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re: latest ebay kerfuffle
May. 15th, 2021 02:52 pmbecoming increasingly clear to me that kink artists are faced with the interesting tension of ... not as much building our entire infrastructure from the ground up (we actually do have this capability, and in action, from friends who own servers > us building our websites > sharing art from those websites > and/or also using hosts that are less discerning with material as long as it's truly not illegal. )
but the struggle is more ...
a) effective ways to share to the masses on social media who aretoo lazy/unmotivated to go back to the old-school method of website hopping (sliding under corporate censors). How do we retrain users? Do we accept that some will never want to let go of corporation's teat? how do we maintain an healthy ecosystem of kink artists who are not exhausted from website hopping and marketing and slowly dropping like flies? I have distant thoughts like specifically created publishers, subscription boxes, collectives where there are people specifically there to help market, promo, give grants and fend off the overhead - but none of them have the peculiar mix of resources + knowhow + willpowers needed for specific kinds of legal battles.
and b) keeping payment channels open. Payment channels is more of a infra problem (finding payment processors that OK specific types of kink but doesn't negate entire blocks of other ones, and if you find one that's OK across the board, then you get users who are shy about not using anything other than paypal/stripe (for sometimes valid reasons, aaaand failing all of that, there's literally sending checks in the mail. )
it's ease of use, that's slowly chipping away. There will be some artists that always survive due to luck, previous resources (getting their money from a dayjob), being simply new and not burnt out yet, etc. But it's how to bridge that gap to people who have a limited amount of desire.
(.... for real tho i'm a little intrigued at the idea of kink-art-as-a-subscription-box-service. You get zines, a CD chock full of art, so there's a sense of unlimited accessibility of whichever media. It's more steady and professional than current zine trades (which are absolutely part of a healthy ecosystem). People could also choose to donate and buy gobs of zines *for* the service if they more just want to help. and it's all one easy click and shipped directly to people, so there's less friction as far as going to each individual site. it's like bringing permanent zine libraries to people's hands. instead of monthly it may be for 1, 2, 3 boxes. hmm...)
but the struggle is more ...
a) effective ways to share to the masses on social media who are
and b) keeping payment channels open. Payment channels is more of a infra problem (finding payment processors that OK specific types of kink but doesn't negate entire blocks of other ones, and if you find one that's OK across the board, then you get users who are shy about not using anything other than paypal/stripe (for sometimes valid reasons, aaaand failing all of that, there's literally sending checks in the mail. )
it's ease of use, that's slowly chipping away. There will be some artists that always survive due to luck, previous resources (getting their money from a dayjob), being simply new and not burnt out yet, etc. But it's how to bridge that gap to people who have a limited amount of desire.
(.... for real tho i'm a little intrigued at the idea of kink-art-as-a-subscription-box-service. You get zines, a CD chock full of art, so there's a sense of unlimited accessibility of whichever media. It's more steady and professional than current zine trades (which are absolutely part of a healthy ecosystem). People could also choose to donate and buy gobs of zines *for* the service if they more just want to help. and it's all one easy click and shipped directly to people, so there's less friction as far as going to each individual site. it's like bringing permanent zine libraries to people's hands. instead of monthly it may be for 1, 2, 3 boxes. hmm...)
