Welcome to SLsecret, week 320.
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SLSecret: Week 320
· Lourdes Denimore ·
Quick link to the 50 Comments
Before we delve into secrets…
• If you hook up with a crazy in SL, it is not our responsibility to help you deal with that. If it becomes a RL issue contact law enforcement.
• Trust no one. If you tell people your laundry they will air it for you.
• Secret submissions are anonymous. We don’t know if your crazy ex or your abuela submitted them.
• Make your secrets legible.
• Do not contact us just to threaten us, especially with e-lawyers. We’ve been doing this for 12+ years. You are not the first nor will you be the last.
• Lastly, if the material submitted here triggers you, please get help. If the materials submitted here make you suicidal please see the suicide hotline numbers posted. They are there to help.
Limited number of mesh makers inside Second Life, shit ton of “designers” having mesh created for them by this small pool of designers. You do the math.
#11 – I am a creator and an event coordinator. I get overwhelmed and overworked constantly. I do it all without fancy vendors or scripts, so I’m forced to interact with my customers no matter how silly or annoying they get. My store has gotten pretty big over the years, but I still prefer to do it ‘face to face’ as it were, to get to know my customers. As for the event organizing, I do charity and awareness events, so yeah, I send out invites. If you post your store name I’ll be sure to never bother you or invite you to our hunts, events or charity fundraisers. I read every profile of every creator I invite, even if I invited them to the one we hosted last month or last year. Doesn’t matter. I know how hard it is to run a store and all it entails, and I know better than most how RL can rear its ugly head and screw up all your plans. So I take the time. If I send an invitation to a creator it is because I visited and liked their store and I read their profile. Every Pick, every little blurb. Just to make sure they are available, the store owner is still in SL, I am contacting the right person, and that they are open to accepting invitations. It’s really not that difficult to put a little ‘I’m too busy’ or ‘I’d love an invite to your hunt/event/wtfever’ in your profile. I also visit the stores again before I send the invites to make sure that they are active in other events and what kind of events they join so I know they are open to doing them. When I get overwhelmed by it all (I run two stores, a… Read more »
I know how it feels to be overwhelmed but seriously if it’s not big of a problem #11 put it in your profile like 100’s of other creators do and most will leave you alone. It’s really immature to be all panicky when you just put it in your profile! Also, ignore people and answer them at your own pace, say you were AFK or RL got in the way if you aren’t answering fast enough for them. I do that stuff on the regular, especially when I know people are complaining to me about something. Be grateful people invite you to events at all and that people are im-ing you. It can be overwhelming but that means people like your stuff enough to invite you to things! Quite a few stores unless they know people barely get invited to anything at all and they are the ones pestering people to join stuff.
#11: If you worked in a store, and were juggling 3 phone calls on hold, then had 4 customers walk up to you and start talking simultaneously, and this happened several times throughout your work day, no one would be surprised if you became overwhelmed and wanted them all to go away. Working in SL can be a lot like that. You can’t control how or when people will choose to contact you. But you can decide the terms of how you will interact with those people. Get a building alt. Seriously. I build in a quiet, public sandbox, and there are no IMs (except for the odd friendly person also building in the sandbox) and I can walk away from my desk, any time, without someone feeling like I’m ignoring them. Once I’ve finished my product, I switch back to my Main and upload it, there. It will give you back your sanity. Set some time during your day, to log in, and -just- focus on any emails or note cards you need to address. Delete invitations you don’t plan to accept. Redeliver items along with a note about where they can find your handy redelivery service, so they don’t have to wait next time, to cut back on repeat offenders. Answer any lingering offlines or IMs, and then put your auto response on. Any more notes that drop in don’t get looked at until the next day, during the time you’ve set out, to do them. Any IMs can be copy/pasted to a note card and answered the next day as well. Mute your UI sounds, so you’re not constantly hearing the ~ding ding!~. Write some “standard” notes. Or keep old ones you’ve used. It will save you from typing out a response about your redelivery / group… Read more »
To Number 4. While I do currently see both a therapist and a Psychiatrist, I still spend every day wanting a bullet in my head, a noose around my neck. If your post is serious, and you’re not seeing anyone about it – I do encourage you to do so. It’s a dark, dark, lonely place where you (and frankly I) are. But there is help. I hope you have someone in whom you feel you can confide in. Take that step. ♥
#4 Please feel free to reach out to me if you would like to to talk <3
#11 – GTF over it. People like what you do, want to blog your stuff and inform you about the opportunity to join their events. Your refusal to just click the X button on IMS and Notecards you aren’t interested in answering is a first world problem if ever I’ve heard one. There are starting to be more whiny designers than there are events to fit them in. If you don’t want to be in an event then ignore the people who contact you, or have a little decency and send them a generalized “Thanks but I’m busy” in response. Or put up an away message that asks them not to contact you further. Or don’t log on at all. The alternatives to crying about people wanting to involve you are endless. These are the people who are shopping at your store to begin with. You should be thanking them for noticing you and all that you’ve created. If you don’t want to deal with people, then don’t run a business. That’s the easiest fix there is.
