People consume media without paying anyone. The internet is kinda famous for it.

Eyeballs increase ad revenue, just because you're not paying money doesn't mean the artist isn't making money.

> Eyeballs increase ad revenue

If you're blocking ads, I think this is usually false. (But I would appreciate a correction if I'm wrong, or more detail if it's complicated.)

You still increase their algorithmic reach by viewing and interacting with their content. It really is voting with your eyeballs: whether you like or hate the content, if you have it on your screen, the creators benefit.

I disagree: network effects are still present even if you block ads. You tell your friends about it, they tell their friends, etc. Only a small fraction of people bother to block ads (or even know about ad-blocking), so the loss in ad revenue to those people is offset by the gain from their friends seeing the ads.

In addition to the two replies below, which are both accurate, most people don't block any ads.

It's true, piracy does get around the whole monetary side of the equation.

That's a pretty lazy analysis. As an easy counterpoint, no one pays to look at Facebook or Instagram posts, but both Meta and (at least some) individual influencers are able to run profitable businesses based on that media consumption (and you could say the same of some bloggers in the late 00s/early 10s, for that matter). More speculatively, I think there is also an argument to be made that even gratis media consumption gives cultural weight to a work which is then available for monetization, especially in this age of tentpole franchises and granularly tracked personal behavior.

Influencers are, by definition, advertisers - and a particularly insidious, ugly bunch at that.

If we go by the vibe of this thread, it's yet another reason to avoid social media. You wouldn't want to reward people like this.

As for the broader topic, this segues into the worryingly popular fallacy of excluded middle. Just because you're not against something, doesn't mean you're supporting it. Being neutral, ambivalent, or plain old just not giving a fuck about a whole class of issues, is a perfectly legitimate place to be in. In fact, that's everyone's default position for most things, because humans have limited mental capacity - we can't have calculated views on every single thing in the world all the time.

Yup, for every person who takes pride in being a strong influencer, they depend on a number of people who take pride in being highly influenced.

>even gratis media consumption gives cultural weight to a work which is then available for monetization

At a certain point you're just making the argument that any lack of action directly opposing something is "allowing it to thrive", making anyone directly responsible for everything.

Not technically wrong, but at a certain point there has to be a cutoff. Can you really hold yourself responsible for enjoying a movie which is problematic because one of the batteries in one of the cameras used to produce it was bought from a guy who once bought a waffle from a KKK bake sale? The "problematic-ness" is there, no doubt, but how much can you orient your actions towards not-benefiting something you disapprove of before it disables you from actually finding and spreading things you actually do like?

I don't find it fair, nor in good faith to claim my argument is lazy. By downloading the media of the artists who's behavior your find abhorrent, but who's art you enjoy (and you can separate the art from the artists), you can assure yourself to some degree that they are not receiving monetary gain. People who were interested in the Harry Potter game (but didn't want the author to finance) simply pirated the game. Roman Polanski, R Kelly, and many others artists are exploited in this fashion.

I do agree that the consumption of that media could very easily increase its cultural strength.

Even in your influencer example, there are ways to bring less traffic/ad views to that content while allowing some ability to consume. example here: https://libredirect.github.io/

> but you're still basically saying "look you're a piece of shit but here's a couple of bucks anyways".

Is it ethical to buy Dilbert books now that Adams is dead and the money's not going to him?

If you (the royal you) thought it was unethical to buy a Dilbert book because the person who stood to make something like $4 off of it had some views you disagree with, you are a broken person. Even if Adams agreed with every single opinion you had, it's a statistical certainty that a dozen people who also make money off that book have views you find reprehensible.

> you are a broken person

On the contrary, I think folks that always try to find some sort of hypocrisy in how folks choose to not spend their money are broken.

It seems too cynical by half, and completely discards any sort of relative morality to one's purchasing decisions. I have also long suspected that there is a selfish motivation to it - as if to assuage your (again, the royal your) own morality about how you choose to spend your own money, you need to tear down other people's choices.

My chief complaint is not only that it's spitting into a headwind during a rainstorm, but also just the performative nature of it. Someone enjoys Adams' (Adams's?) work, presumably for years or even decades. He says something gross. That person then, in order to deprive this multi-millionaire of a few dollars, not only deprives themselves of something they ostensibly enjoy[ed], but also has to turn it into a moral or ethical question so they can either feel better about it themselves, or feel superior to people who a) don't really care what Adams said or did, or b) care but are capable of separating the art from the artist.

