Can SL survive this?

Well I suspect our overbloating texture library is going to blow up in our face one day.

I didn't write "business success". Obviously you have not succeeded with what you want to accomplish, whatever that is, and that's what counts in the end... not money, but meeting your own goals. I understand that, but the way you respond to that colors your view of SL in a way that makes it hard to communicate effectively with you.

I'm sorry it turned out that way for you, and I do wish you well.

I don’t agree with this. I have been able to be exactly what I want to be in SL. I didn’t develop my Avatar until I had been here for 6 months as it didn’t seem important. In SL I can best be described as a designer I guess. Well I went to university in RL to do a degree in design and failed miserably. I tried to get work as a designer when I was a younger man but failed miserably. Bottom line, I had the ideas but didn’t have the ability to create them. So I undertook a career that I didn't want purely motivated by money. I spent my life full of creativity but without any real chance to put it to good use. SL has given me that opportunity and I succeeded beyond my own expectations.

I think maybe your own disillusionment with SL is clouding your perspective. So many of the people I have come in contact with have used SL to live out their dreams, ambitions and fantasies because they weren’t achievable in RL for whatever reason.

You are correct. But can you honestly say that many of the posts on this forum are not just as coloured by positive experiences?

You see... What I would hate is for SL to become a "gold rush village". Hundreds come in looking for gold, and only a few ever find it, bit those few are enough to keep the hundreds coming. And of course, when you get to the village, all the failed gold hunters have already left so you get the impression the hills are paved with nuggets. Meanwhile the village expands purely via the sale of pickaxes by the vendors who are either unaware, nonjudgmental or actively laughing into their sleeves. (This last I think is very rare.)

Why would that be bad? Because the failed gold hunters might leave the village, but they do not disappear, they will remember and tell others, and trust future tales of gold a little less. SL is pioneering the virtual world concept - but if it sours the public on it it may instead strike it dead.

Now I don't mind if that is avoided by enabling more people to find gold, or by telling them that they probably won't find gold but the saloon is the best this side of the pecos. But it's important it is avoided somehow and the only way I can see to encourage that is to balance the points of view given. I have nothing against the big shovel sellers but they are the ones with the most power to change things and they will only use it if things now are a problem for them. I'm not going to create problems for them but I am going to point out their potential cause.