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Zeusthecat

I Had A Random Thought...

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I just read an article that I think is confused nonsense. I want to leave a comment that says "This is a horrible article", but I think maybe my thinking wave-length is just completely different from the author's that I don't want to cast judgement. But I still have a need to express my confused dissatisfaction. If anyone wants to read it and explain to me how it is valuable, I may be able to grow an appreciation for it.

http://www.polygon.com/2014/7/17/5909327/please-pay-attention-to-my-patreon-career

 

Felt like a collection of thoughts that never quite adhered.  Inconsistent tone, too.  No need to point out that you don't like it, though.  Your silence says everything!

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I just read an article that I think is confused nonsense. I want to leave a comment that says "This is a horrible article", but I think maybe my thinking wave-length is just completely different from the author's that I don't want to cast judgement. But I still have a need to express my confused dissatisfaction. If anyone wants to read it and explain to me how it is valuable, I may be able to grow an appreciation for it.

http://www.polygon.com/2014/7/17/5909327/please-pay-attention-to-my-patreon-career

It reads like frenzied pearl-clutching. I'm not sure a comment is necessary, but I think concerted disregard is.

 

Ha, this is the same kind of semi-coherent pearl clutching that's been going on since the late 90s.  You could go digging, and find pieces like this from every niche and broom closet in journalism, published practically monthly for the last 15 years.  I'm not in journalism for a reason, I can't afford to be, much as I love it.  When I graduated, I had friends taking professional jobs for less than you could make walking off the street into your average fast food joint (literally, KFC was hiring for $10/hr for shift managers with minimal fast food experience while I had a friend taking a job at $8.50/hour at a TV station).  I already had a kid and a long term partner, and it would have been selfish of me to chase that passion when I had more profitable, but still personally fulfilling, avenues I could pursue.  Almost everyone I've stayed in contact from my class with is now working in PR.  I lost touch with the one guy who was doing good interesting work, particularly down in Louisiana post-Katrina.  But last I knew, even he kept a part time gig to pay his bills, because his professional pieces weren't paying enough. 

 

One thing I can't decide is who this line is being snarky towards, the old guard, the wannabes or both:

 

Back in my day, journalism was the guarded property of liberal arts graduates and the common man had no hope of mastering its dark complexities without years of study in dank classrooms.

 

The reality is that newspapers, particularly, have depended on people without a journalism education for decades to pad out their content.  At one point, I had one of my professors counsel me to change my major to something else, keep writing for the college newspaper, and then come back to the j-school for my masters.  He basically said that no one really needs a Bachelor's in journalism to be a journalist, it's there for the people who can't imagine doing anything else.  I had 2 paid and published journalism gigs (one staff and one freelance) before I ever had my Bachelor's.

 

At any rate, I'm glad you linked it, not because it was about video games, but because it's always interesting to see how this message is subtlety shifting in the ever changing quicksand that is modern journalism. 

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I don't really know how it's valuable. It makes a point, if not incredibly well - Patreon is a platform for people (usually individuals) with a following to make money. It's not really Kickstarter, at least in practice.

 

I think there needs to be a more nuanced exploration of the value of Patreon in the game's journalism space. But I don't find myself offended or particularly confused by this article.

 

Also, I don't know why it's not marked as opinion or editorial.

 

Edit: Actually, the more I think about it the more I'm bothered by this. Seems like a very ivory tower-style article to write, particularly coming from Polygon. The point I mentioned above would have made a premise for a more coherent, helpful article. Instead, I think it reads like a privileged perspective from a monolith media company. Some people don't have a choice but to use Patreon, because freelance is barely good enough for anybody let alone the less entitled members of society who are at a disadvantage from square one.

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Edit: Actually, the more I think about it the more I'm bothered by this. Seems like a very ivory tower-style article to write, particularly coming from Polygon. The point I mentioned above would have made a premise for a more coherent, helpful article. Instead, I think it reads like a privileged perspective from a monolith media company. Some people don't have a choice but to use Patreon, because freelance is barely good enough for anybody let alone the less entitled members of society who are at a disadvantage from square one.

 

It felt cynical.  Polygon just had their long-form writer leave, without another job in hand, and his blog post about it mentions the idea of it being a failure....  I seem to remember some writing staff being brought over to the "video side of things" in the last bunch of months.  Maybe Polygon as a whole is feeling a bit jaded about the whole writing part not paying the bills even at their established company?

 

But really, the more I read the article the less it makes sense:

 

Patreon pitches "largely cater to the interests of other writers and journalists"?  What does that mean?  Is everyone just pitching a project about journalism or writing, or is there some other interest that they all share as a collective?  (I'm being partially silly, but also curious if that's really the case...)

 

"...Patreon is not the punk rock antidote..."  This article seems to be about how hard it is to make money as a writer/journalist.  What does punk rock, music that espouses the idea of anarchy, of expression over capital have to do with Patreon, a clear and simple platform with which people ask for money for services?  (Punk rock didn't really change the recording business, as much as it was an example of technology becoming more readily available to regular folks)

 

I'm being nitpicky, sorry.  It's fun.

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But really, the more I read the article the less it makes sense:

 

Patreon pitches "largely cater to the interests of other writers and journalists"?  What does that mean?  Is everyone just pitching a project about journalism or writing, or is there some other interest that they all share as a collective?  (I'm being partially silly, but also curious if that's really the case...)

 

"...Patreon is not the punk rock antidote..."  This article seems to be about how hard it is to make money as a writer/journalist.  What does punk rock, music that espouses the idea of anarchy, of expression over capital have to do with Patreon, a clear and simple platform with which people ask for money for services?  (Punk rock didn't really change the recording business, as much as it was an example of technology becoming more readily available to regular folks)

 

It feels most obviously like someone has already reached a conclusion and is instead trying out arguments to see if any of them can be made to arrive at it. Patreon is clearly a dead-end, for one reason or another, and Gera will find out which one why!

