Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

LL subscribes to the wisdom of crowds theory. ie: their feature voting system.

I think we all should PANIC. Despite what Jamie has said, over and over and over and... well, you get it. Any-hoo, I think we should panic. Run around screaming, tearing our hair out, totally freaking out. The RL value of the $L has dropped by CENTS! CENTS I tell you! We should be very very worried. What will happen to the wealthy of SL if the Linden continues to drop a few cents each month? They'll be destitute! PANIC!

How many of us have been left homeless by this crisis? Well, not me, and probably not you, but I'd bet SL's leading capitalist mind could name tens of thousands who have been devastated by the inflation/deflation/stagflation. I'm gonna go hide under my bed till it's all over.

Not if I can help it. The shakeout is already happening.

By the time I run my own servers I should be known as financially stable, fairly trustworthy, a known product and have known service standards.

Only raw newcomers will be the ones needing to 'deep discount', and in so doing, will also flag themselves as shaky and high risk.

Bottom rung pricing also causes the 'double hit' of low value perception, and draws a higher percentage of customers that have financial issues themselves.



Edit: with regard to irrational exuberance - after it was over, the lines and the rails stayed. But after this irrational exuberance, who will be left to pay tier?

That's the trouble with intangibles or service sectors. Nobody cares. Compuserve account, anyone?

I have often wondered why residents, when they refer to Prokofy, use words denoting two different genders. In addition, it seems as if use of "female references" usually occur in connection with comments critisizing or ridiculing him.

Not that a lack of politeness is anything special here on the forums, but IMHO it is incredibly rude to refer to someone, who choose to presents himself as a male, as a woman.

Is this before or after the codebase leaves beta? Or, yes, and I seem interested in having monkys fly out of the inferior end of my gastric tract.

Sorry for the hijack.

Something I agree with. Some of these are folks who would never do that kind of RL/SL mixing of people they approve of do it as if it's some brilliant new insult they personally devised.

Beta is forever -- awww they should make a song out of that....

Actually I'm happy to be investigating various aspects of SL while beta goes on...and on. Some day we might look back on this time as the early years when we were all in the same world, and everything was so accessible. A Law Society observer can tp from ElvenGlen to Neualtenburg in moments with no requirement for a paid up subscription to both an Elven parallel grid and a grid for fans of political systems. : P




Agreed. I'm on my fourth full sim job now, (having turned one down to work on my civic type building in Miramare) and with each job the business planning looks more critical. It used to be just, 'what's the business model for this sim?' Now the initial discussion with a client includes warnings about the growing oversupply of retail space on private islands, and the pattern I've noticed where a new retail island gets lots of traffic and sales at first, but customers tend to get distracted by the next new shopping island, and then the next.

Retail customers don't seem to perceive a shopping sim the way the owner intends. The owner may try hard to create a sense of place, in a style that complements the products, but customers land and look around as if viewing the window display of a bricks and mortar store. If that customer comes back, and the sim is unchanged it looks less novel and entertaining. It may be a while before that customer returns. And there's always some new sim offering a fresh packaging of the same stores with the same merchandise, or something similar.

The solution is a sim that reinvents itself as often as a bricks and mortar store changes its window display. Not an easy thing to accomplish, but it can be done.

Good thread.

At least people here seem to be aware of how a free market works and more to the point why not to insert any type of "ism" into the structure.

Reading back through the various comments I would hardly be here if it was not for the commercial prospects, that is my take on it for what it is worth.

By the way, re crowds and mass delusions.....try reading a book called A Mathmatician Plays The Market. It is sold by Amazon and it is much the best book I have read on the subject with perhaps the sole exception of another book called "The Reminiscences Of Jesse Livermore". That book was out of copywrite and was available free on the net.

I express no opinion on your statement that it is out of copyright. The book is still very much in print, although you may have been looking for it under an out-of date name. It is Edwin Lefevere, "Reminiscences of a Stock Operator," originally published in 1923, the fictionalized biography of Jesse Livermore is available at Amazon and other retailers, there is a 1994 paperback edition and a 2004 hardcover edition, as well as an edition with an accompanying CD.

Oh, you're kidding, right? This forum is chock full of easily distracted.... ooooo lookie there, a SHINY DIME!!!

OK, now seriously on topic now. There is no crisis. What we have here is a couple of people yelling "MOVIE" in a firehouse... wait, I got that wrong - or did I? Point being, you get people who actually know very little about economics babbling about the bottom falling out of the Linden market and then causing a small amount of panic to ensue, making sure to insinuate the stipends are going to be done away with or some other such speculation. The more economically-minded people on the forums call it for what it is - BS. Those who think there might be something to it add to the speculation fire - but don't really go to anyone who can answer any questions, some sort of obscene fear of "authority figures" - even though all Lindens put on their pants one leg at a time, just like us plebes. Does that about cover it, Frank?

I go by what I know, she is a she in RL. I don't really care how she presents herself in world. It wasn't meant as an insult either. It is what it is. How you perceived it is another matter.

Thanks for the info, I have the book on pdf although I feell slightly guilty. I would pay again for a hard copy plus the cd

Regards Paul

We ain't talking RL, however. Perhaps you missed the big "Second Life" logo at the top of the page.

I realized. That was the reason I called this behaviour "rude".

What is rude and what is not is a personal consideration and can't be measured objectively, of course. In many cases where A shows a behaviour and B considers this behaviour "rude", A won't agree. I tried to get over, that it I was talking about my opionion, by using the phrase "IMHO".