Our favorite little adfarmer takes aim at Linden Lab auction Sims

It's fun to watch. Mwahaha

I have smoked grapevine, rabbit tobacco, and corn silks. And tobacco is very easy to grow.

It's an analogy just like "killing two birds with one stone." Are you just being facetious? If so, then sorry, disregard.

Great, now this thread is responsible for the deaths of two birds. What's next, someone skinning a cat two ways?

I'm saying I don't get the big uproar of me saying paying off adfarmers is stupid.

I used idiots earlier in another thread. Evidently people missed that one.

If someone can prove to me that paying off adfarmers is a SMART way to reduce the size of the adfarmer problem, then I will take it back.

I think every single one of us agrees with you that paying off adfarmers makes the adfarming problem worse.

However, there are many reasons that we still do it! Among them: self-preservation, desperation, pure economic reasons (greed), utter futility, and maybe some people truly are ignorant about the whole thing.

I absolutely agree with you that if every one of us stopped paying off adfarmers, then the problem would stop. But do you agree with me that accomplishing that is utterly futile? I believe that this is not because all the victims of the extortion are stupid, but because the problem is insurmountable without LL intervention!

I'll raise your two dead birds, skinned cat and boiled frog with one dead horse to shoot.

I can't speak with others but I will agree with you nearly 100%.

If everyone were smart enough to realize that NOT paying off Adfarmers would end the problem, then we could end it.

But that is never going to happen.

So you do have a point probably about the insurmountable thing.

...and therefore not everyone who pays off ad farmers is stupid.

we established they are not all stupid

some are ignorant, selfish or desperate.


I hardly see where realizing lots of people wont be smart enough to stop paying off adfarmers and thus joining in on the problem is commendable

In a word, no.

In more than one word, accomplishing getting rid of the problem by enough of us making a concerted effort to stop them is more than possible, it is probable. So I cannot agree with the assertion that it is utterly futile.

Of course, you may continue to feel that way, if you wish. I am only sorry that they have gotten you to the point of what I perceive as blind pessimism, but as I have said elsewhere, I can understand it. They can be very convincing in their tactics.

You mentioned your neighbor whose land is only a meter away from your build. If your business is so sensitive that an adfarmer could extort thousands of L$ from you if he got ahold of her plot, what would happen if someone really malicious (like your competition, for example) put up something just as bad, but didn't offer it for sale? I think you probably are a smart enough cookie to have done at least a little mental risk assessment with your business to be at least cognizant of your options in cases like that, and willing to implement necessary countermeasures to protect it.



Again, I wholeheartedly disagree. I think it is surmountable with a grass roots effort, and I am happy to be a part of one I think can do it. Only time will tell, of course, but I think some progress is better than not trying at all and making the problem worse for someone else. That's just my take on the issue, though. I would hope I could convince others to share it, but I understand that everyone has to do what they think is best for themselves first.

I don't think anyone thinks it's commendable. I think we're just trying to defend ourselves from being branded as retards for doing it.

It's being stuck between the rock and the hard place, choosing the rock, feeling bad about it, but better than if you'd chosen the hard place. (Note that NO animals were harmed in this analogy!)

Wow you are devious Talarus.

Now if that were the case that would be Smart of the competition. Nasty, underhanded and lame, but smart.

I think perhaps people are ascribing some sort of needless moral attachment to me using the word stupid.

It is stupid to compound the problem by giving in. But that doesn't make it "bad" or the person "bad"

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The adfarmers on the other hand are pretty smart, they know people will pay them off if they do certain things.

But that sure doesn't make them "good"

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Smart doesn't mean "right" , Stupid doesn't mean "wrong"

Well, not really. My competition couldn't get very far with their 8192 against my rest of the sim. They would simply ruin my business, and waste their tier.

I of course took this risk into account when I chose to locate my hotel where I did, knowing that my neighbor is a good SL friend. I'm just using this as an example, and I'm sure there are many businesses out there that are just as dependent on their view, and far more precarious and worried about what future owners might do.

