A group offering free gifts to it's members will soon be no more. On it's webpage, the "Stay At Home Club" announced it was closing on Friday September 25.
On it's webpage, the group was described as, "a group of designers based on the City of Neon Dreams at the HILTED
region. During one of the harder times in everyone's real lives, we came
up with the idea to gather a set of gifts to offer to people for free.
Together we stay strong and in times like these we need each other. Originally the City of Neon Dreams team wanted to
create a collection of gifts to offer to people, but we decided that it
would be a good idea to involve other designers. The more the merrier!
We started talking to a few friends and shared our ideas with them, that
resulted in so many positive vibes and reactions that we decided to
start The Stay at Home Club."
On September 5, the club would announce it was closing:
We have decided to close the
Club for multiple reasons and we want to be open about this difficult
decision. Firstly, we have dealt with over 1000 of incredible, generous,
and outgoing designers. Many of which have gone above and beyond to
help and provide gifts, some of which regularly updated and added more
to help support us all. As of today, the in-world group has hit nearly
16,000 people, the Discord has over 900 members, the Facebook page has
2,600 likes, and the website has well over 2 Million page views! With
this comes a lot of maintenance, the team has sunk much of their
personal time and money into the Club to keep things running smoothly
and up to date. Although we have worked with many incredible people, we
have also experienced negativity.
We have sadly had to deal with
abusive designers and residents, copyright infringement, hate speech,
and even personal attacks in-world, on Discord, and on Facebook. This
was not what the Club stands for, we wanted to bring a bit of light to a
dark time by helping to provide gifts, support, and a place for people
to not worry about ongoing real life situations. That being said, it was
the minority causing those issues, but they did greatly affect us as we
were also going through the same real life issues that many of you were
also facing. We feel at this stage, the Club has served its purpose and
has been an incredible experience for many of us involved, but now is
the right time for us to say goodbye. Thank everyone involved and wish
you all the best for the future. Times may be difficult, but stay
strong, we will get through it!
While "multiple reasons" are listed for the closing, it seems "the attitude of a few hundred people" was the main one. Although they had banned the worst of the troublemakers, "the continuous attacks we received throughout multiple channels cannot be stopped." The webpage would state that some members reacted badly to the announcement, and reminded people that abusive behavior would be reported to Linden Lab.
The announcement stated that no new members were being accepted, and on Friday September 25, both the inworld group and the Discord server would be taken down. On the Facebook page, there were a number of statements expressing support, and sadness that the group was going, "It's
sad to see you go, but you guys did amazing work. Sorry you had to
deal with such negativity over such a positive helpful thing during a
pandemic." "Thank you for the great work. Sad sl is full of bullies." "We
really thank all yours for the hard work all this time and truly sad
for all this happens. Just the hope and best wishes for future projects
knowing always will have the fans supports with all yours. Sadly the
haters are in every place but helpful people too and they are the only
who really matters." "Thank
you so much for all the gifts, the time that has taken to the creator
to make all of them and for this project that bring a moment of
happiness to our life. But, it's so sad that you have to deal with
negative and toxic people's and you have to close the project."
"Once again, we thank you all for joining us on this adventure and we hope it brought a little bit of happiness to your day. Stay safe and stay strong!"
Hat Tip: Ceejay Writer
Bixyl Shuftan
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