Exploitation in SL...

Last night i was somewhere, and saw a contest being run for best bikini.... voting based on how much money people put onto your picture, prizes are 25,000 for first, 10,000 for second, 5,000 for third....

Adding up the totals, the guy is offering 40,000 in prizes and has already made over 300,000 from votes on the 100 ladies... some pictures had 50 - 60,000 L$ voted on it ....

My question is... WHY? is it really that important to be named best bikini that you would spend that much? to me it's clear exploitation of the poor girls trying to be models all for profit, and yet no one questions it, no one blinks about it, when asking the owner what he plans to do with the profits... "cash out" was the answer given, not charity, or next months prize, or anything like that....

How many Friday threads can the forums handle?

Absolutely despicable. Why didn't I think of it?

The guy who came up with this is a frackin' genius. I am soooo stealing this idea.

Chris! Can I use the Hangout for something? I...uhhhh...want to run a little contest...

What? He was going to cash out and make a profit? That must be stopped. LL should take his entire Linden$ balance and give it to The Society to Prevent Exploitation of Pixel Bimbos.

If you have a society that enforces rigid gender stereotypes, and socially punish those who do not fit the stereotypes, then people wanting to avoid social punishment are willing to spend resources to prove they fit within the stereotypes as well as, if not better, than anyone else.

Your Second Life contest ringleader is just running on a small scale. Look at a bigger scale, such as a web site for Suicide Girls. Why pose nude for small potatoes ($300 US for to the model for a professional nude pictorial, unless it's been raised) for the profit of the corporate owners of the site? Because it's the hip, trendy, and even feminist thing for young girls to do.

(And P.S., I have nothing against people showing off their bodies, it's can be a great thing. It's a great thing is someone truly enjoys it. It's a bad thing if it's because of social pressure or economic exploitation.)

I just want to know how he got 100 girls dressed up in Bikinis in a sim without laggin it out... oh wait.... you said "pictures"... so he had a wall with pictures of 100 alts....err.. I mean Girls in Bikini's and was asking people to pay the picture?

and people were doing it? ...

Just confirms PT Barnums statement ... there's one born every minute.....

Oh, yes, those poor poor girls. You know, they have such a hard life modelling in SL, having to buy new hair and L$5K skins and new animations all the time, standing around in stores all day saying hello to customers ... making photo shoots ... wearing the latest designer fashions ... yes, they certainly are taken advantage of.

Someone should do something! I volunteer to take the time to council these wayward ladies. Privately. In my skybox. I hear champagne and soft music really help folks get at those repressed emotions. It must be very hard finding emotional release after a hard day of posing and shopping for shoes.

ALTS! I didn't even think of that. I love you Kyllie! You saved me a fortune.

Man. I thought I was good. This guy is an evil mastermind! He's like the Steven Hawking of softcore porn!

This would be a great idea to hire a hostess or a dj for your club. I would much rather see photography or model contests be more controled by a panel of judges or a more controled voting system (maybe group only).


In my opinion the pictures who deserve the votes the most don't get nearly enough. I was at a contest vote the other day, I was shocked to hear someone nearby by say "I'm working my friends list" in open chat.
Just come out and say I'll give 20K to the person who gets me the most money and/or traffic.


/me sighs
On second thought I wonder if you can rig the voting so you can't vote until you have been there at least 10 minutes to be counted on the traffic reading?????
Stay 10 minutes and pay a minimum of 100L to vote. I need a new gimmick for my latest project. hmmmmm

/me blushes .. well I do get these evil thoughts every once and a while ...

I just saw one of these payable contest boards the other day. I was at a store and a woman IM'd me asking if I would take a minute to vote for her in a modeling contest, since I'm a sucker...I took her LM and tp'd over there. I was laughing for awhile when I realized you had to pay to vote, but I was there and promised her I would do it...so I paid it 1L. I didn't like it...usually if someone asks nicely for me to take a minute to vote for them somewhere I will do it...now I'm going to have to turn them down cause it looks like the newest scam.

If someone is stupid enough to spend all that money to be voted 'best bikini is Second Life' then they deserve to be exploited. Sorry.

And I mean...it must be difficult to judge best bikini in Second Life...so many are the same. Are they judging the bikini texture design, or the model, or both? And so many of the AVs are similar in shape...the subtle things that make women attractive and standout to us are non-existent in SL.

Pretty stupid if you ask me.

OMG! thank you for this great idea! now i know how i canmake my tier every month! host a bikini contest of cartoon pictures!

It's a win-win situation for the direct participants.

The guy runing the thing makes a killing and the fat bald homo guys behind the bikini avatars get to have lots of sex with horny straight guys.


This exploitation of straight horny guys is disgraceful!!

Is this the most bountiful Friday ever?

Bloody brilliant.

It's like a survey maker gone evil.

There's nothing new here how do you think a lottery works???

/me seeks fat bald straight guy to exploit


Dammit

so brilliant, i am stealing the idea!

where was it?

You missed the washcloth parade...

Curiously, I actually saw this with guys first. I 'ported in on an old landmark, and landed in this exhibition of hunky guys.
I was a little taken aback by the "vote with money" idea first (I've seen lots of contests which were essentially about drumming up friends to vote for you), but I gotta say I leaned towards the "evil genius" impression, too.
It actually seemed fairly legit, and not just an alt show; the style and presentation varied wildly from image to image. Some seemed to think they just needed to show their latest prim parts and pump their sliders to max, while others were taking genuinely good, artistic pictures. -Of course, the accumulated *votes* had little to do with the quality of the pictures.

Let this be a call for more exploitation of yummy guys!

/offers to have his straight guy self exploited for a generous cut of the take

There's no need to create an alt army for this...there are thousands of women (men too) in SL who would LOVE to win a modeling/beauty contest. Heck, I'm one of them.

Offer a big cash prize and they will flock to your signup board.

On the other hand, I will not be there. I think pay-to-vote contests are despicable. Call-all-your-friends-to-vote and Vote-every-day contests are a little better, but are still basically a popularity contest.

I prefer a contest with a panel of judges.

(No offense to Ann...you played Dark Eden by the rules and won fair and square, and you deserved to win. I loved your entry. I just don't like the "vote" method, pay or otherwise.)

..considering one can change their entire appearance with a single mouse click....