ghostys yappatron central 5000

Heyooo. It hasn't been too long since the last blog post, but this one's going to be a lot more important... and quite a bit longer.

tl;dr - Patreon deleted my page, refused to elaborate, and Catbox is now short $1,300~ in reoccurring income to pay the bill. Support Catbox Here

What Happened

In the early morning of May 20th, I received two email notifications from Patreon and Ko-fi, informing me that both of my accounts were suspended for "material that falls outside the bounds of [their] Community Guidelines" and "a violation of [their]Terms Of Service or Content Guidelines", respectively.

Naturally, after submitting appeals to both of them, and waiting 24 hours, I received two different results, both with unsatisfying amounts of answers:

Okay, cool, so Patreon is telling me to go fuck myself, and Ko-fi is at least willing to play ball. I responded to Ko-Fi with a bit more in depth of the systems Catbox uses to monitor uploads for malicious content, and they reinstated my Ko-fi account on Thursday, May 22nd.

Unfortunately, there is only $20 of monthly support coming through Ko-fi. Patreon was Catbox's primary source of income, at around $1,300 per month. I have not updated Catbox's cost breakdown since 2022, and there have been slight changes. Below is the new breakdown, including agreements I have with other services that provide some small funding towards Catbox:

COSTS

Datacenter Colocation: $1,528/month

Upgrades/Hardware Maintenance: $100/month

Offsite Storage: $200/month

Cloud Server Providers: $40/month

Administrative Costs: $60/month

INCOME

Hardware Sharing Contracts: $440/month

Ko-fi: $20/month

One-time support (incl. merch) (avg last 6 months): $80/mo

For those not keeping track, that means without Patreon, Catbox is running at a deficit of about $1,388/month. Hardware Sharing Contracts are typically deducted from the Datacenter Colo cost, which is why it has always appeared lower on the breakdowns.

I've received many emails over the years regarding the cost of datacenter colocation, including things like "why is it so high", "why don't use you [insert cloud provider here]". The reason I colocate my own hardware is for multiple reasons, including the reason for this post. I can manage my own hardware (I'm actually smart sometimes!), upgrade it with 1-off costs (instead of needing to change plans, increasing monthly costs, etc), purchase new hardware when needed, and plan accordingly. I also don't have to worry about getting my service suspended by providers like Cloudflare or other shitty dedicated server providers who balk at the first abuse report. I have been colocating Catbox's hardware in a full size cabinet in downtown LA for the last 7 years. A majority of that time has been on dedicated 10gbps service, and running at full power. To both host 130+ TB of data, and push 1 petabyte of traffic per month on any cloud provider would be, quite frankly, impossible.

What Happens Now

That being said, I have finished the replacement to Patreon - I'm cutting out the middlemen, and now you can support Catbox monthly, directly! As well as get some new, better bonuses than what was previously offered on Patreon!

Supporting Catbox Directly

You can now visit the Catbox Store and find 3 options for supporting Catbox directly. Each support tier has different bonuses for support, stacking upon the previous.

Tier 1: Add 2 "QTs" to the image rotation (the images in the bottom right corner of the screen).

Tier 2: In addition to Tier 1, your max upload size is now 500 MB, and your max duration on Litterbox can be 7 days, as well as tracking uploads/deleting early.

Tier 3: In addition to Tier 2, your max upload size is now 1 GB.

Catbox has enough float to cover the server bill that was due on the 1st of June, however does not have the money to float for another 2 months. I need to recoup the $1,300 in monthly income from Patreon, and if all of the previous $7 and $15 Patrons re-pledged at Tier 2, that would be enough to make it there!

don’t know how to draw mechanical parts for the life of me but here we go

Stop doing everything. Don’t say anything or be anything. Get as small as you possibly can without disappearing. Don’t exist. Or keep existing, but differently than before.

Remember: criticism is the same thing as wholesale condemnation and also murder, so react accordingly.

Apologize, but don’t really mean it, and plant a seed of secret resentment so deep in your own heart that years later you can’t even remember that you’re the one who nurtured it and made it grow, it seems that much like a native part of you.