 

It needs an editor (another ever-dying profession) and a couple nights' think.

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I have a friend who is on Patreon (albeit for comics, not writing) and it does make a significant difference to her livelihood. She DID have a pre-existing fanbase but they had no regular avenue to pay her for making comics they read for free. She had alreaady gotten onto a site where she's paid significant money for her comics but that wasn't really enough to cover bills in itself, so I would say Patreon absolutely does make a difference. Yes it makes a difference to the people who do have an audience, but that's how the internet has always been. Patreon's not especially bad at it (ok discoverability on it is poor, but that's not strictly the same as Patreon being solely for large personalities).

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I have a friend who is on Patreon (albeit for comics, not writing) and it does make a significant difference to her livelihood. She DID have a pre-existing fanbase but they had no regular avenue to pay her for making comics they read for free. She had alreaady gotten onto a site where she's paid significant money for her comics but that wasn't really enough to cover bills in itself, so I would say Patreon absolutely does make a difference. Yes it makes a difference to the people who do have an audience, but that's how the internet has always been. Patreon's not especially bad at it (ok discoverability on it is poor, but that's not strictly the same as Patreon being solely for large personalities).

I've never really thought of Patreon as a platform for discovering new personalities, but rather more like a way to pay people who do a good job. I think of it kind of like one of those Paypal Donate buttons that exist everywhere: If you like this person's stuff, help support them! If you're looking for new people to spread your fabulous riches to, there are much better ways of finding content.

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Yeah, the vast majority of people I see having success on Patreon are people who have obvious talent and quality and are still not making ends meet, to the point where that's what I see it as being for: here is a way to make a job for yourself when it's clear that someone should have hired you already.

 

I strongly suspect that Emily Gera votes Republican - there seems to be an undercurrent here that the world is fair more often than it's not, and so all those people on Patreon are clearly less deserving than people who were good enough to get hired, and maybe instead of being paid they should work on their craft. This is repellent to those who believe the world is fundamentally unfair more often than it's fair, and thus can believe that there are plenty of people who should have jobs that don't, while people who do have jobs aren't as good.

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I really try to not be overly strawmany or consider any viewpoint wrong, but I really just don't understand some of the concepts associated with Republicanism. All saw an American friend post an article about making more job security for part time workers. A friend of his commented saying

"I hope this doesn't hurt small businesses too much."

I don't get that as the initial reaction, because of course starting a business is hard and expensive but if you can do it you're better off than someone who packs basic protection because they're on irregular and unreliable part time work.

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Gera is British, I think. This is what she said on Twitter:

 

I mentioned this over on Facebook but I'll add it here too:  I like Patreon, honestly. The piece is a statement on games industry culture, not an argument against crowdfunding. It's about what success looks like in the modern games industry, how it's ultimately fueled by social media, and how the rise of Wisdom-of-the-Crowds platforms like Patreon embody that.

 

That sounds like something I could kinda agree with, but frankly that point was so incoherent in what was actually written. I usually like Gera's writing and I follow her on Twitter, but that article needed some serious editorial massaging before being posted.

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If she had written a forum-post instead, then she could have had her ideas clarified through egalitarian discussion. This is a great example of why I don't want to write articles. The medium demands an amount of certainty that I rarely have. I love being able to come here and discharge ambigious secretions that are eventually molded into interesting ideas through questioning and conflict by a wide variety of perspectives. I often post something that is barely an idea and by the time the thread dies, I've got a unified theory.

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Ah, I'm a shit. I shouldn't assume she's American.

 

I like to use forum arguments to test out theories I'm not sure about, but I've written articles in the past which are more like me trying to get everything I've learnt about a subject onto the page.

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Thought she was a Canadian living in the UK. Why are you so hard to pigeonhole, Gera? WHYYYY

Anyway it read like an opinion piece and an opportunity to employ a more florid writing style. Sometimes one can obscure the other but it's a worthwhile experiment.

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Two entirely unrelated thoughts, one serious and one not so much:

  • I think I'm done with people using hypocrisy as the only way they refute something with which they disagree. It's a blatant ad hominem but no one seems to like admitting it. So what if I'm a hypocrite? It doesn't make what I say incorrect.
  • Why are males and females considered opposites? I know it comes from the biases of ancient philosophy, but it doesn't make sense under even cursory consideration, because there are intersex individuals and surely opposites couldn't coexist in the same body. Why isn't the opposite of a male a mannequin?

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Some Thumb (can't remember which) posted this article on Twitter, which is probably my favorite thing ever -

 

My 14-Hour Search for the End of TGI Friday's Endless Appetizers

 

Thank you for linking this, I did a dramatized reading of it as my wife and I were driving across the state today, had us both in stitches and soaked up a good hour of the drive.

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RE the Friday's appetizer thing: I read the first half of it this morning and the second half in the afternoon.  During the time in between my day got really shitty so I went from getting a laugh of out of it to really resenting it.  No one's fault really, just an unfortunate series of events.

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that bit is forever emblazoned in my mind.

 

It asks deep questions: what does it mean to be human? who's the badass biotic bitch now?

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Just mistyped de facto as Dr facto in the feminism thread, but since I'm on a phone I can't actually edit posts on this forum.

Gah! Why must my modern struggles plague me so?

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If you're reading from a mobile browser, I think just tapping on the post will expand it in a downward fashion with an edit button!

 

Also I'm now officially requesting that the language gods allow us to replace "de facto" with "Dr. Facto" as we please.

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