An update on my previous post:

It took 10 days, but the Sex Jungle was finally persuaded to move to the continent of Zindra, where adult content is allowed. In the mean time, I waited, and watched as my neighbor bought up most of the vacant land in the region, and continued to build adult playgrounds. My visitor count plummeted from dozens of visitors a week to zero.

After my neighbor moved, it took another report to Linden Labs to get the obnoxious for sale sign he left behind removed. And I used all of this time to think about why playing on the mainland was worth it.

Why pay $15 a month or more for something that can be spoiled in a heartbeat? Would you pay $15 a month for coffee that is sometimes bitter? Or a package of socks that may or may not have holes in them? And when you brought the socks or coffee back, you had to wait 10 days for something to happen? Of course not. You’d move on to another option.

So I dumped my mainland to a land shark, and the gallery has been moved to a private island, where it will be safe and beautiful and nobody will ever see it.

Tateru Nino recently had a good blog post about The Dynamism of Second Life, in which she noted that Second Life isn’t a product or a service, its “the flow – the dynamism – between products, services, customers, creators, developers, communicators, marketplaces, billing systems, and more.”

When any part of dynamic slows down, the whole SL system is hurt. It’s Linden Labs’ job to keep the dynamic humming. And its hard to do, because the dynamic isn’t made of mechanical parts, its made of people. People who get tired and discouraged when the dynamic isn’t working for them, and then they stop trying.

In my case, the dynamic broke down, I stopped trying, the mainland lost a nice build, the region becomes more empty, less vibrant, less attractive to buyers. And, perhaps, it goes the way of several other regions in the area that disappeared overnight. Not a way to build a world.