Big Money in the Virtual Baby Trade

by Alphaville Herald on 10/02/11 at 11:53 pm

Adoption in Second Life – Part 3

by Justine Babii

Bubble Baby
real pregnancy – NEKO version – watch your baby grow little ears and tail

My last article in this series related my experiences in finding some rather unseemly characters hanging around at adoption places. Of course there are questionable characters everywhere, in real life and in this cartoon world we call home, but it strikes me as an odd dynamic that traveling to these adoption places isn’t that much different than visiting an SL club – only instead of trying to get into your pants, they are trying to be something that’s been expelled from my uterus.

Ok, well something that has been expelled from my friends’ uteri. My beautiful friends get IM’d with proposals — and I hear crickets chirping.

Today, for example, a friend and I had only just landed and she was hit with this:

Some Kid: hi pretty lady ..did you come heres to be me new mommy..me is 10 and need a good family and home

The kid had swooped in, asked her to be his mom, and swooped out all before the place had even rezzed for her. I’d had enough of rejection, we went prim baby shopping.

Prim Babies For Sale
Prim Babies For Sale
OK They are cute
OK. they are cute
Naked Demo Bath Baby
demo bath baby

One might wonder why the Lindens allow Second Life children at all. Many might wonder why once they issued famous the “no more ageplay” edict, they didn’t just get rid of child avatars too. Aside from the difficulties inherent in determining which avatar is a child, which avatar is a dwarf, and which avatar is an alien from a planet of really short people, the answer is money. There’s gold in them thar hills.

6000 lindens they are yours
6000 L$s and they are yours

The biggest adoption agency I’ve visited has something like 240 panels that parents can rent to advertise that they are looking for children. Renting a panel costs L$200 for what will be, at most, a two week stay. (They also have 240 panels for children, but kid panels only cost  L$1 to L$5). I would guestimate that 75% of the panels have been full over the week or so I’ve been looking into this. I was amazed by this business model, until I ventured into the world of prim babies.

Tummy Talker
Supreme Tummy Talker for 3 week to 9 month Second Life pregnancies

Would you like to get pregnant in Second Life? You can do it with the help of an L$799 hud.

Breeding Wine Hud
Salve Wine or Breeding Wine Hud for Goreans

Gorean pregnancy? There’s a hud for that too. Are you a neko and you’d like to (I guess) raise your baby in a little bubble? [You’ve got no womb Reg! What are you going to do, keep it in a box?] They’ve got that too.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Here are a few that might raise eyebrows.

How Pregnant do you want to be
How pregnant do you want to be?
My Own Virtual Menstrual Cycle
my own virtual menstrual cycle
Thank god for lamaze
Thank god for lamaze

But get this, once you’re pregnant, you need a whole new program! One of the premiere “Maternity” clinics, charges L$3500 for a hud that simulates a 9 day pregnancy. You can choose other options from there. Would you like a 12 week pregnancy with twins (L$9500) or maybe triplets (L$12000)? How about the Rolls Royce of pregnancies, a full nine months with triplets, yours for just L$15000.  The price of the baby and clinic visits and delivery is included here, but I’m told a lot of women buy these huds and then abandon the included babies in favor of the babies at the cuter baby store).

When you’re ready for your baby, you can choose hair and eye and skin color and gender. (Hello? Eugenics? It’s way too early to invoke Godwin’s law.)

Virtual Eugenics Lab
select the baby type, hair color, style — virtual Eugenics?

Or, let’s say you want to go a little crazy and have your own pregnancy on your schedule and you just want a prim baby from the cuter baby store. You can buy an infant for about L$5000. (And, time for honesty here, the friend I was with actually has one of these and she whipped it out and changed its clothes and fed it and everything and it really is quite cute). A slightly older baby is L$6000 and a toddler is L$6800.

None of these prices include the incredible array of baby toys and baby furniture you can buy to outfit your baby’s nursery.

I’ve put in a couple of requests with various clinics to get a demonstration of what  the ultrasounds, check-ups, and delivery process is like, and since writing for the Herald is not exactly a money making proposition, I’ve been scouting around for randy looking unicorns so I’ll have something to deliver should the doctors return my calls. I’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, save your lindens, maybe one day you too can afford a baby!

