Yes, Another Hate Post. *sigh*

OK. I was reading a post of my lovely friend Dot Lane's blog today dealing with the rise of freebie culture. I really enjoyed reading it and it prompted me to write this next bit.

I just have to say how much i despise people who feel entitled to free things in SL. In fact, I dislike people who feel entitled to most anything, but that's another story entirely.

OK, I love freebies. DUH! But I also spend every bit of money I make in my three different SL professions every week. If I didn't have a job in SL, I would put RL money into it, because I refuse to be a free loader.

NOW. That said. If you do not ever spend a single Linden in SL and only ever get freebies, I still don't neccessarily dislike you. We've all been broke. But here are the following things you can do to make like pretty much everyone hate your guts:

1. You complain about a freebie in open chat, group chat, or to a designer directly. YOU DO NOT GET TO COMPLAIN ABOUT A FREEBIE. Only time I say this rule does not apply is if you just spent hours on a hunt only to discover the reward is a BIAB crap full perm item you could have gotten at any freebie warehouse. Then, you can get all complainy.

2. You enter the store and look around for 2 seconds before saying in local chat (or even shouting it out) "Where's the freebie?" Please die. Ask someone in IM, ask your friends if you have any, or just look until you find it. If you can't spend three minutes of your time looking for a box, then why would you expect a designer to spend hours on something they made to give it to you for free?

3. You don't share the info. If you get an awesome gift of shoes, for example, and you hear someone ask where a nice place to get shoes is, and you don't ever mention the place where you got those great free shoes, then you are lame. If you aren't going to spend money anywhere, at least do a little promotion for the store as a thank you.

4. You don't say thank you. If the designer is standing right there, say thank you. It's just common courtesy. If you TP in, bump into everyone on your way to the box, rezz the box and take the freebie, ignore hellos and leave...well, that would be a /punt to me if I was a store owner.

5. You leave your garbage. PICK YOUR SHIZ UP!! You wouldn't go to a store in RL, take your item out of the box in the middle of the store, leave all the wrapping and stuff in the middle of the display and walk out would you? If you would, you are a jerk of gigantic proportions. Either way, don't leave stuff laying around, it can actually be a much bigger inconvienience to the store owner than you think, since litter counts against their prim limits and not every designer has return rights in their store.

OK, i have a bunch more complaints in this area but I will stop for the moment. What are your thoughts? How do you feel about it? What things bug you?

Encouraging mindless consumerism in SL,
-Sileny Noel