You’re an idiot, most people are gratful for their work, greatful to be appreciated, but they still get swamped and overwhelmed by the stress of it sometimes.
Ah, it was only a matter of time for someone to rear their head and write a typical “Deal with it” response. You missed the entire point of my secret, and you jumped to a bunch of conclusions. Good job!
#11- what if you had someone act as like a intervention of sorts as my brain has shut down (sorry im one of the ebil event peeps and today was opening day and my brain is FRIED…but I would happily talk to a manager instead of you if you wanted to have someone act as a store manager to deal with the event peeps and whatnot so you wouldn’t get so burnt out you could put it on profile and autoresponse “sorry but any and all messages pertaining to events needs to go to x person because they deal with that any messages sent to me about events will get lost in the shuffle as I am in creating mode currently thank you” just a thought
Do you think you are of the few, though? Regarding your willingness to contact a manager? Awhile back it seemed very hard to get customers to speak to anyone other than the creator of their product, has that changed?
If she’s one of the few, so am I.
– Khaya
Number 4. I do not know you, but I would like to if only for the sheer reason to ask you to stay. People out there care about you and it would hurt them to lose you. You are loved. You are special. You deserve to be happy. Please stay. Please seek help to get you thru this dark time. I don’t know you, but I love you and I hope this reaches you before it’s too late.
#4 I’m mentally ill and have struggled with suicidal thoughts and feelings a lot in my life. Some links that have brought me comfort when I’m struggling:
http://boggletheowl.tumblr.com/post/41509206591/ive-been-getting-a-lot-of-these-lately-and-i
http://www.metanoia.org/suicide/
Wherever you’re located, there are hotlines and resources. I know it can be hard to make a call. I know it can be hard to tell someone you know what’s going on. Your loved ones want to know. The people that love you want you to get through this. You are not alone and you deserve to feel better. I may not know you but I care what happens. I hope you will reach out.
Thank you for posting these links. I hope many people will benefit from them.
So is number #4 mocking someone who is always saying they are going to end it but still here everyday or is it someone trying to get attention?
4 I don’t think someone truely considering suicide would give a toss about posting it to virtual-secrets surely not?
Ugh, I think my comment didn’t go through the first time. Let’s try this again.
Yes, someone very well could do. Humans are a very social species, and we need that connection even more when we feel alone and hopeless. Reaching out like this is often the half-step that precedes actual suicide. It’s the point where they feel like, “would anyone even care if I did leave this world?” So they do/say something like this to find out. Consciously they might tell themselves it’s to prove that nobody cares, but subconsciously they desperately seek reassurance that someone DOES care.
At this point, they’re on a precipice. Their natural survival instinct makes them reach out one last time (and yes sometimes there are multiple “one last times,” not because the last one wasn’t genuine but because they returned to that precipice). Our job as citizens of a moral society is to pull those people back from the precipice, not to push them over it or to say “lol I don’t believe you” which is pretty much just as bad. Never play Russian Roulette with people who talk about suicide. You might doubt their sincerity, and you might be right, but are you able to live with your conscience the rest of your life if you’re wrong? Always take them seriously, you lose nothing by doing so, but you risk a lot by neglecting to.
