Why owners allowed the spam to kill the public chat rooms?

I've been in SL for almost three years. I am not a SL addict but when I have the chance I like to visit SL for a few days. I burn some lindens, I visit some clubs, I see how things are going on... then I leave until I have the chance to return again...

I wonder how the spam has become "official" these days, killing one thing that it was very nice for me: the public chat rooms.
Any crowded club I go these days I find the same: spam, spam and spam!
The girls of the staff of the club spam merciless.
- Avalanches of "interesting" copy-paste text that kill any conversation attempt.
- Never-ending one word exclamations.
- Kindergarten pictures or emoticons.
- And all kind of childish stuff you can imagine.
Is this what SL needs?
Obviously if the staff spams, everybody will have license to spam too.
The final result is that there is no chance to follow a conversation in the public chat rooms anymore.

Nothing to say about those girls. They are not genius for sure. I guess they do what THEY THINK is cool and necessary.
What happens with the owners of the clubs?
Why they don't guide their workers?
Spamming is the way to make a SL business to work?
That is what I don't really understand.

Obviously some people like it because there are a lot of clubs like that out there.

They are not all like that, tho. You just have to find the right place for you.

Try looking for coffee shops instead of clubs. You are more likely to find conversation instead of party shouts there.

I have a rule of one spam a hour - as in sending a slurl in group chat and contest info. Same for notices. But at least there is a relief from notices if you want it. Just un-check the notices box.

Club owners should realize that the excessive spam works against them if they are trying to retain members.

Yes I have more options, I know it.
The sad thing is three years ago, before the spam fest, it was possible to chat in the public rooms and it was possible to read what people was saying even in the most crowded clubs. That was an important bonus in SL for me.
Something changed there.
One of the options I had just died.
That is what I am sad for.

If you're mourning certain specific clubs that have gone spammiferous, yeah, that can be disappointing, but you already know there are plenty of others out there--including crowded places--that haven't yet been infested.

You're absolutely right that it's the management who's responsible for setting the "tone" of public chat in a club. If, for example, they allow hosts to use gestures of any kind for any reason, it's only a matter of time until the chat channel is just inundated by inane chatter from staff and patrons alike. That's when it's time to move on.

It's why I no longer go to clubs.

I prefer conversation with people who use whole sentences.

Gestures are fine in small, tiny doses.

When it's gesture after gesture after gesture it gets as annoying as the ASCII art chat that fills the screen.

The woots woots, yeah babies, OMG's, be sure to tip your hosts, DJ, musician have all been around for as long as I can remember in SL. I don't normally like such idle, silly stuff (and I certainly don't like being reminded to tip someone). But, that's the way of clubs and such. People hate silence so the owners instruct their employees to whoop it up to get the crowd into the mood.......that leads to spam contests. But, when I go to clubs now days I go for the music mostly and ignore the spam. I have voice disabled so voice spam never gets to me. I think the "spam" (as you call it.......which is much the same for me) works both ways. Some love the silly gestures and stupid comments.......some don't. As long as the owner gets the results he/she wants I guess it will continue. I've learned to live with it.

Problem is that a host not interacting enough with their patrons will kill a club just as easily as spamming it. I've had host at events pretty much just stand there and if there's a DJ, the DJ was doing all the work.

The best clubs are clubs that have a topic/theme night. And the hosts chat on that topic and dress in theme. Too bad I'm out of the loop or I'd give you some great tips on which ones to go to.

I have a theory that SL voice has pushed some clubs go this way, with folks saving their actual interaction for voice conferences (often not on the voice chat). But, I haven't been to enough clubs to check it out.
.

You need to change what clubs you go to. Go to places that encourage chat.

If the staff are spamming so much you can't have a community, or if they're encouraging or enabling everyone to hide in IMs, the place is not going to be community friendly. You need a place with lots of local-chatty members.

They are out there. In fact there are many such places. You just have to find them.

I agree with you Marzial, I hardly go to clubs any more because the spam bugs me. I cant stand the over use of the ......spanks .... ass not to mention the more crude ones out there. I also hate the need for clubs and their guests to use the gestures that post lines of pics , doi really meed a pic of a wold howling in my chat line to know you are making a sound of a wolf? I go to interact to listen to the music and using most of these things with the associated noise drowns out the DJ

I hate it too. I found complaining about it politely to the staff gets a "people like it" or some such.

So I quit going to clubs.

Is that ASCII wolf really SO fascinating every ten minutes, or for the 1000th time we've all seen it?

ETA: I didn't mean to be a parrot, WW. Lol.

Hey parrots are fine.. The other oe i ate it shr .. I love that T.U.N E .. well i may love that tune also if i could hear it over all the crap .. DJs should revolt over this abuse of spam i think it is being rude to them

I agree. I work at a club sometimes when they need me and I don't spam. I refuse to gesture spam. You might see one or two come out of me the whole night that is relevant to the situation.(Vote now-send pm to dj for your request) and that is it. And most of the time I just type it out instead of using the gesture. Some of the girls there are just ridiculous with the spamming. I'd much rather have a conversation with the guests then spam the hell out of them.

