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Topic: Episode 146: Don't Patreonize Me  (Read 35686 times)

Lemon

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Episode 146: Don't Patreonize Me
with Boots Raingear, John Toast, Isfahan, Portaxx, and Lemon.
Content for this episode was compiled by Yellow Jester.
Edited by Isfahan.
What is the value of art? That's very difficult to say. It's possible to get your art to sell for hundreds of millions of dollars, but first you'll have to be dead and have your life's work liquidated by David Geffen. If you're unlucky, you're a webcomic author, constantly making Tumblr posts advertising your work to an audience of nobody waiting for the day that everything hits big. And that's where Patreon comes in. A crowdfunding service with no possible benefit for the world, Patreon wants to turn whiny, self-important Best Buy shelf-stockers into whiny, self important internet celebrities. This week, The F Plus can finally buy the special paper.
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Mister Smalls

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Episode 146: Don't Patreonize Me #1
If there was one lesson I would want to impart to everybody in the world, and that this episode reinforced unshakably in my mind, it would be "Not everybody needs to be an artist."

I go to college for creative writing, and so many of my classmates there are people who aren't all that good at writing and who probably aren't all that interested in it, but the idea that being A Writer is some sort of mysterious and exceptional profession for the academic elite has been driven into their heads like a railroad spike by the hammer that is society's bizarre preconceptions about the arts, and so they sit around and drink coffee that they hate and wear shitty turtlenecks and turn in the most bullshit garbage writing assignments you'll ever see in your life, because all of that makes them A Writer, and therefore An Artist, and being An Artist makes you better than other people.

It doesn't.

Being a writer is a fucking job, like any other job somebody might have.  The same goes for any other type of artist, be it a webcomic creator, a costume designer, or an animator.  If you want to just do these things for fun on the side while having an actual job, that's totally okay and nobody is going to begrudge you for that!  However, if you want to quit your job and become a full-time webcomicker/costumer/cartoon man, then you had better be damn willing to put in the work and time and diligence necessary to not have your life collapse in on itself.  If you're not willing to do that, and instead go to Patreon to beg for donations so that you can continue to make your garbage webcomic, you are not an artist.  Just like how somebody who puts on a hardhat, doesn't go to college, and charges fifty bucks to make people houses of cards by the side of the road wouldn't be an architect. 

But it's fine if you're not an artist.  You don't need to be an artist.  You can make art and be anything.  The only thing you shouldn't be is a pretentious fuck who thinks that people will throw money at your bullshit ugly webcomic just because it's there, and you think the fact that it's there means that you are special and superior for being a content creator.  You aren't.  Sit down, shut the fuck up, and be an adult with a job like everyone else on the planet.

This is kind of rambly and turned into something more about me than the episode - and I ended up parroting a little bit of what lemon said in the episode already -  but fuck it, it's 4 AM and I wanted to vent.
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« Last Edit: August 02, 2014, 03:31:25 am by Mister Smalls »

Isfahan

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Episode 146: Don't Patreonize Me #2
Someone on SA got strangely defensive about this episode, which leads me to believe they've got a finger in this pie. Here's what I posted to them in response:

I don't think any of us hate Patreon itself, nor do we hate the idea of Patreon any more than we hated the idea of Kickstarter. It's the workflow that people are trying to bend Patreon's system to support that's the source of the groans.

Consider a busker. The way busking works is the person plays on their guitar or saxophone or violin or whatever and, for those few moments of enhanced ambience that comes from walking by them, you throw in a dollar or a handful of change or what have you. Now, whether you throw in no money at all or a twenty, that busker continues playing. Maybe they make eye contact with you and smile or something, but the busker provides the same amount of music either way. Is the busker there to make money? Absolutely. They do not, however, stand there tapping a foot, waiting for someone to pay them to start playing, nor do they start a few notes as someone approaches and then conspicuously stop as they pass by, clearing their throat and looking down at their guitar case. You gotta do it because you love it, not because you think it'd be a fun way to make money. You gotta keep doing it and doing it and getting exposure while sucking it up and hoping to break through. That's why goddamn everyone isn't getting into the Internet-artist gig. You have to let your product speak for itself. Nobody's going to give money to a busker who is just tapping a foot impatiently, thinking he's got it coming.