It's the same kind of performative virtue signaling that led someone at the New York Times to call him racist twice in the first two sentences of his own obituary.

> also has to turn it into a moral or ethical question so they can either feel better about it themselves,

You phrased this as an either-or thing, so I am actually genuinely curious....what exactly is wrong with this attitude?

We as people do a lot of things in our lives that probably don't make a difference, but that makes us feel better as individuals. Genuinely, what's the harm in cutting something out of your life because it makes you feel better?

I don't have any problem with not giving Adams just because you don't like him. Even if I think it's a bit silly, it's certainly your right, and while I would rather enjoy art I enjoy regardless of the artist's beliefs, not everyone feels that way and that's fine. What bothers me is the performative nature of it, having to tell everyone about it to let them know how good of a person you are, and acting like people with a different viewpoint are somehow lesser or worse.

Just look at this thread, several comments about "oh yeah that's what people without morals always say." As if whether someone spends $10 on an old book of Dilbert comics has far-reaching moral implications.

> What bothers me is the performative nature of it

I always find it funny how these sorts of things always seem to roll one way. You can be supportive of him all you like, but if you're going to distance yourself, do it quietly - preferably silently - and please don't say anything that might cause anyone to feel bad about it.

I will admit that I haven't read Dilbert regularly since the early 00's, and certainly not since Adams revealed his uglier side - but that has more to do with me finding out about and preferring Achewood's Roast Beef as my comic surrogate computer nerd.

In fact, some of every dollar you spend _must_ go to people you would find reprehensible if only you knew them better. Bought a Slurpee at 7-11? There's almost certainly someone in that corporation who will share ever-so-slightly in the revenue your $0.98 of sugar water brought in.

Ignore is not only bliss, but necessary.

Adding onto this, we all pay some forms of taxes one way or other and those taxes are sometimes used by govts to then either be lost in corruption or scandals or the govt itself spends it on something you might not appreciate if you know the full context of details (especially when they pertain to war)

> Ignore is not only bliss, but necessary.

It honestly depends on the time, if we as a society wants change, some amount of uncomfort is needed to better shape it for the needs/affordability of the average person but also a lot of people don't want to face that uncomfort so they wish to be ignorant partially being the reason that some of the issues are able to persist even in a democratic system

No ethical consumption under capitalism and all that, but I'm pretty sure giving money to Scott Adams is much more optional than paying taxes.

> under capitalism

Not capitalism but rather in any globalized and industrialized reality I would think. Anything beyond cottage production and you very rapidly lose the ability to propagate blame.

I think home made cottage production of tech (similar to Open source) might be an interesting proposition though. Like we as a community should support small tech more favourably than big tech and I think in many cases small tech is even more price competitive (while remaining sensibly and not burning/having VC money of course) as compared to large big tech which sometimes might be profitable in short term but they lock in.

Everything combined, I feel like its the time for a movement/ genuine support towards indie web or small tech (passionate people making software that they themselves want/wanted)

>Adams' (Adams's?)

I had to look it up as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxon_genitive

Your link just redirects. I think the section linked below is better. I was surprised to learn that there's at least some amount of disagreement on the details depending on the context.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostrophe#Singular_nouns_endi...

The same page also covers the broader subject more generally.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostrophe#Possessive_apostrop...

> One would therefore say "I drank the glass's contents" to indicate drinking from one glass, but "I drank the glasses' contents" after also drinking from another glass.

Every time I stop to appreciate these details that I never really have to think about I feel sorry for those forced to pick up English as a second language. Formal latin should have remained the language of academics and international trade. We really screwed up.

>Formal latin should have remained the language of academics and international trade. We really screwed up.

I think if formal Latin was really that great a language, it would have endured much longer. Latin is a horribly complicated language, and this is probably a big reason why "vulgar Latin" came about, and why Latin-influenced languages evolved from it (Spanish, French, Portuguese, etc.), yet were neither actual Latin themselves, nor as complicated.

There's a good reason English is so popular these days, and it's not just US dominance. English is a really easy language to learn poorly. It's hard to get all the little details right (like this apostrophe stuff), especially for formal writing, and it's hard to really master it, but it's really easy to learn it at a basic level and become decently conversational with it. You'll make lots of mistakes at this level, but it doesn't matter because with the way the language works, listeners will still understand you just fine. It's not like highly inflected languages where conjugating something incorrectly suddenly changes the meaning completely.

