Miss Stardoll World

Everyone wants to be famous. Humans love to be noticed, to stand out from the crowd, to be able to say to themselves "I always knew I was special" or "You can do anything if you put your mind to it" or "I knew I deserved this."

MSW is Stardoll's way of making you feel special. If you even make it past the first round, there is a feeling of satisfaction, a feeling of achievement.

But what makes winning an online pageant a feeling of validation?

At the surface, it seems like validation. It seems like you have joined the ranks of the elite, the important. Stardoll puts a lot of effort into making you think MSW is worth competing in.

If you win MSW, you get Stardollars, Starcoins, automatic Royalty, free Superstar membership, etc. This makes it seem like a great deal. Sure, maybe you spend a few dollars of real money to get Stardollars to spend on broadcasts to promote your doll, but surely if you won you would get your money's worth back, plus some. Maybe this is true, but millions of dolls actively compete in MSW each year, each of them spending money to promote themselves. What are the chances you will actually win?

Stardoll has created the perfect set up to make themselves a huge amount of money each fall. They even upped the price of broadcasts from 5 Stardollars to 8 Stardollars, so that you can't buy as many broadcasts as you normally could with your Stardollars, causing people to buy even more Stardollars to send even more Stardollars.

The first year I joined Stardoll, I spent over $100 in real money promoting myself. Of course, nothing came of it. Most of the people who said they voted for me actually didn't, and I didn't even advance to the semi-finals. At 13, $100 was a huge amount of money for me, and I regretted it for a long time after when I didn't have the money to buy anything I wanted in real life. It was a waste of time, money and effort to run for MSW.

Before you go, I'd like to leave you a fact that might help you decide whether or not to spend your money on MSW.

Your chances of winning are 1 / 336 223 351, or one in over three hundred million chances of winning. Is MSW really worth your money?