If Someone on the Forums pisses you off, do you stop buying their products?

well, someone pissed me off in slexchange and i refuse to buy anything more from her(and i am a BIG shopper). i guess that kinda relates to the question.

yes, all that she said, absolutley!!!

Well this turned out to be more interested than I first anticipated. So what you say in the forums does have the potential to hurt your business.

I know this is a small sampling, but...

If there is something I want, I will be it regardless of the maker. Forums are for debate and at work entertainment and I don't take them servy seriously. I disagree with most of my friends on most topic and we are still friends. I don't understand people who can't seperate the opinion of a person from the actual person. We learned how to do that in HS debate team

Perhaps it is because some SLers do not appreciate how a few posters resort to personal attacks of others on a regular basis? Needless to say, personal attacks during a formal debate is NOT taught in H.S. debate classes, at least not the high school I was in, taught at, or the one in which my son and daughter attended.

angel

If someone makes racist comments on the forums, chances are they aren't civil rights activists in-world or in real life. Likewise, if someone can't post without putting down others, being insulting, and throwing accusations around, chances are they really are a shitty person and aren't just faking it. And if they are faking it, then I guess they get what they're asking for, don't they?

I haven't seen anyone say they would boycott a merchant because of a difference of opinion. I have seen plenty say they would do it if the merchant was a raging asshat, a racist, an elitist.. etc. Big difference. Some opinions should not be seperated from the person.

I seriously doubt that most "internet racist" are actual racists.


Long ago, when IRC was still fresh, we had a channel that filled with black college kids from all over the US. The channel at that time was pretty much the only large scale gathering place for Blacks on the internet, so it used to be jammed packed. Sometimes the channel would be attacked by "Racists" and taken over. So it would be attacked all the time. Then, we mods started noticing the type of comments being made by the "racists". They were those old time cliché racist comments, which made us raise some eyebrows. Most of what was being said was the typical bullshit crap that was passed around in the Black community. We did some investigating and discovered that the “racist” infiltrators were some other mods, and forum regulars who just did it for kicks.

The majority of the time that I have encountered “racists” on the internet they have been other minorities just pushing buttons. You aren’t racist in my book until you mess with my money. Unless you have denied me housing, education, a home loan, or a job based on my race, you don’t qualify as a racist in my book because your ignorance has no bearing on my life.

Again, racist is tossed about like free condoms from the Trojan float at a Pride Parade. It is over used and virtually meaningless.


The whole world if packed full of "Racists" if I boycotted every racist company, group or person. I would never have a job, food to eat or a country to live in.

Does hating stupid people count as being a racist?

We'll have to agree to disagree on this point. I believe they are very much real racists, but like many racists, they're also cowards who will only spout their bullshit behind the anonymity of a screen name, or a white hood.

Even being generous enough to assume that some may just be playing at being racists, they're still attention-whoring childish assholes, and that doesn't make them any more deserving of my money. Being an asshole should be expensive. Fewer people would go out of their way to do it.

No, it makes you revolutionary.

There are certainly enough content creators in SL that I don't need to be spending my Lindens on creators that I find personally distasteful, regardless the reason. I also agree with Jonquille that even if some posters are only acting atrocious to get attention, i still don't need to purchase their goods and/or services.

Very interesting, Eboni.

And April, I have been aware that what I say on the forums can hurt my business ever since I first got on SL, before I even HAD a business. But by the same token, I've also been aware that everything I ever said as Cocoanut on any game anywhere can also hurt me in the future, when I am Cocoanut again. And people sometimes DO react to what I post here by belittling my creations. Which I consider gratuitous and below the belt.

But I stay Cocoanut, and I say what I feel, because I stand behind all of it and because I'm a sincere, real person online, just as I am irl. This isn't to say I'm a perfect person. Who is? And isn't it wonderful to start a new game with a new name - or maybe the same old game with a new name - and have a whole new fresh personna and a clean slate? I never do that. I never GET to do that. I'm willing to drag all my old personna and baggage along with me every time, because though I'm not perfect, I am reasonable, nice, and well-intentioned (most of the time). Being perfect isn't required of anyone.

If I piped down for fear of my business - or my in-game reputation, or how others might want to trash it for me - then I might as well just crawl in a hole and stop being a real person altogether.

