3 ms·
Contentalife
- eigengrau5150 5y agoI have an acquaintance who used to write and publish weird science fantasy. He worked his ass off to get noticed, but suddenly said "fuck it" and quit. He's still got websites, and he's put all of his work on the web under a creative commons license, but doesn't seem to do any promotion. He's not on social media. He just lurks on IRC. I didn't understand why until I read this article. He figured out that the whole self-promotion online was a big con and he was one of the suckers. I just got an email from him after sharing this with him, and he had this to say: "It's not like I need to get paid for my art when I work in tech and make upwards of eighty grand a year. So why should I whore myself out? It might not be great art, or even good art, but it's my art. I enjoyed making it. It gets me laid. Hustling to earn a living as a writer isn't worth the effort when I've got a chill job as a full-stack dev making CRUD apps."