Friday, February 28, 2014
Free shouldn't be better than paid.
Thought produced by a pissed-off mood.
Subscription-only websites are totally fucking defective. Paying gets you nowhere. You may miss one or two articles by not subscribing, but the info in the articles is always available elsewhere in some other form. When a scientific publication is paywalled, you find that the paid content has nothing that wasn't in the abstract. When you contribute to an indie movie, you find the final product has nothing that wasn't in the trailer.
What SHOULD you get for paying a monthly or annual fee? At least you should get RESPECT. You SHOULD get the ability to post comments in the website's forum or combox without being deleted for disagreement. Obviously you shouldn't be able to violate laws, or post crap that will get the website in trouble, but you should be able to disagree with the majority. Maybe you could even receive an occasional civilized response from the moderators.
Some websites manage to treat everyone with respect, but those are never paid sites.
In every case where I've paid for a subscription, I've been deleted or classified as a troll for attempting to bring FACTS into the discussion.
Just from curiosity, I googled some phrases to see if any website even promised to treat paid subscribers with added respect. Nothing showed up in that direction, but astonishingly quite a few health-care-related sites had the OPPOSITE promise. If you pay the insurer, you must treat the 'providers' with respect!
Not gonna pay for a subscription ever again. It's pointless.
Labels: Carbon Cult
¶ 1:36 PM
