IMVU
Over a week ago now, I was searching for something wolf related, when I ended up seeing an Advertisment. It was for IMVU, proclaiming you could be a furry... Hmmm :-/ Now had seen ads for IMVU before, and had always thought it was a little slutty and more of a barbie doll house type experience. But furries? Well, it made me curious.
Now, I should reiterate that I don't consider myself a full Furry. More of an Otherkin or Therian. I also prefer to Role Play with other Therian's / Otherkins who consider themselves fully feral wild animals. Furries with their human abilities and attributes are of little interest to me when I RP, unless they too are able to RP as a fully wild animal.
So, yeah, you get to start off with a furry costume if you want. With a lot of human features :-/ Oh well, okay... I guess I can always change it later. Long story short, I am still trying to figure out how to get myself looking like a fully wild wolf. My answer is to design a 'room' with built in poses which allow me to simulate being a wild wolf, as apparently you can't have a avatar which uses its 4 legs by default.
Much of the items in the IMVU store are community made, and thus there is a wide variety of things to buy. So I got searching for things to buy which I can use for a wild forest type room. There are tons of objects to buy, and I am finding some interesting ones. But much of what I see is pure crap. Take this for example...
This is supposed to be some sort of "Wolf Erotic Sofa". Pretty typical of some of the crap I see. Stock images of wolves used as decoration, and the extensive use of purple, and slutty poses. Okay, well the slutty poses could be useful from time to time, but the stock wolf images are tacky. And in this case, what the hell... WOLF along the wall? Seriously? In Rainbow color of all things? ~sighs~
Edit:
I was told that the article above didn't really sell the product well. This coming from people who I was trying to talk into joining it with me. ~sighs~ Well, I guess that is true. If there is one thing I have found out lately, it is that I am a crappy salesmen. I am brutally honest and to the point with very specific facts that seem to matter the most to me.
In hindsight, I should go on and explain the good sides of IMVU. I was originally very concerned about it being some sort of information gathering sponge or scam company, but the TOS and privacy notice really aren't that bad. I also do like the Age Verification and Access Pass feature, which help assure that you are speaking to someone who is an Adult. This puts my mind a little bit at ease, and makes chatting with random people a little less stressful.
The people I have met have been diverse and interesting, and from around the world. I have met a Vampire from Hungary, who is trying to kill other Vampires. I have met another Vampire from Texas, who seems more like a normal Vampire. Some sort of spider lady, and a few cats... And several normal humans, who have been interesting to talk to. Including a skater girl, and a guy from Toronto.
Despite this program having a wide international audience with multi-language support, it is kind of strange that I randomly happened to meet up with people who were VERY local to me. I suspect some sort of matching system which auto matches people in some unknown manner who are geographically close to one another. In any case it has been an interesting experience, and I do think I want to invest more time and a little more money into this product.