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Hall of Shame
Top Places

Hall of Shame

If you have something you think belongs here, or want perhaps disagree with me, please IM me (Darius Lehane) in-game.

Linden Labs does not control content, and they have taken the brave step of providing an online service that is customizable and programmable. While this can bring about the best in people, sadly this can bring about the worst too. Here are my top picks for shameful, ugly, deceitful or unethical places or behaviors in SL. If you have one you'd like to add, IM me (Darius Lehane) in game, and leave a message.

My suggestion with these places, and those that run them: boycott them! Do not visit them, do not spend your money with them. Remove the profit incentive, and maybe, if we are lucky, they will just go away.

8) Mostly Empty Malls

Another favorite of the talentless is to create a mall in the belief that "if you build it, they will come". Trouble is that you are competing in a flooded market, and often against people who will employ camping chairs to drive up the Traffic count on their mall. He, Wolfy, could it be that you are not renting a place because your mall is ugly? Or could it be that giant blue cube spinning at the top?

Imagine a town with no industry but lots of retail space. Then remove 90% of the population, and that is what Second Life often feels like: a deserted mall in a deserted town. In fact the feeling of desolation is worse, more like a post-apocalyptic horror film: in real life, even deserted malls that are open have a real cashier in the stores. The feeling is creepy.

So here is a tip if you want to open a mall: don't. And if you are going to, at least offer some bit of original content. Some very good clubs have retail sales areas associated with them: come for the music, maybe buy something; at least they contribute positively to the landscape.

7) Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong

Chrischun Fassbinder based his Second Life on, or so it would seem, Snowcrash. He runs "Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong," a nod to that book. However Mr. Fassbinder is engaged in the the most obnoxious spam enterprise in Second Life. He buys parcels of land, cuts them up into 16m² fragments, and puts up clutter out to the horizon. He gets his message out when you are looking for land too, because he marks up his land to the point where no one will buy it, but he can show it for sale (or perhaps he knows a few desperate souls will pay his price to get him out of their sim).

His establishments always rate high in traffic due to the plentiful camping chairs in his establishments -- denying, of course, access and sim resources to other residents of the sim he is in.

If you have no talent, no content, no product and no imagination, research "Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong" on how to leave your mark on Second Life anyway. Chrischun, I know you are a great guy with some good products and good taste in literature, but please, oh please do you part to clean up Second Life.

6) Gifted Eyesores by people like Amadalo Fenua

Amadalo has created one of the ugliest things visible in Second Life: a giant fast-spinning "Jack-In-The-Box" head. This eyesore is no doubt a treat for neighbors, who must surely enjoy the ambience it creates, and the destruction of their property values. I cannot fathom what Amadalo was thinking, whether he thought this was clever or whether he is simply trying to take over real-estate in the area (tactics like this have worked in the past). When you see Amadalo (if he ever logs on), tell him you think he is a moron, then "mute" him. It is too bad it is no longer possible to give people negative ratings for behavior and builds. Obnoxious builds like this make a good case for Linden to monitor content. And if you are his neighbor, my heart goes out to you, it really does.

5) Obnoxious "Land for Sale" signs by people like Travis Ristow

Travis should be nicknamed "Travesty" for the infliction of his blight upon the landscape. In this image, he is selling his massively overpriced 16m² parcel of land (no doubt to advertisers who will perpetuate the eyesore) using that tried-and-true technique: make an advertisement so ugly people will buy the land just to remove it! These quickly spinning "For Sale" signs litter SL like droppings from a parade of elephants. Shame on Travis, and shame on those who feel compelled to ruin their neighbors' experience in Second Life because they can't sell their overpriced property. Do not buy land from this man, or anyone who uses tactics like these. The only thing worse than his spinning "For Sale" signs are the white 10m x 10m cubes some people make instead. Grr.

4) Fire First "Security" Systems

This one belongs to Stephan Peck (be sure and let him know what you think), although it is one of the better ones -- some give only 6 seconds warning. For some reason people like Stephan feel it is better to pay money and buy a "Security System" that teleports people home, destroying their SL explorations, rather than simply banning everyone from their land.

And why are so many people interested in keeping people off of their land anyway? I have yet to see one of these protected parcels as showing any traffic at all, meaning the owner doesn't use it. If you are after privacy, you can put a door in your house that locks. Keeping people off of your land doesn't work anyway because you can easily maneuver your camera to see what is inside -- if anybody really cared. Obnoxious and pointless, and should get the owners banned as griefers.

3) Spamvertisers: Roadside Advertising Networks

By now you get the idea: boycott the owner of the land selling the advertisers, and boycott the stores doing the advertisers. In fact, contact the owner of the store and tell them you are interested in their products, but won't buy from them because they like destroying the landscape with their spam.

This monstrosity depicted is brought to you by LogSpark Holdings, consisting of Blu Sparkle, Chiva Vavoom and Sandry Logan. Let these misfits know that they are boycotted. And hey Sandry and co: no one believes people willing to pay you are "select cadre"; they are as big a loser as you are. Bye.

Oh, and by the way, this type of business is perfect for those with no imagination and no talent. If you are a loser like these, buy up some tiny, overpriced bits of land from people like Travis Ristow and do your bit for the uglification of Second Life.

2) Camping: Zombie Casinos

Casinos employ campers to artificially pump up their "traffic" or "dwell" count, giving those casinos an artificially higher score in the Search menu. The campers usually earn around $3L per 10 minutes, or $18L per hour -- about $0.06 US per hour. Of course, because of the easy availability of free anti-idle gadgets, this means that the camper really only needs to pay the electricity to keep their computer on. If you type "games" into search, you will find zombie-filled casinos, instead of actual fun places to hang out (or fair, fun casinos).

Do not go to these places. Have some self-respect, and besides, it is not clear that you will actually see a profit -- if you factor in the cost of electricity to power your computer, and the cost of maintaining a computer (harddrives and fans do actually wear out). Instead, don't go to Macdonald's one day, and put the money from your happy meal into Lindens. This is a lot more fun.

1) Image-Based (Wannabe) Art

This gets a special mention as a pet-peeve: a talentless user somehow (pirates, perhaps?) gets a hold of Photoshop, and believes they can become the next da Vinci by googling for some textures and pasting it on cards. The best (I really mean worst) of these are intersecting cards (polygons) of photos of plants such as the one depicted in this example.

There are four major problems with this: 1) note the area circled in red, you will notice that a leaf intended to be in the rear of the picture is in front of a closer leaf, 2) because of this sorting issue, the plant flickers horrible as you or it moves, 3) it LOOKS like a picture of a plant pasted on a card, and 4) notice the grey fringing around the plant?

Super ugly. Hey, Azrazael Maracas, creator of this trash, YOU AREN'T FOOLING ANYONE, YOU AREN'T AN ARTIST! And Jim Lumiere, on whose land I found this rubbish, WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU THINKING, CAN'T YOU TELL ITS UGLY AS S**T?

Here is a clue for wannabe artists about alpha textures: alpha textures don't use "per-pixel z-sorting", meaning that Second Life will try and sort them by polygon only -- which means "random" for intersecting polygons. I realized I lost some people here, and I will try and create a tutorial to explain this principle, meanwhile just don't do it. Also the fringing is caused by dumbass cutouts; green plant pixels blend with black pixels to form grey. Looks great in Photoshop, but the blending in SL makes this look bad.