Things you enjoyed until they got greedy - How corporate greed killed every hobby

[Dead Lion]

Webnovels, especially in my neck of the woods which is RR.

The practice of stubbing has been getting more and more agressive since I got into them. Stubbing is when an author deletes the novel or parts of it before publishing (usually on kindle unlimited). You sometimes see stuff barely get out of the rising stars tab and there’s already a deletion notice up.

The result is that the best complete category is mostly made up of stuff written in the early jurastic. Best ongoing meanwhile is either wuxia tapeworm central, schedule: when it’s done (last chapter published march last year) or already snubbed but only books 1-5, the author keeps going regardless.

 

[AbsurdumRideo]

An app called BitLife. Used to be 5 bucks and lifetime access to all updates then it got sold out. Super sad. Fun little game now just used as a cash Cow

 

[TheTitKoker]

Comic and weeb conventions. Once those grow past, say, 20k people for a convention center sized space everything starts going to shit. Way too many noobs who don't know their classics roll up. Staff and organizers stop paying attention to details and their roles become pure headaches. Literally everything that would make for an amazing and more intimate weekend of meeting new friends turns into a messy whirlwind. Panels and other scheduled activities grow stadium level lines. I'm not paying money to fucken wait in lines all day.

And do tickets become cheaper as the even grows? Absolutely fucken not. And then the final nail on the coffin happens - online lottery for hotel rooms. Not just lottery for the tickets, oh no, lottery for goddamn hotels within reasonable walking distance from the con itself.

Now a sub-point to this is exuberant prices for autographs from famous guests who absolutely don't need that money and should be happy to meet some of the fans that supported their movie roles that made them millions of bucks. I've bumped into much, much smaller comic authors who'd pretty much charge ya like $5 and sell their comic books to sign and have plenty of time to sperg out with ya.