freedom spins you out of control 'til someone chokes you with a chain

[06:13 PM] Kaye Robbiani: a customer bought a box of textures, from my texture store, then sent me a notecard to complain that there was nothing in the box but pictures!
[06:13 PM] Thrice Skyward: A customer who actually read her instructions?
[06:13 PM] Thrice Skyward: Lol.
[06:14 PM] Hope Dreier: OMG
[06:14 PM] Kaye Robbiani: she would appreciate my prompt attention to the matter.
[06:14 PM] Damian Delacroix: That's classic. :)
[06:14 PM] Fatima Ur: LOL kaye, thats funny
[06:14 PM] Damian Delacroix: SLAge of this person?
[06:14 PM] Alix Stoanes chuckles. that "picture" of customer service paints a thousand words
[06:14 PM] Sphynx Soleil: what did xie think xie was getting?
[06:14 PM] Kaye Robbiani: 2 years! not a noobie
[06:14 PM] Damian Delacroix: WoW. x_x

Now, as amusing as this is, this speaks to a basic disconnect with building, SL instruction, and the caliber of people on SL these days.

[06:17 PM] Kaye Robbiani: it was wreath and floral textures, probably thought she was getting wreaths and bouquets

Likely, but still. There is a deep disconnect between the making of things, and the viewing of things, in Viewer 2. And sure, she was two years old, this clueless lass, but that's no guarantee that she spent those two years in SL. A great many people try SL for a while, get bored, wander off...months or even years later suddenly realizing they might still have an account, so they log back in to see if things have changed.

Still. This is dimmer than average.

[06:21 PM] Sphynx Soleil: if they're using viewer 2 they probably are shuffled away from "this is how you do things"

That's also true, too, but even so; even folks who can't spell and do nothing but shop know about building, whether or not they do it.

This just brings me back to the point of, it is relentlessly ill-conceived to allow people to log into SL and wander around with no instructions given whatsoever. SL has a high learning curve, even now; two years in, while I'd figured out the basics, I was just starting to learn building; four years in, I'm still struggling trying to figure out scripting.

This lass likely felt some smooth-talking Victorian had scampered with her coin, in return for nothing but pictures of the wreaths she wanted to purchase to decorate her home.

Puts me in mind of the old SLX offerings of "box kits" where people would literally sell plain, plywood created prims. And other people would buy them.

This was in a store named DeTHGRiP:



I have no words. We move on, stunned by the mallet of circumstance.

Why Minecraft speaks to people so powerfully. Or at the least, why such a simple game creates its own archetypal narrative structure. (And, for more intriguing Minecraft storytelling, try Towards Dawn...the tale of a miner who stopped mining.)

Or, put more simply, sometimes it's not about the great new thing--sometimes it's just about the story. In this light, if the PR department can figure this out in time (which will be difficult now that Catherine Linden left the Labs, though a case can be made that she was part of the problem in the first place), Second Life has one of the simplest storylines ever:

Live.

It doesn't get simpler than that.