Begging in Second Life, is there a solution?

Imagine: you are a scripter or a builder, you are concentrating hard on an algorithm or trying to get a texture right and, while you are working away in Real Life, maybe on an important project in Second Life, the blue bar flashes on the bottom of your screen. Your concentration is broken. It could be important. That is why you left yourself logged in, isn’t it? So you open up Second Life.

Somebody, possibly only a day old in Second life, is asking to borrow L$1. What! You have been through this so many times before and so have your friends. No matter what the group is you belong to; SL Help Desk, blues appreciation or even one dedicated to philosophy, someone is begging. Not all the time but it feels like it.

Oh, yes, they say, “borrow”, “I’ll pay you back soon”, “It’s for a friend”. Do they have no idea what ONE Linden Dollar is worth in the Real World? There is no comparison. But they still do it. Recently, one asked for L$930. Well that, at least, is worth begging for! But they still got the same short shrift as all the others!

Some respondents on the group chat window get very angry; some just mute the beggar and close down the window. Others will lecture them on the morals of begging, still others quote the TOS. The responses are varied but follow a pattern...................

Continued reading Kims article in the PEOPLE section

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