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You want to exploit something you consider "garbage" but which has a certain value to the people that create and/or perpetuate it, and you find it odd that it w

by rickmb 15y ago

You want to exploit something you consider "garbage" but which has a certain value to the people that create and/or perpetuate it, and you find it odd that it would piss those people off? This has nothing to do with "the internet" or Reddit, or 4chan or whatever. You try to do this with some local group of people that's involved in whatever kind of hobby or activity you consider weird, or "garbage", and you'll get more or less the same response.

stfu 15y ago
Plus the other aspect is that he is taking stuff that other people built for their own enjoyment and trying to exploit it in a commercial context. If he had tried pulling together an open source development team nobody would have been seriously offended. But what this guy is doing is the same as taking art done by anonymous street artists and selling merchandise based on it. If people pay before or after the production doesn't matter in that case. Acting totally surprised when "the street" is fighting back seems slightly naive.
- Domenic_S 15y ago
  FTA: > When I sought out on the endeavor to create a mobile tower defense game, I announced that the game would be open source, and it would be free. What are you talking about?
  - lwat 15y ago
    He means the money raising on Kickstarter
    - andolanra 15y ago
      No, but that's an understandable cultural misconception. The money is relevant, but not the main issue at hand. In these communities, nobody cares about money, because your standing in the community isn't determined by how much money you have, but by how much you have contributed. This is kind of implicit in 4chan users, where it's considered tacky to even claim explicit ownership, because memes are understood to be products of an amorphous community. It's explicit on places like Reddit, where cultural standing is measured as a number. Yes, the author would not be receiving money for this product, but having created the game as himself (as opposed to as, say, a semi-anonymous Newgrounds member) he draws more ire. Contrast the relevant videos: the original Kickstarter video features a single strong personality, a person mediating the experience of the memes in the game, while the response video is relatively anonymous, attempting to minimize the mediation between the viewer and his point. The fact that the response video also calls out other YouTube celebrities who do the same thing—i.e. offer mediation and commentary of other content through an explicit personality—should be incredibly telling. Other comments that say things like, "I'd be honored to have my content featured in someone's game," are missing the point. It's a basic culture clash: the article's author expresses distinct authorship which can be traced to a concrete person (or persona), even if he gets no profit and open-sources the result, while the people who make up the response understand that authorship as contrary to the whole point of communal humor, i.e. memes. The other meme aggregation sites are also 'mediators' of a sort, preventing people from experiencing the direct product of the community.
- Confusion 15y ago
  Can you point out specific examples of this 'art done by anonymous street artists' that he is 'selling'? I don't think you can. Neither the "Le" meme, the concept of "rage comics" nor the texts that have made "Good Guy Greg" into a 'good guy' have been made by a particular person in any of these communities. You don't actually know what his towers were going to defend and it seems he was hiring artists to render instances of these memes to be defended. That there are individuals who are offended has nothing to do with 'their' content being ripped off. In fact, I doubt any of these people that send 'hatemail' ever were part of the initial creation of a meme. I doubt they ever put any effort into creating a reproduction of a meme, more than surfing to a website and entering a text that was automatically placed over an image. These people are just assholes and you shouldn't defend them.

by rickmb 15y ago

stfu 15y ago

Plus the other aspect is that he is taking stuff that other people built for their own enjoyment and trying to exploit it in a commercial context. If he had tried pulling together an open source development team nobody would have been seriously offended. But what this guy is doing is the same as taking art done by anonymous street artists and selling merchandise based on it. If people pay before or after the production doesn't matter in that case. Acting totally surprised when "the street" is fighting back seems slightly naive.

Domenic_S 15y ago
FTA: > When I sought out on the endeavor to create a mobile tower defense game, I announced that the game would be open source, and it would be free. What are you talking about?
- lwat 15y ago
  He means the money raising on Kickstarter
  - andolanra 15y ago
    No, but that's an understandable cultural misconception. The money is relevant, but not the main issue at hand. In these communities, nobody cares about money, because your standing in the community isn't determined by how much money you have, but by how much you have contributed. This is kind of implicit in 4chan users, where it's considered tacky to even claim explicit ownership, because memes are understood to be products of an amorphous community. It's explicit on places like Reddit, where cultural standing is measured as a number. Yes, the author would not be receiving money for this product, but having created the game as himself (as opposed to as, say, a semi-anonymous Newgrounds member) he draws more ire. Contrast the relevant videos: the original Kickstarter video features a single strong personality, a person mediating the experience of the memes in the game, while the response video is relatively anonymous, attempting to minimize the mediation between the viewer and his point. The fact that the response video also calls out other YouTube celebrities who do the same thing—i.e. offer mediation and commentary of other content through an explicit personality—should be incredibly telling. Other comments that say things like, "I'd be honored to have my content featured in someone's game," are missing the point. It's a basic culture clash: the article's author expresses distinct authorship which can be traced to a concrete person (or persona), even if he gets no profit and open-sources the result, while the people who make up the response understand that authorship as contrary to the whole point of communal humor, i.e. memes. The other meme aggregation sites are also 'mediators' of a sort, preventing people from experiencing the direct product of the community.
Confusion 15y ago
Can you point out specific examples of this 'art done by anonymous street artists' that he is 'selling'? I don't think you can. Neither the "Le" meme, the concept of "rage comics" nor the texts that have made "Good Guy Greg" into a 'good guy' have been made by a particular person in any of these communities. You don't actually know what his towers were going to defend and it seems he was hiring artists to render instances of these memes to be defended. That there are individuals who are offended has nothing to do with 'their' content being ripped off. In fact, I doubt any of these people that send 'hatemail' ever were part of the initial creation of a meme. I doubt they ever put any effort into creating a reproduction of a meme, more than surfing to a website and entering a text that was automatically placed over an image. These people are just assholes and you shouldn't defend them.