When I ran an anonymous survey of Second Life merchants to help prepare this Patreon report on the Second Life economy, I included an open form option that asked, "Is there anything you'd like to say that wasn't covered by this survey?"
One merchant delivered in thunder and fire. Read it all below, and if you're an SL merchant yourself, take the reaction survey at the end.
Preamble
The ones who have the decency, the respectability, the mutual understanding: they became a rare species; we do see them, we do appreciate them.
The following is about the ones that fall out, are loud and demanding, and strikingly overshadowing the good-hearted souls. We are convinced that it is a societal issue being reflected in SL.
Entitled Customers:
They expect life-long and free updates whenever a new product or feature is released on the market; e.g. mesh body or matching add-ons, PBR. There is no appreciation nor a will to pay the minimum for the required time and effort dedicated by creators to improve their skills.
Customers refuse to comprehend that a so-called fatpack is the actual full product with all features included, and that single colors/packs are restricted versions of the full product but for lower budgets, thus, even those with less L$ could have a chance to enjoy the same product to an extent. But these single offers are passionately condemned even though its principle does not differ from how, for example, RL mobile phone contracts are handled, ie. "Lower $ rate – you can make phone calls like everyone else, yay! But, less data volume for Internet user".
Even the most generous creators get attacked, insulted, badmouthed in public if the customers don't get what they want. This kind of customer wants it all, wants it now, and wants it at no or very low cost whatsoever. Their reasoning? "Our hard-earned money", denying our time, effort, investments.
In the past, we reacted to customer requests, like, If we would sell them a customized single version of a product which wasn't offered officially. If it was a simple and reasonable request, we didn't mind since it happened rarely, and people were asking politely without demanding. We were happy to make them happy.
Those times are gone. Nowadays, customers regularly breathe fire and brimstone in our DMs.
One of those recent out-of-the-blue anecdotes is this example: "Fuck you, fuck your product, fuck your store." When one of our team members wasn't able to respond right away, they approached the next team member shown online who couldn't react right away either.
They came back with "Fuck all of your staff, you're all fucking thieves!" Mind you, the cause for this particular complaint was a genuine mistake that happened during original boxing.
The whole interaction with this sophisticated customer happened within seconds. Both of the messaged staff members were in a call. In the middle of updating info in-world and on social media about the re-deliveries of the fixed version of the product in question being sent out.
It was a dollarbie.
Comical. Yet, this story exemplifies the new normal. We don't give second chances anymore. We don't hesitate to ban and block polemic customers forever. We're done.
Next: On Exploitative Event Owners and Lax Bloggers:
Exploitative Event Owners:
This special entity has made it into our hearts and earned themselves the dignified pedestal of skilled entrepreneurs. Every other own horn blowing event owner praises themselves for their preeminent cleverness: luring customers to the event with new and notably discounted items and free gifts, the latter required to be new, limited to the event so absolutely no selling of it at the store after the event, representing the high standards of the event. Impressive!
To reiterate: that one groundbreaking finding that everybody hushes about because if this secret was shared with the public, all profit margins would be cut? Indeed, it is the magical gift.
Group rewards, freebies, gifts are the pivotal infernality why new customers were required to shop till they drop at creators' event booths. Billionaire!
This stupefying idea of capitalizing on creators by asking them to provide these new, discounted and free items is mandatory for joining the event. Call it marketing outsourcing. Smart!
Event owners' next move is joining each and every event coverage website because most do it for free. Bold!
Money has been saved for hiring a DJ for the event opening. Publicity!
However, the DJ's audience joins for the show, not the shopping experience. And even if they were, any lag would make sales impossible. In the meantime, some creators point out that their regulars cannot buy their products at the event location because the region is full, constantly.
Darn, the event owners almost blew that one up but the good news is, the event runs another ten days. Exclusivity!
Now hold your breath, here comes the next venturous flash of genius: raising event fees because "the world-wide(-web) crisis affects ‘all of us’ terribly, we stand in this together".
A flash of nostalgia warms our hearts as we are reminded of the familiar feeling of cohesion when we nonchalantly clapped for the aghast nursing staff members. Admirable!
Creators complain about significantly declining sales, not even remotely approaching break even point. The event owners understand their creators' needs: marketing strategies have to be developed, increased, paid for.
Note to themselves: event fees need to be raised again. Brilliant!
Let's explore unprecedented tactics for how to increase visibility and escharotic customer participation with the event's social media posts:
"Leave a like, comment your in-world name and get a chance to win a megapack of a product of your choice from any of the participating creators." Nailing!
