Myths vs. Truths: "Original" Mesh

Aha, so you sell "original mesh" creations? What, exactly, does that mean—"original mesh"?

(This one is going to be a little longer than usual. Please bear with me!)

I'm not sure I've ever encountered such an undefined mess as the so-called original mesh phenomenon in Second Life. It's something that means the world to some and nothing at all to many others. 

On the face of it, it seems (at least to me) to be a pretty straightforward concept: if you claim that something is "original mesh" then you mean that you created it from scratch. You may have followed a tutorial to make some or all of it, and/or you may have based your idea on something else that you saw somewhere else. But when it came to making the mesh for the object you've made—be it clothing, furniture, decor, a fashion accessory, or even a whole avatar—you did the hard work of modeling the object using 3D software like Blender or Maya. 

Some designers have a much broader definition, however. Some argue that it is "original mesh" if the Edit window shows their avatar's name in the "Creator" field (never mind who actually did the modeling). Some may claim that an object is "original mesh" if (a) it is mesh and (b) it is something more or different than any other creator offered—so, if they take two mesh objects and combine them into one in some unique way, it's an original creation, right?

Others—in my experience, usually those who want a pass for some less-than-above-board actions of their own—want to claim that there's nothing that's really original in SL; everything is based on some RL idea, everything is modeled after something that someone else made, everything has been done somehow, somewhere else. So, if nothing is original, then everything is, right?

Once upon a time, there was a group called SLOCCA"—which stood for "Second Life Original Content Creators' Association." And if you were part of this inner circle, you could put their seal of approval on your creations and be "certified" as an original mesh creator. Neat! Except, by whose standards? Who got to decide who was in and who was out of that elite group? How did they determine that you were, in fact, creating your own mesh? And what was their definition of "original content" anyway?

It's an impossible problem. What was to stop someone who has been certified from buying or stealing mesh content from somewhere and putting the SLOCCA seal on it? Just because someone CAN create their own mesh doesn't always mean that they DO so. It's probably for the best that SLOCCA is now defunct.

I understand the desire for a group like SLOCCA, and the reason why some events want to open their applications only to "original mesh" creators. There was a point when most SL fashion events regularly featured a half-dozen versions of the same mesh dress, which happened to be last month's release from Underground or some other full-perm fashion mesh maker. That's hardly the kind of thing that will keep the customers flocking to your event.

But here's the ridiculous part of the whole conversation: most customers just don't care. I would wager that 80% of shoppers in SL have no idea what "original mesh" even means (as if there were a single clear definition). And of the 20% that do know, more than half of them are designers themselves—and among the rest, one in 100 will actually care whether what they are buying is actually original mesh. They just want something that looks and works/fits great.

In all of my years running Salacity, I had a grand total of ONE customer who ever asked me if I made my own mesh and implied that he wouldn't buy it if I didn't. 

The bottom line on this "myth vs. truth": original mesh is a real thing, but it's a moving target to try to define, and in the end it probably only matters to other designers.