IMVUˈɪmvjuː/, stylized as imvu)[2] is an online virtual world and social networking site. IMVU was founded in 2004 and was originally backed by venture investors Menlo Ventures, AllegisCyber Capital, Justin Greene, Bridgescale Partners, and Best Buy Capital.[3][4] IMVU members use 3D avatars to meet new people, chat, create, and play games.[5] In 2014, IMVU had approximately six million active players,[4] and had the largest virtual goods catalog[6] of more than 6 million items as of 2011.[4] The business was previously located in Mountain View, California.[7] It was known as one of the leading practitioners of the lean startup approach.[8]
The company name was neither an acronym nor an initialism. IMVU co-founder Eric Ries[9] described the accidental process by which the company acquired its meaningless name, and stated "It's not an acronym; it doesn't stand for anything", though he did note the name was originally used because the IM aspect invoked instant messaging, something the company wanted to be associated with.[10]
IMVU contains its own economy with a currency system based on IMVU "credits" and "promo credits." A third form of currency also existed for creators, known as "developer tokens," which were earned when a user purchases an item with "promo-credits." Credits could be purchased online using actual currency directly from IMVU. Credits can also be attained through IMVU gift cards available from retail outlets, as well as completing surveys and the game's daily spin, where a player can win either an item or an amount of credits.
While I write this I feel uneasy... I'm frightened he will find out. My husband often tells me I "play the victim so well", when I discuss my feelings on this subject. My husband is addicted to IMVU. At first I doubted it but five years into our marriage it's obvious now. It's the place where we initially connected as teenagers before traveling thousands of miles to meet in real life. We have been married for 5 years now. We are from seperate countries and have lived together due to him being a sailor stationed overseas where I can accompany him as a dependant, but for now we are physically seperated due to our different nationalities. I know without a doubt that if it wasn't for my husband's addiction we would be beyond immigration visas and possibly even I would have recieved my US citizenship. Our relationship would have progressed much farther by now in many aspects, from trusting to actual shared experiences.
IMVU is a 3d messenger website with great complexity. There is an entire market of virtual goods, a currency that can be converted from and into real money, people can get married in such a way that their spouse is listed in their profiles and chatrooms are shared. Many people sell their commissioned artwork there because homepage and display picture customization is popular, some people sell or trade collecatble pixelated badges. Some people run churches through the client, some people get "adopted" and have little pretend families. A large portion of the community roleplays, and the roleplays can range from furry orgies to tv show spinoffs, to serious and beautiful elaborately worded stories about kingdoms that ought to be turned into novels and sold. I have known many people who met their significant other on IMVU, but usually they are able to seperate themselves from that online community after a year or so.
Ever since I was first made aware of my husband's existance... through dating, through engagment and our marriage... I've always combatted IMVU for his attention. Away from the internet my husband is an energetic, playful, silly man by nature who has a heart for animals and strong family values. He is a virtuoso- he can quickly learn any instrument and his taste doesn't fall within a specific genre but it always elicits an emotional response and chills when I hear it. He carries himself with a confidence that intimidates people often, but at his core he is a compassionate leader who could sheppherd even the most hopeless people toward success. He's cunning, charming, handy. He is a little bit of a procrastinator but most men are. He can beat most people's ass at any game on xbox but on the rare occasion that he does lose he can be a massive poor sport. He can make anyone laugh and children just adore him. People fall over themselves to impress him and earn his respect. He has moved very quickly up his occupational ladder and in my opinion has the experience, training, charisma, and drive of someone 40 years his senior. He is an amazing man who could go far.
On IMVU, my husband presents himself as an obscure individual which draws people in like moths to a flame. He is prideful and vain online, and he treats people as disposable if they don't mindlessly adore him. He talks about addiction and drugs and incoorperates aspects of those into his original character (OC) Tar. His profile, chatrooms, OC are like something out of a bad 50 Shades of Grey universe where elves and vampires and demons exist. Darkness, perversions, kinks, desires, secrets, lust are all repeated themes. I don't judge him too harshly for that because at one point I was into that myself. He uses IMVU to begin a storybook style roleplay where he inserts his OC into a situation with other people's OCs interact with his. Some of these people admire him because he has a costly premium avatar name, or a cool looking DP/Layout, and some admire him because of the quality and thoughtfulness of his writing. Those are people he enjoys surrounding himself with for flattery and will exert the most effort to maintain the relationship.
