STATE OF THE FIXT - KO-FI

it's funny that i find myself writing this site update now, because we're not really that far away from when i was actually planning to do a bit of a metatextual step back and talk about HYPERFIXT as a project. we are less than a month from the one-year anniversary of me registering this humble domain, and i still have every intention of taking that opportunity to look at how i've done so far (and talk about where i might want to take this thing in the future!), but there's also something that's come up now that feels worth addressing.

HYPERFIXT is now on Ko-fi! money can change hands! and in my mind, that comes with a lot of responsibility and commitment to whatever audience i happen to currently have. it would be pretty easy to just put the link all over the place and act like i didn't change anything, but i did. maybe i'm overthinking it, but this feels like a major step to me and i'm going to communicate like it is.

i have opted to go with Ko-fi because i can use it as a tip jar. i mean, that's the phrasing i'm using for it, very directly. i don't currently have monthly donations or membership tiers activated - this is meant for small donations here and there. if i could find a setting to put a cap on donations, i would, because i really only feel comfortable accepting a little bit, given the current status of the website. i am not selling out, as it were.

will i ever have those types of long-term memberships? maybe. as i'll probably be talking about in the big 'year one' post, i haven't been as productive as i would like to be sometimes, and as a result i don't feel comfortable charging people on a regular basis until i've proven myself consistent enough to earn that type of regular monetary support. one long-term goal might be bonus content, but quite frankly, i don't exactly love the idea of locking off parts of my site even if i knew how to. HYPERFIXT is meant to be old-school web, so no matter what the monetary situation looks like, i want this site to generally be discoverable, explorable, and enjoyable for anyone, free of charge.

it also feels important to address something else, which is that this Ko-fi is not some kind of desperate measure. i do not need this money urgently to keep a roof over my head or anything like that. i am lucky enough to have a very supportive family and enough savings to get by on my basic needs, even in a pretty unstable time for young adults. i don't want any of my readers to think this is some kind of emergency necessity, to keep the site or my corporeal fleshy form going. i fully acknowledge that i'm coming at this from a place of privilege and i want that to be known to anyone supporting the site, too.

so, if i'm not currently planning any secret goodies for paying readers, and i'm not in desperate need for the cash, what's the deal with the Ko-fi? the answer is... complex. i want to be a writer. i want to make stuff, whether it's talking about a weird video or reviewing a whole television series. if i can keep this thing growing, i might even want to branch out! my ambitions probably fall somewhere in the broad term of "content creator", but i loathe the term. content is a pretty soulless way to describe it. i want to put things out into the world, things that spread my love for art, that convey my perspective on life, and that make people happy.

my family is, again, pretty supportive of all of this. but plans shift around. i came into 2023 looking to split things down the middle, pouring real passion into HYPERFIXT while starting to form an income cutting my teeth on easy SEO-driven listicles. stuff i wouldn't have to love doing, but that i could maintain as what the kids these days call a 'side hustle'. unfortunately for the entire state of the internet, generative text models exist, and they keep getting 'better' (in major scare quotes). the frank truth of it is that i don't know what the easy, entry-level job for someone like me looks like anymore. the type of thing i wanted to do on the side is the exact type of thing that's going to be first on the chopping block when these tech giants figure out how to make dispassionate, literally robotic text that's 'good enough' for mass consumption.

so, i'm pivoting. the passion project becomes the main event. if cheap and easy's on its way out, i'll focus on the thing i can do that no machine's going to take from me - being the person who writes HYPERFIXT for all of you. distinctly sentient content, that you know was written by an author with feelings, and thoughts, and a contextual existence in the same world as you.

it's a weird feeling. this site has been a hobby and i still want to approach as one, as much as possible. there's some part of my brain that says i'm more of a poser than ever for putting a Ko-fi link on my little corner of the information superhighway. i want to be a writer, though. if i'm going to take that seriously, sustain that impulse and nurture it, i've gotta start somewhere.

so, if i haven't turned you off of the idea with all this earnest examination of me and my relationship to... the concept of having an income...? here's the elevator pitch. i'm not going to call these reasons why you should donate to HYPERFIXT - what you do with your money is your business. let's think of this more as a 'what might happen if you did'.

MAKE HYPERFIXT BETTER

with a semi-regular flow of donations coming in, i can pretty easily cover the costs to become an official Neocities supporter. in case i haven't made my stances absolutely clear by now, i love Neocities and what it stands for in terms of putting power back into the hands of regular people instead of platforms, so i'd absolutely love to support them. on top of that, it'd come with a lot of pretty handy features to have! going from 1 gigabyte of site storage to 50 gigabytes isn't nothing, for example! i could also route that money back into the Ko-fi to unlock some of their niftier features, should i ever need those.

MAKE HYPERFIXT BIGGER

money can pay for stuff! i can write about stuff! i have pretty good access to a variety of streaming services, so television's not much of a concern, but if i want to stay on top of some more video games and write about some hot new releases, having extra money for that helps. if people want to see me do more toy reviews, same deal. this site casts a wide net and ideally, i can put your donations right back into new things for you to read.

SUPPORT FELLOW ARTISTS

i am not alone in finding myself in a weird situation where the prospect of a normal career path is being upended. donations towards HYPERFIXT help me do things like support other creators i enjoy on platforms like Patreon, or maybe commission visual artists for stuff you might end up seeing on this very web domain. you could cut out the middleman, sure - i don't mean to imply that i'm unique for going and paying for other cool people to do their thing on the internet. it is a high priority on my list, though, if that matters in terms of where you put your budget for this type of thing.

BONUSES? BENEFITS? GOODIES?

as i hope i made quite clear above, i don't have anything immediately lined up to start putting behind some kind of Ko-fi gate. that doesn't mean i'll never try to find ways to make it worth your while, though! whether it's thinking about establishing more of a community for readers or perhaps finding some kind of 'exclusive early access' model, i very much want to provide something special for supporters. and, hey, maybe it's through supporter suggestions that i'll find out what that something special is!

KEEP THE TREADMILL RUNNING

to put it in the bluntest way possible - if i receive really any amount of money off of what i'm doing here, it's going to keep me moving. i would write even if nobody was reading it, but having a direct financial figure that's tied to what i'm doing here? that's next-level. i've never had that and i'm going to try and hold myself to, at the bare minimum, keeping HYPERFIXT up to pace with your generosity.

so that's the current state of things. the Ko-fi is open, and on top of my current commitment to doing more Owl House overviews and cooking up other new stuff on the back burner, i am also bothering to, for the first time, try and clean up the home page. because the thing people see when they click these links should be nice, shouldn't it?

to anyone considering supporting the site finanically, thank you so much. i really cannot stress enough what that means to me, as someone who's struggled finding what a 'normal job' looks like, as someone who's ultimate ambition in life is just to write about the world i live in, in ways that engage and entertain. any amount helps. a single dollar is one-fifth of a monthly payment to Neocities, and it's also, currently, astronomically more money than i've ever been paid to write something. if you aren't in a position to donate, don't let this change how you read HYPERFIXT - having readers at all is what makes me happy, at the end of the day. i look forward to lots more engaging and entertaining, and i'll see you regular readers back here on April 18th for the site's first birthday check-in.