The Money Maker...

Jerry Fluffy here once more, with a word to the wise--If you want to leave objects laying around, go to a sandbox...or at least put it on your own land.

On Tuesday of this week, I was saw a peculiar object spinning around. It said "Make easy money!" and that caught my attention immediately, since I'm still looking for an inexpensive way to increase my Linden count. Anyways, I continue reading and it says to pay L$100 to get started. So, I paid the object, and received a copy of the object, and thought to myself "how am I going to use this to make some money?" Stupidly, I went around to some locations in SL to see where I could leave it. Unfortunately, I forgot to take into account that even though these parcels were not marked "no build zones", I didn't own these patches of land. But, whatever the case was, I had one of those dollar signs spinning on a daily basis.

The next day, I found out that I had made L$90. Someone had bought the object hoping to get rich quick, like I was hoping to do. I told Kim about this object, and what I was doing with it--at that time [Thursday], I had left it in a casino that I go to alot [to check out my ATM balance], because...after looking around the area, there were a lot of objects just lying around with no one to claim them. [For example, squeaky sounds, rubber "parts", billboard advertising a club, a new car...] Eventually, I empty my Linden total [to my ATM] to see if this thing really works. While partying at Cirque Mystique, I noticed that a person bought the money maker [and I paid the creator his 10%]. So I was making money off of this thing at a rate of L$90/daily--pretty good for a newbie. So, after making L$348 [combination of dwelling, raving, and the money maker sales], I called it a nite, and fell asleep.

So Friday in Qualitative class, we're in game going to locations and practicing out interviewing skills. I first get an IM from the creator of the Magic Money machine, advising me to discontinue use of the dancing dollar sign. [I had placed one out in a classroom to see if someone would take that bait, and like "magic", someone sure did, and I became L$90 richer] I asked him why, and he told me that he has been receiving complaints about how people are just leaving them all over the place. [Again, people own land in this game] I'm not the mischevious one, and my experiment was coming to an abrupt end anyways, so I agreed to taking it down [as soon as I got back to my room].

Sure enough, I logged into SL again in my room...and I recieve an IM from an angry person. Yes, he used "fucking" in the conversation--turns out that there has been discussion like this going on in the SL forumns, not positive discussion just so you know, and he's pissed that there was still a money sign in the casino. [What I found odd was that this was not his land, yet he was so protective over it] Anyways, when I got to the casino, I didn't see the spinning dollar sign, nor did I see this angry guy. Turns out that he was already at the casino [earlier] and got linden to ban the creator of the Magic Money object. Now, I think that's taking it a bit too far. I'm sure the creator never intended for this to be blown way out of proportion...but this "friend" of the casino owner got the object creator banned by Linden. And he was happy about that.

Well, with all of that behind me, here's what I have to say about the Magic Money object--people did not sure it correctly! They placed it all over the game, so that they could make the most amount of money possible, without taking into consideration that the land wasn't theirs. What pissed me off the most about what this guy said to me was that he generalized the whole situation, and placed the blame on me, when I know that I wasn't the only one with this object. Still, this guy was totally convinced that I was the cause of this entire problem, and threatened to get Linden on me so they could ban me as well. As a word of warning, he told me to never do this again, and left me alone.

So...if you see a spinning dollar sign anywhere, be careful. Better yet, if you have one, make sure you put it on your own land.