The popular Second Life program called The Stay at Home Club, created to help those SL users stuck at home during the coronavirus pandemic by offering high-quality apparel, home decor, and many other fabulous freebies, will be closing its doors on its six-month anniversary, September 25th, 2020.
According to the official announcement posted to The Stay at Home Club website:
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 1,000 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 I am saddened at how the bad behaviour of a few SL residents has spoiled something wonderful, I am also not surprised. And I am also well aware at how something like The Stay at Home Club can grow beyond anybody’s initial expectations, and take up time, money, and energy that the organizers might want to invest somewhere else. Every project (yes, even this blog) reaches points where difficult decisions need to be made: what to keep doing, what to stop doing, and when to call it quits.
I do want to thank Freya (Childofpreservex Resident), Zac Remex, and Alex (AstaraBonnibelle Resident), the owners and organizers of The Stay at Home Club, for all their hard and sometimes thankless work in setting up and running the club.
And as a freebie fashionista, I would very strongly urge you to take advantage of all the fabulous free items that so many stores have donated to support The Stay at Home Club, before they shut down their website, in-world group and headquarters, and Discord server on September 25th.
I wan’t aware of the club, but in reading about it I want to express my utter admiration for the people that came up with the idea and carried out the execution of the idea. I’m sure many others have said the same thing to you all, but you are heroes for having taken on something so selflessly like this. There will always be those who will behave badly for all sorts of reasons. There’s no excuse for such bad behaviour, but I hope all the organisers of the Stay at Home Club will walk away with a sense of pride at having achieved something amazing.
Kaylee