
Search on "Escorts" and you will pull up a relatively simple list of names. At the top, presently, are three Bad Girls, Elements and Arsheba. Each club has taken a different road to success, and a different way of doing what it does. Each club works because it uses the defects of SL to create a particular place which makes it possible to persuade clients to part with their liden in return for the pleasures which sl affords.
Bad GirlsBad Girls is the worst club imaginable, it is something close to hell. A very, very profitable hell. In fact, everything that makes Bad Girls an awful experience makes it a great machine for money. It is a festival of lag: they tell you to take your AOs off at the door, as well as scripted items. It's dancing is very little more than lewd gestures, and conversation is not much above "hey baby!" and "wooohoooo!" The music is irrelevant because of the constantly repeated sound "welcome to bad girls!"
"Welcome to Bad Girls"
This is probably by design, because no club on SL knows more about pushing male buttons and getting them to spend money. Bad Girls, like Phat Cats is a club apart from all of the others. Listen closely, because the management of Bad Girls understands that hell is strictly a cash and carry firm.
"Welcome to Bad Girls"
First the lag and noise. By stripping men down to nothing but their linden balance, they remove from the equation that bane of the working girl's existence, the guy so in love with his own cock that he is sure that you will instantly be so in love with it to that you will want it creaming your every orifice within seconds of seeing him. Only the most, excuse the expression, dickheaded, can believe that they can put across their special and unique qualities in a sea of audio, chat and visible goo.
More over the managers there, as you would expect from such a place, are suspicious, rude, dishonest and threatening. When I sent the link to this article as courtesy to the two managers on duty - one should tell people when they are being written about I got back an IM telling me not to spam and dishonestly accusing me of having sent out the link to others. This from Sinful Rossini the assistant manager. But then, Bad Girls doesn't need to be polite, they don't need to be nice.
And they aren't. (I am soooo gonna be banned from Bad Girls....) But that is OK, I'd never want to go there on my own time. But then, they have a staff that hasn't learned to ask "who are you?" "what is that link?" Or how to read a profile. Just an idea.
By reducing the dancers to empty barbies, they make the equation simple. More choices only lead to anxiety. Many, many, many men come to SL, they know, or find out, that there must be better sex out there than in orgy rooms. But they are embarassed, all of the rl moralizing about prostittuion hangs with them. They need permission to do what they want to do, and to pay for it. The repeated simple come ons, the obvious and overt slutitude of Bad Girls gives them that permission. It is a giant "Girls Gone Wild" commercial.
"Welcome to Bad Girls"
The aesethtic unpleasantness of the Bad Girls experience also means that another element is removed, namely the girl who is looking to get a guy and have sex... like for free. The lag and strip down means it is much harder as a girl to stand out. Reduced free comeptition funnels all the men down into the dancers in the end, and, as mentioned, they have only one instrument to get a dancer's attention and get her out of lagarama. Pay.
"Welcome to Bad Girls"
And the key to all of this? By creating a Mardi Gras in every month spelled with a vowel, Bad Girls draws people in who need the weight of what you can't say in rl out. It is almost always packed. It is almost always making money. It knows its clients very well, and if that is what you need, to just let go, but in a mainstream kind of safe way, then Bad Girls is it. Sophmoric is the word for it.
"Welcome to Bad Girls"
In short, in their deepest nocturnal emission fantasies, ambitious club owners dream of running "the next Bad Girls." And they have about as much chance of doing that as with getting Kate Winslet to give them a free blowjob, because Bad Girls is a world aparat. You almost never see Bad Girls tag wearers anywhere but Bad Girls. For the men who want to come in, get softened up of their need to spend some linden and have "a good time," there simply is no other place.
"Welcome to Bad Girls"
It also means that girls like working bad girls. Why not? It is the easiet job of any major club. Come in, hope on the pole, drip and scream a bit, negotiate a job, do the bare minimum of flirting. Get the date, do that date, come back to the pole if you want more money.
"Welcome to Bad Girls"
The essence is simple at Bad Girls, they take the stripped down to baser reflexes of an orgy room, and turn it into a product that men are willing to pay for. It's a machine for turning one handed typing into money, and is unique on sl. They take great pains to lead you by the nose: from the repeated warnings about lag, to the animated clouds that run from the tp in point to the club. In short, the genius of Bad Girls is that it churns people who are just barely out of the lowest level of sl knowledge, and turns them into a loud, proud and profitable crowd.
A crowd with a distinct, if dull, rhythm of "howlz!" "lookin' good!" "Heya!" "Show me your B( o )( o )BIES!!!!" and of course the ever present, "Welcome to Bad Girls"
Think on what that means to be number one at the thing that is the chinese restaurant of coming to SL.
