Listen–I told y’all my crap is nothing but basic AF CC conversions nearly 10 years ago; and no, I cannot photoshop or use Reshade; and I have no style; and and I play TS3 on a potato so all my pics are vanilla garbage–but guess what? At least i don’t effing charge y’a’ll for any of it; sue me.
I make CC cuz I like fantasy, and figured other TS3 simmers might be interested in the same stuff too–my frikkin bad! If my basic AF blog offends y’all so much, show mercy and post the step-by-step tutorial demonstrating your skills, so the community can grow and improve together, as you sit on high and look down low upon this wretched noobtard.
And PLEASE forgive me for assuming y’all knew what the frikkin nonsims / non-sims / RANT ALERT tags are even FOR.(－‸ლ)
Or: Let’s Discuss the REAL Issue Here in the Sims Community
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I’ve seen the argument again and again: “You don’t have to support them if you don’t want to. You’re not entitled to someone’s content.”
It’s not about being entitled to content. NO ONE is “owed” content. Period.
It’s about the situation that paywalls put the community in and it is about respect–paywalls foster a division between the people who have money in the community and those who don’t, and it breeds attitudes of undeserved superiority and entitlement on the part of the permapaywall “creators.” It’s not harassment to point out that these people are toxic as hell and it doesn’t help that people keep defending them, but then do nothing for nothing for us early-access and free creators.
This whole fucking mess is REALLY about treating people fairly and having respect for the community and other artists. The fact that permapaywall defenders are so hung up on the materialism of it is proof enough that this community has a serious problem.
I am an artist and a creator and a member of this community too. Do I not matter because I am not ~a brand~, or because I am not ~luxe~ and popular enough? Are the people who download content somehow less deserving of respect than CC creators? Permapaywallers do not deserve to act as though they are above being held to account for how they treat others, for lying about where their CC comes from, and for acting entitled to people’s money. Again, it is about treating people fairly and permanent paywalls will do nothing but divide a community whether or not someone chooses to support them.
God forbid someone shares something with someone who cannot afford it, and then they get doxxed and have their privacy violated as a result. How is that fair or respectful? They PAID for the content. They BOUGHT it. It was a business transaction, end of. So, why is that someone not worth having their privacy respected, but a permapaywaller can get away with such behavior simply because they put items up for download?
I will say it again and again: This is about how we as a community intend to treat each other and permapaywallers are not above being held accountable for their actions, PERIOD.
NO ONE IS ENTITLED TO CONTENT. AND NO ONE IS ENTITLED TO MONEY.
This is an unpopular opinion, I know, but allow me to clarify what I mean by that.
No one is “owed” content. If a creator isn’t feeling up to doing x, y, or z projects, the community should be respectful of that. They should not demand an artist’s time and they should be considerate of an artist and their life outside the computer. Artists SHOULD be compensated for their work. So many people want to take advantage of people offering commissions and freelance work to get something for cheap/free.
HOWEVER.
No one is entitled to someone’s money. Especially not when the product(s) provided is/are derivative. If a friend shares a set on a Discord server because a lot of people can’t afford the permapaywaller’s prices, and that person gets doxxed simply because they shared a product THEY BOUGHT with people who were unable to pay for it themselves… Who is in the wrong, here? The person doing the doxxing, obviously, because it is a direct intent to violate a person’s privacy in retaliation for sharing a product they paid good money for.
Bottom line: People should not be punished for sharing CC they bought with actual money and people should not be punished for not having money to buy it to begin with. Putting a derivative work up for download does not mean you have the legal right to treat people like shit, harass, or violate a person’s privacy, in retaliation for sharing your content.
Now time for some strawmen!
“You don’t have to support those people.” Yep, I sure don’t. And the problem with that statement is the ignorance of the broader culture around permapaywallers and their “brands” and exclusivity.
