It's a Saturday and I'll be heading out of the house soon, to have lunch and hang out with friends, but I wanted to post here coz it's been, what, four days? I've been thinking about a post over those four days, and almost wrote one in response to the whole freebie discussion thing started by Ana Lutetia and Prad Prathivi, but as everybody and their mother started blogging about it too I wasn't sure if there was a need to add my voice to the mix.
Let me just say that yes, I used to hunt freebies exclusively and obsessively, especially because the currency exchange rate from US dollars to Malaysian ringgit isn't exactly favourable to me. At the moment it's USD$1 = RM3.58, and to give you an idea of what that means, that's almost the cost of a meal, since by adding another ringgit I can buy a bowl of noodles for RM4.50. If I don't want to spend a lot of money in SL, freebies are the way to go.
And it's fun to get free or very cheap stuff. You don't get this in RL -- "there's no such thing as a free lunch" -- so in the early days it was a buzz to constantly be coming across free things. Like, wow, I can't believe people are so generous! And wow, isn't this outfit amazing, I can't believe I got it for free!
But at some point one also gets tired of constantly chasing every single freebie on the grid. Like, is that all to SLife? lol. Plus, you know, my inventory gets bloated, I don't have time to sort through the piles of freebies, and when I do sort I sometimes find that many of them don't suit my personal style or taste, and end up throwing them out anyway. Now I no longer chase freebies, and hardly even do hunts because I don't have the time or patience for them unless they're by a designer whose stuff I really, really love.
Perhaps freebies are part of an 'initiation rite' for newbies on the grid. I'd like to think that they help newbies to start out, just like they helped me, and that probably as time goes on and people get more invested in their SLives, they begin to feel more comfortable about spending RL money in SL and start buying things they like instead of just accepting whatever is given in store gifts and hunts. At some point you start developing your own sense of style, and then you start looking for clothing that reflects your personal taste. When that happens, it's no longer feasible to pick up every single freebie on the grid.
Nice to see the difference in RL disposable income given a mention, well done. Also, I think it's a fairly normal progression to be happy with freebies initially and then when you gain more experience in SL and become more discerning, to start considering the quality and style of the goods first and the price second.
I would have to agree with you, Quaintly, as that's exactly how I got started - I looked for freebies until I could afford to spend money to buy stuff, and even then I got a job in SL to support my shopping habit. I've worked pretty much non-stop since I started in SL, and that's mainly because I didn't want to pour RL money into something I wasn't spending a lot of time in, and as it turns out I spend a lot more RL money now than I did 3 years ago.