Sensual Elements
On the surface, Elements and Bad Girls look alike, their traffic numbers are similar, both feature immensely ugly dance floors, the come ons are florid: Elements grinds out "the pimpenest pimps and the hoeyest hos." Crass, dum and ugly on the inside. The lead up is very different, and the experience is very different. If Bad Girls is the club that every ambitious club owner dreams he could run, Sensual Elements is the club that he or she actually might run. Where as the Bad Girl's experience is almost unduplicable, Sensual Elements is the "same old thing" that every other club is trying to get to: a packed floor, paying customers, and a festival atmosphere. Sensual Elements people go their first, and then move out through the club eco-system.
So why are they loyal? It really is simple: it is possible to be human in Sensual Elements. It is slowish, but not clogged. It is partyish, but not blitzed to over kill. They don't warn you about lag every few lines of their notecards, they don't have warnings about getting instantly booted. Elements may look gaudy on the inside, but it is carefully made with the same efficient eye as outside is.
It is possible to go into Sensual Elements, and show off the avatar that you have spent so much time creating, and look and act fine. If Bad Girls sells itself, Sensual Elements sells the possibility of living the phat fantasy of, at least for a night, being a playah among playahs. The bad backdrop helps, rather than hinders this. Go inside of Bad Girls, and everyone is reduced to grey goo. Go inside of Elements, and everyone stands out.
This is why the inside floor is as it is. The outside is very tasteful, very well done, and very smooth. It is a marvel of design and simplicity, out of Frank Lloyd Wright and classic early 20th century Modernism.
And again, a top club, even things which seem like defects, are, in fact, part of the goal and mission. Would be club builders who build beautiful clubs, but don't create an addictive experience, will wind up wasting their time and money. Sensual Elements is very different from Bad Girls, because Bad Girls is packed with boys who need permission to jump the fence into the willow world, where as Sensual Elements is packed with people who are, or imagine themselves here in sl, to be baaaaaaad, as the old time jazz culture use to call it. By giving people a taste, and it is a taste, of that sense and essence, Sensual elements draws its clientele more deeply into it's experience.
Arsheba is almost as laggy as Bad Girls on its bad nights, and was recently pushed off the list of top places by camping farms. But Arsheba is the reverse of Bad Girls. Where Bad Girls strips the equation down to its essentials, Arsheba is the reigning queen of dancing on SL. I have trouble standing in Bad Girls long enough to write about it, Sensual Elements is someplace where, after the fourth or fifth lame come on, I'm ready to go. Arsheba? I've left 1000L tips in a girl's jar at Arsheba because of the quality of performance.
Bad Girls is about the money, Elements about the club, Arsheba is about the girls, and the tight interaction between the dancer and the patron. This is why Arsheba attracts an artier crowd. I have been to Arsheba many times, I have never gotten a lame come on there, ever. I have had men approach me while there, but always with a certain sophistication and presentation. Arsheba takes ever step to underline this difference between their product and the two larger syblings - quality djs, quality shops, better decor, touches in every place and position. By being entertaining, Arsheba makes it safe to be attractive.
This extends to the security people, managers, djs and everyone else. They are unfailingly polite, even when enforcing the rules and dealing with patrons that are being difficult.
As a result, working Arsheba as a girl is harder, it requires being more "on," more alert, creative and vibrant. Arsheba is also the club that has the most new clubs gunning for it. This for the simple reason that both Bad Girls and Elements are products of their packed crowds, where as design and dancing are tow things that can be mimicked from the beginning. If Elements is "the same old thing" that people talk about, and try and do, Arsheba, by staking itself on skill invites competition, invites people going head to head with its formula.
But it isn't easy, not to train a good staff. Arsheba's dancing is not just emotes, but a certain style and pacing, a rhythm that meshes the green of object spam with the white hot of emotes that punctuate it. Arsheba is, in a sense, SL's largest boutique club, and as such, even on its bad nights, brings in people who would not stay in any other sex or escort club. It also means that Arsheba has to work harder, since what it has is staff and style, keeping on top of this is harder. Bad Girls runs itself, and Sensual Elements runs by the numbers. Arsheba sweats to make it look effortless. And there are more than a few club owners that know that.
All three of these clubs share a ruthlessness about playing the game. The landscape of sl is strewn with would be competitors, clubs that flare and die, or which despite great look and good people, don't ever get off the ground. I've worked in a few of them, and had friends work in others. On the same night that I wrote this, I visited half a dozen clubs from the next 17 slots on the the top 20. Cooter's land had people, but that was for solo, not girls. Many others were almost empty, even some well regarded names. The net work effect is very strong, the big three, were all packed. And that is what unifies them: people come there because other people come there, always. Each club has managed to deal with sl's limitations in different ways, and provide a place that attracts a specific clientele.