What is real?

Today I rather randomly received the following email from some random person:

I know what you're up to, you're just advertising those imvu credits and believe me i won't spend my money on something not real so nice try girly

I usually receive an average of about one email a day that appears to be from someone with an avatar at imvu.com and has to do with imvu credits...like someone either wants me to give them free credits because they think buying them is stupid, or they don't think it's stupid but they don't have a credit card or maybe like the above email, they aren't actually asking for any free credits, they just want to tell me buying credits is a foolish idea.

This one is probably my all-time favorite:

jinx can you please give me some creds 5,000 please I dosen't have aby money I dont wont buy a creds its stupid :( please :) 5,000 and thets all ..........

Like...hello...first of all, proof-read what you write but besides that...you are telling me what I do for a living is stupid and then you want something for free from me? That's like going into a bakery and telling the baker/owner, "buying cupcakes is stupid, I don't want to pay for your cupcakes, so please give me some cupcakes." Like, is this actually supposed to work???

Mmmm...cupcakes!

But anyway, back to the first email above. It got me thinking, "what is real?" It's like I asked them to pay for something that has absolutely no value (well, not ask them...more like just passively advertising them) and I find that an incredibly interesting point of view. I mean, if my grandmother thinks IMVU credits have no value, that's different. I don't think my grandmother has ever been on the Internet and she certainly hasn't used IMVU...credits really do have no value to her (unless, of course, she had a whole bunch of them for some reason and then someone offered her a wad of cash for them...then they would have value to even my grandmother who couldn't use them herself.)

But...if you have an IMVU account...if you use IMVU...how are credits not real? IMVU is a real company, it has real employees, real venture capitalists, real offices located in Palo Alto, CA. and millions of "real" users. A bunch of people make money off of IMVU and a bunch more people spend money on IMVU. If IMVU credits aren't real then I'm thinking perhaps the following things are also not real...

The Internet
Anything downloaded from the Internet (software, movies, music, audiobooks)
Movies watched in a movie theater
souls
money spent against your credit card limit
etc...

If you can't touch it, can't hold it in your hand, it must not be real, right? If this person REALLY TRULY never buys anything that is not "real", then I'm impressed as it seems quite hard to do these days. Well, either that or it's just a kid who's parents won't let them use their credit card.