Some Brief But Important Admin Concerning Patreon's Recent Changes (Patreon)

Before we get to the rest of this month's rewards, I want to make a public post explaining a few things from the Patreon creator backend (ha ha).

Recently, Patreon added a "subscribe for free!" button to all creators' front pages. Great idea, right? Easy click button to get people onto the free feed and increase visibility blah blah blah.

Well, if you follow any other creators you've probably already heard a little about how not-well that idea has gone. Once you hit a subscribe button, people tend to just call it a day and not investigate further, with the result that things are kind of a mess across the board for everyone.

Here in the Laboratory, since that policy choice, and surely a choice it was, we are up almost 500 patrons, a whopping 50% increase in just a month and a half or so--and almost none of them are on any kind of paying tier.

Which would sort of all be fine except I suspect a bunch of those new 500 are wondering where all the content is. 

The content at the Laboratory has always been distributed by tier, and even goodies that go to everyone have always defined "everyone" as people who are on those paid tiers, even if it's a penny. There is and always has been very little open, public content here because that's kind of how the whole concept of Patreon was designed and what we all thought we were meant to be doing around here not blogging on a regular social media site which Patreon is never going to be I'M NOT IRRITATED WHY WOULD YOU ASK.

So if you subscribed to read things, this note is to let you know that they're all there, hundreds and hundreds of pages of content, but you have to subscribe to one of the paid tiers to get most of it. Even the Discord is minimally paywalled--because just giving any passing fanged troll who's mad because I spoke on the internet while nominally lady-shaped open access to this very beautiful and special community is a cool way for that Discord to dissolve in a pool of awfulness.

If you, the Brave 500, did just want to keep basic tabs on me in the wake of other social media crumbling and wandering off because it forgot who its buddy was, great! If you were hoping for more, and/or wanted to tangibly support my work in books and online, may I suggest one of the easy, really very cheap, tiers that are enumerated under the appropriate drop-down menu. I've removed the new button from the front page (an unadvertised option buried under so many clicks and links I have to imagine they really want this to fly) and I just want everyone to get what they come here for from now on.

And Patreon, if you're listening, this is a great site that so many people rely on. Could you please not mess with it very much thank you.