Socially|Mundane

I've been thinking about my favorite pet-peeves of Second Life for a while now. No, I don't mean all the Linden Lab SNAFUs or the Second Life Viewer bugs or the general wonky nature of the Second Life Grid.

I'm referring to those things in-world, usually the cause of which are residents themselves. So I am going to work my way through my top-ten pet-peeves list. But rather than just plop a bullet lists here, I'm hoping to elaborate on each, so you know why it's a pet-peeve. And that if any apply to you directly, you'll understand why it's a pet-peeve and so irritating not only to me, but likely many, many others who come into your presence.

Number seven my list is "force-feeding triggers".

You know what I mean.

You need to find something. Or, you happen to just be sim-hopping or exploring. And when you land, you sometimes will be offered a notecard or landmark, and now you also are offered to join the proprietor's group.

Quite often you get blasted with all this stuff at once. Especially when the buffoon who set it up, did so wrongly and the trigger offers multiple copies or multiple times the same exact things...all at once. That on top of the in-world open-chat spam that begs you to accept these things (we'll get into talking prims later.)

Okay, message to all you people who have these things set-up: if you use it to offer rules to your place, okay. I'm all for that and it's understandable because there are way too many idiots who come to your location and find a reason to complain about something then bitch about how they are so offended.

Hey, if you come into my house, don't you dare whine about being offended. You are the one who invades my space. If you don't like it, leave.

So, if I land on your place and it triggers a prim-speaking message telling me your rules - or offers a notecard with your rules, that's fair. Just please don't write your rules in a way that it takes me more than 60 to 120-seconds to read, otherwise, forget it - that notecard can't hit the trash fast enough.

However, what the hell makes you think you are important or interesting enough that I will blindly, willy-nilly want to 1) read the notecard about who and what you are, 2) take a landmark for this place i have never been to before and most likely never will return to and 3) join your stupid group that i have no idea what the spam is like or what it's about - or why would I want to join an update group if I have never purchased anything from you yet?

When I shop I am usually on a hunt. I don't go 'browsing around' and rarely will I ever make an impulse-buy. So that means I am TP-hopping. There already is the patience required with the rez-wait after rez-wait as it is. When I land in a place, the first thing I look for is whether you try to force-feed me all this junk.

It's sure sign your crap is just that. Any quality creator wouldn't do that. The reason is because a quality creator has experience in building/scripting/whatever. That experience comes from being in and using Second Life for some time. And that use experience means they know just how irritating force-feeding is, and thus, they would not do it to their customers because they want those customers to actually return.

The next thing I look for is rez-time. If it takes more than two-minutes for anything to really start appearing, (prims, not textures. I can be patient with textures) - then I am out of there.

However, if I land and I am bomblasted with force-feeding, I can assure you I already am in the search window, clicking on the next stop and peeking at a preview on the map.

If your place hasn't rezzed in any respectable manner by the time I close the map to look around - I'm gone. The first clue to your place being a place I do not want to be was the force-feeding. And I can assure you, force-feeding locations go onto a black list.

If you are a force-feeder because you want to make it 'easy' for people: you really aren't. You are making it irritating. If your place is worth coming back to, which is decided after looking around to see if it's worthwhile to even do so, then I will create my own landmark at the exact position i want it.

If I want to join your group, I am quite certain that if you are a quality location, then there are instructions either somewhere on your showroom floor or enclosed with your product. I'll see it when i buy it. Until then, I really have no interest in you or your group.

If you are a club or other social destination, I can promise that if it is a place I want to return to, I will create a landmark and join your update group all by my stupid, ignorant little self. I don't need you to attempt holding my hand and cramming these intangible things down my throat.

So please, stop force-feeding me your garbage. It's garbage because you are force-feeding me junk I don't even now if I want yet. How about you allow me to decide whether I want that stuff.

I would rather not have to click 'cancel', 'cancel', 'cancel', 'ignore', 'cancel' when I land at your place. It is much easier, faster, more convenient and pleasurable to just land, allow the place to rez and start looking around.

If I decide I want to return and participate in whatever you have and offer to participate in, I will grab or join those things on my own. So if i pop into 25 different locations (pretty common number for me while on a hunt,) I will only have to deal with little blue menus infrequently, and then only when I specifically request to do so, rather than canceling and ignoring them 5 times at five different locations.

I mean, my mouse clicker gets enough use as it is. If it fails on me because of over-use, i might have to come after you legally or something.

Though I must admit, besides irritating the hell out of me, it does serve to remind me that I need to update my "Running a Successful Business in Second Life" book I wrote in 2006. Perhaps it's time for a 2009 version and I'll be sure to add a whole new chapter on this subject in the 'what not to do' section.