Linden Lab proudly announced an impressive growth during Q1 of 2010 yesterday, a growth that bucks an ever prevalent trend of decline in usage of virtual worlds. You can read all about that here.

There were a few things cited as helping the economic growth including the release of the movie Avatar, which not only drove users into virtual worlds in their droves but also increased the sales of virtual goods, as Na’Vi inspired avatars and merchandise hit pixel shelves.

However, I was a little surprised to see that Valentines Day was also cited as being a big drivers of virtual goods sales. In fact, Valentines was a record breaking day for XStreet, which saw its highest ever single day sales (28% higher than the previous) on 14th Feb.

Erm…

WHY?!

So call me cynical but I hate Valentines Day. I hate it when I’m single and I hate it when I’m seeing someone. Why on Earth do we supposedly ‘intelligent’ humans need Hallmark to tell us when to go all out with a romantic gesture? If Hallmark said that April 30th was to become International Yay-For-Faces Day and that we should all go out and buy expensive gifts and cards for anyone who has a face, would we do it? Worryingly, I think some people might!

But the thing that pisses me off the most about Valentines day is the immense potential for it to all go wrong. No offence, ladies, but some of you ain’t that easy to please. I was seeing someone a few years ago who insisted that she HATES materialism and expensive gifts and that romance was ruined by it. So come Valentine’s Day I was panicking for ideas. Obviously buying her something expensive and taking her to a swanky restaurant wasn’t going to impress. So I went to see a friend I knew who worked the concierge for one of the city centre’s apartment blocks. I asked him what the chances of being able to use the roof that night were.

“Absolutely no problem. I’m working so I can open it up for you.”

So I packed a picnic and a bottle of wine, advised her to wrap up warm and I took her into Manchester to watch stars from a 24 storey building roof.

Now, bear in mind she was a self proclaimed “city lover,” not one who particularly liked the countryside. For some reason I always found that odd given her stance on non-materialism. But I thought I had it nailed with that idea – the perfect Valentine’s night, surely?

She certainly seemed impressed and we had an amazing night.

And then I bumped into her friend a couple of days later who informed me that the girl thought I was “non-caring,” to not even bother buying a gift.

SERIOUSLY? WTF?

Needless to say I asked the girl in question who confirmed that she was a little upset by it and I told her I thought she and I should probably stop seeing one another. I can’t be doing with contradictory girls!

But I’m going off on a tangent here.

Virtual Valentines is WORSE than the real thing. Ok, so the gifts are better priced. But it basically means that Hallmark is now dictating that we should carry out romantic gestures in a virtual world too? WTF? And in Second Life, as I talked about yesterday, there are more adventurous and exciting dating places so the pressure is on. If you take her to a ballroom in the clouds on a regular Friday night, how do you step that up a gear for an occasion like Valentines?? I can see it now:

GIRL 1: Omg my boyfriend took me to a ballroom in space for Valentines.

GIRL 2: Really? Wow… that’s umm… Sweet. My boyfriend took me on a private rocket and we travelled around three solar systems before arriving back at a beautiful Pacific beach for some dancing.

GIRL 3: Well my boyfriend took me back in time to a medieval forest. He became a knight and swept me up on his stallion (no pun intended) before whisking me off to the foot of a magic tree where we ballroom danced into the next century.

GIRLS 1 + 2: Awwww!

GIRL 3: And then his wife shouted something in the background so he logged.

Anyway… given the sheer level of annoyance that RL Valentines causes me, you can imagine that virtual Valentines irritates me more.

ROMANCE should be SPONTANEOUS, surely? There’s nothing romantic about a bunch of flowers and a card picked up last minute because your boyfriend is scared to death of missing Valentines.

However, waking up on any old Sunday morning and taking a stroll somewhere or sitting in front of a fire and reading a novel together… isn’t that what it’s all supposed to be about?

Anyway, ahem… grr. I nearly went sappy there. Excuse me while I go drink beer and watch football.

Tags: virtual valentines
Categories: Second Life

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 29th, 2010 at 2:23 pm and is filed under Second Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.