21 Responses to “Big Money in the Virtual Baby Trade”

  1. jake

    Feb 11th, 2011

    brrrrrrrr i need to go scrub myself with soap and hot water after reading this.

  2. D.F.

    Feb 11th, 2011

    “Many might wonder why once they issued famous the “no more ageplay” edict, they didn’t just get rid of child avatars too. Aside from the difficulties inherent in determining which avatar is a child, which avatar is a dwarf, and which avatar is an alien from a planet of really short people, the answer is money. There’s gold in them thar hills.”

    No, its simpler then that.
    Of course not all Lindens will like many of the things going on in Second Life, but they at least realize it’s not their business as long as RL laws are not broken that might get the company in trouble.

    LL wants everyone to enjoy their SL in the way that they want, without going all facist thought polile “what we dont like, we wont allow”. That, is what freedom means.

    Thank God people like you are not in charge here.

  3. Lili

    Feb 11th, 2011

    Ok, for all the people who actually consider adopting a child in SL
    (I mean the children who are actually adults playing children), do you not get a hint of how creepy this is? The prim babies are a little strange, but it’s at least better than adopting an avatar.

    I just can’t get the picture of little Bobby being a fifty year old teamster, sitting at his computer in boxers and swilling beer. Yeah, and needing a shave. Sorry. He’s probably got the Redzone thingy too, so he can be sure you don’t have any kinky alts.

    Oh yes, the Redzone thingy. When are one of these SL news organizations going to do a story about that crap?

  4. Oh noes

    Feb 11th, 2011

    If everyone just quit and moved to WoW we wouldn’t have this problem anymore.

  5. Senban Babii

    Feb 11th, 2011

    It will all end in tears, mark my words.

    I actually have no problem per se with people roleplaying families to some degree. In fact I’d rather see more roleplay and less metaplay if anything. In a sense it’s merely an extension of playing with dolls in a doll house and pretending they’re a little family.

    But there’s something creepy about the way this particular side of it is conducted in SL. Prim babies is one thing but the idea of people actually roleplaying babies and toddlers is just…….creepy. It’s also highly unrealistic. Let’s look at a snatch of conversation.

    Parent Resident: Hello little baby, let’s give you your dinner.
    Parent Resident prepares some lovely nourishing food
    Baby Resident: Yay! Me wuvvs oo mommy
    Baby Resident tucks into the lovely nourishing food then snoozes

    The reality.

    Senban Babii: Hello little baby, let’s give you your dinner.
    Senban Babii prepares some lovely nourishing food whilst trying to do the ironing and help with her daughter’s homework
    Baby Babii gurgles and sicks up the lovely nourishing food all over itself, the cat and the carpet
    Senban Babii’s daughter starts screaming I HATE YOU YOU’RE NOT MY REAL MOM I’M PAINTING MY ROOM BLACK AND GETTING A TATTOO
    Baby Babii falls asleep in its own sick
    Mr Babii is due home any time now
    Senban Babii reaches for the bottle of gin tucked down the back of her chair
    Mr Babii comes in, finds Senban Babii slumped in front of the unfinished ironing, a daughter drinking pints of heroin and screwing her way down a line of boys, Baby Babii drowning in sick and decides to go have an affair with last week’s Post 6 Grrrl.

    Now okay, no one wants some grim reflection of a reality like that. They want some escapist fantasy. That’s brilliant, go for it. The problem is not the escapist fantasy, it’s the creepy elements to that fantasy that I think people have a problem with.

  6. Pappy Enoch

    Feb 11th, 2011

    “me is 10 and need a good family and home”

    Them fake chirren am clearly bein’ run by hillbillies.

    I ain’t got nuffin’ to do wif it.

  7. D.F.

    Feb 11th, 2011

    I looked into that Redzone thingy lili. Seems to me its a load of BS and easily defeated. Plus it’s not something that ‘billy’ can wear, its landbased meaning that like other security systems you need to have land to install it on and it only works there.

    Also its old, the thread on second citizen forums posted here recently was from a thread of last year, and the link therein to the product was to the loong gone and replaced marketplace before the one in use now. If any of the SL blogs would have worried about it they had probably done an article about it ages ago.

    Shitstorm has passed without too much fuss about it, so its probably not worth worrying about.