Every day, when I open my eyes, I’m afraid to crawl out from under the covers. I have little to look forward to. There’s one person that makes me want to go on. Is that you?
#4 Please talk to someone. Will you hold on for one more day, hour, minute. Please. You matter.
#4 – probably the same person on plurk, quit wasting time with secrets and anons and take your ass to see a doctor.
You are a jackass! Clearly you have no understanding of mental illness!
I have a very clear understanding, and at some point coddling and head patting has to stop and in your face “take your ass to see a specialist” needs to be said. Obviously I can’t grab the person by the hand and escort them, because if I could, I’d snatch them by the hand and say “enough talking, you’re seeing a Dr.”
You may think you are helping this person by talking to them like this but not everyone can handle ‘tough love’.
There are people who need to be handled gently,and everything else is like a slap in the face.
Um, I hope someone’s following up on #4. That’s a cry for help one way or another.
Khaya Leistone here. I’ve been where you’re at. Please IM me.
#5 you can’t copyright a house, you can’t copy many things, but there is a large number of people in SL who think it’s immoral. IMO if you make it your own and give it a twist I haven no issue with it. Give some value add
Agreed.
#4 talk to someone.
5) I’m a pretty vocal opposer of copyrighted content being used illegally in SL, and copying something isn’t illegal, sure it doens’t show a whole lot of creativity but it doesn’t lessen the work put in, cause I dunno if you know this but actually making mesh takes skill and effort.
9) I see stores in SL use the words ORIGINAL MESH all the time and they use pulled images from google on retopo’d meshes. Cheapens the whole terminology.
11) Then leave/stop creating. People can tell when a creator has burn out because their products start to suffer, and the brand starts to suffer. I’d also suggest going to your Dr for depression cause being unable to concentrate and feeling overwhelmed can be symptoms of that. It really isn’t hard to ignore event and blogger requests, just create an alt and direct enquiries to the alt (anyone who doesn’t read your profile isn’t worth being involved with anyway), or hire someone to deal with that for you.
I appreciate the skillls of mesh but then there’s the ones who write origional Mesh has if it’s a badge followed by “we do not use templates, we are all 100pct origional” as if anyone using a template is sub human, Ihate that.
No, I just want people to know that my content is original. That’s it.
I worked 10x as hard to build items from the ground up, people deserve to know they are buying original.
If I were a consumer, I’d be pissed to spend $400L on an item, only to find that it was a retextured $100L template.
It’s fine that you see things another way, but don’t assume we think template users are “sub human.”
Umm, it’s not about being sub human, it’s just clarifying that they don’t use templates, they use originally created mesh. Calm yer tits.
While I agree with your statement about it not being hard to ignore the requests, it doesn’t change the fact that I must see and interact with said requests (Remember, there is no option to shut off receiving IMs or NCs in SL). So while I certainly exercise my ability to simply *not* respond to these solicitations, I still receive EVERY fucking one of them. The solicitations also flood my offline e-mail inbox, making it near impossible to weed through them and get to the few people who legitimately need my help. It ends up costing me so much time that I just get fed up and the desire to continue with my work pretty much goes away. It’s like, “Well fuck, I was excited to create X product, but now I just want to get off of the computer and do something else.” The consistent flood of these solicitations have really just taken their toll on me. Let’s talk about what happens when I log into SL: “ding ding ding hello? dot..dot..dot…? are you there? hello? I didn’t get my item? hello? help me? hello!!!! join my event? hello, I have a blog! ding ding hello! can I blog for you? ding ding ding ding ding ding. hi. want to join my event?? please. hello. I have a proposition for you. ding ding ding ding ding ding ding buzz buzz buzz buzz” Every……..fucking…………day. I try to ignore it and keep working but they just keep popping up. So obviously, with no reprieve, the idea of even logging into SL becomes a tiresome thought. I work on as much of my product as I can outside of SL, but you know.. at some point I have to log in to compile the item and place it for sale. Having to… Read more »
