Seriously. I managed a small rock band for a while. We got picked to tour with another band in some clubs in Eastern Europe. This was pre-Spotify, but Facebook strong.

We had no CD sales pre-tour to these places, just some views on youtube. We were relying a lot on the other band.

But the people that came to the shows?They knew the words and sang along and we had a great time.

Someone had our music and shared it before we got there. And we were grateful for those pirates!! And yes, we sold some merch and CDs at the shows.

If not for the pirates it would have been a much different experience with a lot less people showing up.

Our band never “made it” but it was still a successful tour and a helluva lot of fun. In large part because our music was pirated and shared ahead of time.

Now I’m realizing, I don’t pronounce the L in those words… Maybe they pronounce it liked mulled?

I watched a fairly recent youtube video podcast with a traditional porn actor and an onlyfans performer. The actor (cherie deville) talked about all the control she had, regular testing, and overall safety. The OF performer had none of that and basically described her last on camera act that devolved into SA and extortion. From that, I got the impression there is still some ethical porn out there and a lot that’s not since just anyone can create and push content now.

Your friend’s situation brings up the question of ownership. Do you actually own a persistent thing if you can’t later sell it and pass ownership to someone else?

I think media companies want to ideally have us think of their products as candy bars, we buy it and consume it. If we want that experience again, we have to buy another. They want us to buy the opportunity to read, look, listen every single time, or buy a pass that gives access for a limited time.

But a lot of us consider media like a personal, well loved library or museum. We buy books and things in order to revisit again and again. We replace or repair if worn out. If it’s one of a kind, we take actions to safeguard it. We search for rare and unique things and acquire from other private collectors if it’s no longer publicly available. The value of our collections increase if the media stops being published and goes out of circulation.

But these entities would rather see everyone’s personally owned copy spontaneously combust just because they didn’t want to sell it anymore. And it’s what they have done to digitally sold and DRM’d media, or by deleting from streaming services while also cutting the creators off from being able distribute independently.

We are at a major crossroads as to what ownership and ongoing availability and access means. Piracy is currently a failsafe until property can be safely bought and protected - for the purchasers.

I’m here and on Mastodon. I really like Mastodon. (I still have my old twitter account, but have not posted or commented for years. I never really used it anyway. Now I use it to see the occasional newsworthy linked tweet since they require a login now to view anything. I’m purposely ignoring its attempt to rebrand)

I still go to old.reddit and lurk on slow news days. But my feed isn’t as robust or interesting as it was before the exodus. It’s still good for historical help on certain topic. So I will keep checking it probably.

But to me it looks like Lemmy and Mastodon are getting slow, steady, but high quality growth overall. I think the fediverse in general may be the saving grace of the internet. It looks to me like the “main stream” internet is becoming one voice, much like Clear Channel taking over and homogenizing the eclectic voices of regional radio.