was particularly amused by the unique way the shop handles demos...a rock chained to the shoe.

Given that my suit worn in these shots, a "Madison Avenue" discussed in an earlier post, comes from a creator who has left SL, I felt that I was doing my bit to support the in-world economy by laying down 500L for two nicely made pairs of shoes.

Now if I can only get the shoe-saleswoman-bot to give me a foot massage!

My shopping won't save SL, but it saves my pride.

Educators on Avatar Appearance & Learning

Location: Slapping Forehead and Laughing

I missed one of the best VWER meetings in a while. We have this impression of academics as frumpy eggheads who don't really care about their appearances. But what about their avatars?

Over 40 participants discussed the role that clothing and other aspects of avatar appearance play in getting respect from students, administrators, and the public beyond Second Life and other virtual worlds. More than a few of my colleagues came to the meeting in hilarious costume (AJ in a Mayan outfit is priceless). I'm pleased to report that everyone did wear clothing.

Some stand-out quotations follow, some hilarious, some sobering, all true:

• I once had a rather eye-opening talk with some students in which they dissected the dress sense of everyone male and female in the dept, this is in RL, they expected people to "make an effort" and they made assumptions that however you dressed you were thinking about THEM (students) when you made your decisions
• I don't think it matters MORE in SL, I think it is more that outside SL we are already conditioned to obey certain norms/expectations and so there tend to be fewer surprises.
• Thinking about our appearance requires the same kind of intentionality that other rhetorical decisions do.
• I can't show many presentations in SL to my bosses because there are just too many bosoms in them.
• For me we are doing [medical] simulation not a lot of furries on a ward ;-)
• That's an issue we haven't discussed. Psychological associations. What we perceive as "fun" might set off issues in fragile folks.
• I am old and I remember when a teacher was fired for wearing his hair on his forehead .. bangs.
• I once came to a chat with my students with a cigar, and one of my students had a real problem with it.
• Well i had changed my avatar skin and i was meant to look like Angelina Jolie. . . . i looked like a man.
  
• Yesterday I was wearing nothing. I think SL servers are perverted.

Need fashion advice? Try "What Not to Wear in Virtual Clothes" and look at the entire transcript from our meeting

New Laptop + SL = Fail

Location: Workaround Land

I was really excited to have a shining new MacBook Pro with 8 GB of RAM. I was ready to SMOKE SL for my June roadtrip.

Best-laid plans and all that, in both SL 1.23.5 as well as Imprudence. I got lucky in being able to view the world normally on the laptop itself.

My giant external monitor, connected to the MacBook's external video port, gave these acid-trip results.


It was fun, in a bizarre way. This sort of thing happens in OpenSim worlds all the time to me, so why not SL?


No, I'm still not switching to SL 2 on my main machine. I'll try it with an ALT soon.

Thinking about Aesthetics in SL

Location: Blind

"My God, I'm blind."

Have you ever said that when you looked upon really poor taste? Taste so bad that it's good?

I won't reveal the identity of the happy avatar couple or where I found this photo.

I'm glad they are happy. Maybe I'm just a grumpy professor and Spring still seems far away.

But why? Why?

"Why not?" is not an acceptable answer.