I completely agree with the delegate solution. There comes a point in every creators life (if they are serious about making this a business) that they will need help, just like real life business. I wouldn’t suggest a store manager for your specific issues as it doesn’t sound like you’re aggravated with customer inquiries/needs or overwhelmed with them. I’d suggest a marking coordinator who would specifically handle all of the incoming. Believe me, as CMO for Miamai and RealEvil Industries I live in a constant state of my messages being capped. I completely understand where you are coming from however our lovely virtual community has changed over the past few years and this is an unfortunate (unwelcome even) change. Events are a necessary evil now a days, I am certain you are aware. If you choose to take this route whom ever you choose should have superior researching skills and be blatantly aware of the community and those within it. Your time as a creator is extremely precious and considering that most events only hit big for the first 3-4 days (MAYBE a week) of good sales it’s hard to choose which ones to take and which to pass on. As for the comments below or above not certain where they landed concerning people ignoring your profile: If event coordinators cannot READ your profile and direct their solicitations towards the person you have clearly stated they need to go to then they complete the first step of weeding out the events you shouldn’t bother with. At least that is my opinion anyway. If someone sends something to one of the creators I work for or the store managers instead of me it immediately goes into file 13 (the trash) because I cannot be bothered with people who cannot take a… Read more »
Erk. I was already feeling nervous about approaching designers for our event, but now I’m downright terrified to. I mean, I completely understand where you’re coming from, but at the same time, how are we supposed to know which designers are already overwhelmed and which ones have availability? All we can do is ask. I’m sorry that you get so swamped, I really am, but I’m not sure what event organizers are supposed to do. Some events can do application-only, but ours is still growing, so many designers don’t know about us TO apply in the first place, so yeah we invite the ones we want. We’re very selective, we don’t go around asking every designer we know of. But now that I see how much our invitations might annoy designers, I almost don’t want to do it anymore.
Don’t be, go ahead with your plan. I don’t know how many designers are as overwhelmed as I am.
I am just one voice.
Kesseret, are you serious, some organizers actually do that? That’s pretty shitty. :/
Author, thank you, though I’m still apprehensive now. I just wish I had a way to know whether the invite would be welcome or not, before I bother someone. >.<
No you should ask. Its easy to say no. What would chap my hide is being busy for one event you run so I said no then getting blacklisted for future ones. Which I’m sure you don’t do. But some event organizers do.
Delegate babe, I think most creators end up making a building alt, just for the purpose of being able to work while in sl and not be bothered. And if you have the income, you need to get a proper store manager, someone to wade through all the inquiries, so that you save your attention only for the important ones, and finally, if you haven’t already, get a vendor system that allows for redelivery, it makes life easier for the creator and customer. And for the rest, you just need to be really firm about your limits, have them listed in your picks (i.e,. no event solicitations, blog requests) with the statement that any unasked for requests will simply be ignored with no reply, and then when people bug you, ignore them, or *gasp* mute them, its sl, they’ll get over it.
A storemanager can hardly do a thing. All redeliveries etc. still have to be done by the creator him or herself. And only the nice polite people contact the storemanager. After they have contacted the creator first, who then tells them to contact the storemanager. The bullies and so never follow that request at all.
It is hard, because you want to be nice. And everyone that ims you, demands personal attention fom their favorite creator. But that keeps you from what you love and need to do most: creating. Stop trying to be nice. Be nice to yourself.
The only thing that keeps me same, is turning the sound of ims off (thank you firestorm) and making clear I only answer to notes.
Also, make a Q and A or something for the most asked questions. That way you only have to copy and paste. If you post it on your blog or website, you can even just send them the link.
Take care.
