Paper Mario: The Oragami King is a game about folding.
There are over 600 million blogs in the world, spread out over 1.7 billion websites. There are 31 million active bloggers posting at least once a month in the United States alone.
I say that to say I am always humbled when someone gets in touch saying they enjoy my weird little blog and wish to explore the possibility of growth and monetization. The conversation usually goes south when I inform them that I am fully aware that this blog is unable to be monetized because should that happen it is at best highly immoral and at worst highly illegal.
I am literally stealing every piece of content you see on this thing with full knowledge of what I'm doing. I simply don't care, and only continue to do so because no one is stopping me. No one is stopping me because one, I don't have a large enough community to pull aggro, two, I am not receiving any money for it, and three, the platforms (Google/Youtube) created tools that allow me to manipulate other people's intellectual property in a way that makes them complicit. We in this together.
It's one of the reasons the blog is called Default Tester. Find a bug and exploit it until it's fixed. If it's not fixed, it's a feature.
The next step in these conversations is when the pitcher recognizes my moral turpitude they ask why I don't satellite monetize by way of Patreon. I respond the same way I always do to workarounds like that, which is by saying that getting paid through crowdfunding is the same as establishing a line of credit I would have to pay back to the true creators sooner or later.
Using my current system all creators that I brazenly steal from are repaid via direct clicks on creations, which in the marketing world is a clear return on investment. In return, I get to edify my broken spirit by sharing things I enjoy with my friends and get to answer a question I always wondered, which is, "Would I embark on an adventure that paid nothing, made me look crazy, and is guaranteed to fail, just to say I did?" Turns out the answer is yes I would, for at least ten years.
Anyway, I say all that to say when a potential publisher, reader, or business community peer expresses second-hand embarrassment for me when they find out I write this pretentious, grammatically atrocious, preachy, blog for free with no promotion, please know that I understand where you are coming from.
But I'm just another blog in 600 million doing the best I can. No more, no less.
Rip TB Rip TC Rip Tall-T. Love is wise, hatred is foolish. Get out there and do great things, we believe in you. Also Jobs.
The Protoculture Mixtape : Issue : Games : Pejorative
