New report warns of dangers of trashy avatars

It's More Predictable. (tm)

Will they be issuing blue pinstriped ballgags as well?

I remember happening on a place that offered four or six corporate avatars. They were presented as that: avatars that were suitable for the business environment.

They didn't look bad, except that the hair was not so great.

It could be a niche business for someone, or a few someones, to offer full avatars (clothes, hair, and all) for corporate residents. I'm sure some ordinary residents might want such an avatar as well. Not everyone wants to be glamorous or sexy. Especially the men, I think.

And it ought to come with instructions on how to revert to that package, so ppl feel easy about fooling around. Maybe it could be no mod? or come with no-mod copies for safety?


Someone mentioned the Lindens... I've been surprised by how basic some of their avatars are, but I guess I shouldn't be. I imagine that if my job was centered around a virtual world, that I would have a really kick-ass avatar.
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... That's why she visits at lunch. (^_^)y

That means your avatar might want to lose the sparkly pink torpedo bra, metallic leggings, and giant bat wings. When it's representing your company, that is.

Since I'm a very, very old man I can say that in the RL I inhabit, things have come full circle.

We're in the software consulting business which means we travel to a lot of client companies and see a lot of different "standards".

In the late 90's, early 2000's there was a big backlash against "corporate suits" and lots of personal expression going on, especially in the new media companies but even in the boardrooms of quite staid companies.

Maybe as a result of a more difficult financial climate however, I have noticed the suits and ties are back in a big way.

On the whole I'm quite glad. My view is a lot of it has to be age appropriate. There's nothing worse than trying to take a middle-aged finance guy seriously, when he's going for the skater-boy look.

As for me, I just don't have the talent to come up with a super expressive way to dress. Give me 5 suits in a row, 5 white shirts in a row, a couple of pairs of black laceups and some ties and I'm sorted for the rest of my life.

It also helps on those dark , hungover mornings when getting dressed with your eyes closed is the only option.

I liked your post, Atticus.

Some of us who like to create alts were chatting the other day, and I commented that it would be nice if we could sell our alts. (I was just talking, not serious, btw.) The others didn't think anyone would want to buy because "they would lose all the fun of making them."

But I understand that it is distinctly NOT fun for many people, and that they would be much happier to go a place where a number of options

(1) look good
(2) are business-appropriate
(3) are labeled in a helpful way (for example, "business casual"
(4) are complete (so that the buyer doesn't have to go find hair or shoes or something in another place)

I know it might sound like I'm trying to talk myself into starting such a business, but I'm not.

it's obvious that the corporate mindset, and the corporate customer mindset, already has trouble with dress-down fridays. it follows from there that they would of course have trouble with Avatars.

And it's not only corporates. i set up a laptop a good few years ago for an artsy author and his newspaper-columnist wife, and a support crisis moment cropped up just as i was about to go and do door duty at a little soiree - so I clumped in to fix the damn thing in big boots and leather trousers. Took at least 20 minutes for them to get over that and let me do what I'd gone there to do...

What a funneh thread, and yes the article is amusing but I can't say it's not true. As a representative for Virtual Ability, when I am in a business meeting inworld I wear a business suit or business pantsuit, of which I have several, you CAN find them if you bother to look. Yeah sometimes the shirt is cut down to my waist but the jacket covers it, so meh. Treasure isn't overtly sexy anyway but sometimes just can't help it, even her.

Last night I had on skin tight leggings and a skimpy lace top, and boots. I looked very cute. I was on my sim and looked up to see a new person arriving I hadn't met before. I looked at her profile, saw she had joined some of the deaf groups, so ok, a new member of the deaf community, cool; I went over to meet her and introduce myself and in talking, found out that in RL, she's a nun. OMG. I immediately felt over exposed and half naked. But that was MY problem, not hers, she was great and soon put me at ease. You just never know!

I think you've said something important there Treasure.

I get the feeling that some people feel that the "corporate suits" judge people all the time on how they dress.

At the end of the day I'm 44. My teens and student days were the 80's and my God did I look bad in mascara!

What it means is that for most of us "suits" we really don't give a t*ss.

I think Seven would make a bundle if she started that business.

I can't vouch for people outside my circle of RL friends, but for many men of my age.. seriously we'd rather be hung, drawn and quartered than spend a morning "clothes shopping".

Everyone's different but I do notice that often, the most judgemental are those who insist on "free expression" and think that "suits" = "devil's spawn"

One poster here reckons that anyone who wears a suit should be pre-judged as an undeniable control freak/sociopath.

Now that's how I like my irony served.

I had one lousy job where I was berated for wearing shirts "without collars"...(They weren't t-shirts but nice knit shirts!!)... However, I do have a tattoo on my hand and nobody has ever given me sh!t about that.

It depends on the industry, I think. The tech sector seems to be pretty progressive on matters of appearance. Either that or the tech people have the upper hand and refuse to give in to these backwards corporate ideals.

It's not only the corporate 'suits' it's my own sense of 'coming correct' (I'm sure someone can have a field day with that) . I don't feel businesslike if I have to sit there editing my top to cover my nipples.

You and me both.

I have several suits for my avatar. Usually I wear an 1870s look with a frock coat and contrasting waistcoat. I also have a 1940s-50s pinstripe and a modern black suit with various degrees of formality (I can chose just shirt/shirt+tie/shirt+tie+jacket/Shirt-tie-vest-jacket). But working for a Historical Society, the 19th century is where I work most of the time.

