It's basically just a joke. If you hover over it, it says "I paid 8 dollars for this". It's like buying a sticker to slap on your laptop. It means nothing/does nothing, and is just for fun.

I understand what it's supposed to be. I find it obnoxious. It's a "joke", but you also pay actual money for it. Money that is definitely not well in proportion with how funny the joke is. I really do not enjoy seeing Elon/cryptobro-level "humour" having made it into an official feature of this site.

It's not a feature. A feature would imply that it changes how the website functions. All this does is basically add a little icon that says "hey, I donated 8 dollars to help keep the servers on for a website that hosts a large community of lgbtq+ people."

There is no reason you have to buy it. In fact, I expect most people to ignore it. All the while it's taking a dig at twitters stupidity for trying to make their verification process a paid one.

It's just an in-joke referencing Twitter's new 8$ 'verification' tag.

I know, I know what it's referencing. And I think it's obnoxious. Everyone understood that the $8 Twitter checkmark was a bad idea, so FA is now doing it "ironically" as a "joke". But we've been over this in online discourse years ago: When you're doing the thing "ironically", you're still doing the thing. It's not any better.

No, it's not late stage capitalism, FA owner took a page from the crypto bros.

Keep making big promises that are not done and/or done extremely late while only producing small once every once half a year while collecting monthly subscriptions.

Yeah.... but hasn't FA kind of always been like that? Make promises and then stuff just only kind of happens, but not quite, if at all? I think what's new with this is the departure from any veneer of pretending to be earnest. If furaffinitypr was still around, this would be perfect for them.

It has, the only problem is when money gets involved. People are hoping for improvements if they give money, under the assumption their donations help with improving the website, which, the improvements will pretty much never come.

How is setting up what is basically a donation badge taking a page from crypto bros? O.o

The icon literally does nothing but says you paid 8 dollars. Did you even read the actual release statement?

It doesn't change the websites function in any way. You can sell it on a doge coin crypto market to buy NFTs, it's just flare for your page. Like a funny hat you buy in a video game or a sticker you slap on a pole.

It's called making promises, so people give you money for your project.
But then never deliver.

How long have people been asking for profile name changes? 20 years? The requests for improvements date so far back they can legally buy their own porn.
By the time Dragoneer added profile banners, I could have gone to college, got a masters in programming, done it myself, and have 7 years to spare. I would buy this website myself, my friends and I can easily work on it. But Dragoneer will not sell it to anyone.

Have you made the offer?

Yep, my friend did :/

Dang, oh well.

Sounds like it’s meant to be a joke but at the same time FA is like “yeah but to them it’s a joke but we get $8 per person so we win”