Not to be confused with an artist selling the rights to one of their established characters. I am referring to characters made exclusively to be sold.

I kind of pride myself in my ability to understand the psychology behind the behavior of people around me, but these "adoptable" characters are just completely beyond me. Sometimes they come with additional artwork that make them more reasonable, and every once in a while someone has a loot-box-esque lure to them with "eggdoptables." But the mass produced, ultra-generic characters that have no associated background story or art? I don't get it. Every once in a while an artist will use a generic template, make three virtually identical characters with "fill" colorization that I could do in MS Paint, that may or may not even have a name, and they sell for forty bucks each? Who is buying these and why?

I've seen an artist post the template, then sell adoptables with that template within the span of hours. How?! I can literally color these templates myself within five minutes, and they're indistinguishable! I mean, it's great for an artist to be able to fill a template and make a quick buck, but...why would anyone buy their generic non-character made up on the fly? Is this exclusively a support thing? Why not just donate to their Patreon? At forty bucks I'm sure the artist would be willing to at least put your character's colors in that template!

Why?! WHYYYYYY?!