-
@ Scoundrel
2025-05-27 21:25:19
In our modern world long term commitments are the currency over flat payments, privacy and disgression are the exception rather than the rule, and piracy is an epidemic. For a good while now I have been a champion of the idea that a person should do whatever they can to avoid associating with any institution or actor that doesn't respect that person or that doesn't align with that person's worldview. I believe that nowdays, doing this is one of the most important things we can do to improve ourselves and society. If a person does not contribute back to the things thay they rely on in their life then they can't say they are responsible for themselves.
However, I have to be clear when talking about this worldview. Even ignoring the enormous future cost of living in a world where everyone has to be fully responsible for their own personal supply chain, it's just a simple fact that there are many things that are worth giving up some of your independence in order to associate with.
Maybe that's why it's so irritating to me when I find something I believe should exist and is worth it to produce, and when I want to depend on and contribute to it, but when that the producer doesn't seem to want that. Take the story of Invincible for example. The show is based on the Invincible comics. I've personally seen the sizeable cultural impact that Invincible has had. I've enjoyed the memes and I've qctively avoided spoilers since I want to enjoy the story myself eventually. However when I looked up the comic on Amazon it cost a sizeable amount of money for a single volume, and I think there are actually three volumes at this point. My local bookstore was selling one volume for around $70.
When I see this kind of thing I have to ask, who is buying these comics? How did they get popular if they were that expensive? I've seen a webcomic that had had a comparable cultural impact, Homestuck, operate entirely without a paywall. I don't even remember them having ads. Maybe just merchandise and donations? How can they possibly compete like that? I want to read Invincible and give them money, but how can I justify Invincible's existence if the publisher can't justify a lower price?
That's not the only time I've encountered that either. In my youth I was a hopeless consumer of library books. I would go to the library several times a month, taking home up to a dozen books each time, all of them paid for entirely with Other People's Money.
Some of the books I still think about every once in a while, and it would be nice to make up for my prior lack of responsibility for myself by buying a few of the books. So when I was looking for a gift to give someone and I remembered a great superhero trilogy I read, I looked it up on Amazon. Each book in the series was over a hundred dollars. What the hell, man? Nowdays there are plenty of other brilliant superhero books, like "The Perfect Run", or "Industrial Strength Magic", both of which you can buy on Amazon for much less money. Were libraries the only ones buying the book? How did it end up being so expensive?
I want to come to some sort of conclusion, but I just don't understand what's going on well enough to draw one.