Plenty of Patreon accounts get it right. They are the people already creating what they would be creating regardless. They're already playing the music before you're even around to hear it.

A lot of the folks we read were looking at their Patreon income and thinking "as soon as I make it to X dollars per whatever, I can go tell my boss to shove it and do this full time!" I think that's the wrong way to look at it. Patreon as a revenue stream can be extremely volatile, especially after people realize what they're now on the hook for as a content creator. Supporters can pull their support, and they don't have to explain themselves. It's not the cake, it's the cherry on top.

Most of our subjects for this episode fell into one of those two categories: the pay-me-to-start-creating people, or the wanna-quit-my-job people. That's the source of amusement. That's the reason they were in the episode.
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Episode 146: Don't Patreonize Me #3
Yeah, Patreon seems like a good way for a creative person who already has a solid fanbase to try and get some money out of it. I know the guy who does Gunnerkrigg Court has one, for instance, and I could definitely see tossing him a few bucks because that comic is the shit. But this is the internet, so for every creative person putting a lot of effort into making their artistic vision a reality there are ten assholes who want to slap their hands against a keyboard and then just soak in the praise for having the bravery to do so.

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Episode 146: Don't Patreonize Me #4
I didn't think much of it when I saw it yesterday but I am pretty sure I delivered a postcard from Pateron thanking them from their support that included a sketch of a shark with four legs.

nigeline

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Episode 146: Don't Patreonize Me #5
I didn't think much of it when I saw it yesterday but I am pretty sure I delivered a postcard from Pateron thanking them from their support that included a sketch of a shark with four legs.
WhiteBoyShuffle, August 02, 2014, 10:44:56 am
There are so many things wrong with this sentence....

Also, you should start a log of all the interesting things you find as a postal worker. I'd love to know what weird shit people don't think to put in opaque packages....

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Episode 146: Don't Patreonize Me #6
I didn't think much of it when I saw it yesterday but I am pretty sure I delivered a postcard from Pateron thanking them from their support that included a sketch of a shark with four legs.
WhiteBoyShuffle, August 02, 2014, 10:44:56 am
That sounds familiar, did the shark sketch look like this?

It's a little pet/mascot creature from a fantasy webcomic by a Finnish artist called Prague Race.

Glad to read Isfahan's clarification. I haven't listened to the episode yet, but after reading the same post on SA last night, I was kinda giving it some side-eye. No, I don't have a Patreon, but I do a lot of 'hobby' art, i.e. I make money from it, but it doesn't pay my mortgage, and I've thought about making one to offset things like materials and website hosting costs (and drinking money). I think a lot of artists just get defensive easily if they perceive someone questioning the monetary worth of their work, since people demanding free art, or work for 'exposure' is unfortunately the norm.

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Episode 146: Don't Patreonize Me #7
I didn't think much of it when I saw it yesterday but I am pretty sure I delivered a postcard from Pateron thanking them from their support that included a sketch of a shark with four legs.
WhiteBoyShuffle, August 02, 2014, 10:44:56 am
There are so many things wrong with this sentence....

Also, you should start a log of all the interesting things you find as a postal worker. I'd love to know what weird shit people don't think to put in opaque packages....
nigeline, August 02, 2014, 02:11:50 pm

I had to read it again, but that isn't my best writing.

The only thing that has stood out so far was that someone shipped a playground ball. Not even in a box or anything, just slapped a label on it and had it delivered.

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Episode 146: Don't Patreonize Me #8
I have a lot of dumb shit to say about Patreon, art, and laziness, but Mister Smalls gets my bulb for condensing pretty much everything I was going to say into something clear and insightful. I'll probably still preach to the choir later, but for now I'll just say "ditto" to his post.

So right now, instead of talking about Patreon specifically, I'm going to address something that seems to come up almost every single episode:

Now, I understand that not everybody has listened to every single F+ episode, so not everyone's fully familiar with what we do 100% of the time. However, after almost 150 episodes let me point out that we do not just randomly attack people for no reason. Sometimes the episode's subjects are mocked themselves, but those are the subjects that are just flat-out stupid. Multiples, "psychics," a country made up of nerds who inhabit invincible robo-dragon bodies... dumb stuff like that. Other times, the theme is just a thread that ties together weird or stupid posts. Nobody cares if you're childfree, are into girls with glasses, enjoy fanfiction, cosplay, occasionally chew ice, have an unusual wedding, write poetry, or have a project on Kickstarter... as long as you don't use that as a springboard to act like a crazy idiotic jerkoff.

