Entitlement Attitudes
As you might have noticed I have a number of webpages that could be considered free services. The Paint Shop Pro related pages, my art pages, and some automatic file mailing services I provide to certain online communities have given me first hand experience with what I shall call the 'entitlement attitude.'
This attitude is the sort of thing that fuels emails to me about how I should draw giant purple demons with dozens of tentacles raping women, a popular cartoon character being sodomized, and assorted other graphic images. Not the least of which involve the violation and humiliation of characters that are currently on my pages. Most of those characters are parts of myself so why would I draw them being raped and murdered, particularly for the enjoyment of some faceless person that had the nerve to demand (they rarely request) that I do it for free?
While the PSP related emails are less disturbing they are no less infuriating. I recently got one about how I didn't auto-redirect all the individual pages of my old site to their new locations. They were quite snippy about it. I chose to grit my teeth and delete it rather than inform the author that she needed to click on a few links and update her bookmarks, to put it much more politely than I was thinking it. We shall not even get into the ones that want to put my shapes/tubes/plug-ins on CDs and SELL them without giving me a cut of the cash. Can you believe the audacity of that? Email a person saying "Hey I want to put your hard work on a CD and sell it without paying you anything, can I have your permission?" What were they thinking? And the most infuriating thing is that they'll probably do it anyway.
Before I start to sound like only the furry subculture and the PSP community are guilty of this attitude let me assure you it's far more common and widespread than these two relatively small fringe groups. Most of the 'online community' has some measure of it. Yes, even 'old timers' that bitch about how AOL made the net go to hell. Let's not even get me started on prepubescent '1337 h4x0rz' and script kiddies.
In fact, the amount of entitlement attitude a person has seems to be inversely proportional to how much they contribute to projects that get targeted by other people's entitlement attitudes. People that take their own, private, hours and money to write software, make artwork, offer services such as web hosting, email, and MUCKs generally don't start bitching and whining about someone else's freely offered work. Probably because they have received their share of email from barely literate whiny assholes. There are exceptions of course, there always are. The most common exception is some artists (term perhaps loosely applied) that get bent out of shape when a free hosting service they were using to display their work goes down.
The one thing that really infuriates me though is when someone claims they have the right to use my artwork. Or that they have the right to take my webpages and put them up on another server with all my copyright information removed so they can claim it as their own. They don't have the right to anything of the sort. It's like saying they have the right to walk up and take a new car off the lot because it was sitting out there in the open. They don't, and they don't have the right to the content of my webpages either.
To be entitled to something you need to have the right to it. These people do not have the right to my time, money, effort, or property. They do not have the right to expect me to provide them with services. I have the right to deny them my services. I have the right to sue them for theft if they take my property. I have the right to move, or remove, my website at any time.
So if you find yourself feeling
the urge to send email to some webmaster demanding changes to their property
to suit you...
If you feel the need to bitch at an artist about not drawing what you want to
see...
If you want to whine about getting your account canceled for copyright violations...
If you're itching to bellyache about some webhosting service closes down...
If you're dying to pitch a fit over your favorite MUCK going offline...
If you're ready to flame me for my opinions...
Remember, if you didn't pay for the service you aren't entitled to it. If you must voice your opinion be polite about it.
If you're enjoying someone's time and efforts through a website or free service how about taking a moment to say "Thank you"? I can assure you that they aren't getting many emails saying that.
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