I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in the Sims community in the last 5-7 years, which is where the most exclusive and popular content becomes the predominant content in builds shared widely across multiple platforms. I see free content creators’ work get sidelined because God forbid the latest felixandre or harrie set not be featured in someone’s build, because we all want to suck up to the big name creators and builders, we all want to be exclusive to get those notes, etc.
It’s become harder and harder to find and promote free content because people seem to just not care if it’s not posted as a CC Kit and if it’s not bougie and exclusive enough. And if you can’t admit or even be bothered to see that non-exclusive creators are getting sidelined by this, then I don’t know what else to tell you. (And before someone says, “you’re just jealous”–I’m really not. I have a day job and I also maintain anywhere between 55-65 patrons and have done since 2020. I don’t have anything to prove to anyone, to the point that I’m willing to give my early access content away if someone is excited enough and is nice enough to ask for it before the 2 weeks are up.)
“Artists should be compensated for their work!” Yes, they should. And don’t you dare act as though that means anyone who monetizes content is suddenly above being held accountable for their actions. Don’t you DARE use the sanctity and respect creators deserve as a platform to gaslight people into thinking toxic and aggressive behavior is OK. Consumers are taken advantage of just as much as freelance creators, usually by the biggest companies or, in this case, the people who make the most money–and usually with meshes that have been proven to be stolen or converted and then lied about.
“I don’t blame people for going after pirates!” No artist worth their salt is going to be okay with violating people’s privacy–ie, breaking the law–simply because someone shared their pixels after purchasing them.
I’m gonna say it louder for the people in the back:
No artist who is actually a real proper creator would be okay with breaking the law simply because someone else shared content that was purchased from them.
“But it’s piracy!!” You don’t seem to care about that when you ask for the game crack to TS4, or literally any other game or free download. Also, it isn’t piracy to copy and paste a file that is based around derivative work that is actually owned by a proper company (in this case, EA). That’s like saying it’s piracy to repost a fanfic you commissioned, with proper credit given to the original writer. You bought it, it’s yours, and just because other people’s eyeballs looked at it doesn’t mean the original creator loses out on traffic or revenue.
As long as credit to the original creator is given, derivative work is not piracy. It is literally just free advertising.
When someone subbed to my Patreon and threatened me with spreading my early access content, I thanked them, and offered to refund them the money. You want to pay me money to spread my content around? Fucking SURE. That is literally advertising and I’ll let you do it for free.
“You’re hurting the artist making their living!” If they’re such a damn good artist and creator, they should join actual communities and websites who make a real living creating 3D models. Plenty of people DO do this as a job and they make actual good money doing it because they’re good at what they do. The reason a lot of these people aren’t doing that is because they use assets and free softwares based around EA’s Sims 4 coding and they take 3D models other people have made and convert them. So, no, it’s not actually hurting anyone for that reason either.
Strawmen are done now.
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At the end of the day, this is about what kind of community we want to build and how we ultimately want to treat each other. The fact is this community DOES need to reckon with how it treats its creators and how the creators treat the community.
Paywalls are dividers between the haves/have nots. Trying to deny that juxtaposition and its cultural/psychological effect just makes people look thoughtless and short-sighted. We need to be more supportive of each other period, and that means not kneecapping or dividing ourselves. It means not cheapening the heart in CC creation by putting more importance on content than on the community itself.
The community has fallen over itself (in large part) for “luxe urban luxury” exclusive CC. But I think it would be silly to just blame that on immature people/kids when it’s really a result of the capitalist nightmare we’re living in. It’s like blaming a fever on wearing too many layers instead of addressing the infection as the source.
As for how to change that… well, I don’t know, honestly. I really don’t know where to go from here. But what’s important now is that we bring these issues out into the air for discussion.
We need to figure out where we’re headed as a community and how we want to treat each other going forward. And we need to figure out how we’re going to deal with the people who don’t want to play nice with the rest of us.
