Why is SL work so undervalued?

I appreciate your comments Nashville and have no problem being corrected. If that was my implication, I stand corrected. I also want to point out that I don't lump Cris' website into that category. I like it a great deal.

I suppose one of the big problems is that some people fail to realize that SL is a game, a simulation.

I am 15 years old and I recently participated in a stock market simulation, in the beginning they gave us all $60 000 ("play" money) to start off with. This doesn't mean that in real life if you want to start playing the stocks you are instantly given $60 000.

Now myself I like to do abstract art in real life, I would say I am fairly good at it considering I lack any artistic training at all and I taught myself my own artistic ability at the age of 15. Now if I was offered 2000L to create an abstract piece I would have no problem with it, as I enjoy what I do.

Let's take a 3D designer for example, there are a large number of people who like to participate in 3D modeling because they enjoy what they do. Perhaps that's why they play second life, a GAME where they can show off their talents and have fun at the same time.

As a closing statement, your not a professional writer, your not the one offering the job, so why are you blubbering about it?

Party foul! Apparently you missed the bit about needing to be 18+ to play SL, so if you're going to violate the TOS, at least keep it under your hat. Jeez!

Or are Teen Grid members allowed to read/post in these forums also? (if so, when was that announced? )

What I meant to say is that I am 15 years of age at heart. I am actually 27.

Excellent, excellent. Play on, my good man.

Some people think it's a problem, but a lot of others see it as a feature.

This is not a slam, but... Did that have a point? I seem to have missed what you were getting at?

Sure, the point is pretty obvious.

Nobody pays RL rates in SL, really. But then, nobody can really work in SL like they do in RL, either.

I pay good rates, but they aren't RL rates. You do excellent and fast work and get paid, but not what you're worth, and even you can't be available in SL like a RL job simply because you have RL -- understood! And that's my point.

But then...you can't expect people to act in SL as they do in RL.

For example, at a RL job, if it were full-time, benefited, payroll, I couldn't really say, oops, I have to go to my kid's play or oops time to go shopping for dinner. That is, my schedule wouldn't belong to me, because I'd be working for RL wages at a RL job.

But at SL jobs, which are done as a kind of "moonlighting" thing, people can and do say, "Oh, sorry, my wife is calling for dinner" or "Oops, time to help my son with his math." That's because they are using trying to combine their SL log-ins with their home-time with the family. And that's understood.

And that's why you can't pay RL wages.

I get annoyed when someone says "sorry, I have to go to math class" but then they must get annoyed, too, when I say, "Oh, sorry, can't go to GOM or can't collect my funds now, have to take my daughter to ballet class." The point is, we all feel we can always make a RL excuse for whatever we are doing in SL, whether it is for work, or whether it is for paying.

In RL, I could never say to my clients, "Sorry, Phil Linden has a town meeting for me to attend now, could we move that conference call" or "Sorry, I have a rentals customer in my virtual world, could you hold that thought?"

But in SL, of course I stop everything and nobody even expecting me to do a job would explain if, for example, my child falls down and hurts herself or something. I mean, it is understood that RL *always* takes precedence over SL, no questions asked.

Yet...many people bring RL expectations for service and instant answers into SL, and turn on "entitlement mode" full blast, I find. All their frustration and anger from RL lack of service and RL lack of entitlement gets brought into SL in spades because it's a kind of dream world. They get terribly upset when things don't go right in their dreamland.

So, I hope you can now see that this isn't some slam, that this isn't a knock if you say to me, "Sorry, my wife is calling" just as I'd expect you not to think I was a slacker if I said, oops, sorry, can't arrange that payment have to run to get kids from school." Understood now? RL takes precedence.

And because RL must take precedence, we cannot arrange an SL with RL wages and RL work. RL wages comes when there is RL work. RL-type work sometimes happens in SL, people even go on long jags of free labour for days, working on picky stuff.

But at the end of the day, they want to feel their time is their own, not some boss's. And at the end of the day, they shut off the dream world because they have RL to do first.