Makeship's site is so funny. They'll swear on one page they're champions of the environment, and on another page brag about how fast they're growing and how many campaigns they've fulfilled. Yeah I'm sure the company selling themselves to investors as an infinite growth plastic factory really cares about climate change. That reusable packaging is doing some heavy lifting
also "It's totally not slavery guys!" source: just trust me bro. There's a list of certifications a factory would need to qualify as ethical but there's no information on the actual factories so no way to guarantee they actually HAVE them. they really think people are fucking stupid. The career page advertises a fully remote workplace so they don't even own the factories. Toy company that doesn't make toys.
good news tho they have awards for being a Great Place To Work when you're not one of the slaves :) thank god the social media managers and marketing experts are unharmed
Okay not to dig into Makeship SPECIFICALLY too much because there are some worse actors, but yeah-- I also hate thinking that someone could look at friendly cutesy polyfil central saying "we do carbon offsets!" and think that solves it.
At this point I assume most things I can afford (and some things I can't) are made at disgustingly low wages, with low-quality or carcinogenic materials, and they will not be properly recycled.
My best response is to Reduce!
Reading your takes about internet artist culture reminds me of a feeling i've had for a while but can't fully wrap my head around
(not a native english speaker please bear with me 🙇)
There are so many indie creators (not just visual artist but also youtubers for example) releasing plushies that are incredibly affordable. Sometimes multiple in a row, too. For the price of, like, two t-shirts I can choose which of my small project favorite character I can put on my shelf. The convenience is weirding me out. Years ago most creator merch was tshirt or prints. An entire plushie still feels like such a big deal to me, so a 30$ price tag just feels wrong.
At this point I wonder *why* creators sell these plushies (apart from money). I fear that one main reason is "because they can". With enough of a following, it's easy to get the 200 preorders for a makeship campaign so why not, right? For the audience, paying 30$ for a nice, fancy decoration item is easily justifiable, especially if they know it'll help their favorite creator.
But is it worth it? Is it necessary? How many people are going to be still as attached to their blorbo of the month plushie in 2, 5, 10 years? I'm worried that the time and money it takes to create a custom item is more and more devalued, both from the audience buying the item and the artist designing it. It is certain that the people actually making the plushies are not paid a fair wage.
It bothers me to be so cynical about this because I want artists to be able to make cool stuff (and i like when cool stuff is actually affordable) but I can't see companies like makeship or youtooz as anything other than factories that make future trash.
For the record, I'm not saying all this to claim superiority over people who buy or design those plushies, guilt them or attack them. It's just something that bothers me and I think deserves to be talked about
10000% agree! We've hit a peak of "if you want it, you can have it " that imo is cheapening the act of having it at all. Makeship is the last straw for me-- there's something insanely sinister about scrolling through all those campaigns. I think "Who's buying this? What size is the pile of crap this is going on top of?" and I feel like I'm looking straight into a landfill, nevermind the packaging and gas to ship it.
I think there's this background radiation telling us from birth that all Famous Things and Stories should have merch. That the dream is writing a book, and having your book made into a movie, and your movie characters made into tees and plush toys and children's swimwear and a side-scrolling GameBoy Advance game. It's to the point that I've seen a lot of people do merch design PARALLEL to the writing process, or fantasize about all the associated tat they'll get to sell when they haven't even sat down to write the first chapter. I presume Youtubers are even worse about this!
And none of these symbols of the work complement the work. In most cases the merch is so offensively off-tone or useless that it goes against the story's message or characterization, and plush is NOT a medium that captures what's charming about most designs. And don't get me started on the ones that use polyester sublimation, which imo belongs on the Demonic Table of Elements.
In terms of artist support, sometimes I think "if you're that hard up, I'd rather just send you $10 and be done with it". But that's hobbled by Patreon's purpose creep-- it was originally conceived of as a way to be generous to creators so they could do what they were already gonna do, without them giving you special monthly gifts. We need more art grants haha
Sharing (most of) this big lovely comment because YES--! People get bristly on the subject of Doing The Inconvenient Thing That Makes Your Life Experience More Full, but expressing love for something in an unsanctioned and personal way still hits like nothing else. The incalculable lifetime fulfillment of god damn hobbies!!!!
Neutral sidebar: I remember someone talking about how we'd even save packaging or disposable promo materials because branded stuff was so rare. Which makes us sound like orphans. But also it's a great reminder that packaging can be given sentimental meaning itself!
i've been thinking about this a lot because i did grow up watching how fans across the pond were getting cute plastic keychains of their art and easy access to official merch like plushies and figures and oh how i Longed to be like that. But now I feel so... nothing about it. I back a kickstarter for an indie game and all the updates for months are about merch, keychains and standees and plushies I don't want because I haven't played the game yet??? since it's not out??? and the devil whispers but what if you do play it and fall in love and now that merch is forever unattainable? like no! im not buying plastic on the mere chance i might get attached to the character printed on it??
And with artist alley creators you see people scrambling as soon as trailers or leaks are out to produce something of a new character, in order to be the first one there before it gets oversaturated by everyone else joining in and then... the character sucks? nobody really likes them? Time and again gacha game fans will run pages to generate hype over leaked future characters they basically have 2 jpegs and a post-it note of info about only to just not care about them once the character actually debuts. Which only fuels this constant barrage of Things for characters that barely exist that we just convince ourselves to hype up, into making a part of our identity, that we buy merch of to prove we were the OG and then a few months go by and nobody cares anymore because a new thing's gotten everyone's attention.
Fandom already moves really fast compared to when I was getting into it for the first time but it boggles me that we're at a point where we don't even need to feel any real attachment through story or actually experiencing the thing to make and have merch of it. I see mutuals talk about their struggle to get over the impulse to buy all the merch they find as soon as they get into a fandom and it's crazy! There's no rest! No simmering in any kind of experience. Just physical goods.
Very bleak additions! God this reminds me of how when I was on twitter, you couldn't search anything that had a new trailer because the dudelier corners of it would rush to draw nude pinups in the first hour. Also just to be the first one to do it. They weren't even horny!
(Not to mention how far we've sunk since "maybe we should talk about how bronies are making it fraught for little kids to google the name of a kid's cartoon".)
Social media incentivized a lot of this-- likes and retweets are a kind of brain-frying scrip that people think they can exchange for real money later. I believe we can get back to just liking a story, but it'll take conscientiousness and work
I genuinely think the scam-based economy is one of the most pressing issues we face, not for the direct result of people being scammed (disclaimer: that part is also very bad) but because the average person being forced to learn and live by scammer logic is an inherent harm and a self-perpetuating one. I know arguments to human dignity don't fly online but counterpoint, it's the only thing that really matters
Martin Parr
we really do have the whole "if you can't beat them join them" thing down though. don't like getting scammed? you can always become a scammer. every conception of meaning that you could ever have imagined ground into the mud before your eyes? do everything you can to normalize it so you can get a spark of what joy used to feel like from watching the light fade out of others eyes. christ alive
Stalked by My Doctor: Patient’s Revenge (Doug Campbell, 2018)
showing off @stitchy-face's wealth and estate by painting his most prized livestock. (speed paint commission, thank you for indulging me in the silliness)
Once again I'd like to point out that the artist spaces being talked about have a more significant portion of female participation. I think this is why THEM changing feels so worthy of comment, because significantly-male nerd hobbies stopped being primarily generative a long time ago. So y'know. It's on us to learn from their mistakes