And, to the people who disagree and don’t want to be mature or civil about this: Just like you say we don’t have to buy CC, you don’t have to read this post, or participate. Go run along back to Twitter or wherever it is you want to be rude and snide. I don’t care. I have a life and a full time job and I also know what grass feels like. Take time to pet a cat or dog, touch some grass, tell someone you care about that you love them. It’ll do you some good.
Since apparently reading is a little too much to handle for people who want to take legal action over being held accountable for DOXXING OTHERS???
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CLIFFNOTES VERSION:
1. IT IS NOT ABOUT WANTING FREE CONTENT. IT IS ABOUT TREATING EACH OTHER WITH RESPECT AND PERMANENT PAYWALLS ARE INHERENTLY TOXIC AND HARMFUL TO COMMUNITIES. PAYWALLS ARE DIVISIVE AND HAVE SUPPORTED AN “EXCLUSIVE”, OBSESSIVE COMMUNITY TREND THAT ACTIVELY HARMS FREE AND EARLY ACCESS CREATORS. THIS IS ABOUT COMMUNITY, NOT CONTENT.
2. NO REAL ARTIST WOULD DOX SOMEONE FOR SHARING CONTENT THAT PERSON PAID GOOD MONEY TO RECEIVE.
3. CREATORS DESERVE SUPPORT AND RESPECT. SO DOES THE AVERAGE COMMUNITY MEMBER. IT GOES BOTH WAYS.
4. SHARING CUSTOM CONTENT THAT IS LEGALLY OWNED BY ELECTRONIC ARTS IS NOT PIRACY. GET OVER IT. ACCEPT THE PAID ADVERTISING.
5. WHEN SOMEONE DECIDED TO “””STEAL””” MY EARLY ACCESS CONTENT, I OFFERED TO REFUND THEM. THAT’S BECAUSE I’M NOT DOING THIS FOR THE MONEY. AND IF YOU WANT TO DO THIS FOR A LIVING, THERE ARE LEGITIMATE AVENUES FOR DOING FREELANCE 3D WORK, SO I PAUSE TO WONDER WHY PEOPLE DON’T USE THOSE INSTEAD. ALSO, IT’S NOT THEFT IF IT’S INTENDED TO BE FREE.
6. CUSTOM CONTENT IS NOT MORE IMPORTANT THAN COMMUNITY.
7. NO ONE OWES YOU MONEY FOR SOMETHING YOU DO NOT LEGALLY OWN. IF YOU WANT ENTITLEMENT, LOOK IN A DAMN MIRROR.
8. PERMANENT PAYWALLS ARE POISON ON THIS COMMUNITY AND WE CAN ONLY MOVE FORWARD BY GETTING RID OF THEM AND LEARNING TO RESPECT AND SUPPORT EACH OTHER.
9. STOP TRYING TO ATTACK PEOPLE WHO ARE VICTIMS OF DOXXING. GROW THE FUCK UP AND LEARN NOT TO BE A MONSTER. IF YOU CAN’T TAKE WHAT YOU DISH OUT TO PEOPLE, MAYBE YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN CAUSING HARM TO PEOPLE IN THE FIRST PLACE.
10. WE NEED TO LEARN TO UPLIFT EACH OTHER AND BOYCOTT PERMANENT PAYWALL CREATORS.
The simming community–the gaming community at large–has become so warped, backwards, monetized and toxic over the past decade, that it truly saddens me. This doxxing crap used to be OLD news. These unethical gross CRIMES had already been established as the very worst depths one could sink to for the sake of petty childish vindictive nastiness, and no one wanted to be proven guilty of doxxing/DDoSing, and other forms of hacking and privacy invasion laws (let alone try to excuse them, shrug them off, or handwave them aside). Especially not for something as STUPID as video games.
