The Alphaville Herald

The Day the Dove Flew Away

by Alphaville Herald on 02/07/05 at 3:11 pm

by Matthias Zander

Palomma Casanova has long been a leader in the fashion industry of SecondLife. I remember first meeting her at the SeaSide Casino over a year ago. We became fast friends, especially after discovering that we had known each other through a few mutual friends in ActiveWorlds, which we had both been active in. This morning, Palomma announced on the forums and in notecards sent to her friends that she, in her own words, “leaving slowly from SL.” In large part, she blames the Herald’s own Chipsen Queso for this. In addition, Palomma paints a horrid picture of what is, supposedly, her current life in SecondLife.

First, I would like to point out just a few flaws in some of the things Palomma said. As their former male fashion coordinator, I was given a collection of notecards to aide me in running shows and such. Palomma states multiple times in what she wrote something along the following lines: “Day after day we grew and grew and grew. Never charging a penny. I only wanted to bring a service where everything would be free.” However, in one of the notecards that I was given to give to designers if they wished to host a fashion show at their location, it includes a pricelist for a single designer show at the designer’s location, a multi-designer show at a separate location, or a single designer show done at DoveVogue if the designer has already done a fashion show with DoveVogue. The prices begain at $L2000. The note also says that a 50% deposit is required at the time of booking, and is signed by Palomma.

Later in her note, Palomma said, “Reporters that have that evil eye and enjoy to hurt others. Bad written articles with poor grammar.” Only two reporters are mentioned in this note – the Herald’s Chipsen Queso and Pixel Press’ Posh Honey. I do certainly hope that Palomma is not accusing Chipsen of having poor grammar, because it is quite impeccable. I can also tell you for a fact that she does not enjoy hurting others. If Palomma would actually take time to get to know her, she would know that Chipsen is simply brutally honest.

In the next paragraph, Palomma says, “As I read SL Herald once, having someone named Chipsen hit me bad writing a poor nonsense article taking sides, hurting my feelings of putting DoveVogue so low, stealing logos from my prims and publicise my model contracts to the world without permission.” Chipsen’s article was simply saying that DoveVogue was requiring all of its models to exclusively model for DoveVogue. I don’t know how telling the truth is hitting Palomma or how the truth is “poor nonsense” or “taking sides,” but Palomma seems to have a skewed sense of this. I have personally told Palomma many times that Chipsen got the DoveVogue logo from the land picture from the old location, but I suppose I don’t know anything since I am an editor for the “evil Herald.” Finally, Palomma might want to realize that since contracts cannot exist in SecondLife, as the Lindens have repeatedly stated that nothing is legally binding, Chipsen could not have publicised model contracts without permission.

Palomma goes on to say, “I want to be happy and you leave when you don’t have fun. And now I am not having fun anymore with all the hurt that these people has caused me. I have been upset, depressed, crying, sick.” I have to interject my personal feelings here and say that if SecondLife is causing you to be depressed and sick, you have serious issues. I’ve said it many times and will say it again – if you’re not having fun doing it, it’s certainly not worth it, because SecondLife is supposed to be fun.

A bit further down the writing, Palomma says, “To Top Models people, I wish you the best, I had never felt you were DoveVogue competition but always felt the owners were annoyed of DoveVogue success.” I can tell you first-hand that this is false because of my long history of involvement with the Top Models group. Madison Blanc, the founder and CEO of Top Models has never been annoyed by the success of DoveVogue, but has disagreed with some of the actions she has taken, as have I. Actually, when Palomma hired me to be her male fashion coordinator, she took issue with my being a part of the Top Model group as an officer. She asked me why I was so involved in that “loser group” when I could go much farther with DoveVogue. It strikes me as odd now that you not only wish the people of Top Models the best, say that you never saw them as your competition, and feel that the leaders were jealous of DoveVogue.

Finally, close to the bottom of her letter, Palomma says, “Please designers, when you hear Pixel Press, SL Herald and others asking you for an interview think about it, don’t let them destroy you and step on you like they have done with me. I am not weak, I am just tired of it, tired for months and months a non stop hit. As kids, it amuses them. I am an adult, so I let the kids play alone with their little articles.” This plea for cooperation ends up only as a plea for attention. I cannot speak for Pixel Press as I have only met Posh briefly, but we at the Herald have not “destroyed” or “stepped on” Dove Vogue. In fact, if you read the last few reviews of fashion shows by DoveVogue here on the Herald, you will find them very complimentary of the models themselves.

Even further down the letter, Palomma calls the people at the Herald and Pixel Press “evil individuals.” I personally am quite offended by this. I am not the person who drove my own fashion agency into the ground because of some decisions I made. I am not the person who drove my fashion agency into the ground by lying to those who were coordinators for me. I am not the person who drove my fashion agency into the ground by complaining instead of hosting fashion shows with the latest and greatest designers. Palomma is all of these things. If reporting the truth and giving my opinion of Dove Vogue (which, as I stated before, is typically good when it relates to their fashion shows) makes me an “evil individual,” then I suppose I am guilty. Otherwise, Palomma, you are simply hurling insults at anyone whom has even ever mentioned you in an unfavorable light, which is quite unbecoming of you.

Finally, Palomma’s next to last line of her letter reads as follows: “I am really sorry, I cannot continue this any longer. There is always a beginning, there is alway an end. This is my end with this.” I think I speak for the entire Herald staff when I say that we are sad to see you go, Palomma. You have changed the face of the fashion industry in SecondLife, sometimes for good, sometimes not. You and I have rarely seen eye-to-eye here in SecondLife, that much is true, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t respect you for some of the things that you have done. I can only hope that your exit from SecondLife is a quiet one after this, and that your letter isn’t simply a plea for attention as I believe it is.

Right as this was about to go to press, a friend of mine told me to check the forums for Palomma’s latest response to this thread in which she says she is NOT leaving SecondLife. This utterly contradicts what she has said in her letter, and is very disappointing to me because I had expected her to stand by her word. Palomma, I hope you are happy with the attention that you have gotten from this worthless stunt, and that you do enjoy what you have planned for the rest of your time in SecondLife.