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The Elephant in the Wall
4 years ago
Time for the rabbit everyone warned you about to touch base on a touchy subject. Paywalls. If you feel offended by what I have to say, please write an email to the following address:
nobodyaskedforyouropinion[at]paywalls.com
I feel something has been lost in translation in the relationship between artists and subscription services. For the purposes of this article, I'll refer to this problem as 'paywalls.' What is a paywall, exactly? A paywall, in what I feel is a charitable definition, is a subscription that requires a recurring payment in order to access exclusive content. There are some Patreon models that don't follow this model to the letter, such as getting early access to content or higher resolution artwork, but it still fits the definition.
Don't get me wrong: I believe that pursuing art as a job is a wonderful thing to do. I understand the appeal of turning my hobby into a job but still having creative freedom to accomplish anything I want with my work, as someone who wants others to read my stories. I also feel that turning art into a career and making it entirely about the money is completely valid as well, in order to franchise a brand and make it stand out from the crowd.
But, for the love of God, could you artists who do this just lighten up on the paywalls?
Except for the most naïve whiteknights, everyone secretly despises this bullshit and wishes you'd all stop encouraging it. With paywalls you are withholding already finished work from publication and charging and arbitrary fee to access it, so all it really does is turn an artist's presence into a massive fucking advertisement. Nothing does this more than slapping a giant Patreon logo and url in the watermark, or saying in the metadata or description 'by the way, the full resolution artwork/entire comic is available on this website, gimme ur money to access it X3'. Oh, I get to join a discord server and access an exclusive role channel? Neat, now I have something in common with other donators I guess? Oh what's that Mr popular artist person? I can spend almost £200 to have dumbass funny money to use so I can spend it during one of your six hour livestreams? What's that Mr comic porn man? I have to randomly pay £20 to access a comic containing the exact same content you were making ten years ago, but then you got salty because you didn't get enough attention or something? Hello game developer? Oh, you want me to subscribe to you so you can continue making yet another boring graphic novel slideshow style text adventure game just like all the other boring graphic novel slideshow style text adventure games on Steam?
By implementing these paywalls you're negatively impacting the community in two ways. First, this this mentality spreads to other artists, encouraging them to use similar monetization tactics when they really don't have to. Second, it results in people having to spend hundreds of dollars to see the work of all the artists they like, where in reality you're just manipulating your audience, and nobody will tell you this because they want to remain in your good graces.
But I don't care, I don't care if every last dipshit paywall artist on the platform blocks me over this. They can complain about "muh rent" all they want, but what they fail to realise is that their audience have the same expenses they worry about. And not all of us are skilled enough to draw artwork, or write stories that people want to buy and jerk off to.
Stop collectively milking your audience dry, stop treating them like remote piggy banks and start taking some responsibility for your own lives. It's easy to fall back on the starving artists trope as an excuse, but people who do paywalls are objectively not starving. They're being greedy and paywalls just make it clearer to everyone that this is exactly the case.
nobodyaskedforyouropinion[at]paywalls.com
I feel something has been lost in translation in the relationship between artists and subscription services. For the purposes of this article, I'll refer to this problem as 'paywalls.' What is a paywall, exactly? A paywall, in what I feel is a charitable definition, is a subscription that requires a recurring payment in order to access exclusive content. There are some Patreon models that don't follow this model to the letter, such as getting early access to content or higher resolution artwork, but it still fits the definition.
Don't get me wrong: I believe that pursuing art as a job is a wonderful thing to do. I understand the appeal of turning my hobby into a job but still having creative freedom to accomplish anything I want with my work, as someone who wants others to read my stories. I also feel that turning art into a career and making it entirely about the money is completely valid as well, in order to franchise a brand and make it stand out from the crowd.
But, for the love of God, could you artists who do this just lighten up on the paywalls?
Except for the most naïve whiteknights, everyone secretly despises this bullshit and wishes you'd all stop encouraging it. With paywalls you are withholding already finished work from publication and charging and arbitrary fee to access it, so all it really does is turn an artist's presence into a massive fucking advertisement. Nothing does this more than slapping a giant Patreon logo and url in the watermark, or saying in the metadata or description 'by the way, the full resolution artwork/entire comic is available on this website, gimme ur money to access it X3'. Oh, I get to join a discord server and access an exclusive role channel? Neat, now I have something in common with other donators I guess? Oh what's that Mr popular artist person? I can spend almost £200 to have dumbass funny money to use so I can spend it during one of your six hour livestreams? What's that Mr comic porn man? I have to randomly pay £20 to access a comic containing the exact same content you were making ten years ago, but then you got salty because you didn't get enough attention or something? Hello game developer? Oh, you want me to subscribe to you so you can continue making yet another boring graphic novel slideshow style text adventure game just like all the other boring graphic novel slideshow style text adventure games on Steam?
By implementing these paywalls you're negatively impacting the community in two ways. First, this this mentality spreads to other artists, encouraging them to use similar monetization tactics when they really don't have to. Second, it results in people having to spend hundreds of dollars to see the work of all the artists they like, where in reality you're just manipulating your audience, and nobody will tell you this because they want to remain in your good graces.
But I don't care, I don't care if every last dipshit paywall artist on the platform blocks me over this. They can complain about "muh rent" all they want, but what they fail to realise is that their audience have the same expenses they worry about. And not all of us are skilled enough to draw artwork, or write stories that people want to buy and jerk off to.
Stop collectively milking your audience dry, stop treating them like remote piggy banks and start taking some responsibility for your own lives. It's easy to fall back on the starving artists trope as an excuse, but people who do paywalls are objectively not starving. They're being greedy and paywalls just make it clearer to everyone that this is exactly the case.
