#but also you gotta acknowledge that it is A Reason bc there's this oddly common view that artists should not care about the money

[acorviart]

ooo ok so I was wondering if anyone would argue against my first 2 points, because I don’t think I phrased them very well, but also it was 4am when I wrote it

So a few counter-arguments: 

My first point isn’t “but other people do it too” or that it’s justified specifically because corporations also do it. What I am emphasizing with both the first two points is that while a merch artist is an individual, they are also running a business, have put significant time and money into this venture, and sometimes need to make decisions that prioritize/protect that venture. Whether or not having to act as a business is a good thing is debatable, but notice that I never said anywhere that this is a list of reasons why gatekeeping is “good,” just that sometimes it’s necessary and here is the reasoning behind it! It’s what sets sharing manufacturers apart from my example of sharing a resource like brushes, because the number of people using an unlimited resource like a digital brush doesn’t run the risk of directly affecting the original artist’s income and ability to keep running their business. Unfortunately all of this is perpetuated by how capitalism works, but Big Pharma holding patents specifically to price-gouge on lifesaving medicine isn't really an equivalent situation to an artist being asked to provide procurement work for free to anyone who asks? It's more like walking into a random bakery and asking the baker to send you, for free, all their recipes that they spent a year perfecting and bank their business on. Maybe that's a bad comparison too, I don't know how bakeries work, but hopefully you guys get the point I'm trying to make.

I thought it was implied or outright stated enough throughout, but maybe I needed to explicitly write it at the very beginning instead of at the very end: these are reasons why manufacturers are not shared to strangers and to the public willy-nilly, it is not an argument in favor of silo-ing information entirely or making everyone climb that hill both ways in the snow because I had it hard and now you need to too, etc etc. There’s plenty of sharing between friends and colleagues (many of my manus are from recommendations from friends, in fact)—it’s a different conversation if you’re asking someone you have a good rapport with vs a someone who’s a complete stranger. Plus, there are lots of resources openly shared on this topic like guides and tutorials on sourcing, as well as middleman group orders, so the barrier to entry is actually not all that high.

I also included the second point because it’s not at all obvious to a lot of people just how much time and money the sourcing process costs. Some people ask just out of genuine curiosity (I have had plenty of people ask me in-person to make small talk), unaware that it’s a complicated topic. I think that the amount of time/money someone spends on something is a perfectly understandable reason for why they would be more selective in who they share that info with (along with all my other points), and knowing this will let people formulate questions they can get more useful answers out of, such as “do you have any resources or tips for how to start this process?” or “do you have any recommendations for what manus to avoid?” instead of “can I have your very specific manufacturer?”

would anyone be interested if I made a breakdown post of reasons why merch artists don't share their manufacturers? it's oversimplified as "artists are just gatekeeping" in part because I think there's just not a lot of awareness that it's a significantly more complex situation and involves some level of risk compared to sharing simpler resources such as brushes

artists also don't tend to explain beyond "sorry, I don't share my manufacturers" (for good reason, they're not going to write an essay to answer a quick question) but maybe diving into the details will help people understand why so many merch artists are protective of their manufacturers and will not share with strangers