Welcome to Gaia! ::

I could sit here and list every reason that gold gens are a bad thing for this website (the marketplace is now broken beyond repair, newbies who can't buy a crapton of GC are discouraged from using this site before they can even begin, and all of that wonderfully awful stuff). I could pull out some statistics about how an item that cost 100k a few years ago now costs 1b. I could show you a graph to validate that point, even, if I really feel like being fancy and persuasive.

But I'm not going to do that. Why? Because everyone else has tried that, and it's gotten us nowhere.

I'm not angry about the state of the gold economy like everyone else is. I was angry about it, but I'm beyond that point now. Anger now would lead me to be even angrier in the future, once I realize that you hear me but you're still not really listening. I'm just a pest that's buzzing in your ear.

So, no, I'm not mad. I'm disappointed, and I'll continue to be disappointed for a while. After that, I'll just become hollow and indifferent to this site as a whole. And everyone who's mad now will reach that point in the future. It's beyond the breaking point; it's the point where you expect to just be broken even further, so you just give up trying to save yourself that humiliation.

I will ask you this, though:

Staff, why AREN'T you listening to us? Our complaints go in one of your ears and then out the other. To the greedy, money-minded people who flash ads in front of us every couple minutes or so, is our opinion (collectively and as individuals) worth less than nothing? Personally, I believe everyone's opinion should count for something. I think we owe it to each other to listen, even if we don't agree. I think you should be guaranteed that right to be heard just because you're a person and you're alive and you deserve to be treated like you're a part of the world.

So are we less than human to you? You don't care what we think as long as we're valuable to you? If everyone just stopped buying gold gens, and stopped being valuable, would you just treat us like flies and swat us away?

I don't want you to answer, because I know your answer already. We aren't users, we're not people with lives who might need money for non-pixelated reasons, we're your personal gold gens. We enter a password or a credit card number and put the money straight into your pocket.

Gaia staff, my request is this: treat us like we're really people, not utilities to you. Listen to us. See us as more than your potential paychecks.

I feel like you're not going to reply to that request.

I'm starting to wonder if Gaians think their worth is only the amount of gold or cash they pay. Basically if Gaia makes one of their features aka "marketplace" not usable anymore, it's not my issue. It's Gaia Interactive's decision to narrow down their user base in order to make more money. I figure it will continue to happen under Gaia's current head-honcho is around. All I can do is try to enjoy games like zOMG! while playing with friends. I'm just tired of hearing that just because people can't dress their avis in premium items anymore their whole experience on the site is ruined. There is still gold shops and games and forums and chatting and guilds and art to enjoy. I wish Gaians would just suggest ideas to make the social, games, and forum aspects of the site fun again. Like will we get another developer like Uncle Kenny to work on fun events again? Will the marriage, pet system, guild event page, and inventory arranger get done? Maybe instead of suggesting just gold and items all the time, we can get Gaia to work on features again. Anyway Gaia does listen. If they didn't then a shop that is accessible to everyone GOFusion and having Loyal's counter fixed for me at least wouldn't have gotten done. Gaia doesn't want to fix inflation otherwise gold generators wouldn't be sold anymore, but what can we do as a community do make this site fun again?