A complicated language like formal Latin makes sense if you want your language to be more like a rigid technical specification: it leaves much less room for ambiguity. But this is not at all easy for speakers of other languages to learn well enough as a 2nd language for international trade.

I'm shocked at how much the term "racism" is coming up. I followed him on Twitter and watched some of his YouTube and I didn't see any racist content. In fact, he did not align with the racist rhetoric and slogans which came out around COVID, that's why he was slandered as racist (ironically). He was just defending his own race. Everyone is entitled to defend their own race and culture if done respectfully and without fanaticism; which was the case here.

It's important to note that the specific comments the NYT are referencing is when he was discussing a survey in which only 53% of black people surveyed agreed with the statement "It is okay to be white." He started discussing what happens to a society when nearly half of one race can't bring themselves to say it's okay to be a member of another race.

There are plenty of podcasts where plenty of people say truly racist things. Saying "47% of black people saying it's not okay to be white is a problem" is not one of them.

I sort of have to admire the kind of person that comes right out with "I have no firm principles or beliefs, and nobody else should either". That's certainly an ethos, I suppose.

Because yeah, if you can't imagine ever genuinely standing up for anything, of course the idea is gonna feel fake and embarrassing.

People genuinely feel his behavior sucked, dude, and it's not "performative" to say so, it's normal human social behavior. Shaming and scorn are powerful tools and we use them to set norms.

So no, nobody cares if Scott Adams doesn't get $4 and has a sad. People care a lot about making it clear that egregious and ugly beliefs will be met with scorn. If that makes you feel bad, well, good. That's the point.

Nailed it. A notable behavior of people with weak morals / no principles is to loudly proclaim that other people with principles are "performative" or "virtue signaling".

And a notable behavior of performative virtue signaling bores is saying that anyone who doesn't share in the performance (even if they agree with them in principle) have weak morals and no principles.

Well then! I guess now we all know whose bread is buttered on which side.

I'd love to have a response to this but for the life of me I have no idea what you're trying to say.

It's funny to end a comment with "That's the point" when you so egregiously missed my point that I have to believe it's intentional and you're approaching this entire discussion in bad faith political hackery. Have a good day, but I doubt it.

Good point, retailers typically get 50% of the purchase price, which means that they're getting as much as the author/printer/editor/marketer/etc. all combined. So perhaps if you bought the book from a bookstore you wanted to support (assuming they would carry it), that could outweigh the impact to the author.

We are really chartering into utilitarian line of thinking here.

Nothing wrong with that and I may be overthinking but utilitarian line of thinking is the reason why a lot of issues actually happen because Politicians might promise something on an utilitarian premise where there real premise might be unknown.

Morals are certainly in question as well and where does one stop in the utilitarian line of thinking

But I overall agree with your statement and I wish to expand on it that if we are thinking about offsetting, one of the ideas can be to keep on buying even books written by many authors, overall aggregate can be net positive impact so perhaps we can treat it as a bank of sorts from which we can withdraw some impact.

> Politicians might promise something on an utilitarian premise where there real premise might be unknown.

At the risk of drifting off topic, what does it matter if you agree with the policy? If I want my member of Congress to vote yes on a particular issue, and they will vote yes, does it matter to me what their motives are?

"You are a broken person" is not an appropriate response for someone engaging in a personal boycott. This is verbiage of flamebait and it really doesn't belong here.

"Ethical" is the wrong lens to see it through. I have only so much money to spend on art. I'd rather use it on something I wholeheartedly like. Ideally, something that wouldn't exist unless I supported it (art buyers, even if we are artists outselves, should not be "gilding the lily" and heap money on artists who don't need it).

Still depends on where the money ultimately goes.

As I once noted to a homeopath regarding their extensive selection of impossibly diluted water remedies, by their own dictum, it's all toilet water.

Ethical? I'd say it would be fine.

Tolerable? I couldn't enjoy the books. It's like when I found out about the Breendoggle and tossed all my MZB books in the recycling bin.

That makes a certain kind of sense.

Then again looking at the table, laptop, and protein drink in front of me, I know that many people were involved in making and shipping them. Some were quite possibly rapists, racists and/or worse.

And I don't find myself caring at all.

This is something special about art, isn't it?

That’s interesting analogy! With art, you re receiving something that’s not physically consumed but informs you or even changes your mind - depends how that art works for you.