    But ya know, if you think its worth creating a new shitstorm over it, why dont you go get the demo, pluck it apart and see what it really does and how it functions in detail, write that article yourself and send it to the Herald? im sure they’re willing to post it, as it might generate some more delicious drama.

  8. Persephone Bolero

    Feb 11th, 2011

    @Senban Hahahaha…Right on.

    I’m wondering what the rate is for bulk purchases of prim babies without the pregnancy. And can they be scripted to perform repetitive mind-numbing tasks? I’m trying to start my own sweatshop.

    You know how we capitalists are.

  9. Yep

    Feb 11th, 2011

    yep a nice battle against the hackers. Now someone has found out a way to spoof redzone and add names of people to the list as fake alts of people.
    http://no2redzone.wordpress.com/

  10. Yep

    Feb 11th, 2011

    RZ has a hud now that people can wear anyplace and snoop on people. It is hilarious to read RZ customers being alarmed about people wearing these huds on their land finding who their alts are. I guess it is ok for RZ users to snoop but not for someone else to snoop on them.
    http://isellsl.ath.cx/madsci/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=378

  11. Senban Babii

    Feb 11th, 2011

    Okay, I have an observation of just how messed up these things are.

    Look at the photo titled “demo bath baby”.

    That poor baby is sitting in a bath in which is floating a severed foot while the photographer sits there snapping away.

    What kind of sick world is this?!?!?

  12. marilyn murphy

    Feb 11th, 2011

    hmmm… here is my first thought on all this. i liked that striped pull over the model is wearing in the first picture.
    secondly i think, having had children, that the faux baby talk is totally off base. i never heard a pre-schooler talk like that. most infants learning to talk get words right pretty fast. that whole scenario of baby talk is way way overdone. heres another fun fact. if you have an infant and an adult in the room…..the baby talk always comes from the adult.

  13. Senban Babii

    Feb 11th, 2011

    Now if these things were able to cry, wail and baww at full volume, could not be returned to inventory once rezzed and would rez sick and weewee down your favourite outfits twice daily, burning the stains into the textures?

    Then we’d have SL babies we could really believe in.

  14. Trinity Dejavu

    Feb 11th, 2011

    You know, if this topic freaks you out so much, perhaps you’re not the one to be reporting on it .. week after bloody week.

  15. At0m0 Beerbaum

    Feb 12th, 2011

    ^^^ BUTTHURT ALERT! ^^^

    Also, can you put prim babies in an oven? :)

  16. Wyrdwolf Legion

    Feb 12th, 2011

    It’s easy to tell child avatars from Dwarf avatars, or it should be.
    The beard and bloody great axe are pretty good clues.

  17. SlShapeshifter

    Feb 12th, 2011

    Holy shit, lookit those pricetags O.o.

    I think you’re better off with the unicorn. At least then the baby’s free. Okay, it costs a little dignity, but still….

  18. Pappy Enoch

    Feb 12th, 2011

    Miss Persephone, done asked “I’m wondering what the rate is for bulk purchases of prim babies without the pregnancy”

    How many you need, missy? I gots ‘em by the wheel-barrow, if’n you don’t mind ones with two heads.

    “Senban Babii reaches for the bottle of gin tucked down the back of her chair Mr Babii comes in, finds Senban Babii slumped in front of the unfinished ironing, a daughter drinking pints of heroin and screwing her way down a line of boys, Baby Babii drowning in sick”

    Dang. You done a rite good impersonification of my young life. Just put “the truck done broke down again,” “grampa done shot some feller,” an’ “I were bit by the junkyard dawg” in there, and we could have us a time.

  19. Obvious Schism

    Feb 12th, 2011

    Hey Pappy, if you need any boxes to transport those babies, give me a call

  20. D.F.

    Feb 13th, 2011

    your butthurt alert should’ve gone off by this little snippet earlier too:
    “My beautiful friends get IM’d with proposals — and I hear crickets chirping.”

    Notice how she remarks on this fact in nearly each one of these articles? fairly amusing.

  21. Snickers Snook

    Feb 23rd, 2011

    And for those who get annoyed by tummy talkers and want to strike back, there’s this:

    http://bit.ly/gcuUOb

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