Why I Don’t Patreon, pt. 1

6 minute read | This ritual in writing contains affiliate links, if you make a qualifying purchase using one of these links I may be paid a commission at no expense to you. 

This ritual in writing is part of my Why I Don’t Patreon series. If you missed my introduction to this series, make sure you go back and check out the full list of thoughts here. I have been focused on expanding the ways I view liberation, freedom and healing and his includes looking at the various ways I participate in systems that do not support my liberation or the way I desire to show up in the world. I find myself thinking often about how I am complicit in my own oppression and how I am or can be complicit in the oppression of others? So let me give you an example because (at least for me) it always seems easier to find the ways I have been or am being oppressed and not the ways I am oppressing others or complicit in my oppression.

One of my absolute favorite artist, India Arie tends to record and release a new album every 8 years or so. By music industry standards, that is a long time to go without releasing new music because (in the industry’s mind), the people have already forgotten why they like you, due to such separation in time. As much as I love India Arie and adore every bit of her music, I have often found myself as a consumer both excited and in expectation of her release of a new song or album. Sometimes even counting down how many years it has been. But I am not the only one, our household runs on music. So I have often had music centered conversations about when Kendrick Lamar or other artists are going to drop an album with my husband and I have been on the other end reminding him that our favorite artists are just that. Artists. We love their work because whatever their process is to create new beats, lyrics, or express what they have been living out in their songs it speaks to our lived human experience. It is why certain songs rock our souls. (And well, if you want a clear example of this, go listen to Lauryn Hill’s MTV Unplugged album.)

Patreon was an idea created and executed to provide creatives with a platform to offer their work and generate an income outside of social media because most social media platforms require large followings or high volumes of engagement to become monetized. Instagram’s number used to be 10K followers. So imagine putting out good work that gets shared all over Instagram and makes its way over to Facebook and Twitter only for you, the creator to not receive the ‘followership’ or financial benefit for your work (not to mention credit at all, I’m side eyeing you 2020 with all the well-intended white women that stole the labor and work of Black creatives and posted it as their own). I have been on the receiving end of women coming to my studio and sitting in my yoga classes to take notes and learn how and why I was doing what I was doing, only so they could duplicate my work or process under another name or something wrapped in their religious beliefs. Patreon meets that need for creatives to OWN their intellectual property and release and share it while they are being paid for it.

BUT there are also lots of creatives, artists, speakers and teachers on Patreon taking up space and offering absolutely NOTHING to their communities in exchange for their financial contribution. Some creators openly state and share this upfront, they warn that their Patreon is NOT an active community where they can expect to engage or receive ANYTHING other than their financial support to the creator. This too feels icky for me because especially in my line of work (healing, liberation, decolonizing and unlearning) the root of most harms and traumas in American culture stem from the exploitation of working class people to benefit corporations or government. Why then would we turn around and implement the same practice?

So is Patreon bad?

No, at least I don’t think so. Subscription based programs are similar to memberships in they are convenient and provide a source of funding to creatives by YOU in exchange for or no exchange for a service or good. But how or why do subscription programs work, because in short, they are predatory. They provide guaranteed revenue that creators and creatives can count on for their income. “The psychology behind subscription programs and memberships is if someone is willing to pay for a subscription service, they will feel obligated to visit the store, or show up in the space even without reward to justify the expense.” As this Forbes article shares. In fact, according to Subscription Flow, they are projecting that subscription services are going to increase in the near future, $1.5 trillion dollars to be exact.

Being in the yoga and wellness industry, I have seen and experienced memberships in action both as a studio owner in studio owner groups promoting the membership model for predictable income and YTT programs. If studios are only making it by through the exploitation of its customers through memberships and conversion to yoga teacher training programs. BUT you don’t have to take my word for it, the Yoga is Dead podcast with episode 1 being “200-hrs Killed Yoga” with Tejal Patel and Jesal Parikh touches on how the yoga teacher training programs have killed what we know yoga to be in the American U.S. Okay, so if studios are doing it and gyms are doing it, food subscriptions and dog food subscriptions, etc. what is the problem? Some of the psychology behind why it is beneficial is because these ease of convenience for the consumer. You set it and forget it. You subscribe and put in your information once and set it to automatically process for you each time. Most of the business models using this make it difficult for you to withdraw your membership (i.e see fine print in contract, “written notice of withdraw of membership 30 days in advance” )with penalties for canceling greater than if you just kept the membership. Business Insider shares, “They study found that 74% of respondents “say it’s easy to forget about recurring monthly subscription service charges,” and that 72% of the survey participants have set all of their monthly subscriptions to “auto-pay".” These businesses and subscription models are benefiting from the hustle and bustle of dominant culture and it’s steady drive that keeps us busy and occupied where we believe auto-pay is helping us more than its harming us, because of course we are too busy commuting, returning to office and doing all of the things to remember to logon and pay a bill or send in a donation.

Now, don’t get me wrong I know not all Patreon participants and creators are this way BUT I also know there are a great number of them that are, even the ones under the guise of dismantling the system, patriarchy and capitalism. So what are we supposed to do? I believe one of the ways for us to move forward together is collectively but also in ways that are not exploitative of ANYONE or anything. Ya’ll hear that?! If I were to be a creator on Patreon, I would provide other avenues for people to resource my work of course there being free options and other items that consist of my life’s work that people can pay for, whether that is a one time fee or a payment plan co-created and of the value deemed by the creator. One of the things I have implemented is creating a community off of social media housed on my website where people can engage for free. Then I have offered other levels of my work again housed on my website that people can access with various payment options because the work I do does need to provide for my family. If you are interested in finding out more about Tha Village (my online community) feel free to check it out. This is in no way an exhaustive list of cons against Patreon nor solutions to it but my goal here was merely to share some of my thoughts and affirm those that have in turn questioned if creating a Patreon platform is or isn’t for them.

Stay tuned because I will continue with the rest of this series and more on why I decided to create my own community platform.