A New Rhetoric

[Ivy Norsk]

I said in another thread that I was at a point where I didn’t think Kitty Markets should be called "Kitty Markets" anymore. I want to revisit that and make more clear what I am thinking about. When I say that, I am not making some cry of despair or sour grapes.
I really mean that that presenting KittyCatS to ourselves and people who are new to the hobby as something that is done primarily for SL economic reasons and thought of in marketing terms is no longer helpful. Nor is it necessary.

I think what often happens is this: people come across a kittycat, be it a Firestorm kitty or the Advent kitty or a friend’s kitty or something. And they think, “Ah this is darling, I want one.” And they look into what the KittyCatS scene is and they see markets and people get carts at markets and they think, “oh, this is what you do…” So they do it. And thus begins the learning curve of breeding out cats (but they don’t know about breeding yet) and marking cats for sale using the best advice they can find, and gradually getting some perspective and finding out that their first cats aren’t worth anything, and hopefully not losing too much money in the process.

But what if the thing they first encountered wasn’t called a market? What if it was a Kitty Park, or a Kitty Castle, with cat montages decorated, and full of cat photography. What if there were classes on breeding and cafés for chat? What if only part of the area was set aside for a more limited kind of sales presentation? (Cats of the month? Themed cats? Your best cats, sure…) Some of what I have enjoyed most about this scene is seeing pictures and the comics and the chatting with people. Megapuss races and community fishing are fun. And yes, auctions are fun.

Many of the market sims already do this kind of thing, with hunts and decorating and trying to create social hubs. But what if that was the primary thing? Now of course, part of the problem is that the markets are indeed supported by rental to pay the tier (and the tier is too damn high). But if we frankly participated in that, not as sales-stalls, but thought about it more as paying membership in a local kitty club, social dues if you will, that move swings the mindset in a different direction. Cats could and would still be sold, but perhaps people would be less apt to get into KittyCats as a money kind of thing and breed cats just for the sake of trying to sell them which just uselessly increases their numbers.

I know that there are people who do make money from selling KittyCatS. The primary way of doing that is relentlessly chasing down the new traits, and breeding them out with armies of foxie salt and peppers and snowshoe creams and so on. This is completely valid. I personally don’t want to do that. I would rather play with my pretty kitties, some of whom have greater and some less economic value. That’s my choice. I pay for it myself with my entertainment lindens.

The point is that KittyCatS is a multi-faceted hobby, of which selling cats is only one part. It may, in the wild beginnings, have been the biggest part and we have all heard stories of the amazing auctions of 30K bali seals. Those days are unlikely to come again and it was inevitable that they would end.

But the cats themselves are still here. And the logic puzzles of breeding are still here to play with. Now that we have mesh, I think decorating is easier than ever and SL has never looked better. SL has always been a kind of visual chatroom with sandbox capacities. It does not need to be about sales.