critncozy

her name was Marsha P Johnson, and we have her to thank for so much.

remember, the first Pride was a riot, and she was one of the brave souls who endured it to help carve the path which so many of us walk today. she helped found several activist groups regarding LGBT safety and wellbeing. and she was absolutely radiant, too.

and while i'm at it, what i've come to realize with early acces and paywalling is that has become so normalized in ts4 community is this model was never meant to be sustainable. yet some creators seem to put all of the pressure on the consumer to pay compensation when this is a hobby we are all doing for free. i will never give my money for someone who has clearly never given a damn about the people who are apart of this community. i'm glad we're realizing how harmful and incredibly greedy some creators are but i also want people to realize that the consumer will always hold the power. don't let anyone guilt trip you into thinking that recolored assets from game, broken meshes, repetitive sets, broken mods, ai-gen cc that looks like absolute garbage- need i continue? anyways don't let anyone guilt you into believing you are responsible for their livelihoods when in reality it has been show time and time again, they do not value the labor you’ve put into earning that dollar. please understand this before you find the need to defend an adult who is very much capable of that.

(In case it's not clear, I'm making fun of paywallers who are like aS a CrEaToR)

If you can't "afford" to do this hobby without demanding money from other people, what makes you think you have a right to charge OTHER people money? Why should WE have to pay YOU so YOU can do YOUR hobby?

Let me put it this way: Trying to prop yourself up in a shitty economic system by becoming part of that system of exploitation makes you part of the problem.

(No, getting a job in a capitalist system does not disprove this argument. Going to a job in a capitalist society is a built-in and inescapable reality. Modding communities DO NOT NEED TO HAVE PAYWALLS TO FLOURISH. While some people do make a living off Sims 4 modding, most do NOT and it is NOT a reasonable expectation that you'll open up shop and earn a roof over your head.)

It's one thing if creators do reasonable early access for Sims 4, a game that has been out for over a decade. 1-2 weeks! That's reasonable! At least in my opinion. I am personally willing to grant fellow creators that kind of grace, especially because I only opened my Patreon in 2020 so I could pay for my medication.

It's an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT MATTER if your content is early access for 1 month, 6 months, a year, y e a r s; you put trackers or even malware into your content; you threaten/dox people who share your content; you lash out and harass or get other people to harass others; you believe you are ENTITLED to OUR money, money that you so desperately cling to yourself.

There's a difference between advocating for respect for creative endeavors and endorsing a systemic divide within a community.

Let me put it another way: 95% of human (pre)history was spent in mostly egalitarian societies. We know this based on archaeological evidence taken from caves, meeting places of hunter-gatherer nomadic bands, burial sites, storage/food cache sites, etc. We don't have evidence of large scale conflict and patriarchal hierarchy until after any given culture has developed agriculture and developed the concept of an excess of personal property.

In short: Modding communities that do not tolerate pay models of any kind tend to be egalitarian and have actively produced the equivalent of entirely new games-- the Dark Souls modding community is particularly legendary in this respect, but there are so many others.

And what do we have with the Sims community's decades of paywalls?

Creators become paranoid. Backbiting.

They lash out at the community that has supported them.

Paywall creators start treating their PAYING SUPPORTERS like dogshit - we've seen how Felix and Harrie talk to people and treat them like peasant scum. Any creators who do this are spineless, entitled, and pathetic.

They begin to see the sharing of their content as "theft" even though it... really isn't theft at all; theft implies a wrongful claiming of ownership, but sharing an infinitely copyable file isn't claiming ownership.

Paywall creators become willing to do ILLEGAL ACTS (doxxing, violations of privacy in sharing someone's personal info/payment info/wrongful use of such, direct and/or indirect harassment, stalking, bullying, etc)

Free creators don't get the support they need because there is now an air of exclusivity around the paywalled content.

I don't know about y'all, but I do NOT want that in the Paralives community. I don't want it in the Sims community either, but if I can help stop it at its roots in Paralives, I'll sleep a lot better at night.