cerealjoe | I'm thinking about this and we're not even in philosophy class! (Reply)

So... coming back to the whole DreamWidth thing.

rahaeli pointed out to me their DW Business plan FAQs (here) and reading through them, I had a very interesting reflection. At first I did not want to pay those $25 per year for DW even though I have no problems paying them for LJ, mainly because I told myself that DW will probably never survive and it will be money wasted. Then I read the business plan and it seems viable. And yet, even after making sure the calculations were reasonnable and everything, I still did not feel like forking over those $25.

Then I finally realised why. It's the simplest thing in the world, it's the fact that I am petty and childish. Yes, I enjoy having an ad-free LJ, I enjoy it immensly. I also take pleasure in having extra features such as extra icons and storage space and my own theme. To be honest, I still have some icon slots free, I have my own server space so technically I don't need the storage space and I haven't changed my theme in about a year... so in the end, those options aren't all useful to me. But you know what I enjoy? Knowing that some people have to see ads in order to use LJ. Yes, it's not a conscious thing, whenever I look at my LJ I don't think "oh, brilliant! Some bastards get ads and I don't, yay!". Yet, when I think about it, it's a glorious thing to know that people who don't want to pay for a good service will pay in some other manner, and let's be honest, is there anything more annoying than online ads?

This train of thought made me question all of my decisions to pay for some things. It's kind of strange.