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The "Freebie Shop Experience" by Hottie Something

Looking for freebie places to review was an eye opening experience. I learned that not all freebie places are giving from the goodness of their heart, no matter what they say. As an experienced SL resident I thought the most annoying thing about freebie stores would be that small contingent of noobs who are just out to make trouble. You know the ones that walk up to everything with curves and ask "Do you like sex?" or the one wandering around with his attachments out—basically the ones you strongly suspect as being 12 year old boys. The thing that actually bothered me the most however was the commercialism. There are only one or two places out there that seem to be genuinely giving to the community and few are actually giving good quality stuff. The majority however is in it to make money and give as little to the noob as possible.

The most striking thing about my experience is that basically most of the freebie places are offering the same old junk. Someone somewhere set out a bunch of stuff a long time for free and with copy/transfer rights, and now everyone is giving out the same crap. Ok, some of it is decent stuff but my main point is if you find one decent freebie place then you have pretty much seen them all barring a small handful of unique contributions at one or two places.

When evaluating these places based on content, I discovered three types:

• The places that have the same stuff you see everywhere else and are basically just using the freebies as an easy way to get a large number of people to come to their location, because somehow they are making money off of the traffic (i.e. – ads, ATMs, "almost freebies", other full price stores nearby etc.)
• The places which were doing mostly the same as the above but which were making a little more effort to actually provide the noobs with some good freebies
• The places that truly seemed to be trying to just give to noobs and not trying to make any money out of the venture (these were very rare and the quality of the products is sometimes good, sometimes not good)

I saw a few really "shifty" things while out looking for freebies. Some places claimed to have freebies but had instead "almost freebies" which were actually free at other locations. Before you spend 1L or 5L on a "freebie" look around at other freebie places. Most likely you will find it for 0L elsewhere. Some places had notecards that said "We do it for the Noobs!!" or "Everything you see here is absolutely free!!" and this was just a bunch of BS. They were often very obviously doing it for the money, and in some cases it was an outright lie that everything was free.

My advice for you if you are looking for a good freebie place is find one that is attached to a store or something and is giving away some of their own products as well as the usual line up of freebies. Find one that is not too spammy and not constantly trying to get you to complete surveys (see my warnings about surveys and ATMs in the Danger Keep Out! page). Most of all make sure the place has a good selection of stuff that is actually 0L—if you were just looking for discount products you could find a lot better quality stuff out there than those in the freebie places.

• Freebie Beach
  Freebie Beach reviewed by Hottie Something. Nothing special. 3 stars.
  
  
• Freebie Island
  Freebie Island reviewed by Hottie Something. Not quite freebies! 2 stars.
  
  
• The Free Dove
  The Free Dove reviewed by Hottie Something. Genuine freebies. 3 stars.
  
  
• Noob Island
  Noob Island reviewed by Hottie Something. Best place for freebies. 5 stars!
  
  
• Welfare Island
  Welfare Island reviewed by Hottie Something. The LAST place you should go for freebies! 1 star.