A Group Invitation, and the Seductions of Free Stuff

When I logged on last night, a blue Invite card was in the upper right corner: Join This Group! It was a person's name, and what appeared to be a business. I thought for a moment: what if this is one of my neighbors? I don't want to give offense....maybe I should click on all the land around here and see if the name on the Invite comes up...

But I didn't. I decided that if the person actually did turn out to be a neighbor, I'd just apologize for declining the Group membership. The odds of that being the case seemed fairly small, though. I'd read somewhere that merchants can do mass mailings, so this was probably something like that. (Maybe people do mass mailings to all Premium members, or maybe just to all who own land on a particular continent....? I suppose I'll find out eventually.)

So I proceeded to work on my To Do list. And really didn't get much further than trying to organize my Inventory.

The thing is, I've acquired so much free stuff---from Help Island Public (I never did see the original Help Island), from the Shelter at Isabel, and from a few other places---that I've never even seen most of it. So I made subfolders for clothes and for accessories that I won't carry around. I'll put them in a storage prim. But I wanted to at least look at them, first.

I got only as far as some of the pants, really. There was my avatar, pants-less, standing in full view of anyone---though as I was the only person on the sim at the time, the exhibitionism didn't seem to be all that outrageous. One pair of pants after another went on, then off.

Looking at them, I could see a fairly wide variety in workmanship. No doubt people give away items they didn't put a lot of work into, and some were clearly first attempts at pants creation. Others had nice detailing, attached belts, appliqués, studs, and other signs that care had been taken.

One of the most effective ideas the Lindens ever had was to keep the creator's name on all items that go out into free circulation in Second Life. That way, a person's efforts can always be rewarded with recognition and appreciation, which could translate into actual cash income (if the grateful recipient of the item decides to seek out more by the same creator).

So Second Life provides not only the fun of making stuff---pretty amazing stuff, in some cases---but the knowledge that it might actually pay off in a tangible way.

And this is part of what I'm finding seductive. The free stuff is fun to acquire; getting something for nothing seems to be inherently attractive to us humans. But beyond the somewhat mindless pleasure of acquisitiveness is the recognition that the stuff acquired has a traceable history. And the implication of that is: anything I make will, throughout its existence, remain to my credit (or discredit if it happens to be shoddy, of course).

And that is an amazing spur to creation.

I don't know that I'll get good enough at using the building tools to become capable of making things that other people will enjoy. I hope so. Though I do recognize how much there is to learn.

However it works out: I am having fun with the attempt!