Neil Gaiman’s Journal: Entitlement issues… is an excellent blog post regarding whether you have the right to be peeved if your artist/writer of choice has not produced the thing/creation you’re waiting for fast enough to suit you. The interesting bit starts with the bolded email Mr. Gaiman’s responding to.
That is so goddamn spot on and, although I’m not an artist or writer myself, exactly what I’ve been thinking for years whenever I’ve seen someone bitching in that way – or worse still, artists/authors kowtowing to such pressure or pre-emptively prostating themselves before the masses and begging for mercy because an update may be a couple of days or even a few hours late… Orz
True in the latter case a lot of them are online content creators who need to keep people’s interest in order to pay (at least a little of) their bills thru merch, donation drives and micropayments, but sometimes you just want to give them a therapeutic slap in the face, grab them by the shoulders and say… “DUDE! CHILL! It’s alright! We understand you’ve got other committments. We can wait a little while for the next installment if you have exams to do AND want to take the time to do it right. We’re not paying for the bits that are delayed after all, and it won’t affect how much I want (or don’t want) your clever T-Shirts. So long as you don’t take the piss and leave it *months* over deadline…”. (Because I can stand the odd week or three gap in a comic schedule, but when it starts stretching into years like with a certain couple I could name, it becomes harder to justify keeping them in your top bookmarks)
Same for people in Gaiman’s and Martin’s shoes, even though the job is actually their bread and butter and everything happens over a necessarily longer timespan – they tend to put a whole lot more time and effort into it. Things can happen.
Dunno what it is with people these days and being so crazy demanding. Is it the multi channel TV, or the guaranteed internet access, or what?
I think it’s just the “me me me now now now” mindset that most people have. I admit, I’m a bit guilty of it too — not about content creation, but I’ve gotten really annoyed lately to find out companies don’t keep the hours I want them to. (All the car dealerships in the area, for example, close at something stupid like 7 on weekdays and 5 on weekends and they’re closed Sundays — how the hell do they sell cars?)
Grocery stores are open 24 hours. Movies are on demand on your TV set. Shipping is 2-day and free (on Amazon Prime, anyway). Songs download in a few moments. The Internet answers any question in less than 15 minutes. It’s easy to jump to the me/now mindset and think, “And you want me to match my hours to your schedule to sell me a car? Why should I put up with that crap?”
It takes an effort of will for people to wait for things. I don’t excel at patience and I don’t think most other people do.
On the other hand, demanding something that has to be produced from scratch for the very first time to be made RIGHT NOW NOW NOW ME ME ME is just plain rude, so I’m really glad to see Gaiman putting it in such blunt terms.