Why I Advocate STOP SHOPPING and BOYCOTT ARCADE

Photo by CBS

STOP SHOPPING, BOYCOTT ARCADE -- this is the call I have to people in business in Second Life to respond to the crash of the LindEx.

Of course, I've told my customers in fact that they should buy Lindens as they've never been cheaper (and they haven't, and those invoking past rates are both wrong and invoking this history for all the wrong reasons). So in fact I've encouraged them to shop and of course pay their rent. I'm hardly going to stop hundreds of those customers from doing what they want, which is to have fun and shop at Arcade when it opens next month.

But as a person in business who has to cash out Lindens to pay tier and real-life bills, I'm going to take dramatic action because that's what you need to do in the fetid, closed society of SL.

This is a situation that does not get better due to the lack of free speech on the forums, the hordes of horrid fanboyz and fangirlz who discourage democratic debate there, and the punitive atmosphere from "regulars" and the mods. Sluniverse is a similar closed and cliquish society that bans critics -- I myself was banned for confronting the support for Woodbury University griefers that cost businesses and communities money and people which was wrong -- I was hardly the only victim. They thought it was edgy and cool to support hackers and griefers -- I don't.

The forums and Sluniverse have filled up with lies, denials and disinformation from alts. 

Phil Deakins is getting far more visibility than his inworld knowledge and business would merit - that's how it works. I hadn't visited his shop in years -- I was utterly shocked to discover how crappy it is (see photos at the end of this post). The decorations look like they're from 2007 -- crappy textures worse even than I would make. It's like that awful forums character Jetaime -- utterly outdated build, no presence inworld. His traffic now that bots can't help him is 1886. His parcel size is 4996 -- even if he has more elsewhere, this is a person who simply doesn't get it about paying a tier bill. Next.

I'm glad to see that toast bard, not a person I find attractive who has viciously attacked me in the past (she once suggested that I sew a corpse's penis on to myself), is at least speaking up with the truth about this phenomenon on plurk. I've seen her in business since 2004; she now has the company named tres blah. I'm not a particular fan of her stuff but occasionally will get a gatcha or yard sale item. The point is, though she stands to BENEFIT actually from easy and low-cost cash, she gets it when she experiences the BITE when cashing out money for real life, and possibly tier (they are all on a sim called Tableau, and somebody has to pay the $195 or $295 a month on that sim of course).

Through her old FIC connections, toast got the influential Shamlet, as I have always called him -- another closed society who bans me unless I use my RL name (!) although that requirement isn't made for anyone else) to even publicize the topic and put in a query to Linden. Well, that's something.

But we see the same lies and deza as the Russians call it (disinformation) as elsewhere in the column and the comments.

That column was posted May 20 when 21 million Lindens were waiting to get out the door; then it was 358 last night. So please. Let's not pretend there isn't a problem.

So let's go through it.

The main piece of dez that I see is claiming that this crash isn't a crash, isn't the lowest it has ever been, is a normal fluctation, and doesn't mean anything. This is total bullshit.

Yes, technically the LindEx has been lower in its history. But that figure which no one cites a source for, but I can find you here in 2006 and 2007 news articles respectively is for the INSTANT cash out. The garden-variety cashout. That's what those sites tell you and that's what most people remember as they are casual users. The instant cashout is what is available when you simply go to the LindEx and ask to buy money. It gives you the "best buy" rate for "instant". Not enough people realize that if they were to be patient enough even to wait an hour let alone a day, they could get a better rate with the "limited buy" function where you chose a rate that seems like it may move quickly, as there are not a lot of offers stacked up there, and park your request there as a buy.

So sure, someone can easily prove me wrong in my claim that the LindEx has "never been lower" by citing the instant cashout figure.

The problem is that I'm talking about the limited buy figure which is when you park your Lindens to be sold at a figure you select, waiting a day or 7 days or 30 days for it to cash out. THAT figure can be 10 points or more different than the instant buy.

I have been keeping records of the LindEx for years because I write newsletters. So I can find my own newsletters going back to 2009 and 2007 showing even a 250 limited buy cashout. And maybe someone will come up with documented proof of an even higher (lower in value) figure. 

So what? That's not the point, because there are two OTHER points to be made now that we've surged past 250 to 263 today!

1. The use of this claimed historical "low" is being deployed to make a point that we "have nothing to worry about". That's utter bullshit. Of course we do. Because...
2. The historical lows did not crash SO QUICKLY, i.e. a 10 or more point spread within a day. I can only think of one other time when the land auction crashed quickly when Ryan Linden got the bright idea of having uniform bids suddenly. That completely hollowed out/leveled the established inworld customs of valuation of telehub land, snow, waterfront, etc. and then crashed the value. That in turn affected the LindEx -- but more slowly. I know I had blogs about this at the time which I'll dig up.