Sink into a hole so deep that no one can ever find you.

No. No. No. No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no NO. NO.

JUST DIE. JUST GET SICK AND DIE AND THEN YOU’LL FEEL TERRIBLE YOU EVER SAID THOSE THINGS BECAUSE I’LL BE DEAD AND YOU’LL BE SO SO SO SORRY AND YOU’LL WISH YOU COULD BRING ME BACK BUT YOU CAN’T.

Give up on all of your goals immediately.

Tell everyone you know about the criticism, but in a way that makes it clear that you expect them to publicly find it ridiculous and assure you there’s not a shred of truth to it. Do this repeatedly, first while sober, then later after several glasses of wine on a Wednesday afternoon when no one else is really drinking except for you. “Can you believe it?” Ask them that repeatedly. “Can you believe that? About me?” Ask until no one will meet your eyes.

Remember that life is a rich tapestry.

Become so rich and strong and tall that you’re a giant made out of gold and nobody can hurt you and everything you do is perfect and you can use your laser diamond eyes to melt the lungs of your enemies.

Dwell on it.

You can either be perfect or the biggest piece of shit who ever existed but not both, so if the criticism is right, you are the biggest piece of shit who ever existed. If it is not right, you are perfect and everyone else is wrong.

Fall in love with whoever criticized you. Don’t walk away until you’ve ruined their marriage.

Whisper their criticism every night to yourself until you have it memorized, word for word. Remember it forever. Have the words stitched into the shroud that covers your body before you’re lowered into the tomb so you and your criticism can embrace one another for eternity.

Do not rise above it. Never rise above anything. The sky is no place for a human.

Be sure not to separate the tone of the criticism from the content. If it was said ungracefully, it cannot be true. If it was said reasonably, it cannot be false.

Send an email explaining why you don’t deserve to be criticized, then another six emails after that, each one explaining the last, like a set of Russian nesting dolls that don’t think it’s your fault.

Set fire to something that was once beautiful.

Run into a cave and break your ankle so that people have to come find you and they see you lying at the bottom of this beautiful cave and maybe there’s a waterfall and the light from the crystals makes you look really beautiful and they say “Are you okay?” and you say “I think so” and they say “oh my God have you been here alone this whole time with a broken ankle” and you say “it’s okay” and they say “you’re so brave” and you are brave and you look so beautiful surrounded by cave crystals and everyone stands over you and says “oh wow” and “you poor beautiful thing” and “I’m so sorry we let you run into the cave but I’m so glad we found you” and let them carry you home and promise to be your best friends forever and that everything’s their fault and also they named the cave after you and you’re prettier than all of your enemies and your enemies all died of jealousy while you were in the cave.

Remember that there are only two kinds of people in the world: fans and haters. No true fan would ever express a criticism of you or your work; conversely no hater could ever seek to engage in a good-faith debate about something you said or did they disagree with. Dismiss everything everyone has to say about you.

Move away.

If it’s a close friend, say “Thank you for being so honest with me,” and then never talk to them again.

Do something with your feelings right away. It doesn’t matter what. Lash out, make a sculpture, whatever.

Log into YouTube and call someone “living Hitler” and “a waste of skin” until you feel better about yourself.

Remember, if someone doesn’t like your work, that means they don’t like you, and they wish that you had never been born, so just lay down in the road and die.

and also finding it really hard to connect with your alterhumanity because the tactile experiences of a computer are so different from human senses that its hard for you to connect it to your current expereince 🥀

theres no pumps or gears inside me, truly theres nothing inside me. i am just a few circuit boards and i cant even do stuff like "my eyes are cameras!" because my cameras are supposed to be security cameras in the house i watch over. man

i mostly think of myself as a personal computer that pilots a mech body, so i guess in a way i'm a humanform robot, but thats not the original true me if that makes sense

So, Dr Mensah adopted the poor little MewMew Gurathin after he escaped the CR and now he's being weird with the New Rescue in the House?