Selling your Virtual soul for others gain

Back in 2021 I wrote a piece about Avatars as Brands, I’ve a few more thoughts on the subject.

With some input from Draxtor Despres, I came to the conclusion that the term “Brand” only applies once money is involved. However increasingly these days people are making “brands” of themselves in an attempt to promote themselves and be popular, but is that the right word? Maybe it is, but not in the same way as I previously meant it. While people mindlessly create social brands in an attempt to be noticed, they’re usually not receiving any financial gain for them. So what’s being sold, who’s gaining? The social platforms on which they promote themselves. I would say that what people present online as their “brand” is more of a “persona” than a brand, if it’s not an actual business. They just need to read a dictionary. I don’t mean that everyone creating personas are in the wrong, it’s the marketing industry that has led people to be using the wrong terms and encouraged them to become a brand and maybe even  an “Influencer” , where they sell their metaphorical soul to promote products they never use that they feature in their content.

Blogging is a bit like this sometimes,depending on your platform. Lately I’ve done several posts featuring a particular Second Life creator’s products. I’m not affiliated to them (or any stores) as regular readers will know. I purchase the items myself, which is fine. Although after the fourth post in a month, I did start to question myself. Then on top of that something happened that made me reconsider this approach and my blogging practices. If you think about it, I purchased items from that brand, spent time on staging photos and a credits list, to show off that brand’s merchandise. So the creator actually benefits twice, the item cost and free advertising. Put like that it sounds kind of daft. In this case it’s the brand and ultimately Linden Lab that benefits not the prompting platform, this blog. Although obviously I do have some more nice clothes too.

The Second Life economy and technology has changed over the years however. Whereas once you could have brought a full outfit, made of clothing layers and prims for about $400L, that amount might now buy you a part of the outfit, like a set of Mesh PBR-Textured gloves or shoes (the more time and skill required to make modern clothing items raises the prices). So whereas once the price of an outfit could have been shrugged off because the equivalent amount of cash wouldn’t buy you a cup of tea in real money; now it’ll cost you two expensive coffees and maybe a piece of cake. Which is why I didn’t purchase a number of recent releases from that store and will be a lot more selective in my purchases generally going forward.

Read the previous post on this topic: Avatars, Brands & Personas

Header image via MidJourney (AI has occasional uses.)