The Facebook debacle & other issues

14 minutes ago, sumdude said:

What if Y doesnt know they are on hammer time list?? And just asked a friend to buy? So much wrong about this...

Or Z didn’t know, or neither knew. It’s not uncommon in this hobby (or any hobby where shipping is frequently involved) to do group orders and splits to save on shipping. 
edit: Putting this here rather than making another new post but I just don’t understand how he even has the time and energy to stalk people online to make sure they aren’t committing minor smartdoll crimes somewhere on the internet. Now he has to play detective to see what sold items are going where too?? For a guy who complains about being too busy a lot, he sure seems to have a lot of free time. Unless he’s outsourcing his paranoia and paying his spies with ‘goodies’, anyway. 

Edited July 24, 2021 by Monty

1 minute ago, Monty said:

Or Z didn’t know, or neither knew. It’s not uncommon in this hobby (or any hobby where shipping is frequently involved) to do group orders and splits to save on shipping. 

Exactly!! He's basically banning all group/ split orders with that. 

At this point, he should just have a Blessed by DC list instead of a Hammer list, since the latter is probably longer than the former by now.

2 hours ago, Monty said:

I just don’t understand how he even has the time and energy to stalk people online to make sure they aren’t committing minor smartdoll crimes somewhere on the internet. Now he has to play detective to see what sold items are going where too?? For a guy who complains about being too busy a lot, he sure seems to have a lot of free time.

I've wondered about that too. My standard would be to prioritize time differently...
Saw this image and thought about how it seem to fit the Smartdoll-land climate:

Considering the communities obsession with not modifying fullset dolls, split orders are probably terribly offensive to them.

What if a "banned" person pops up with a SmD somewhere but doesn't say anything about where they got it from/used PMs exclusively to communicate with the seller? Are DC and the SmD purist brigade going to harass them and everyone on their friend list until they spill who sold it to them? I feel like this is going to take a lot of time and energy that could be better spent elsewhere.

What I don't understand is how Mr. C would find out? How the heck would he know?

Is this where his little "surveys" come in? The "what are you buying this doll for" emails?

That's just crazy. 

7 hours ago, Yumeiro said:

🙄

wat?   ya kiddin me!   *sigh*   that maze is gettin longer all the time, Mr Choo

What if it is a gift for person y for a birthday or something  and person z doesn’t their know friend is on the hammer list. He needs to makes his more rules specific. 

Edited July 24, 2021 by Mars

Okay, this pushed me over the hill into full fury. I don't know why THIS was the straw that broke the camel's back, but it was.

I went directly to that Twitter post. A person (presumably working at Mirai Inc.) told a commenter that as long as you don't join a "trash-talking forum" or scalp dolls (or sell to someone who does or is already banned...), you don't risk getting banned. That same person also said that dealers authorized to sell Smart Dolls must follow the ban list, which means Fabric, Friends, and Dolls is going along with this. Oh, and the way to find out if you're banned is to try and place a SmD order. If you get radio silence - congratulations! You've been banned!

Police yourself, police your dealers, and now, police the people you plan to resell your doll to. Police other people planning to resell their SmDs. Watch what you say ANYWHERE online, because there's a doll company owner out there with narcissistic tendencies who's policing the f#$&ing internet, and he's watching you. And SmD dealers. And anyone you resell your doll to.

... 

This is some cult-adjacent behavior, and I'm DONE. This ban-by-proxy garbage is telling SmD fans to police who can or can't buy their dolls, as well as policing other SmD owners' listings of SmDs for sale. This is creating a tighter and tighter ring of SmD customers, and all others must be excluded, or you risk getting voted off of Mirai Inc. Island (tm). 

Congrats to Mr. C for this flaming dumpster fire of a business practice. I was still kinda thinking about getting a SmD, but now? No way in H-E-double hockey sticks. Never. Not from Mirai Inc. Not secondhand. NOPE. I might consider it if I saw one at a thrift store.

PS: one happy person will tell approximately four other people about their good experiences. One angry person will tell at least ten people. Do the math...

How would they know? Is Smart Doll Store deploying an extensive spyware network? Do they log your email address, then cross reference it to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and forums? Do they have spy bots on forums tracking who talks to whom? Are they hacking in to our email accounts?

Are FB and Insta and Twitter sharing personal info with businesses like Smart Doll Store?

This is starting to seem really sick and twisted and extreme.

I have really liked my Smart Dolls up until now. But... do I even want to be a part of this toxic atmosphere?

Look... it even has me using the over-hyped word "toxic," which I have tried to avoid because it is so over-used and over-applied. This goes beyond toxic. "Freakin' creepy" might be more accurate.

