There's something distinctly creepy about a dude throwing a hissy-fit because people have constructive criticism and don't always talk about him every little second... takes his ball and goes home... and pretty quickly, he's monetizing the ball and creating a place where the level of discourse is suspect at best, is crafted to squash nuanced critique and anything other than talking about him and the whole thing is remade into a transparent funnel toward merchandising sales.
Nothing illegal or necessarily unethical about that change but...
It's a bit fucked-up. At least a little mercenary, at least a little narcissistic. Especially from a dude who had been treating these guys like casual friends and equals on some level up to that point.
Had it been transactional from the start, the sense of betrayal might've been much less but... dude had been treating these fine folks like conversation partners for a while and then... nothing... and then an invitation to go to a new place and be treated like revenue streams.
I wasn't there but I can definitely see how that'd be messed-up and would sting in a more-than-superficial manner.
Dude, there is just no two ways about this: you are full of it regarding this subject. I'm pretty sure that some form of a premium service existed before assetbar and that assetbar existed for a good while before the current premium service. Furthermore, the free assetbar (so far as I know) has nothing to do with assetbar on the premium service other than that assetbar is something that is made available to both paid and unpaid readers. Your previous implication that the main assetbar was shutdown in order to herd assetbarrians into the premium service is evidently wrong.
There's no reason to view Onstad's various money-making endeavors as tainting the reader-creator relationship. It's not as if he's a friend of your springing a multi-level marketing presentation on you during a dinner party.
Signed,
A dude who has only ever paid for a book and a bottle of hot sauce and who has spent a total of 5 minutes on the assbar.
Edit: You also seem to think that the fanflow is diverting quality and quantity from the main strip. This is why you feel betrayed, right? Well, the quality is just like, your opinion man. As to the quantity, I believe that strip production had already slowed to current levels pre-fanflow. I suspect the fanflow really just redirected efforts from side-work like the blogs. You may have started reading when the blogs were in full swing and thus feel more entitled to that type of content.
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Topic: On the topic of Assetbar... (Read 190982 times)