This comment is in response to “Event Organize” and the others who brought up redelivery terminals: I use a vendor system that has a redelivery terminal. I do think the majority of people make use of it. The main problem is that there is still a good amount of people who refuse to read my profile before contacting me, which means they are not seeing that I even have a terminal. They will bypass any responsibility to inform themselves, and bombard me with “I didn’t get my item”.. Usually that’s all their message says. They don’t even bother to think outside of themselves and offer me their transaction information. It’s as if they believe they are my only customer. Now, I have one of 3 choices. I can: (1) Ignore them, their fault for not reading my profile to find the redelivery terminal. Problem: Now I have their money, and they didn’t get the item they paid for. Not cool. (2) Message them and send them the link to the terminal (3) Redeliver it myself. #2, and #3 sound easy enough but I am bringing in hundreds of transactions a day. So people like this are a daily problem for me. I have taken the steps to make their shopping experience a good one, but they want this customized personal hand-held help. I think most of you are self-aware enough to know that none of this means I am not grateful people enjoy what I have created, but this constant need for personalized attention becomes a nuisance. It is not a logical request, I am one person. SL has a built in auto responder but it only works if you leave your avatar logged in. What is needed would be one that works while you are offline as well: *Customer/Organizer… Read more »
I’m not a store owner or manager, I don’t know much about this aspect, but I do know that with some stores – Slink, for example – the redelivery system is automatic. I hit the button at the store, it takes me to a web page with a list of my purchases, and I click the one I need redelivered. That works for updates too. As far as I can see, neither Siddean Munro nor SOCS have to do a thing other than keeping the system up. It’s pretty easy for them and for the customers. Maybe you can ask her what she uses?
I hope I don’t sound too snarky or critical in my other comment. I just see that there are needs on both sides, and I’m not sure how each one can get those needs met without adversely affecting the other. Neither event organizers nor bloggers WANT to annoy you, but we have to be able to invite/apply, so how are we supposed to do that? I’m genuinely curious if someone has solution ideas.
Honestly, a good system like the E3V system has tools to where the store managers could be added into it. Do re-deliveries and even be given HUDS to help. Agreed about the Q&A. But there are vendor systems out there that work wonders for creators who have store managers. Now trusting the store managers with that kind of power, should be seriously thought upon. I own a store and manage another. While me and my friend have access to both store customer service terminals, we do not abuse it and trust each other indefinitely. The thought of customer service items should never hold a creator back with the items that are out now to help them.
Plus have a store website, even if a basic one that has all your tidbits on. Concerning to bloggers, if your not taking them state that on the site and if they still contact you. Do what I do, decline the notecard. It’s not going to harm you to decline or make you look bad, if they come at you then you need to tell them they should have read your site. Point in blank, don’t let things overrun you and you’ll be fine. I manage and delegate for two stores, when you feel like it’s too much take a break and come back with a clear head. I’ve taken a month break after doing an item for a round up. Don’t let things pile up on you!
Exactly. Back in the day I had a store and gave my best friend login info to my hippovend so in case I was without phone or internet she could redeliver. I’m sure I got scammed a thousand times but if someone sent me a message i would just redeliver. My items were no trans so who cares? I never wanted to piss someone off for 30 cents and also SL creations are digital and I just didn’t worry because most people weren’t scamming. Also I hated notecards. About 90 to 100 percent of my customer service was done over email and a cell phone. I can’t read a note card on my cell. I think how you handle it is how it ends up. Granted there weren’t 10000 events like their are now but you restrict your events and go no stress on the customer service you can be golden. The minute SL doesn’t become fun is the minute you should just stop. Good luck!!
Thanks for the constructive reply! I think it is time I do what you suggested.
Thank you for showing this side of content creation. I honestly never considered that store owners are getting constantly spammed to participate in every little event. I can totally see how it can be a nightmare.
<3
I agree there are too many events. But If it’s to the point where you hide from your obligations, along with your desire to create, this isn’t a problem of too many events and bloggers. It’s a problem of you not being able to say “no.”
Since that’s a very good life skill to possess in the real world, let SL be where you learn to hone it. The other option is to let your inability to say “no” drive you out of SL and away from something you love (creating).
I posted #11. I am not the only content creator feeling this way so your response is actually a great one as I believe it relevant to those who really can’t seem to say “no.” As far as my personal journey is concerned: I do say no, to roughly 90% of the solicitations. My limit is 2 events tops, per month, all others are ignored and/or tossed in the trash. My SL secret isn’t about not being able to keep up with event participation duties, it is about the constant & continual spam-solicitations of these events.
keep it to a one event a month or none.