It will be interesting to see if the current order I have in with the Smart Doll store will somehow get cancelled because I'm posting about here on this topic. If it does, that will be really scary, because I don't know how they would have tracked me here.

What strange affliction is driving Smart Doll Store to ban paying customers? And then to make jokes about it?

Is this some kind of experimental marketing ploy to make those in the Inner Circle feel so special that they'll buy even more? Man, Smart Doll has really strayed from its original philosophy of inclusiveness, hasn't it?

Seems messed up to me. Pathologically so at this point.

4 minutes ago, davidd said:

It will be interesting to see if the current order I have in with the Smart Doll store will somehow get cancelled because I'm posting about here on this topic. If it does, that will be really scary, because I don't know how they would have tracked me here.

Only the forum mods / admin can see your email address, so he would either have to have a hacker on staff or you would have to share your email with a mole.

27 minutes ago, MaleficentMrsofEvil said:

A person (presumably working at Mirai Inc.) told a commenter that as long as you don't join a "trash-talking forum" or scalp dolls (or sell to someone who does or is already banned...), you don't risk getting banned.

How do they define a "trash talking forum?" I would not consider DollDreaming, or even this topic within DollDreaming, to be a "trash-talking forum." It's a discussion topic on a discussion forum. Discussion, traditionally, means comparing experiences and talking over positives and negatives of a product. People who love Barbie still point out the flaws in various releases, or discuss what could be done better. Same with every doll on the planet!

How do they define "scalping" dolls? Some people get a doll, don't bond with it, and so they resell it. Some people's interests change over time, and they sell all their Barbies to collect Bratz. Reselling pre-owned dolls is a MAJOR PART OF THIS HOBBY! Re-selling is not always "scalping," even if we re-sell for a profit.

And again... how would they know? Does Smart Doll Store have spies everywhere? On eBay? On the forums? On FB and Twitter? Are they trying to sew discord and distrust among us? Which of us is the spy here at DollDreaming, collecting email addresses from our member bios and sending that info to Smart Doll?

I suppose, if the information is publicly available, that would not technically be illegal. But it would be... nasty, mean, and petty!

Most of the "trash talk" happens on Facebook. By all rights, then, Smart Doll Store should ban everybody who has ever used Facebook! Right? Or Twitter? Or Instagram? Or gmail?

Seems like they'd be busy enough running the company and selling stuff and making dolls. How do they have time to police the entire World Wide Web?

This seems really, really weird to me.

And... I wanna know who the spies are! Do we really want snitches and spies on this forum? What does Admin have to say about that possibility? (Addressed - thank you! Admin/mods here are cool!)

Or... is this just a "scare tactic" by Smart Doll Store to put us all  on edge and to disrupt online friendships?

Again, I repeat: Smart Doll has certainly strayed from their original philosophy of friendship and inclusivity.

Pretty sad.

 

(Oh, and, no, I do not really think there are SPIES at DollDreaming. That was a hypothetical example.)

Edited July 24, 2021 by davidd

I'm actually now starting to think that how legal his rules are... After you buy an item from a shop, it's yours and you should be able to do whatever you want. If they would have like serious recasting problem, even worse that ever has been in bjd world, then I *might* would understand these insane rules as it would be simply for protecting your artwork from illegal recasting. But this seems to be just simply for his own personal amusement only.

Other thing I've started to think that how much of all his stuff is just insane barking. He's made simply false accusations on his site towards doll hobby scene, I remember reading how he complained about people whining that there are hole in our dolls back and ppl think bad about whole company because of that (clearly fishing out for some sympathy with that cry). Well making random holes and cutouts isn't even any new thing with dolls. For example Domuya flexi body had part of back thigh missing so that you could put your doll sitting on their knees. And these were a thing like over 10 years ago. 

I don't believe that he/they have any capacity to actually follow every f*ing single order (unless they have like microchip in every item which would have live tracking....) I think that only sane way to do this is to block every order where payer and delivery address are different. (By this method I ordered my very first bjd as having Paypal wasn't a thing here way back then). 

1 hour ago, davidd said:

How do they define a "trash talking forum?" I would not consider DollDreaming, or even this topic within DollDreaming, to be a "trash-talking forum."

We make it a point to keep the trash talking out, but I suspect Danny’s definition of “trash talk” is different from ours. I am pretty sure we’re the forum being referred to. SmartDolls aren’t even on topic at DOA, and I couldn’t find any trash talking on https://dolliehsanctuary.com/sanctuary/. (It wasn’t an exhaustive search.)

