More on hunts & gifts

Ivey Deschanel of Sn@tch wrote a blog post today about a situation that occurred when she was giving away a gift. Ivey likes to have people hunt for her gifts, which is sometimes cool, sometimes not. Face it, if SL is laggy, who the hell wants to stand around searching for a gift when it hurts to move your cam or walk? But I always enjoy her gifts when I'm able to go out there and get them because I think she's an extremely talented creator, so it's usually worth a little extra effort on my part to go out and look around.

I am always amazed when designers say that people yell at them or request other gifts other than the one being offered. That is just plain bad taste and poor upbringing on the part of the person showing their ass like that. The word "trash" comes to mind. These are probably the people who make a whole day of it at Sams Club or CostCo, hitting up every free sample in the store - three times. They are NOT representative of the entire community of gift lovers.

However, as appreciative as most everyone is of the gifts that the wonderful designers of SL give out, the designers must know by now that if they say "free," 10 people are showing up at once, with 10 more a couple of minutes later. People like being first. They like to grab the stuff and show off to friends and pass out landmarks. It's just the way it works. But it's true, most do not stick around to shop - at that moment.

When 20 people hit up your store at once, usually wearing 10,000 prims, scripted items, poofers, and the like, it's going to lag it down. Just a fact. Personally, I don't enjoy sticking around like that and it's getting to where I don't go running anymore when a gift is announced unless I REALLY REALLY love the store and I'm not doing anything else at the time and it's not a limited time offer. So yes, I will teleport in, grab the item, and leave. But I almost always return to the store later, and I believe many people are like that. So while there may be 40 people in the store at once and not a sale is made, that doesn't mean that sales won't be made later.

I love great gifts because that shows me what a designer is made of. It's getting to try something on to make sure that the designer knows how to do a good seam, or doesn't make their skirts crazy huge and unable to be resized down, etc. It lets me see if I WANT to spend my money in their place. If they give a terrible gift, I don't go back. End of discussion. If their item is fabulous, then I go back during my downtime and check out the rest. So while you might see me pop in, grab it, and run, that doesn't mean that I'm being greedy. That means I just want to see what the gift is and try it on in the privacy of my fairly lag free home. I think most people are the same way. There are many times in my RL I run into a store, grab one thing, and go. [Well, I pay for it, of course.] This doesn't mean that I'm not interested in the store as a whole. This means I have other things I need to be doing and I don't have time to examine the entire store. I'll come back later when I have time.

Ivey also brought up that people were basically just saying where the gift was in her store. You all know my stance on super hard hunts. I LIKE treasure hunts. I really do, I think they're loads of fun - except when they're not. They cease to be fun when people cannot find the gift at all on their own. But simple hunt or extra hard, there will ALWAYS be people who take the easy way out and get help. ALWAYS. I had to do it on one of the Valentine's Day hunts because some gifts were just too hard to find in certain stores. I'd prefer to be able to find it myself, but as someone who has spent over 30 minutes hunting for one little gift before, I just don't have the time to do that these days. I always feel disappointed when I see a hunt gift blogged and I wasn't able to get to the store and get it, or I just never could find it, but it's still never enough to make me act like a fool in the designer's IM box.

I guess everything, from being trashy and screaming that you hate a designer because you couldn't find the gift or you wanted something else instead to hiding your gifts under a rock under a box under a cat, can be solved with one little phrase:

Don't be an asshole.

Now I'm REALLY going to take a nap. I have a feeling I've got one leg in the Crankypants right now.