Model Camper: Free money site adds ironic new twist to camping chairs

When Tateru and I began our search for genuinely popular communities in Second Life, free from camping chairs, we briefly scratched our heads over Puerto Banus, a place that's consistently crowded and in the Lindens' Top Twenty sites by foot traffic.  On my first visit, I saw dozens of fashion models striding along a row of catwalks in a kind of fantasia Miami Beach locale.  Must be big hangout with fashionistas, I thought, and teleported off.

Tateru wasn't as amazed: "It's just camping chairs."

I went back to double check, and so they were. The Residents weren't roleplaying models: they were fixed to an animation embedded in the floorboards, which was making their avatars automatically sashay across the catwalk like so many Tyra Banks marionettes.

The longer they walked, the more Linden Dollars they made, with an automated script that deposited L$ to their account with a cheerful announcement that blinked across the chat window. 

"We pay the models to parade on the runways and exhibit our traders' designs and other designs in SL," Puerto Banus manager JR Sands tells me. "I look at it as 'earn as you go job' rather than just sitting on a camping bench to boost traffic."

Innovative, no doubt. It also occurs to me that these are camping chairs taken to the ultimate, logical conclusion:

At the start, camping chairs became popular because new users could use them to earn easy Linden Dollars to spend-- much of which went to buying elegant or provocative clothes and accessories.  That's when the real fun began, for wearing those fashions enabled them to roleplay a glamorous alternate life.  With Puerto Banus, however, the end has become the means: now your avatar roleplays that lifestyle, too, even when you're not at the keyboard. 

Looking around Banus further, I realized it was even stranger than that: nearly all the visitors there seemed to be away from keyboard, so the constant march of supermodels went on in almost total eerie silence, with no chatting of any kind.  And thus, the avatars were roleplaying to no one, advertising fashions to no one, only coming alive when the owner returned from whatever they were doing before they left their keyboard.  And in that way (if this makes any sense) Second Life itself was virtualized.

After all, why pretend to be a supermodel on a catwalk, when someone will pay you to do that for you?

Comments

[Odysseus Fairymeadow]

I was actually thinking about something like this happening last night. A number of places could benefit from in-world models, paying someone to just "be a body" and show off the wares somehow could be very useful. Not sure if a simple catwalk with no other modifications is that useful though, although it does make the store look more interesting to passers by.

When the CopyBot mess came down I was a bit disappointed in the banning as I saw the potential for shops to have a dozen or so CopyBots in their stores mimicking the closest avatar wearing a few of their outfits, making it easier to window-shop for stuff as it were.

[Elfod Nemeth]

Amusing idea, models modeling but nobody to watch, except the campers waiting for the next modeling spot to open and pounce - they need to make it more of an event to pull in actual crowd.

Kind of following it logically, maybe we'll start to see employees in SL being paid automatically at the end of a shift instead of av2av payment - say hostessing for 3 hours at a nightclub and paid automatically at the end by a sensor monitoring your presence. Of course quality may suffer...

[Vint Falken]

I was pointed to an interesting way of camping by Bella March. It's on an Italian energy related sim, and you get a can of 'power drink'. As long as you are wearing that, when exploring the sim, you will get a small amount of L$. So you can just stand there and idle (most will probably do so?) or take the can along and explore the sim. So it does not limit you to having to stand/sit at one spot or to marching on a catwalk. ;)

[Tateru Nino]

I should put that on a tee-shirt.

"Tateru wasn't as amazed"