Question of Controversy: StarDesign Freedom

In my recent bout of Stardoll-searching, it seems to me that a lot of older-crowd dollies now have gravitated over to the more designing-aspect of Stardoll, rather than actually playing games, etc. So while I was browsing through a few hot designs at the moment, I was reminded of a familiar post I read a few months ago, posing the question of the great "why?"

 

So today I have a question for you. Do you think Stardoll should allow users to have free jurisdiction over the content material of their StarDesign items? (And I'm not referring to StarDesign Hair or anything specific, just in general.)

There's quite a lot of controversy surrounding this question lately, so if you don't know what I'm talking about, here comes the explanation...

 

I personally have seen quite a few "iffy" designs...for example, I've seen the rare nip-slip, and lots of designs with poorly proportioned cleavage, racy clothing designs, innapropriate wording on clothing, etc. and the like, and the 3-D features (ahem...) in the StarDesign Hair boutique were also of the same nature.

Here's my personal opinion on the subject matter.

 

StarDesign is an open option where Stardoll users can design their own furniture, clothing, jewelry, hairpieces, and much more with their own creative talent. To put bans on users creativity would be like telling Picasso to stop painting, not to mention the amount of time, effort, and money would be needed to put into Stardoll to monitor the StarDesign process; it would be literally an impossible feat. There's no point in banning users that have the occasional reference to these designs; it is obviously just the way one chooses to express oneself. StarDesign is not mentioned ever in the Stardoll One-Stop Rules, so therefore anyone should have free jurisdiction over what they display. If people don't like it, then they don't have to use that feature; simple as that. As for the younger users, the Stardoll administration are doing their best to cater to all their users, but they can't please everyone; simple as that. 

MSW 2012 is finally here!

That's right, dollies, so hold onto your designer sunhats and run to the Broadcasting page, because it's time to campaign! Stardoll announced that MSW 2012 would be arriving shortly a few days before the voting started last night.

 

 

Last year's theme was red, and now it's blue this year. I still don't understand the color choice, but I sincerely hope next year won't be green. In any case, you can vote by clicking the large blue button right above the Covergirl/NCG star votes. Keep in mind that you can only vote for the same person once in a day.

And if you know me by now, it would seem obvious that I have no interest in campaigning whatsoever. I'm not putting down anyone who does, but I personally would feel my wallet hurting just by looking at the amount of Broadcasts people are sending out, rapid-fire. It takes a lot of work to run, and even then it's going to be extremely difficult for a dollie to make it to the semi-finals. But good luck to anyone who's campaigning! Feel free to advertise yourself in the comments below.

The prizes, in my opinion, get better and better every year. To see all of the information about MSW, click the link here: http://www.stardoll.com/en/campaigns/miss-stardoll-world/ for the full description.

Good luck, dollies!

P.S. I think I'll be posting a MSW 2012-themed makeup tutorial soon, so keep checking back and I'll keep you posted.

Get a Speech Ready...

The little title-meme was a sample of some of the advice I received in a Dollmail from Stardoll. After reading further, I discovered why having a "speech" ready would be necessary!

It seems that Stardoll has developed a new addition to their Starpoint system! And this one's the icing on the cake!

So basically, we have to spend more to get more, right? I mean, it's practically what they're endorsing here. An understandable theory, but not something that you'd want to apply to a website like Stardoll. It makes absolutely no sense to me why we would need these, anyway. So for every little accomplishment, you receive one of these tacky trophies, that get shown on a shelf above your presentation. I can already imagine how this might have gone down among the Stardoll staff when bringing this idea up to the table.

"Guys, we need to think of a way to re-vamp our Starpoint system."

"Why? I think it's good enough the way it is."

"There's nothing particularly wrong with the old one--"

"Ahem, excuse me, but we've redone practically all of Stardoll now. We need to redo the Starpoint system or people won't want to visit us because we're so lame. I mean, guys, we're sooo 2011 right now."

"I'm sure that's not true..."

"Um, it is, too! We ditched all of our moral values already back in 2010. Why not f*** up the Starpoint system, as well? That's the only thing we haven't changed."

"She's got a point, you know."

And it's obvious that I was making Stardoll out to be this greedy, power-hungry, moral-value-ditching monster-machine, but in all seriousness, I can see them slowly slipping down the hill. What did they think our reaction would be? Ooh! Shiny! This user has so many trophies, ergo they must be cooler, richer, and more popular than me! As a wise and well-learned user once commented, there's a reason why the "How do I delete my Stardoll account?" is on the list of Most Asked Questions under the Help category.

This has gotten to the point where it's not even a laughable topic anymore. I'm not the only one who's noticed the vast amount of clubs being created to retaliate against Stardoll's newer image. So, what do you think? Has Stardoll ditched it's old image? Are their "new campaigns" trying to draw in the wrong crowd of people?

Those Darn OC-ers!

If you haven't heard what unpleasant drama has been boiling inside Stardoll for the past week or so, then you probably live under a rock.

Have you ever wanted to start a club? Make it big, watch it rise to the top of the popularity list? Well, now is definitely not the time to do it, especially not with the OC members lurking around. Rumor has it they've been sneaking into clubs and making innapropriate topics, breaking the rules, and anything else they can do, resulting in the permanent termination of said club. They're only doing this to popular clubs, it seems, and even Stardoll-staff-run clubs like Tokio Hotel, Michael Jackson, Amy Diamond.

Stardoll administration found out about the uproar a few days ago, and are taking extreme precautionary measures to make sure that the OC members stay out of other clubs, permanently. They re-instituted a huge "Follow the One-Stop Rules" banner on the Clubs page, and temporarily closed down a few clubs for investigation. Popular clubs are now going private, kicking out several suspected OC members, and deleting topics like mad.

When I checked out robin's Stardoll page (the original owner of the first OC club), he writes, "OC will be back, check this page for updates. I'll hang out in test200 in the meanwhile." It startles me how much confidence he has. It's already been deleted what, at least thirteen times? And that's no surprise, seeing as the incidents they were deleted for were highly scandalous, especially the most recent...try eleven year olds stripping on a webcam and getting the police involved.

By doing some of my own research in test200, OC's backup club, I have deduced that all the dedicated OC members seem to blame "lavenderluva", the eleven year old stripper, for the termination of OC, permanently. And that's not to say that everyone else is not to blame.

Face the truth: the OC members are homeless and angry. They want revenge on the Stardoll staff for deleting their club, and a few of the radicals are trying to wreak havok by shutting down other popular clubs in retaliation.

I'd say this has become a full-out war: OC vs. Stardoll Admin. The popular clubs have been caught up in the artillery fire, and no one is safe.
Who would you bet on?