He is marketing’s his dolls to children right so how are parents gonna manage to even do all these rules 

2 minutes ago, BeyondTime said:

We make it a point to keep the trash talking out, but I suspect Danny’s definition of “trash talk” is different from ours. I am pretty sure we’re the forum being referred to. SmartDolls aren’t even on topic at DOA, and I couldn’t find any trash talking on https://dolliehsanctuary.com/sanctuary/. (It wasn’t an exhaustive search.)

Maybe it’s a tumblr forum or something I remember a tumblr called wabi salti maybe that’s it 

Edited July 24, 2021 by Mars

4 minutes ago, Mars said:

Maybe it’s a tumblr forum or something I remember a tumblr called wabi salti maybe that’s it 

Wabi Salti is an awesome name. Some of those posts are divine too. 🤣😂🤣😂🤣

Still prefer wasabi though - powdered wasabi, wasabi paste, wasabi sauce, and wasabi mayo. Wasabi is like the best thing for use on food and as a pun. 😆

1 hour ago, davidd said:

How do they define "scalping" dolls? Some people get a doll, don't bond with it, and so they resell it. Some people's interests change over time, and they sell all their Barbies to collect Bratz. Reselling pre-owned dolls is a MAJOR PART OF THIS HOBBY! Re-selling is not always "scalping," even if we re-sell for a profit.

This. Over 9000. 

 

1 hour ago, davidd said:

How do they define a "trash talking forum?" I would not consider DollDreaming, or even this topic within DollDreaming, to be a "trash-talking forum." It's a discussion topic on a discussion forum. Discussion, traditionally, means comparing experiences and talking over positives and negatives of a product. People who love Barbie still point out the flaws in various releases, or discuss what could be done better. Same with every doll on the planet!

I'm pretty sure he's the type of person who feels that if you don't agree him with 100%, you are against him. 

The whole "guilty by association" thing is pretty intense. I understand preventing fraud (that's a big part of my job), but you shouldn't just ban people associated with someone who did something bad--especially the ones not involved in fraud, but just the petty grievances.

All these rules sound so stressful to follow isn’t this hobby supposed to be fun

Edited July 24, 2021 by Mars

lmao did anyone see the anti chaos box opening video posted? I mean absolutely no offense to the people that made the video, but these poor people paid $600 and got such a small amount of unusable junk that it made my wallet hurt. 2 pieces of fabric 2+ yds each, some 3D printed stuff that can't be used, a ton of heads, some tripod pieces, and not much else. For $600.

There's seriously just no way around it at this point. You cannot swear up and down that you aren't in it for the money when you're offloading your unusable garbage to your most loyal supporters at insane markups. That would be like shoe daddy selling a $600 box of some shoe soles, maybe some fabric straps, a couple of unfinished heels, a yard or two of fabric, and some 3D printed rejects.

Maybe you wouldn't have so much junk laying around your business in the first place if you could focus and see things through, Danny.

I'm in rant mode now. I started feeling really weird about Danny/SmD back when journey was announced and then delayed repeatedly. When she finally came out, not only did he send a few out for free for his favorite people (which is just...iffy to me. He has the right, but it's awful exclusionary) but he changed her dramatically because he couldn't stick to anything. So he released two versions and quickly discontinued one. And it's snowballed from there.

I'm at the point where I don't like my SmD anymore. Don't even look at her. I keep thinking about selling her but I always get hung up on maybe wanted to make some clothes for SmD one day, which would be fun, but at the same time, I just don't want to contribute.

At this point I'm eagerly awaiting Mirai Inc.'s downfall. Can't say for sure it'll happen but it sure seems like he's going to eventually alienate the majority of his customers, both current and future, and ban them from purchasing anything.

Came in here to see if anything has improved since my last viewing of this topic and I'm really sad to see it's not the case, I can't imagine how horrible and heartbreaking it would be to work my ass off to save up for a doll, only to A) Miss out on her because she sold out while I was filling out the pre-checkout questionnaire, or B) waking up to find my order cancelled for not being one of the Good Ones ™

Edited August 2, 2021 by Mizuumi-no-Otome

that questionaire is crazy ngl.       unless ya frequent sew-er    2yards of fabric is like havin extra guest blankets 

Aside from like. white cotton fabric, which I use a ton of, I only need like a like a quarter of a yard for most any kind of doll garment (and that's only if it's decently complicated). Having 2+ yards of any fabric is just too much for doll sewing unless you're planning on making and selling multiples of a certain item. Or, I guess if you want a lot of room to experiment 🤷‍♀️

-deleted because I don't want a political argument started-

 

I have 0 regrets selling my Smart Dolls at this point.

Edited July 25, 2021 by Deyja