Finally, cue in the selfless marketing experts aka bloggers and vloggers. The event owners explain that sharing our products with their event bloggers and vloggers will, again, increase our sales re-mark-ab-ly.
The vloggers’ vlog slide shows of the booths which almost look like the event coverage websites but: it is animated. With copyrighted music. Innovative!
The bloggers need to be high profile bloggers who are part of 15 different events. Networking!
In an attempt to solace those creators who participated for years and still get ignored every round, as well as the other two dozen creators who wonder why in more than three years they've only been blogged three times (Coincidence? All good things come in threes!), and the now jobless bloggers who are shattered that their favorite creator called it quits and offer blogger boxes no more, the event owners hire a blogger manager. Succeeded!
The blogger manager takes their task seriously and reminds bloggers strictly and regularly to fill in their full blogging reports but never communicates to creators if and which of their items were included in a blog post. Mysterious underdogs! It's a life style!
To be fair, though, event owners do their part of the job: they upload the creators' advert pictures on their social media platforms. Event owners are busy people so these advert pictures have to be provided with the required resolution and size by the creators, without distortions, please, this is a reputable event. Professionalism!
Last but not least, the never-ending merry-go-round within the event business community. Supporting each other by networking with other events. Marvelous!
Drag the customer flock from event to event. Needless to say, there's a little downside to it since the same target group gets to see the same offers, and sooner or later the customers see through this complete farce and skip the rat race.
Here's to the rescue: promising start-ups with fresh designs! A friend of a friend of a friend who has a store felt in the mood of doodling another logo sketch. By pure chance, they accidentally ended up with a brand-new sub brand. Re-branding!
Offer them a free sponsor booth, generously sponsored by the other paying participants who missed out another offered opportunity to increase their visibility, and create the illusion of competition and flourishing business through cronyism. In order to keep the event's standard high, the friend of a friend of a friend who might just be your billionth lousy shop operator is required to offer a gift; pro tip: no one will remember that retired item from their original store, now an exclusive, brand-new gift thanks to the invention of recoloring. Gobsmacking shrewdness!
"Bollocks!", we've said, and never looked back when we left well-known, popular events whose owners wouldn't stop establishing ten more originative suggestions ("not mandatory but highly recommended") to exploit us for their personal gain.
We're done.
Lax Bloggers:
They ingratiate themselves with a potpourri of dizzying flummeries, elaborating the high potential of positive outcome if we only agreed to collaborate because their work would have a significant effect on our sales (reality: it doesn't even happen with high profile bloggers), how they want to support start-ups (we've been around for a decade) and how they are so convinced about our products, they'd actually use it on a daily basis.
Apart from their often mediocre effort into pictures, it turns out, they don't follow our social media, never liked any of our posts, aren't part of our in-world store group, never bought nor blogged any of our products, not even a free gift of ours. There are no ties to us, at all. This happens more often than you'd expect.
From our experience of working with bloggers in the past, roughly 10% of assigned bloggers were willing to meet minimum requirements which was to blog all of our products; a ridiculously low requirement with 1 new released product every 3 to 6 months.
We've been fobbed off with demonstrably false excuses when we asked about missed blog posts. We've discussed this situation with other creators since initially, we blamed ourselves and thought we must have done something considerably wrong. But they've told us the same stories.
We don't work with freebie hunters and self-proclaimed sales experts anymore.
We're done.
Epilogue — And Hope
We ain't mad. But we've gotten tired and exhausted. We'll probably never share anything like this trivial novel again. Funnily enough, this was the first and only "public" outlet ever because it seemed to be an appropriate instance for giving an insight. Anonymously because cancel culture is highly popular, and many of our creator friends are still heavily involved in this kind of business and don't deserve being dragged into ours.
We, however, moved on already. It's been a good while ago by now. We've decided to focus on creating for ourselves solely. If anyone likes our creations, they're more than welcome to grab a copy offered at a fair price.
Maybe some day we'll return into the business. At present, we are happy again. With only a handful of customers. But happy and loyal customers. Sometimes, we teach them a trick or two, accept their invitations to an art gallery opening, join them in activities like base-jumping, discuss politics, society and sports with them, listen to their worry, hang out for table games, and have a good laugh and an enjoyable company. Life is good.
We doubt that any of those who should change their attitude would actually listen. But maybe it gives a few fellow creators a chuckle and some relief that they ain't alone.
Peace out ♥
SL MERCHANT READERS: What's your opinion of this essay? Take this anonymous essay below (use mouse/trackpad for best results).
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Results published soon!
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 
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