There’s a handful of people I know whose real-life identies are known inside of Second Life. I’m one of them.
It creates a weird power balance – most of my customers are effectively anonymous, when I’m not. Take, for example, the1grizz Resident. There is no freaking way to tell who this guy is in RL. He doesn’t even have (as of 19 Feb 11) payment info on file with Linden Labs.
But yet he rented from me, broke a bunch of the rules of the agreement, inconvenienced other renters … and now thinks I’m treating him unfairly.
This puts me at a distinct disadvantage.
Of course, in almost two years (three? Damn, I lose track) of renting, he’s only the second person I’ve had to actually remove due to behavior. So maybe that’s a good thing. It’s strange that the folks who worry the most about breaking the rules are the ones who are barely bending them… while the flagrant rulebreakers don’t seem to care.
He rented a 50 prim skybox… but rezzed over 1000 (Real world comparison: Pay a RedBox $1, and then empty it of DVDs). After five days, I told him to lose some of them, and he did … onto other renter’s lots. Suddenly nobody in the area could rez (or create) thier virtual stuff, and I started getting complaints.
By this point, he was breaking a bunch of my rules AND those of Second Life, so I booted him from my apartments.
And then he kept complaining.
It’s just stunning.