Crass Commercialism

Well some of you may have noticed this blog has been down, restricting access for some time. For various reasons I've decided to step away from the OSR and the tabletop gaming web community - possibly permanently. Part my decision to withdraw is personal, I find myself with insufficient time and desire to write about games but I also have the sense that the 'OSR' scene this blog is devoted to has become a rather disgusting place where crass commercialization is strangling a formerly creative amateur community ...

Gus L., Dungeon of Signs 

In the last few years, I've seen several of this sort of post ~ not always expressing the end of their blog, but often disparaging selling of gaming products by single designers as "crass" and couched as detrimental to "creativity."  Gus L. goes on to include "alt-right" influences also causing his action, but we don't need to talk about that here.  I am quoting this blog only because I remembered where it was, so it was easy to find.  It is the sentiment that concerns me.

I don't want this to be a post excusing my behaviour, or explaining at length why I moved towards commercialism.  In 2015, I lost my comfortable job and turned to the internet as a means to help support myself.  I had published two books about role-playing in 2014, I published a third in 2015 ... and since then I've had a hard time of things.  I haven't been able to maintain reliable employment in an ongoing recession, along with tens of thousands of others in Calgary.  The news keeps saying the recession is coming and going, but no one I know has been able to identify any improvement since four years ago.

The most successful thing I've done has been to employ myself.  I am my only reliable source for income.  Three of the restaurants I've worked for in the last three years have closed permanently; the brick and mortar store I worked for last year is showing signs of collapse.  A straight job, working for a straight employer, obeying the cult of work, has been the bane of most everyone I know personally.  Amazon is killing retail employment across the board, and those I know who were comfortable in customer sales positions 10 years ago are scrambling for whatever they can find.

And this brings us to the subject of robotics replacing human employees, highlighted in at least one American presidential candidate running on a platform that acknowledges this is actually happening.  It is.  And while the magic solution of the government giving people money is a fantasy, the reality is that each and every one of us has one option left in the coming economy.

Find something you can do, and do well, then do it for money.  Being self-employed and a solitary worker, you can sell directly to your customers with a minimum of overhead, potentially finding the means to pay for your food, your rent and your small personal needs.  If you are too high-and-mighty to exploit your own abilities, because you believe abilities should be exploited traditionally by others who offer you a paycheque, and that self-employment is "crass," then may jeebus help you.  The capitalists and the government won't.

But, I would like to express an observation that has arisen out of my experience with this.  Success is often ... shall we say ... a bitch.  I've recently been told by a fellow artist [which I'm accepting as hearsay for now] that I am in the top 10% of earners on Patreon.  Yet I'm making barely a third of my needed income.  I make a bit more through my book-sales.  And I am quite often stressed by this, as anyone might be as they realize they need a second job or simply the panic they feel as they struggle to get more customers to walk into their shop.

I watched this happen three times with restaurants, as I said.  The managers cut the staff, they cut the hours, they cut the food quality, they cut the amount of food on the plates, they water the drinks, they adjust their hours, they police waste of every kind, they make the employees work insensibly on make-work tasks because they're being paid, after all ... and the stress level coming from the top increases palpably.  It is a frustrating and bitter thing to be manically polishing a restaurant until it glows for no customers that will ever come in.  When a restaurant bites the dust, it is often the cleanest it has ever been.

The worst part of commercialism is desperation.  The slow swing around the drain, knowing that you're going down, or merely the knowledge that you're not making enough and this can't last forever, is how it changes your intent.  We start thinking, "This is a good idea; I love this idea."  And we end thinking, "What can I sabotage?  What will keep me alive?"

Ladies and gentlemen, based on the receipts Mrs. Crummles has shown me, Liverpool has little relish for high-minded theatrical entertainments properly conducted. We must give them our pity. Now, we must give them something they will pay to see. "Romeo and Juliet."

Mr. Crummles, Nicholas Nickleby (2002)

Steadily, the all consuming purpose becomes, "What can I create, or write, that will win me an audience, since what I'm writing has such a limited appeal?"  And like polishing the brass and scrubbing the floors, and even pouring money into rebuilding the bar in an attempt to drum interest, there is always the risk that, no matter what we try, it won't work.  The fear that even if Mr. Crummles stages Romeo & Juliet, the ticket sales won't improve.

Maintaining your virtuosity in this mindset is difficult, for the pervading thought becomes, "Can I waste my time with this."  Years ago, when I lived comfortably and could afford to scatter my time, I could waste my hours with all kinds of things.  And now, there is a niggling voice in my head that is always saying, "Is there money at the end of this?"

I've never wanted that voice.  I watched that voice consume my 20-something friends decades ago, burying themselves in cars and houses and five-day trips to Cuba squeezed between ten hour days and mountains of stress.  Some of them were artists, who no longer sit at a piano or take up a brush to paint ... but they have space and means to travel and the enslavement of commitments.  I wanted to write.  I grew up in a wealthy neighborhood, I'd had space and travel, I'd ceased being impressed.  I wanted the freedom to waste time.  I think there is nothing so precious as having so much time that it can be wasted fruitfully and well.

But hauntingly, there is the voice.  The audience does not care for high-minded designs and writings.  Pity them.  But get their asses in the seats.  It's not a choice.  It's a "must."

Sigh.