This crap used to happen back in the TS2 days, when people were first learning how to be douchecanoes online and delude themselves into thinking that 3rd party user generated content made in one’s FREE time should EVER be SOLD. For TS3, the very biggest issues were EA themselves at the Store, and T$R. But thanks to TS4 being allowed to run hog wild, here we are, dealing with the very worst forms of not just permapaywalled monetization, but online harassment and invasions of privacy.
This crap shouldn’t have to be EXPLAINED. This shouldn’t be an issue. Y’all should know better by now. How have things been allowed to regress so dang far?
Particularly the TS4 community. It’s night and day how much easier and user-friendly it is to create CC for TS4, so between the droves of CC creators that migrated to TS4; the brand new generation of johnny-come-latelys that were already familiar with Patreon through Youtube/Twitch/etc; the heavy influence/impact of paid/stolen assets from Second Life on conversions and the mental gymnastics popular simmers like Leosims & co. used to get away with their BS and teach others how to do; and EA’s normalization of microtransactions in other video games, we had the perfect recipe to poison the well and ruin the CC community.
I hate the very idea of paying any amount of money on CC/UGC/DLC/etc, especially in a game I already paid for. So I keep talking about it, cuz even though this has mostly been a TS4 issue that the TS4 community started, actions have consequences, and this heinous Patreon culture has steadily been seeping into TS3 as well. I’ve been screaming and hollering about it for years, to the point that I’m a broken frikkin record: I could care less what happens to TS4 (where in the HELL are the EPs?), cuz it’s a dumpster fire and EA’s cash cow needs to be put out to frikkin pasture already. But I’ve steadily become fed up with the entire situation. I know I’m broke, but y’all must have mad disposable income to be cool with paying subscriptions to all these effing sites charging all kinds of money per month like a daggone utility bill. I especially haven’t had time this year, as I have way too much RL crap going on.
When 2022 started I REALLY wanted to go off on NTFs, and how these shameless greedy effing video game companies like Square Enix said the most disgusting thingsabout how gamers don’t create and share custom content for fun or for good will, but for money.ButI stayed quiet, cuz y’all were already proving them right. Thank heaven people aren’t really taking NFTs seriously, but the only reason the gaming companies even latched onto it and hyped NFTs up is cuz they KNOW we’re stupid. Gamers have already demonstrated just how low they’re willing to sink, and just how much REAL money they’re willing to WASTE, all for FAKE digital worthless shiny new content. Those Kits ain’t teaching y’all NUTHIN, I swear! Clothes you can’t wear, food you can’t eat, furniture you can’t use–and you can’t even resell it or get a REFUND if it’s busted. On top of that, the Patreons can decide at any time whether or not to respond to their patrons–CUSTOMERS–and if they’ll abide by their own uploading schedules (let alone EA’s, cuz eff the honor system), and then they’ll give everyone grief if they’re called out on their mess and throw tantrums like a bunch of spoiled rotten children. And your personal information and privacy is at the mercy of these clowns? YIKES.
But if the state of things is cool with y’all, then whatever. I’ve said my piece a million times; y’all know how I feel about TS4, EA, paywalls, the whole ugly mess. Paysites MUST be destroyed, so PIRATE, fileshare, drink up me hearties yo effing ho ☠️☠️☠️.I’ll continue to say whatever I want whenever I want about whoever I want, and if y'all don’t like it unfollow me, cuz I’m not the one screwing people over for the sake of a effing HOBBY. A EFFING GAME. Capitalism is EVIL, yup, I said it! This is STUPID, y’all. Put your money back in your daggone pockets, and don’t give these entitled brats another red cent.
Listen–I told y’all my crap is nothing but basic AF CC conversions nearly 10 years ago; and no, I cannot photoshop or use Reshade; and I have no style; and and I play TS3 on a potato so all my pics are vanilla garbage–but guess what? At least i don’t effing charge y’a’ll for any of it; sue me.