Yes, the LindEx had its times of crisis, notably when the Lindens killed the GOM (an entire watershed in SL); when the Lindens killed off SL banks and stock markets (that was a good thing, but bad actors like Benjamin Duranske role-playing wannabee DA characters artificially worsened it by causing a run on the banks). The Alphaville Herald, which is libertarian and leftist and even communist when it wants to suddenly got all regulatory about this and wanted "LL to intervene." I pointed out -- as I do about campus rapes -- does that concentrate the mind wonderfully, Urizenus? -- that real-life authorities, real cops and not campus henchmen or virtual world coders -- should administer justice. That's all. Not a start-up of open source hackers and a bunch of anonymous friends of theirs online.

There've been other challenges, whether the "telehub land buyback" or the imposition of the VAT or whatever. But let me note that those crises were NOTHING LIKE what is happening now because they didn't happen WITHIN A MATTER OF DAYS, but over time.

MORE IMPORTANTLY, they happened with Linden Lab explaining its policy, making announcements of its policy, even having inworld meetings about its policy.

None of that is happening now. That's why these horrid fanboyz who think others are panic-mongers or others are ignorant or insane are just plain wrong-headed and in fact devious if they are doing this at the behest of, or with the knowledge of the Lab.

Those who keep invoking "historical lows" and "historical fluctuations" are completely wrong about context and even facts. None of these past lows occurred as precipitously and with such thunderous Linden silence. So stop peddling the fanboyz bullshit.

The thread on Plurk, which is the main hangout for Second Life people who don't like Sluniverse (and even those who do) has a much more realistic discussion on this subject.

My demands to this group as you can see are several:

1) They need to get on Sluniverse, New World Notes and the regular SL forums and fight their fellow assholes who think there isn't a problem. They can do that much. I say "fellow assholes" because so many on plurk ARE the sort of creator-fascists who have been causing oppressiveness and assholery on the forums for years, and are the privileged set going to Sansar poised to take advantage of the early knowledge of the market that none of us have. These people continuously advocate policies to benefit their class, most of which not only don't benefit others but actually harm them.

2) They need to go to the Lindens, publicly, privately, individually, collectively and ask two things:

1) Is Supply Linden doing this? Is Supply Linden selling lots of cash now? Why? Can he stop?

2) Where are the circuit breakers? Lindens have told us there are circuit breakers in the past that stop massive cashouts and keep the rate even. What, are they broken?

For those of you reading (and writing barking bullshit on forums) who think the Lindens get rich from the LindEx or doing something like this, think again. If there are any of you who actually think there is no Supply Linden or we don't know that, think again as well. The coder of the LindEx has openly told us about the existence of Supply Linden and CNN even covered it back in the day.

The Lindens used to explain a lot about how this machine worked. And to any even casual student of this machine, it is instantly clear that the staff salary and benefits to manage this thing probably mean it breaks even or even loses money. The amounts it throws off in fees just aren't that huge, given LL's cost for the thing itself and their other costs. That's a shame given that currency for the Metaverse is one theory of how Lindens can "break" their "dependency" on land (something I do not think they should do, unlike Shamlet who has agitated for it for years out of open source communist nonsense and theories that combine socialism and libertarianism (as so many SL-things do) about how economies should be run -- for platform providers of course, not users, which he really doesn't care about).

I really can't see the Lindens behind this cash dump, although the question has to be asked especially because no. 2 seems to have an answer "we aren't applying circuit breakers".

Maybe they can't because the amount is very high and they have to siphon it off and hope they can do so but then they need to be straightforward about what their policy is.

Maybe they will invoke "privacy" as to why they can't tell us that Anshe Chung, their number one frenemy, or Adam Zaius, their golden son, are cashing out from these laggy shores for good.

People who make the claim of Linden enrichment don't understand the system to start with -- it has "sinks" -- $10 texture fees, Linden-denominated land auctions, purchases on the LindEx that are sinks or "burning" of dollars, i.e. they are not converted at some internal rate by the company into dollars.

As far as we know. But we don't know for sure. Given that the Lindens charge a fee for sales on the Marketplace, and the long-term plan for Metaversal solvency is -- again -- to break away from land and generate fees for services like LindEx and marketplace infrastructure (which hardly pay costs now!), maybe there is some formula there. I just don't know. I don't think so, but let's hear it from them. I asked Ebbe directly on Twitter and got nothing, but I wouldn't expect to.

The only way Lindens have to make hard real-life cash is from tier (land) which I don't think they should abandon (and they claim they won't but are attracted to the long-term prospect just like Shamlet is), from rentals of sims for special events, from fees for cashing out Lindens from SL's servers and possibly some special content sales (they used to sell necklaces for real money).  But again, let's hear it from them. DO they have a formula for the fees only to convert to cash?

Oh, and do they make interest off the float? I believe they must. I was told by the Linden VP in charge of this some years that they didn't (ie to administer and collect it was too hard). But many people have dollar floats on their account as buffers or as cashouts waiting a day or two or seven for tier and they may make use of this in some way.

