Many people ask me why I escort. Some because they are guys who want to have sex for free, but many more who see my doing virtual sex for not exactly virtual money as a problem. And it is a problem. But there is another problem, and that is that right now, there are two economies in second life. One is the economy of people who are paid enough to make their living in second life, and the other is the hobby economy. And the people paid to make their living in second life want to exploit, and that is the right word, the hobby economy. Over and over again I am offered hobby money to do work that other people will sell for real profits. And I am told to like it, because "it's just a game."
I am told by people in the real world that this same problem shows up in other places as well, where people buy consumer products to do real business with, and businesses always fear "cannibalization", where consumer products have enough features that businesses that can pay more don't. I am not clear how this connects to what I see here, but they seem to know what they are talking about and make the point that there is business money and consumer money, and businesses are always trying to find ways of charging other businesses more, and in turn, businesses are always trying to use their purchasing power to get lower prices than consumer pays for things. Not sure on this, but I do get that companies think about money differently.
The reason I keep escorting is because most people want... whores. That is, they want to make bad decisions, and pay other people to carry them out exactly. They don't want to make good decisions, they want to make bad decisions. I've gotten offers to build badly thought out sims. They don't want my real talent, which is the ability to make use of SL, what they want is a pixel pusher to execute on their bad ideas. They are willing to pay hobby rates for this, because it is supposed to be "fun" for me. Instead people are willing to take such sub-minimum wage jobs, because they are hoping to break into the business.
With escorting, I am a provider. I am a provider whose expertise is valued by my clients, because, well, I don't take clients that don't at this point. While I am a virtual whore, I would be one anyway, and as an escort, the client realizes that I am more than a pixel pusher.
The other point is that many of the places that offer work for real things come and go. They are less stable than the facts of male nature and the facts of social break down of marriage in the late modern world. Somewhere, someplace, right now, a guy is deciding that his wife is never going to have sex with him no matter what he does, so he is going to have sex whenever she feels like it, and put all of his effort into getting sex, real or virtual, on the side. That's what causes a man to go out hunting even if he wanted to be faithful really, not not having sex, because some of my clients have fairly regular sex lives, but the feeling that sex happens at vague and mysterious times that are completely under someone else's control. At that point, they stop working at the relationship. It sort of spirals down from there.
So this pattern is pretty stable, because right now, someplace, there is a woman deciding, in the front or back of her mind, that she's never going to give it unless she "feels" like it. Bad move sister, because that means he's going to treat you like any other slut, he'll check to see if you feel like doing it for free today, and if not, move on to the next girl and check her. If you think I've got a certain contempt for this process, you are not far wrong...
So I can place my faith in people who are, admittedly, ripping me off by paying me hobby rates so they can keep their full time jobs to treat me like a creative whore, or I can deal with people who are, in fact, paying money that really is commensurable with what they could be spending. Let me put it another way. A guy who pays 4000L for a rev cam session is paying an amount that is more than say, renting a porn DVD would get him. He's paying me something similar to competing options. Where as the person happily in a 70,000 USD job a year who is paying me 2500L an hour for computer work, when they would have to spend 25 USD an hour to hire me to do graphics work in the real world, is cheating me, and knows it.
Whose treating me with more respect? The guy who wants to stick a virtual cock in some orifice, but treats me like a specialist and is paying the same thing he might pay to the local DVD store? Or the person who has a terrible plan for a sim, lords it over me, and is paying me a quarter of what I would make doing about the same work for a website?
I know my answer. I gave up escorting quietly for a while, I am back at it, because not only is working the short pole better than working the long pole, but right now people are offering in world talent rates that should not be touched with the proverbial ten foot pole.
A different way of saying what I am saying.
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