I'd substitute the word 'stupid' with 'counterproductive', maybe? Or at the least say someone paying off an adfarmer is doing something stupid instead of being stupid? Semantics maybe. but a little less judgemental.

I thought we'd settled this! It is not necessarily stupid to give in! Sometimes it's just necessary! I thought you said you agreed that the problem is insurmountable? Do you really think I personally am stupid? Do you think that every person who pays off an adfarmer is stupid?

We're not all pissed off because we're getting accused of being amoral. We're pissed off because we're insulted by you calling us stupid when we are not acting out of stupidity!

I think it's a business fallacy that drying up adfarm money would kill it off.

It won't.

What you need to kill, is the *perception* that adfarms make money.

Or there will always be enough people "trying the idea" such that adfarms will continue anyway.

Then, months later: "Oh, it didn't work."



We've already seen this, and still see this with land speculation.

I'm dead sure that a LOT of people lost their virtual shirts, trying to win the land speculation game. It's a *very* dumb game, unless you are Elanthius or something and have tools, encyclopedic knowledge and can keep pace with technical changes. 99% don't; and the 1% that do are smart enough to not kill the goose laying the golden eggs the way adfarms do.

There have been constant waves of new people trying land speculation ever since 2003 - and there will be people trying it as long as land is available, no matter how bad the odds.

Same with adfarming and land extortion - people will continue to try it regardless of effectiveness, but because they *think* it might be.

This is very admirable, Talarus. I don't agree with you that it's possible to accomplish, but I really applaud you for trying.

I think that what will work better than grassroots efforts, is hammering it home to LL that this needs to be dealt with. Threaten to withdraw our tier. Tell them how much land we would buy if not for this problem.

But if someone is trying to solve the adfarm problem the stupid course of action *IS* to give in.

Whether it pisses anyone off or not.

The Smart course of action would be to not give in.

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I don't know that I'm describing motivation as much as describing a choice made.

You are describing motivation - okay. So maybe they have a good reason to make the stupid choice.

Wow you make a good point here.

Some people still think Clubs make money, after all.

Its hard to know for sure without knowing what percentage of adfarmers are making a profit.

Maybe this is all just semantics. I really don't think we disagree on hardly any of this. If, like Brenda suggests, you just said "counterproductive" I think no one would have any problem.

"Stupid" just suggests a lack of brain power, which simply is not the reason that most people give in.

Personally, I have given in because the 1000s of dollars I have invested in the land is more important than supporting a futile cause. The course I chose was definitely counterproductive to the cause. But I don't see how it was stupid.

I don't. But then again, it all depends on what you consider "kill it off".

In the Ad Zoo plan, you surround, obscure, humiliate, and/or incorporate the adfarm land. In time, the adfarmer either goes bankrupt (abandons the land), gives up and sells it to you for cheap, or, at the very worst, leaves it there. Since you've already incorporated it into your build, you're not losing anything that you already didn't plan to lose, and he is paying tier on something he will (likely) never make money on, which definitely wasn't his plan. No matter what, you win. More often than not, he will go away and try to play somewhere else. When those "somewhere elses" dry up, too, so will his desire to continue trying.



There sure will, but it won't be months later. Most people who bother starting adfarms are goldbricking "get rich quick" types in the first place. When the turnaround isn't remotely as quick as they are expecting, they will give up, too.

That doesn't mean there won't be more of them try to crop up, because there will be. However, if the popular reaction to them is defiance, they will not last very long at all.

THAT is what "kill it off" means to me. Not total prevention, but assured and copious amounts of utter and complete FAIL for anyone who tries.

Its is stupid in that it merely helps the adfarmers out. Which you don't want to do.

It doesn't sound like it was a stupid business decision for you though.

I don't mean people lack brain power - just comprehension as to the bigger issue. It is the fact that so many people make the choice to give in that has made the problem so large in the first place.

Many of us pre-date common adfarms in Second Life. So its easy to see the progression of multiple generations of people giving in to the extortionists.

Yes it could be that the problem is too big now to handle. Hard to know, I doubt enough people would say no to buying out ad farmers to gauge that.