I've had my dancers tell me that there are other clubs for which they previously worked that REQUIRE them to use pre-fabricated emotes and gestures extensively, rather than being spontaneous. The mangers want to keep tight control over what the dancers do.

When it comes to dancers at clubs doing it, my guess is that some lean on use of gestures a lot because spontaneously emoting all the time is hard, and a lot of club managers are requiring their dancers to spend every waking moment at the club. It's a recipe to burn out the dancers creatively, and so I suspect they lean on gestures. That's one reason my club has limited hours of operation and no strict dancer schedules. I don't want my dancers dancing all the time, I don't want them to burn out. I'd rather have a few good hours out of someone than a lot of mediocre hours.

For others, I think gestures in virtual reality take the place of a lot of the "ums" and "ahs" and "so what do you want to talk about" that takes place in real life when strangers are awkwardly trying to socialize.

As for the begging of tips, I tell my dancers: don't beg, earn.

Thing is, at real clubs no one shouts over the top of the music. Why do people want to do that in SL?

Amity your management style is sane. Thumbs up.

At the club where I work, we are... hm... strongly discouraged from using gestures. Every now and then a guest will come in and start gesturbating, and I'm not above firing one off while it's going around, but what usually happens is that everyone gets it out of their systems and then we can settle down and have some nice chat. (I've gotten a lot more tolerant of gestures than I used to be - some of them are quite creative - but I could just as happily do without seeing most of them ever again.)

I think people are used to firing off gestures because they see it so many places they go, but once there is something else going on to pay attention to, they get out of the habit.

I do know one individual who uses gestures an awful lot. I found out recently that they are disabled, and I think they use the gestures to compensate for not being able to type as fast and still contribute to the conversation. I don't think that's the motive most people have for using text gestures, just wanted to point out that you never know.

Yes I hate that art stuff ok cause look my chat screen will be small to the right usually and that art just looks like crap.
and iof I dont have the window well I cant see anything on my screen for all the "art"

Japanese places are quite big with this. . .

=^-^=

As a DJ I've seen plenty of gesturbating. When I'm in a place where this is going on, I conclude that the problem is one of two things:

1) Either the DJ (or in some case live act, especially so-called "tribute bands" that are people pretending to be a band while you're listening to pre-recorded music by somebody else entirely) isn't good enough to keep people interested in the first place. In which case the venue needs somebody better.

2) People just don't give a rip.

If I'm at a venue with excessive gesturbating and I'm not working there, I leave. If I start seeing too much of it when I'm DJ'ing I start working on how I can improve to make it more interesting and stop the gesturbation altogether because they don't need it. If they just plain expect to gesturbate and it's got nothing to do with my performance or lack thereof, I have a solution for that too. Quit working there.

I used to dance. The main reason I quit (besides getting more than a little bored with it all) was that club owners were more and more requiring gestures or pre made "canned" responses. Being "spoken to" about friendly chat with customers that did not include tauting of the club..........such as I could not say "how is so and so, I haven't seen him/her in a while?" to someone I knew. Needless to say that club went the way of most other clubs in SL. Club owners need to let the dancers be themselves as much as possible......that little thing comes through loud and clear to the customers. The folks that dancer connects with will become a loyal customer. The dancer who never connects with the customer in a personal way will drive the customers away.........so the club has to constantly keep "new meat" coming in the door. I quit dancing all together over that.

Good to see I am not the only one concerned about this problem.
Thanks to all for leaving your opinions. You made some good points and you brought relevant information I didn't think about it.


Sometimes I have no alternative options.
I am a Spaniard. There are only two big and crowded Spanish clubs in SL.
I love one of them. The manager rocks, the DJs are great, the public is funny and talkative, the music is great... The only problem in the club is the spam. There are up to 3 go-gos just dancing and spamming. Sometimes they make spam wars! The ASCII dog girl vs the ASCII hand girl.. who will win the battle?
Yes, I could leave, but if I want to spend some time in the best Spanish club this is the only option I have. The spam makes the club much worse, but it's still usable.
In fact, I am going to talk to the manager of this club and I am going to show him this forum. I don't want to look like someone suggesting to him how to run his own business but after I've seen that there is a consensus about the situation I feel the need to make him to know it.

And just to end, I would like to say thanks to the staff of the clubs (managers, go-gos, DJs...) who keep some kind of intelligent control over this issue.

I hate that especially at concerts. Also I have a tend to be renitent if I am forced to tip people. I do that by quality and not by ordre de mufti. So, my solution is: ever when I am solo on my ways, I go into "busy"-mode at these locations to have peace and silence in open chat and to be able to concentrate on the music/the musician. If I like what I hear, I tip them before leaving. But I do all to see no spam while listening.