Against the Crowdfunding Economy
jacobinmag.com
jacobinmag.com
> They start to get pissy when you make art they don’t want. Like they have a right to be involved in your life.
Yes, how positively odd that after giving you lots of money, they want something specific in return.
> Friendster seemed lucrative, so why not try something similar in Myspace? Facebook? Snapchat? They’re all variations on a theme.
I've noticed this attitude is widespread among marxists: glossing over differences between businesses, or the products they offer. To a marxist, as long as the high-level descriptions of two products are similar, the products are functionally equivalent. That Myspace got crushed because its UX was basically a dumpster fire means nothing to them, they just seem to view one company winning over the other as the whims of unknowable capitalist machinations.
They view business as a whole as essentially a big black box. This is not because they are stupid, but rather because, to borrow a phrasing from Upton Sinclair, it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his ideology depends upon his not understanding it.
Marx had a few insightful criticisms of capitalism but Marxist ideology buries those in a substantial amount of poo. Of course most Ideologies(tm) have a similarly poor BS ratio and require a lot of deliberate ignorance to swallow whole cloth.
It's the same people who don't understand why everyone hasn't already switched to using functional languages, or think that functional languages are equally easy to learn. Yeah, they may be equally easy to learn if you're a hardcore CS/math nerd, but that doesn't describe most people, heck, it doesn't even describe most CS majors!
I wonder what it is that makes both hardcore open-source nerds and marxists very utilitarian and blind to user/consumer-friendliness. Both are communal/anti-profit movements, but on the surface that doesn't seem directly related to "not caring about UX".
I've always loved and always been a fan of OSS, but at the same time I have never been a fan of the arcane obscurantism that goes with it. I used to see it as just a function of not having time/energy to polish UX, but now I think it's somewhat intentional. They like things to be arcane since it's a status symbol to know arcane things.
I've definitely been that guy at points.
>Both are communal/anti-profit movements, but on the surface that doesn't seem directly related to "not caring about UX".
I think in both cases the issue is about freedom. For instance, in IRC, if the server you are on sucks, you can move to a new one. You can even set up your own. In the same sense Myspace sucked. People could do absolutely hideous things to their profiles. It was a terrible platform, but you could change it to be your hideous platform.
UI/UX often takes the form of "This is the best way to do something." I think that is a fine strategy when it works (see:iPad), but when the person who created the UI can change it at any time to suit for their own ends it really rubs the wrong way. Facebook used their ability to change the user experience to manipulate emotions. That's not unique to Facebook of course, but it explains why people would rather use Myspace.
I'm not a Marxist, not by a long stretch, but I'm definitely becoming less accepting of non-free software as time goes on. I bought a Surface Pro when they first came out because I thought they were the coolest form factor I had ever seen. That Surface has been the source of about half of my computer related frustrations over the past 3.5 years. I still love the form factor, but my experience is often soured by Microsoft's horrible OS design. I wouldn't mind the horrible design if it stayed the same, but they often make changes to their design that make the user experience worse.
I understand that Microsoft has to design an operating system that works on hardware they do not control, unlike Apple. Before I had a surface I used this fact to excuse a lot of bugs and poor design. Unfortunately, Windows has more bugs on my Surface than it does on any other computer I use. My experience with the Surface, a computer I love, has eliminated the remaining shreds of respect I had for closed source software. The fact that Microsoft will not or cannot fix persistent and widespread bugs and errors affecting a computer they wholly designed is embarrassing. FOSS software has its bugs, but when it breaks I can (and have) fixed it myself. Even if the overall experience is worse, at least I own that experience, and can change it.
This is what it really boils to: I'd rather live in a hell of my own making, than in a heck created by someone else.
I think that argument probably rings true for staunch capitalists and Marxists alike. I've often heard variations of my sentiment above used to excuse the lack of social welfare in the US, and I think the Marxists probably feel that if they are going to be disenfranchised they'd rather have a more equal society than a less equal one.
Sure. You could say precisely the same about a politician who accepts money from a mafia or large corporation. What you are saying is not a counterargument when the entire point of the article is a criticism of a system based around this exchange (in the same way I imagine you wouldn't defend political corruption).
Or to put it another way: if you object to people having power via controlling the flow of resources, don't propose a state monopoly as an alternative to a more distributed system.
The argument they make later for why crowdfunding for paying for people's medical treatment is basically sound: most developed countries have universal healthcare, after all. One can intuitively understand the moral argument of "people shouldn't have to go around begging for donations because they got cancer". The article just doesn't say why that applies to artists, too. Unless you want to just make the hyper-general argument of, "like, you shouldn't have to work for money, maaaan."
edit: basically it's hard to take critique of business behavior from marxists seriously because 90% of the time it seems to come down to "profit is immoral, full communism now", and unless you're willing to go for that, the arguments they present are completely useless.
...except that is illegal and an absurd example, and the "artist" explicitly sought patrons to provide him money in exchange for his product.
If an "artist" opens a business and attracts clients then he needs to serve his clients with the business he advertised, even if you use strawman arguments to compare them to organized crime.
Point of clarification: Most patreon subscribers pay a dollar or two a month. If I paid a given artist, say, $250 for something specific then yes I would expect to get that thing. Patreon works more like you give them a few bucks a month and they produce what they produce in general, so getting upset with them for that is more than a little ridiculous.
I'm not sure what to call this, but everyone who chips in even a minor amount of money expects to have input and control over the product in question, to "get what they paid for", failing to realize that what they're paying in is a tiny amount compared to what is actually making it happen. It seems to be a relatively new phenomenon, but that could just be my experience.
Then they got on Patreon for the wrong reason. You're supposed to back someone because you like what they're creating, and want them to continue doing so, not because you want to tell them what to do. If you want that, then just commission them directly.
And Patreon backers as individuals don't give a lot of money. It's when they come together that the money gets to be significant.
Sounds like you're admitting that patrons do expect something specific in return.
The author doesn't appear to be marxist in this article. It's interesting that you gloss over subtle political distinctions in this particular comment.