Geh! (>_< I weep for you. (T_T)

I look at it this way... I have my job because I know how to do it. If there is any other condition to my employment that requires me to go beyond THAT, I'll gladly go do something else. I believe I'm fully capable of making such a move. (^_^)y

Also what sub-sector you are in.

I used to do contract IT work for the White House in DC. Dressing down was taboo. When Bush was in power it was even worse.

A few years ago I switched to the nonprofit/research sector. Before starting work I did what I found normal: go clothes shopping. On my first day a co-worker told me I did not need to dress up so much.

I did not need to be told twice,since then my usual outfit at work has been sneakers, non-ripped jeans or a skirt (usually denim), and a nice top (I figure tees would be pushing it). Nobody has said boo to me about my wardrobe, I figure they must assume that is typical for a programmer.

Yep, and the role as well Kara,

In our little company I wouldn't care if what we call the "Back-Office Guys" come in wearing their pants on their head. As Immy has pointed out, if they can do their job without upsetting other employees, then they're fine.

Unfortunately I'd rather not see my business go down the pan and my employees on the street just because my sales and account management people want to express their personalities through their dress.

Maybe society and culture are wrong, but it still boils down to the fact that people buy from people they like, or at least from people that don't scare the sh*t out of them. They way of the world at the moment is that the people with the cash are still the "suits".

Also I've noted that the bigger the buy, the more clients want you to look like a bank manager.

We broker some quite big deals and I really wouldn't feel comfortable asking someone for a 7 figure sum while dressed in anything other than a suit and tie. (Maybe that says more about me though!)

Maybe I should try it one day, but if we lost the job I'd always wonder......

I can't help wondering why the report was made in the first place.

Our appearances make impressions... this has been known for some time, yah?

At least a few thousand years, if not a lot longer.

People will run companies as they will; they will be picky about it or casual about it; it's about as individual a choice as anything else. For the person running things.

There's also the matter of expectation. I've had visitors apologise for not being properly dressed up in Caledon as recently as last night (we don't have *any* dress code, other than perhaps not prancing around as a giant schlong, or similar). People just participate as they want. Maybe it's still too strict, and people should be able to be flying penises in psychedelic hot dog buns if they want to. But not anything worth worrying about.

Whatever the case... how is avatar appearance for a business something worth reporting about? It baffles me.

I've known a fair number of California tech company owners in my time ~ not little places like mine but Serious Businesses (say, 10 to 100 million USD annual, and up).

Almost all of them run around in sandals and jeans. And almost all the time. The only time they really dress up is for fancy dinners out with the family, or the theatre or something like that.

Women are different though ~ they tend to be ten times more conservative dressed than the men. No clue why; it's just "like that." Though once another top level engineer did some environmental testing with me in little more than a fluorescent orange string bikini and tanning oil (it was wicked hot at the test site). But that was the exception rather than the norm.

I wear suits.

Pep (That doesn't help really, does it?)

Maybe I've got to get across to California then Desmond,

London is, on the whole, a very different place to do business.

As I mentioned before, we have a few clients in the media and publishing sectors and they are a bit more easy going. Although as money's become a bit tighter again, I've noticed the suits coming back out the wardrobe even there.

It's all anecdotal at the end of the day and everyone's experience is different. Maybe I'd be one of those guys with a 100 million turnover if I wore sandals and jeans more, you never know

It's common sense. But I have a debate about it in SL all the time with friends who run businesses. Some say that you be whatever you want to be, and dress however you like to dress, and go about your fun, and continue to run your business successfully.

I'm on the other side, where I feel like that as a business person in SL....I need to function the same way I do in RL. People bring their RL judgments in here. No stopping that.

I consider what I'm wearing when walking about the store, and I consider what my behavior is in general (slip up some times, and don't want to come off too rigid - fun, is still part of running a business in both lives).....so I use an alt for anything that might be judged harshly. Still don't want to give up having some types of fun that would definitely be judged. Some people will absolutely refuse to give up this kind of fun as their main av who runs a business....and some days I wish I could be like that.

Man, I just had to cross touring Caledon in flying penis with psychedelic hot dog bun off my to-do list

True, right now where the only way I see external people is if I go to a conference they are pretty relaxed about my appearance. When I worked IT in a hospital though they wanted people to not have any appearance that did not look totally professional to any visitors (my boss had me stop wearing nail polish because of that rule).

I had to help open an office in NYC. It was just a shell of a place. It needed telephone wiring, internet hookup, everything except electricity and walls.

We went to meet the building manager. "We" was my boss, me, and the director of one of our satellite offices.

My boss wore a suit. I dressed professionally, knee-length skirt, conservative shoes, etc.

When we got into the city, we had some trouble in the parking garage, but my boss managed to talk his way out of it. "When you're dressed well they're never sure if they can blow you off," he said after.

When we got to the appointment, the guy from the satellite office was there, wearing sneakers, jeans, and an old shirt.

"Do you think how I'm dressed matters?" he asked.

My boss sniffed and said, "You look like you've come to paint the place."

In fact, the building manager immediately assumed that my boss was the one in charge, that I was a manager, and that the third guy was... some sort of factotum, a flunky, and he didn't bother talking to him at all.
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I am sooooo glad I don't work in the corporare world.