Mourning Michael Jackson in SL

Heading into SL last night, Michael Jackson was actually the last person on my mind. In fact, it was nice to get away from all of the media coverage and begin my search for a new home. However, as I entered "home rent" in the classified search box, the very first entry was a Michael Jackson In Memoriam sim. No, it was not for rent, which is odd that it popped up in this search, but it was at the top based on the number of people visiting this new sim. By last night, over 36,000 avatars had visited this memorial. Upon further searching it was later discovered that this sim is for sale with no neighbors for the bargain price of L$9900.

I will admit I was a bit shocked to see this Michael Jackson devoted sim.....but maybe only for a few seconds....because I quickly remembered that what happens in the world is mirrored in SL. This is a cultural extension of what we are experiencing in RL. As a result, my curiosity was piqued. A second search in the "All" category brought up a pretty decent showing for Michael Jackson related sims, products and music events. It was amazing to see how many music venues had switched their music over to all Michael Jackson and in Terra Bordeaux a "3D" concert was being held - well almost. Upon visiting said concert, I was unsure whether to categorize this as a sick joke or a legitimate caricature. The 3D Michael Jackson was one you could buy for yourself for a little over L$600, but the actual form of this avatar was so skeletal that is looked as if Michael had been dead for several weeks already. The addition of giant angel wings on the back did not help matters.....it really creeped me out and I was not surprised that there was no one else around to enjoy the "show". Besides, the caricature MJ was silent as the grave and the sim music was general pop with no MJ music around.
Ironically, there were some really nice memorials that allowed people to light candles or leave flowers and balloons. What was extremely interesting was the variety of international representation. Each memorial was inundated with mourners or curiosity seekers from around the world. I loved the little memorial outside of the Old Stone Church at Some Enchanted Evening. Visitors could read allowed their favorite quotes from the singer, or a devotional segment that comforted them. The only weird element I noticed here was a camping kiosk at a rate of L$2 per 10 minutes....not exactly memorial worthy.

One note as you travel around viewing the memorials.....many are as eccentric as MJ was in RL. Case in point: The memorial on the PassPort sim. The church-like setting with roses, candles, free t-shirts and loads of MJ pictures is great as you wander around listening to his music......but yes, that is a bald MJ in a glass coffin, just like Snow White, in front of the cross in the chapel. And be sure to watch as you walk around....try not to step on the dismembered bodies strewn around. You gotta love these fans.....memorializing him in a way only possible in SL!












Now back to house hunting!
Sif

The Danger of Sudden Homelessness in SL

For the past 9 months, I have been the proud renter of a lovely little island set in a sim designed to be a replica of Tuscany. The sim was very well designed early on, but soon changed piece by piece until my island was the only piece of the sim that remotely resembled Tuscany.

My rental agreement was well priced for a 4096 sqm island ($L2200 per week), with 937 prims. However, the rental restrictions were a bit odd, with no changes allowed in the areas of sim music choice, land elevations or visitor restriction. The limited rental permissions were due to the sim owner's desire to gain "purchase" along with rental. For $L7600, plus the same weekly rental, permissions were more liberal. I opted to try out the place for a few months, but music was not important to me and the shape of the island was what I liked about the place anyway, so I searched thoroughly for an Italian style home to plop on my island and continued to rent all these months without paying the purchase price since that was not a requirement.

I loved my place but was getting frustrated with the ever changing environment around me. My Tuscan sim soon changed into a mess of varied, chaotic neighbors who could switch to a tropical theme or build a giant house of cards next door without any land design restrictions imposed. Despite these horrid changes around me, I still loved my place.

Some of these changes increased after my landlord informed me that he was no longer the manager of the sim. I think he gave me the name of the new owner/manager, but my rental box was still paying the same manager, so life went on without much incident.

Due to some RL changes, my recent SL use has been very limited and the thought of letting my villa slip away was very tempting. My rental box had notified me that I had 2 days left before running out of rent. So the next day I attempted to enter the sim to pay for one more week to get some pictures and remove my stuff before letting the rent run out for the last time.

That's when it happened.....I attempted to go to my sim to pay the rental box, but the transport failed with an error that said the sim was down or no longer existed!! I waited a few more hours for another try and then tried again the next day, but all subsequent attempts failed to find my beloved, yet crazy sim.

After a few more attempts, I looked at the old manager's profile, and suddenly, my sim, which had been one of his picks, was no longer listed as it had been a couple of days ago. That convinced me that something was horribly wrong and so I contacted the former manager to ask what was going on. He explained that he was no longer the manager again, but failed to tell me what had happened. I also noticed that NONE of my personal property had been returned to my lost and found!! I was not only homeless, but ALL of my belongings had been stolen in the process!

I tried further to get some information out of my former landlord, but he would only provide a partial name of the avatar that had taken over.....I was smelling something very rotten in Tuscany (Tuskany Sim). After some bugging and hostile verbal exchanges, he finally offered to give me a new parcel in his other sim for the same price and to reimburse me for the lost property. I estimated about $L8000 since my structure and boat were copyable, and this would cover my furniture/garden losses. He paid me the money without hesitation and then left without any word or explanation.

I know the former manager now has a huge Itland sim with residential and commercial complexes, but after this fiasco, I wouldn't take him up on that offer for any sweetened deal imaginable. The owner is actually a native Italian which I thought would help with maintaining a traditional Tuscan style sim.....I thought wrong.

So there really isn't any moral to this story except that if something like this happens to you, you could complain to Linden for fraudulent behavior if the owner/landlord did not reimburse you....and there are mediation/litigation groups in SL, but I'm not sure how much power they actually have. However, in all of my rental experiences I never imagined anything like this could actually happen without any warning. Can you protect yourself? I doubt it unless you restrict your home/furniture purchases to copyable items, but that's not possible for most of the really creative items out there.

And of course, no one can reimburse you for all of the shopping time you took to get your home looking just right.....farewell fond villa, it was my favorite place so far....on to the next place.....maybe I'll go with a well established sim that has been around for a very long time....maybe that will help guard my rental investment.....but there are no guarantees.

Your friendly neighborhood nomad,
Sif