#before you come to my inbox wanting to argue abt closed species or whatever

[hawkepockets]

i’ve been really trying for days and days to wrap my head around the entitled & dismissive attitude many people have toward online artists and i just don’t get it. like it tends to come down to “what’s stopping me from copying the design of your adoptable without paying/making a fursuit of your closed species/reposting your work without credit/feeding your work into an algorithm that reproduces it/getting your drawing tattooed without asking you/using your oc in my tabletop game/(insert whatever minor thing they’ve been asked not to do by an artist)? you have no enforceable ownership over an image/idea.”

and often it’s paired with the totally contradictory assumption that artists CAN punish rude people and art thieves by leveraging copyright law or cancel culture.

when the reality is of course NOTHING is stopping you from doing any of those things, in most cases the opportunity loss for the artist is not a large sum of money, and there is NO recourse for an artist whose flimsy, maybe silly requests were ignored. the worst that can happen to you is being made to feel bad for being rude—and that’s only a risk if you talk abt your rudeness online.

like. i truly don’t get it at all, what’s being said. i don’t think buying an adoptable from a small artist, for example, is “petit bourgeois behavior” or “basically nft trading” or anything to do with corporate IP protections. i think it is a nice thing to do thanking the artist for their time, effort, and imagination when they made a design you like and want to use. if skipping that step and just copying their work makes you feel a twinge of guilt, or god forbid nets you some sharp comments on social media… idk what to tell you. no one can force u to be generous and respectful. but your little display of inconsideration is not occasion for you to write a thinkpiece abt how no!! it’s the GUILT that is wrong! it’s the very CONCEPT of netiquette that is counterrevolutionary and bougie and wrong!! …

aw.. but you don’t LIKE being chastised. you don’t LIKE to feel bad. everyone should be PREVENTED from chastising you and making you feel bad!! you should be free to treat people however you like and they should be restrained from reacting!!

….right?? isn’t that it?

besides which it’s so senseless to characterize artists as an enemy class when truly 🐀 anyone can draw.

u guys cant reblog this. but i have no pseudolegal avenues to stop you from copy and pasting it onto a rebloggable post and