I make CC cuz I like fantasy, and figured other TS3 simmers might be interested in the same stuff too–my frikkin bad! If my basic AF blog offends y’all so much, show mercy and post the step-by-step tutorial demonstrating your skills, so the community can grow and improve together, as you sit on high and look down low upon this wretched noobtard.
And PLEASE forgive me for assuming y’all knew what the frikkin nonsims / non-sims / RANT ALERT tags are even FOR.(－‸ლ)
I love how they’re here assuming race and where you live.
The community needs to realize that if they keep treating everyone like crap soon there will only be bullies left.
Rather than me having a good time on my main Sims 3 simblr account (murfeelee.tumblr.com which recently fell victim to Tumblr’s insta-ban spree)–posting my regular Weekend! Replies!, queuing up gameplay posts & TS3 CC–instead I’m hunkered down in the trenches tryna decide WHAT DO DO NEXT.
Unfortunately, these ideas weren’t able to get off the ground, as it’s EFFING HARD to run a website–costly, complex, and thankless to boot. We’ve all seen the constant pressure put on SimFileShare to carry the entire simming community all these years, as a Sims-specific FREE filesharing host for our terabytes, petabytes, exabytes, zetabytes, and yottabytes of CC.
One of the main deterrents to simblrs not leaving Tumblr as we rightly should’ve, is the plain simple fact of the matter that every alternative lacked some feature or another that Tumblr excels at. Be it site features (reblogs, tags, mentions, themes, media hosting, site import/export); integral user innovations (New X-Kit); the free and easy access (versus paywalls on Pillowfort & co.), we have all been trapped in this abusive relationship with Tumblr, for want of a better place to go.
Unless a better website is made, either by us or someone else, we’re stuck here. So what can be done about it?
Tumblr’s Auto-Bans, and the Reblogged Link Fiasco
The main allure is Tumblr’s large community presence & participation itself. The Dec17 Tumblrpocalypse lost Tumblr 1/3 of its entire user base in one fell swoop.There are tens of thousands of Simblrs across The Sims’ games. But crazy enough, these arbitrary auto-bans are ruining the one thing that kept us here–what’s the point of sticking around if you or someone you follow can get INSTANTLY kicked off the site under these spurious flaggings!? Especially if Tumblr does EFF ALL to make sure it doesn’t happen again?!
SoI have zero confidence that merely getting our accounts back will fix things–the OLD links/posts are still out there; having been reblogged dozens if not hundreds of times. Innocent simblrs are being shut down left and right lately–one site gets restored, and two more get banned the next day. This is LITERALLY what happened to me, Desiree-uk, and Toreno-Werty, within HOURS of each other.
Even if Tumblr bothers to contact you, and deigns to grace you with an actual explantion, rather than leaving you in the effing dark, lately it’s tended to be because of reblogged links
Reblogs, by their very nature, are PERVASIVE, so what do we do when years -old reblogged content is buried deep in our blogs–partcularly those links that are not immediately apparent to even be from flagged sites????
@staff it’s 2021 yall.. there has to be a better way to filter content. Deleting entire accounts is extreme af! And on top of that. The Sims community is a big reason for Tumblrs survival. Let’s be real, not many use this damn site anymore ♀️ idc idc!
Is the Simblrpocalypse inevitable? What can we do to protect/backup or content?
Last week I opened my own Wix account. However, I’ve always had trouble with Wix–it’s so HEAVY and SLOW, and bogs down my PC evey time I use it–let alone try to build my own. So it’s been VERY slow going for me to get my Wix page in a state where I can publish it, but I AM working on one, so I can at least have a place other than Tumblr to post my CC releases.
And as for Wordpress backups, the last time I imported my Tumblr blog it glitched and made duplicates of every post, thus going over my storage space so that Wordpress won’t let me make new poists on that account. I made another Wordpress account, but AFAIK there’s no function on Wordpress’ Tumblr Import feature to pick and choose which posts we want to import – it just imports the whole blog, which is unnecessary in my case, since I already have another Wordpress import for 2013-2018 – I just want everything from 2019-2021 Imported. (And if I don’t get my account back I can’t Import it anyway, which makes Wordpress moot).
