Does FedEx® hate art or is the FedEx® sim an imposter?

as some know my friends Arahan Claveau and Nebulosus Severine are both working on art exibits inside second life™ both in Amsterdam and the Virtual Holland sims for a week. a couple of nights ago we were chatting with neb about her massive lightspeed tunnel which in my opinion is an amazing work of prims and textures. during this chat she mentioned that the “co owner” of the neighboring sim, which bares the name “FedEx®”, came by and demanded she remove her art! he stated that there was too much glow and that things were too shiny and if she did not comply and remove the art he would speak to a linden and have her banned! take into concideration that this artwork is on the virtual holland sim, and NOT his sim, which in it’s own self makes his demands worthless.

we started looking into the situation when he flew over and rudely commented “i hope this is gone in a week.” yes we were a little childish, neb rezzed a picture of her bending over in a mooning pose but she was clothed in the photo and again, this is NOT ON HIS LAND!

lets take a look at Kalvin Jefferson, this so called “co-ceo” of FedEx®, as his group title states. his credentials on the main profile, sure they look sharp… but do real marketing professionals, working for a major company, purchase second hand sims and NOT move them to their own grid location not connected to any other sim? the FedEx® sim is located bordering the virtual holland sim as well as a couple of other sims owned by the same group. that’s only the tip of the iceberg. when contacting nebulosus about her art he called her “darling”. i’m sorry that’s not professional at ALL. he then banned anyone who tried to speak with him rationally about the situation except for the owner of virtual holland. they began to construct a rather crude prim wall in the one area where her tunnel was located.

let us also take a moment to dig further and check out the “owner” of this FedEx® sim, xbrian Sands

xbrian’s profile made the inner grammar-nazi in me want to destroy small planets…

What can FedEx offer u in SL? FedEx will make it so u can ship your packages Right here in SL,Thats right no more Logging out to run to the post office.U will be able to ship any package from right here in SL.Plus We will offer shipping right here in SL. at a small fee.Thats right suprise your lady and have us take her Roses with a note card from or send gifts.Let us handle your Delivery.

what professional in their right mind types like that?!?! “u” is NOT an acceptable replacement for “you”!!! especially when you are supposed to be a professional in marketing. as well they did not use the ® symbol when writing out FedEx which most major corporate sims that i have seen always make sure to use the correct branding marks when writing out the names of companies.

UPDATE! xbrian Sands no longer has anything related to FedEx® in his profile… hrm.. curious isn’t it?

their group for the sim also includes the same horribly miswritten text along with the official FedEx® logo for their group image.

none of the group members look like they are really part of any real world corporation. their profiles look like normal second life™ people.

i am all but convinced that this is a sham. if i am wrong then my appologies go to FedEx® because you are working with a very immature team.

still waiting on word on if this is actually a fake company or if this is a real company, but it just looks a bit questionable in my opinion.

taking a serious moment

i wanted to write a quick blog about this because its been happening to me alot recently and it’s driving me up the wall.

lately almost every day around the same time, i am getting spammed by bots sending links promising “free lindens”. these links are disguised with a “notlong.com” address.. which is kinda like tiny url but makes it look like the address is a subdomain of notlong.com. when you click on it, and yes i clicked on it which is probably not advisable but i wanted to see what it was… it will take you to h**p://cutiebutt.com/rot (broke the link so it doesn’t send any traffic from my site) first off, this site has stolen LL’s header image and photoshopped FREE $L! on it. there’s also some photos of second life people flying and those are probably stolen from someone i’m sure…

click for the fullsized image

now, to some people just starting out on sl, who don’t know much about scam sites or phishing… they would probably put their name in that box and i have a good feeling that when you do that, it takes your uuid, which means it can do any number of crappy things to you, including more spam!

the avatars that are spamming me seem like bots, i always check their profiles and they always come out empty. which of course is the tell tale sign of a bot.

[2:14] Mersand Kostenbaum: ATTENTION GRID CITIZEN: I am the banker. I am the wealthiest
citizen in Second Life and I am giving away millions of dollars in Lindens. Goto
*******.com to claim up to L$25,000. That is all.

[11:04] Waite Goldlust: heya, would you like some free lindens? we can give you some
just check out ******.com you can earn up to $l5000 right now

those are the two that i got. the first one i was in world when it spammed me so that one is in my chatlogs somewhere. the second and third were sent while i was offline.

it reminds me alot of gaiaonline where people send you to scam sites claiming that they can get you tons of gold but you just have to give them your name and password. which of course would result in the takeover of your account.

aparently this is a widespread epidemic. massively.com wrote about it recently as well.

so if you are getting spammed by these people. first of all make sure NOT to do anything on the site. do not put your name in that box. secondly, make sure to report the spammers the moment they contact you. fill out an AR and a support ticket if you can.

as with any game, you must always remember, no one is every going to send you money for free (at least large sums anyway). there is always a catch.