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    Saying Goodbye to Anthology and Event Blogging

    Anthology

    Anthology event announced that May will be the last round. This is the only event that I’m a blogger for, so it feels kind of sad seeing it end after two years. But honestly, I also think there are too many events on the grid, so losing one is probably healthy overall for the Second Life economy.

    Events create this rushed mentality for both creators and consumers. Before I even get a chance to unpack and show you my latest outfit, it’s already three releases old from the same creator. Now it feels dated, it’s no longer at whatever event it launched at, and I don’t even know if it made it to the main store. Events are not that great for bloggers.

    My blog posts sell items long after I post them. Years later, people still find old blog posts and go shopping. That’s why event blogging has always felt weird to me, because the content expires so fast. I’ve always been hesitant to sign up for event blogging because I don’t actually want to feel obligated to blog anything. Anthology was super nice about it though. You just blogged a few items per round and could pretty much blog whatever you wanted. Blogger’s choice.

    Even though I still blog fashion, I also want to blog about so many other things in SL. That’s why I don’t really sign up to officially blog for a lot of brands or events. If I’m only blogging, on average, once a week, I don’t want my content dominated by one thing. I’m too scattered for that.

    Anthology

    So I guess this post is really just to say that Anthology will be missed, at least by me. It was me dipping my toes into event blogging and realizing I probably couldn’t handle a massive event with super strict blogging rules.

    Anyway, don’t ask me why I decided to shoot these photos in the dark. Then I realized you couldn’t even see my shoes, so I had to go back and change the EEP light settings.

    I love loafers, and these are the Elaine Shoes by Arltos at Anthology. I don’t know how long Arltos has been around, but I only really started noticing them fairly recently, maybe within the past two years? I wear low heels, loafers, flats, sandals, and sneakers. I’m not a fan of sky high shoes. They look uncomfortable, even on virtual feet.

    Anthology
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    Breakfast

    Breakfast
    View the Raw SL snapshot on my Flickr: https://flic.kr/p/2rY9Z9b

    I’m just a Second Life resident. I’ve been blogging and playing this game, virtual world, whatever you’d like to call it, for decades. I grew up on this platform. I’ve taken thousands of snapshots over the years, raw, unedited, unfiltered. But I’m also the kind of person who leans into new tools, so of course I’m excited about using AI to enhance my photos.

    Even when some designers push back loudly with “don’t feed my creations into AI or I’ll ban you from my store,” I can’t help but roll my eyes a little. They can’t ban the entire world. They can’t control what tools residents use in their own creative process. You can ignore the noise and keep using whatever tools you like. What feels insane to me is the hypocrisy. Big brands in Second Life, the ones making a living here, get a huge pass when it comes to AI editing in their ads. They’re showing AI hair, AI clothing, AI bodies, AI environments, all polished up to entice us to buy. That’s fine.

    But when a resident retouches a photo with AI, the same residents who are actually spending money and keeping this world going, suddenly we’re untalented pariahs destroying creativity or causing water shortages or whatever the dramatic take is this week. The double standard is wild.

    If you like this photo, yes, I edited it with ChatGPT Plus. I pay $20 a month for it. I also pay for Adobe Creative Cloud, Krea, and a bunch of other tools because I genuinely enjoy pressing buttons and seeing what happens. It’s still my photo. It’s still my avatar. I just gave it a glow up.

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