Then there are people who struggle to seperate IMVU from real life and initiate a romantic relationship with him. There will be up to 6 ongoing relationships at a time. They start off with OCs flirting, they may even get imvu married and ultimately end up with them having a lingering emotional attachment which my husband doesn't discourage or dismiss. In fact, he will text them in real life, skype with them, email them, add them on facebook. Most recently he has begun adding them on Discord where he will lead them on. He manages to find the girls with the lowest imaginable self-consence and sends/recieves photos or video, tells them he loves them, will lie to them about his occupation or disguise obvious aspects of his life that he would not want these girls to discover- such as the fact that he's married or that he's not really a high-stamina rescue swimmer but an emergency services dispatcher. Once he realizes the girls or myself are on to him he will cut them off without explenation and block them. Then when the coast is clear he will ghost them almost to an obsessive, stalkery degree before ultimately contacting them again and resuming where they left off.
My husband will spend way too much money on IMVU. He sends virtual gifts to show off, he pays for someone to design his layouts, he commissions portraits of his OC, he buys virtual goods for himself. It costs money to create a badge and they aren't cheap, even when on sale but he purchases the ability to have them AND buys badge designs (although I believe a few are ripped-off pixel images from other places and recolored). He recently lost his job and was using some of the money he was supposed to survive on with our pets on an updated layout and dp for both Tar and his alt. He has a renewing VIP membership most of the time, he paid for AP which gives him access to adult content, he has used his IDs to verify his account and get the little badge on his profile. The main account in of itself now without subscriptions or anything new is likely worth thousdands.
When my husband isn't on IMVU he still obsesses on it. He goes on pinterest and saves ideas for his character. He checks the multiple applications for the interactions tied to IMVU. He leaves IMVU running day and night using a tablet that he assured me would not be used for IMVU so his avatar can be parked in a chatroom to catch the attention of more people. He uses some third party website to check avatar cards for changes while he is away.
The use of IMVU since we got married has been considered breaking the terms of trust in our relationship due to girls messaging me and tormenting me with details of why my husband was "their man", and how in their opinion it is I who should step aside and let them continue their relationship. There are people my husband is not romantically involved with on IMVU who ridicule me for staying with him and accuse me of being too controlling. They will find me on social platforms that to my knowledge have nothing to do with IMVU to harass me about my husband and about personal tradgedies I've suffered such as pregnancy loss and abuse at the hands of my dad. I have seen for myself that he sent girls videos of my husband and I being intimate to encourage them to be intimate with him, too. I have seen for myself that he has offered to fly to girls to meet them, or offered to pay for their tickets to visit them. In the past he has sent people associated with the site hundreds of dollars at a time on paypal while I'd been begging him to save money for immigration and visa stuff. My husband has sent images of my own artwork to IMVU users claiming it as his own, he has told people not to pay any attention to me, that I'm crazy, that I'm just an obsessed ex.
The day before my husband and I got married I was looking at his phone and saw that a girl named brittany had emailed him. I asked her who she was and it turned out she was from IMVU. I confronted my husband and ultimately proceeded to get married even though his use of IMVU was like a hot sword to the chest throughout the whole cerimony. I returned to my country shortly after to begin visa paperwork and he resumed his activities on IMVU again.
Overseas when we would finally live together I thought that being in amazingly gorgeous Sicily would mean he would stay away from IMVU. We loved it there, he had a good job and the place we lived in was like heaven. We got pregnant there and when I went in to the doctor's for the 6 week ultrasound I returned home that day to discover that my husband was using IMVU again. The betrayal and the fact that with so much positive, wonderful oppertunities surrounding him he was still a slave to the IMVU community really shocked me. I expressed how I felt about it given the situation we were in and the choices we had to make, and he was underwelmed, He gave no indicaton that he would stop even though he acknowledged that it hurt me. I made the painful decision and had a medicinal abortion at week 13. The placenta was stuck in my cervix and I had to go to the emergency room to stop the bleeding and remove it, My husband was present and involved through the whole ordeal... But he didn't seem remorseful. He never acknowledged that we didn't have our baby because he refused to be my husband and stop betraying me.
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