DIY Consumer Bill of Rights

Congratulations, you are a consumer of Products of DIY Culture. You like something obscure, niche, handmade, homemade, or simply very very particular. Certain kinds of music, movies, pictures or, yes, even games.

Maybe this is because you are smarter than other people and new mainstream products just makes you think of nonmainstream products or old products or something you thought up yourself that does the same thing better, or maybe this is because you have been consuming products for so long you've slowly become jaded and tired of the "gateway" products, or maybe it's just because you're a pretentious, insecure asshole who uses your interest in something out-of-the-way as exhibit A for the defense in the court case you're constantly running in your head where you accuse yourself of maybe being too much like everybody else. Whichever it is, you are entitled to certain rights. Here they are:

-You have the right to assume most people are stupid. They are.

-You do not have the right to assume most people are stupid merely because they don't like your product of choice. There are a lot of different kinds of smart, and only a few of them require thinking whatever you think is fun actually is. I'm real glad my doctor spent all that time in medical school learning about where my pancreas was rather than painting, and when I pay him immediately and in cash, he's probably real glad I learned to paint.

-You have the right to access the product you wish to consume. You have the right to form communities dedicated to helping you access and/or retrieve such products. If you haven't found one yet, you have the right to form your own.

-You do not have the right to demand easy access to your product of choice at all possible consumer-interfaces with the medium wherein your product-of-choice manifests unless you are willing to help destroy the current economic system and replace it with something else. Why doesn't WhateverFuckingStore.com sell WhateverFuckingThingYou'reAllExcitedAbout: Advanced Edition? They don't sell your thing because they don't know if it'll make them any money. Myriad opinions on how to smash model-2011 capitalism and whether that's actually a good idea or not are available elsewhere on the web. You are, however, allowed to say "If you don't got Mojo Nixon then your store could use some fixin'."

-You do have the right to suggest that maybe the consumer outlet of your choice could simultaneously fulfill the twin goals of making you happy and making them money by providing access to products amenable to discerning connoisseurs like yourself.

-You do not have the right to assume you're right about that. At least not until they try it.

-You do have the right to point out that maybe, aside from the monetary rewards, they might also garner less tangible but more important benefits like helping to build a vibrant on-line or in-real-life community by cultivating a more sophisticated-and-therefore-probably-more-dedicated-and-participatory customer base.

-You do not have the right to assume they should give a fuck about that.

-You do have the right to call them greedy fucks if they don't.

-You do not have the right to call their freelancers and employees greedy fucks if they don't. Do you take responsibility for the actions of every boss you ever had?

-You do have the right to speculate on what kind of people would be interested in the thing you are not interested in.

-You do not have the right to assume you're right about that.

-You do have the right to ask around about that.

-You do not have the right to assume someone's lying if you hear an answer that doesn't fit your thesis.

-You do have a right to talk about why you don't like Very Popular Products That Don't Fit Your Idea Of A Good Time.

-You do not have a right to bore everybody with that.

-You do have the right to create or promote a product that remedies the perceived deficiencies in said product.

-You do not have the right to assume your solution to the Problem of the Very Popular Product will satisfy other connoisseurs complaints with said Very Popular Product. You are united by your dissatisfaction with the Popular Product, not by your agreement about what the solution is. If you were, you wouldn't be the special-little-snowflakes-in-search-of-an-experience-that-fits-you-like-a-glove that you are. You hate vanilla because it isn't strawberry, she hates it because it isn't chocolate. Your unity-of-purpose will only last so long as neither strawberry nor chocolate wins, so if you want unity, build it on something else, like a unity-of-belief-in-creative-experimentation or a Neapolitan Pact.

-You do have the right to demand Nice Things. Great achievements in art and culture have come from every conceivable point of view. If you need a characterization-heavy rpg where you play stretches of plumbing pipe enmeshed in a psychologically-tense soap-opera-plot powered by a water-balloon-tossing resolution engine that's actually good then you have every right to demand it.

-You do not have the right to demand Fancy Things. You are smarter than average or more experienced than average or just more picky than average, therefore accept that it would be commercial suicide for some fancy motherfucker who makes fancy shit hoping to sell something with mass appeal to pitch their product at you, especially when there are so many goddamn average people out their to prey on. Average people will buy just about anything because--hey, have you rolled yourself a character with Int 10 lately? Not pretty.

And if there were a Fancy Thing for Discerning Consumers you probably wouldn't buy it. Why? Because you can probably figure out how to get whatever it's offering cheaper. Because you're smart, or experienced, or well-connected and/or you--unlike normal people--pride yourself on not being gullible enough to buy shit just because it looks fancy. Point is, being picky puts you on the far edge of capitalism's bulls-eye. Get used to that.

-You do have the right to demand that people who make Things With Mass Appeal That Little Kids See All The Time have some social responsibility. They shouldn't make Wonder Woman into a guy, and they shouldn't make Storm white. With great market share comes great responsibility. I mean, if you're not going to make anything good and you're having all your shit printed for 10 cents an hour overseas the least we can do is let you deal with the parents you're fucking with on your own. It's that or the revolution.

-You don't have the right to demand that people who make Things With Mass Appeal That Little Kids See All The Time be any good. These things will probably suck because they are aimed at a mass audience. Again: change the whole world economic system or live with it and be happy when, once in a while, you get Adventure Time or Justice League.

-You do not have the right to demand people who make DIY products have some social responsibility. They are making something that is for them and people like them and we have to give them the benefit of the doubt that whatever they're making is the way it is for specific creative reasons and they need to be given a little room to come up with something new. Plus, seriously, nobody's fucking listening to them anyway.

-You do, however, have the right to demand the people who make DIY products make things that are good. That is the price they pay for their freedom: they must put in a real and genuine effort without hiding behind the excuse of what will or won't sell, or their creative license is revoked. They need to provide the maximum possible value for money in whatever direction they're heading (even if it's a direction you'd prefer they didn't go) or get the fuck out.

-You do not have the right to bleat about somebody else's DIY product merely on the grounds that it's designed for people who aren't like you. If you want to complain about something, complain that people who aren't like you exist at all. How far that'll get you in life depends on what direction you're going and whether or not you like sleeping with those people.

-So: if your excuse for doing things that piss people off is money, you have to accept that you need to Think of The Children once in a while, fatcat. If your excuse is creative freedom, then you have to always make the best thing.

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Joesky's Rule Compliance Addendum:

Slow demon

This demon has the body of a beautiful naked woman.* It has the face of a big fucking leech. Its trick is to make you fall in love with it, then it eats your face. Resistance to its charm is inversely proportional to how upstanding your character is. Paladins save at like -9.



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*Is there a non heteronormative version? Maybe if I ever figure out what a hot RPG guy looks like.