Another debunking that is required is that people who point out the obvious facts of Sansar as a reason are "scare-mongering" truly need to stuff it -- like this German site that linked to my blog. Sansar is likely a large part of what is driving this, as time-wise, we see this worrisome activity right before the expansion of the beta in June. And that's because any pragmatic, grounded, sane person -- not a fluttery FUDnik as the geeks claim - knows that if there are more people in the beta, there are more people invested in the project who will then want it to succeed and will move to it -- which means the gutting of the existing SL. Every little FIC LL fan who has been let in the beta will have every reason to spin it as positive and put their marbles in that basket to justify their invitation and their very existence. They aren't stupid. So don't let them get away with implying we are.

The reality is, everyone who has been in TSO or There knows, when a new shiny comes, worlds empty out. They close. This may not be instant, it may take years, there are backwashes as I've explained, but new technology, better shinies empty out old worlds. Sure, there are lots of reasons why SL as we know it may survive -- for one, it's the Lindens' cash cow as tier generates their profits every year and cover their costs. It will be awhile before Sansar can do that.

But if Sansar is less laggy, prettier, able to hold more people on a sim, more interesting and gripping, it will attract people and content creators will create for that world and landlords will rent out for that world and so on, and SL will empty out. To say that this won't happen because new words have problems with software bugs is silly -- so what? So did SL, which used to be as crappy as the day is long, but everybody understood instantly that it was better than TSO because you could walk off your land (!), fly around and explore wonderful areas and buy and sell in it freely and not be banned from "the game". I personally don't think a world that induces spectator status without the ability to edit even as an amateur -- as Sansar does -- will work, but who knows, it might. Most people want to be given content to consume and hate having to work to generate it.

M Linden's theory that the "killer app" was "each other" -- that the prospect of close and especially sexual relationships but not only sexual relationships would keep the world vibrant -- is true as far as it goes, but it's not enough because it is still too hard for people to find each other and they still don't have enough to do. Sansar may fix that.

So let me tell you my own policy now with regard to this situation. 

I am boycotting Arcade for a number of reasons:

1. They visibly and obviously stand to benefit the most from cheap cash especially as they are now deliberately marketing 50 pulls, twice or more than twice the amount as the last few fairs run by other groups (that had 20 or 25), i.e. they will be deliberately siphoning cash from the rubes. So I need those organizers to make a statement about the LindEx and to use their clout as huge businesses who will make hundreds of thousands of REAL dollars from Arcade to get the Lindens to talk, explain their policies, and stabilize the currency. 
2. They are offering a prize after 50 pulls that is NON-TRANSFER. This alone should cause boycotts and consumer slowdowns for sure and I only encourage them. That item MUST be put on transfer and become available to the after-market. The organizers at other events tried this gambit, I and others objected, they changed it. Arcade MUST do this. It will do it if they hear from consumers.
3. Gatchas are getting too expensive and merchants are getting too greedy. The price has crept up from the $25 it was originally years ago to $50 to $75  and $85 and now even $100. We have to put our foot down and boycott or they will keep bilking us. There is no objective increase in cost that these people experienced such as to justify this gouge. It's just getting what they can from addicts, and that is shameful. Yes, free markets mean people can charge what they want, and God bless them. But consumers can also not buy and stop pulling $85 gatchas. If people won't boycott Arcade fully, they could do this much: stop pulling the lever on $80 and $85 gatchas. It's not worth it. You don't get better content from those charging more.

I realize I will probably have little company with this exercise, and people will say I am only harming my fellow merchants. But there's a big gap between me and them. I don't make hundreds of thousands of real-life dollars; they do. So they need to act to help all of us by appealing to the Lindens about the LindEx; they need to change their no-transfer policy and we need at least some of them to come down in price as a gesture of good will.

Here's the link to join the group inworld.

I'm seeing way more anger at gatcha than I used to. I see people getting in groups and urging others to boycott the new $80 and $85 gatchas - we thought $75 was a gouge. They get expelled. They are right to protest. 

I see people really angry when they don't get the rares -- they try 33 or 66 or 99 times, it's incredible. I never pull a gatcha more than 20 if there is no prize, and most time, I limit to 3 times or what I think a reasonable price for a rare would be, i.e. if a rare is $750, then I might try 10 times for a $75 gatcha.

But many people try so many times for another reason: they are in the rares gambling business. Rare selling is basically gambling -- all of gatcha is, but the effort to get a rare to sell is the obvious gambling tip of this iceberg. People want to get in first to get the rares and sell them while they are hot and hopefully either make a profit or at least cover their gatcha habit.

I'm starting a group for this boycott, and months ago in fact, I started building a site called Shaman's Hut that is devoted to helping people shop smart on gatcha and also overcome addictive and destructive behavior. I hope to open soon.

My boycott is only limited to Arcade now but in fact I have STOPPED SHOPPING completely everywhere over the LindEx. I may come to the yardsales later and buy these items at half price. I'm certainly not going to come to Seraphim's yardsale where they are FORCING people to sell ONLY at pull price. People will flock to it just because it will have traffic and advertising. But people should boycott that form of creator-fascism as well.

I'm not even going to create things and upload $10 textures. It's a total buying fast in which my Lindens on account are for refunds only, or for changing some texture at a customer's request.