Virtual money = the root of all virtual evil

Well.

I've just remembered that my paid membership at Writing.com expires on the 31st of July. I have almost precisely the same amount of GPs in my account as it takes to purchase a 12-month Basic membership (same as I'm on right now), but it would take me a hell of a long time to make that much money up again, plus I don't know whether I'm going to be writing much over the next year or so.

I've been a member of WDC for roughly two and a half years now; I won an Upgraded membership in a contest, scraped up enough money to continue it for six months, and then lapsed into a Basic membership for a year. And now it's come to this. Funny thing is, I've gone through that entire period of time without committing a single cent of actual money to this site. One of the things I love about WDC is that their virtual money (Gift Points, or GPs) is not exceedingly difficult to come by if you're good at writing, or mediocre at writing, or really really enthusiastic at reviewing (funnily enough they have a review reward system which I messed around with for a while before deciding that I didn't have enough of a stomach for criticizing other peoples' work), or, you know, really good at conning a few bucks out of naive folks. End product being me having more cash on the site than I do in real life. Odd, innit?

But back to the problem. Will I or won't I? I don't anticipate being active much there, other than to screw around in the I&Os with my friends and maybe enter the occasional contest or two. And if that strange and useless story I'm working on ever gets finished (hell, as if anything I write ever gets an ending of any sort) then maybe--maybe--it will be unfortunate enough to end up in my port where people can stare at it for a bit before pulling a random number out of their ass and giving me that many stars and a few words of encouragement but zip to nada sentences of actual constructive criticism--

If it sounds like I hate the site, then fine. If it sounds like I love it, fine as well, because I probably do.

-stares at membership purchase screen-

Eh, what the hell. -clicks-

The email tells me I've now got one Basic membership expiring the 31st of August 2011. Which comes out to 199,550 GPs down the drain.

But see, this is what's nice about having your own little cache of virtual money. You can waste it any goddamn way you like.

~Mnem- "No, I'm not bitter. Why do you ask?" -osyne