I saw the SA post Isfahan's referring to, so it seems like this is something people forget the instant the episode's about something they like. Yeah, a few of the jokes themselves might be cheap shots at your interests, but I'm sure you'll survive one or two people saying "ha ha, watching a kid show is silly" when it's not even directed towards you personally. What some folks struggle to understand is that the whole episode is not "wow it's so stupid that some people like cartoons! Ha ha what idiots! LIKING CARTOONS AND WHATNOT! HAAA HAAAA!" I mean what the fuck, that wouldn't even be funny. That'd just be boring as shit. Can you imagine a whole episode of nothing but "some people... DON'T have kids? Whaaaaaaat? How can a person not have kids?!!? As in, zero children! Huuuhhh???" or "some people make... costumes?? That's not something everyone does!!"? That's not what we do here, for a variety of reasons.

So this is just a note to everyone who listens to any episode in the future: If you're worried that the newest episode is the one where we drastically change our format and spend an hour mocking regular, harmless people who are calmly minding their own business, worry no longer! Because it's never going to fucking happen. Be free of stress and continue writing your novels, making your comics, watching Sherlock, and frotting all the live long day! Because we don't really care as long as you don't use it as an excuse to shout utter madness to the world!

... now if you're an otherkin who writes massive essays about how you staple MSPaint My Little Pony art to people's faces as a way to bring awareness to the plight of your fictive headmates' mass marriage to fatpride!Loki not being recognized by the government? Then yeah, you should probably worry about being made fun of, both in the podcast and everywhere else on the planet.
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« Last Edit: August 02, 2014, 05:54:38 pm by portaxx »

nigeline

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Episode 146: Don't Patreonize Me #9
I didn't think much of it when I saw it yesterday but I am pretty sure I delivered a postcard from Pateron thanking them from their support that included a sketch of a shark with four legs.
WhiteBoyShuffle, August 02, 2014, 10:44:56 am
There are so many things wrong with this sentence....

Also, you should start a log of all the interesting things you find as a postal worker. I'd love to know what weird shit people don't think to put in opaque packages....
nigeline, August 02, 2014, 02:11:50 pm

I had to read it again, but that isn't my best writing.

The only thing that has stood out so far was that someone shipped a playground ball. Not even in a box or anything, just slapped a label on it and had it delivered.
WhiteBoyShuffle, August 02, 2014, 05:29:36 pm
Hah, wow, and they weren't worried it would get deflated.

I didn't mean your writing, by the way! I more meant the idea of the creator of a four legged-shark cartoon spending hard-earned Patreon money to send out thank you postcards.

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Episode 146: Don't Patreonize Me #10
Is "Riveting Refuse" a tag yet

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Episode 146: Don't Patreonize Me #11
I wanted to post a brief defense of Patreon, as it does serve as a service to established artists, by raising money for rehearsal time or publishing costs or mailing expenses or paid commission work. There are lots of things that require more cash that take time and effort away from doing the art itself, and by sourcing it through Patreon can offer a convenient way to let art consumers support artists for the direct purpose of enriching their lives. I don’t think any rational person is using it as a substitute for working or on empty promises.

That said, there are plenty of no-talent ass-clowns who think that just because they have a crappy concept for a web comic, they deserve your support. It’s fine, just don’t give them anything, and let their mom be their only supportive patron.

Protip: Don’t joke about buying video games with potential donation money, idiot.

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Episode 146: Don't Patreonize Me #12
By the way Lemon, I can't wait for the Go Fund Me episode.  And then, after that, the bitcoin-only Kickstarter knockoff episode.

There's always more and it's always scammier.

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Episode 146: Don't Patreonize Me #13
I actually looked around on Go Fund Me. That one will be a tough nut, since a lot of them are about needing to pay medical bills, funeral costs, and disabled living modifications.

Although, I bet there is something there, if you dig deep enough.

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Episode 146: Don't Patreonize Me #14
I'd make the Go Fund Me episode as I've found some nice things for it, but I kind of want to know if someone already did that already and I can save myself the time.