Now this whole topic has been interesting, because from the start of it, I've thought not about buying something from somebody (cause as I said, I don't have the money to buy things), but instead, of the futon Eboni gave me. The day she gave me that, and helped me with my windows, she has just met me. Since then, on the forums, because I have stood up for/objected to the treatment of probably the two people she has the most reason to dislike, she's made it pretty clear that probably if she had to do it again, she definitely wouldn't. To say the least.

So - what does one do? Delete the futon cause the person deals with you on the forums as one would deal with a total enemy? And sometimes makes you mad or feel bad? Definitely one thinks about it. But I don't delete it. I still cherish it, as I did the day she gave it to me in friendship. Because that Eboni still exists, even though she decided to withdraw that Eboni from me. But I'm still here for that Eboni, should she ever return. And so is her futon.

Having said all that, though, if someone has been unfriendly to me on the forums, and if I did have money to spend on something besides textures, no, I would not purchase their items. I wouldn't go so far as to belittle their items on the forums, though. In fact, if it is good work, I will SAY so, and praise the work even if I dislike the person. That's only just good sporting behavior. I just wouldn't buy it myself, or spend time in their shop, etc.

coco

Coco, I just love reading your posts.

No, because we're the same race as you, Beau!

Seriously though, I know many people who are open-minded and tolerant of all forms of diversity - and yet they have problems with those they perceive as lacking the same wisdom they possess. It's a very tricky situation and one that's very hard to change.

(For the D&D players among you, I'm making a distinction here between INT and WIS)

I definitely have based my purchasing decisions based upon how I feel about the person or persons behind a business. For example, based upon my experiences with Anshe, and also seeing what happened to Merwan in regards to SLExchange.com, I would never spend a dime on that site, while I am happy to support SLBoutique and SecondServer.

Also, in my quest to find new store locations, I purposely avoid locations owned by Dreamland/Anshechung.com, as well as Ravenglass. (the former is not easy to avoid - the sim one of my stores was in was bought out by her).

Forum behavior also affected my use of Gaming Open Market. The owners' propensity for drama and indiscretion turned me off to them completely. When it comes to financial matters, discretion is paramount. Watching the head of GOM post a sarcastic response in these forums that a particular person wasn't a customer after she said something critical about GOM (and she was in fact a customer of theirs and her comment was dead on) was enough of an indiscretion to give me pause.

Additional bouts of drama when they were defrauded, including a baseless accusation against IGE and a rant against LL for not immediately doing their bidding was the nail in the coffin for me. All that was even before their latest swan song in the forums. So yes, forum behavior does have an impact with me.

It comes down to respect - if I have no respect for someone, I am certainly not going to give money to them.

I think Christiano rasises an intersting point. Some tiems it depends on what the conduct is in the forums. I can see where some forum behaviour could suggest that the person is not to be trusted with my business. If someone has a reputation for a lack of busness ethics in the forum, I would be cautious and do my homework. At that point it is probaly easier to go somewhere else.

But If I disagree with them about telehubs or about whether SL is a game, or should we be allowed to have sex in mature areas, or the color of aimee's panties, I don't take that stuff in world. I also don't negrate people because i disagree with them. the only neg rates I have given are for people who have atttacked me with prims.

I agree with you here. There are a lot of people who I disagree with in the forums, but that has no bearing on whether I would do business with them or not. It is much more about observing their overall behavior and ethics, not a disagreement about particular topics. The only time I do take anything in world is to try to speak to someone one on one to try to diffuse a misunderstanding. Other than that, what happens in forums stays in forums for me. And as a drunken Schwanson Schlegel learned late one night when he was very loose lipped, what happens in Yahoo stays in Yahoo

Edited to add:

Increasingly, doing business with some people in SL is not just a matter of paying L$ them. In the case of GOM, IGE, and the buying and renting of private island land, people are also giving up information like RL names, Paypal account info, even credit card #'s. It comes down to issues of trust and respect - and the two go hand in hand.

I would never buy anything from Cristiano Midnight.

Yeah, that's right. No smiley emoticon. WHATCHOOOOOOGONNADOOOOOOO?

Stop iming me, I am not going to send you free stuff or cyber with you.