So, other than Wix and/or Wordpress, what else is out there for us?
Wix might be our best bet for cataloguing CC, for those of us who make it. But what about community engagement? Places like Sims 3 Updates and My Sims 3 Blog migrated to TS4-only years ago, so Tumblr became the main hub for promoting new releases through reblogs. This was particularly effective after the rise of CC Finds Blogs like the late great Lana–another blog that got banned during the Dec17 Tumblrpocalypse, and never recovered. And several major CC Finds Blogs have been hit at least once by Tumblr’s ban since then, too.
A few weeks.months ago, when @mspoodle1,@darkccfinds, and @katsujiiccfinds got banned, I started considering backing up my stuff, but it was only once @desiree-uk confirmed last week that it was still happening that I knew I needed to do something, and made my Wix account. As a fellow CC finds reblogger with 5 sideblogs dedicated to reblogging Sims content (including fancifults3cc.tumblr.com, scifits3ccblog.tumblr.com and ninthcirclets3cc.tumblr.com), I naturally expected to get hit next, and I was right.But if we’re all too scared to reblog content anymore, the Simblr community dies, as it’s through reblogs and tags/mentions that we let our followers know about the CC being made, and support simmers in the community.
There seems to be no simple solution. Yes, we all want our blogs back, and we want this whole reblog/link issue to be fixed, with Tumblr’s @staff finally providing a reasonable way to get rid of the bad links/posts themselves, NOT our whole account. Kicking people off the platform will only lead its users to continue losing faith in Tumblr’s longterm ability to maintain this website–let alone its ability to show any sign of care or consideration for the accounts investing so much time and energy into keeping the platform relevant.
Hi, Simblr community. Murf here, from murfeelee.tumblr,com
As I effing expected, Tumblr terminated my account today too, over the exact same nonsense that recently hit @katsujiiccfindshereand@desiree-ukhere.
I contacted @staff at Tumblr Support about it today, and even tried to make a backup account to tell y’all about it earlier today, but Tumblr banned that account too, so now I’m trying to get BOTH accounts back, FML.
This frikkin SUCKS, Tumblr–WHY are y’all making it so dang hard to make people want to even BOTHER with this site anymore? PLEASE do something about these nasty instant-terminations–at least the Flagging system warns us in advance, and just hides posts that aren’t allowed anymore, so do the same thing for posts with hyperlinks to outside websites you don’t want us linking to and clicking!!!
How is it acceptable that are you are insta-banning simmers for reblogging content y’all LET US reblog in the first place? It’s THE SIMS, Tumblr–we’re not reblogging anything graphic or hateful or anything; we’re just trying to play with virtual Barbie dolls. (What on earth did that site (starting with a D) which shall not be named evendo? O_O It was YEARS OLD reblogs of LACE DOILIES, DECORATIVE AIR CONDITIONERS, and GLASS FURNITURE, for crissakes! HIDE THE CHILDREN!)
I actually tried to delete the compromised posts on my CC Finds sideblogs, but lo and behold, the stupid posts wouldn’t even delete, and kept popping back up!
(Fun fact: I couldn’t even get my account termination letters at the Contact Support page to go through – I had to keep resubmitting them before the buttons would stop getting stuck in an endless loop–like REALLY? I can’t even do what you all tell us to do@staff.It’s not even watching what we reblog (the whole frikkin point of Tumblr, jfc) – it’s watching what we’ve ALREADY reblogged and are trying to get rid of, that can set Tumblr’s trigger-happy algorithm off.
So yeah, that’s my frikkin life right now, y’all. (－‸ლ)
Just in case they ban this account too, y'all can still see my archived CC posts at the Wayback Machine: (it might load super slow at first, at least for me it did?)
