I Won't Buy You a Coffee

> Did you like this post, please buy me a coffee?

are completely okay! I don't interpret it as 'begging me for my money'. They are not nagging, and you do not have to buy them a coffee/pizza/metaphorical food item. You can go on with your day. But maybe someone thinks that the post deserves a token of appreciation, and tossing someone one, maybe two euros doesn't hurt. Just like tipping. Good = no tip, exceptional = tip.

> I know how much 4€ is, that's about two icecreams, or three beers. Off topic, but is OP finding these? Are certain countries in Europe really this cheap??

That button is for them, for those who want that button, if you don't just ignore it! Nothing bad will happen and the author is (usually) not expecting anything.

I have personal projects that I pay >$100/mo to operate. I can afford to do so, it is not impactful to my life. People have, without prompting, offered to give me money for these projects as a way to show appreciation. I have no intent to ever make money off of these things, I don't even hope to break even, but offering some money is a material way to show appreciation for a service you find valuable and I don't think there should be any shame in it.

Someone getting the odd coffee money is hardly operating a "venue for profit"; they are just trying to get by any way they can.

The time costs for writing are highly variable.

It is safe to say, the bill for hiring a writer isn't 4€/year or even 4€/post.

Blogging is also cheap only for writers who don't spend time and money to gain experience, validate information, and maintain relationships in order to writing interesting words.

Blogging only costs a few euro per year if we ignore the resources that go into servers, electricity, IT folks, laptops, and the luxury of time and safety to write.

I look at the tip/patronage soliciting differently because there are some people who really feel the costs of their hobby or side project hanging over them. It can be due to tight budgets, or how they were raised, or perhaps their significant other objects. Asking for tips justifies their efforts, whether people give or not. I want to see their efforts, so don’t mind that they ask.

The “coffee” thing specifically is a bit annoying, and often asking too little. I suspect few people tip, and if they will tip, they’re just as likely to give more. A smaller number of people tip a lot so do want to give small amounts each time. Most don’t. I’d be happy to hear if occasional tipping of a few dollars is more widespread than I think it is.

What's left is the friction of paying the fraction of a cent that needs to be paid to the content creator to keep the lights on.

This is a collective action problem. There is no reason why there isn't a monthly fee processor for accessing the www that pays every site you visit some fraction of a cent for each visit. As we already covered they exist for ips, we call them isps and they deal with all the payments in the background required to keep the wires maintained for all the bits that flow through them.

A simple though like this post is low effort. Once in a while a quick blog post not a big cost. However, these relatively low-effort posts on Hacker News are not a particularly great value to society.

Ha. It's my personal opinion that this is an insanely negative post. I hate advertising with a vibrating passion that I can only assume other people would consider unreasonable, but even I don't blink at a "Buy me a coffee" button. In fact, I smile at the quaint notion, and I have clicked it a few times.

The idea that hosting is the primary cost of writing is so far off the mark, I don't even know where to begin.

- not monetization

- just a sort of "if you appreciate it, let me know"

that said, it is human nature to NOT show appreciation for other people.

as a matter of fact, how many people upvote (and why)?

is it because they appreciate the person writing? Or maybe "I agree" or "you confirm my bias" in most cases.

honestly, the reason I don't do the "buy the coffee" thing is the incredible friction and intrusiveness of payment systems.

You're not contributing $4 to help them host.

You're contributing $4 because you liked their ideas and are contributing to fund more.

The author writes:

> Look, I also think that creatives should get compensation in the same way as everyone else, but that doesnt mean that every instance of creativity should be a venue for profit. I think it's shameful that programmers get such higher compensation compared to artists, but this is not the place to equalize it.

Then proceeds to offer no mechanism of such compensation for blog writers.

Many people put in a not insignificant amount of time into their writing, and if it was worth our time to read, maybe we should consider showing our appreciation in a material way.

so asking for money is also part of that freedom right?

the simple fact is you, you'll never get what you don't ask for. I hate when youtubers ask me to like and subscribe, but I'll never hold it against a single one of them. You never know which person you convinced that time and that time alone. The tone in your voice, the season around the viewer, literally any number of factors change people's decisions to do something kind for a relative stranger on the internet. if you don't give them an easy way to do it, and a reminder that you would appreciate it, the likelihood of it happening is a lot lower. if it helps, you can think of it less like using capitalism to support hosting the subject, and more like your free speech to give tangible support to a subject you appreciate. some people don't have any commentary or judgement that isn't more succinctly said with cold hard cash. no reason not to make your blog accessible to those people.

It's so much less annoying, intrusive, and generally dystopian than the world's largest corporations listening in on my phone calls so they can serve me minute-long ads for things I already bought that are intentionally as maximalistic and attention-grabbing as possible.

When a creator asks me to buy them a coffee, but they don't do commercials or other sponsorships, how can I be annoyed by that? Their work has value, they're not being unreasonable.

> This irks me primarily because I'm so tired of rampant capitalization and constant advertisements.

Then maybe complain about that instead of indie creators placing some text to make it easy for people who want to give them some money.

Yet getting my credit card out for a stranger everytime I half-enjoy an article is not something I'm going to do.

Unless the answer is payment friction, assumed wealth or assumed effort, I can't seem to reconcile why I'm happy to recompense buskers but unwilling to recompense bloggers whose article I'll enjoy once and whose website I'll likely never visit again.

In an internet of initially-convincing yet insubstantial AI-slop, people hawking every fad going, and knowing your hard-work will be fed into a AI model that you'll later be charged for, I can't help but feel there must be a solution.

So op is fine financially, but people who are asking for money usually tend to be doing "free" labour and sometimes not employed, or maybe they are employed and would like any additional financial aid to offset their personal costs (time is also a cost, you could be consulting for $$$ instead). I help admin a Discord that receives a few hundred dollars monthly in donations, and we're still way in the negative in terms of what we've spent on the community.

I would not make foolish assumptions when someone's asking for a "coffee" that it "costs" them nothing, the same argument applies against me and my friends, sure Discord itself costs us nothing, but the bot hosting does, the game server hosting does, there's a cost to a lot more things that might not be immediately obvious to everyone.

If freenode asked to buy them a coffee, I think any of us who used IRC long enough might "buy them a coffee" because we know the infrastructure is not free, the time invested by the maintainers, etc.

I d rather donate $1 to 10 different blogs every month, than subscribe to NYT or Atlantic.

Second, blogging is cheap if you're writing about what you had for lunch, but there are numerous personal blogs and websites that are obviously costly and time-consuming to run. For example, I'm sure that Ken Shirriff's blog costs him money. Similarly, if you wanted to recreate Marcin Wichary's blog, it would cost you tens of thousands in photo gear and travel costs.

> I'm so tired of rampant capitalization and constant advertisements. That's why I'm here on the indie web, to get away from all of that, and now you are here, begging me for my money.

And that just comes across as entitled. The indie web doesn't owe the author anything, and it especially doesn't owe him the adherence to his views on capitalism.

wow, that comes across as very entitled. what business do you have to tell me that i should do something for free for you? i am tempted to add a paywall to my blog just for you, while everyone else gets free access.

if you had titled that: "why i don't ask you to buy me a coffee", for your own blog, then that would have sounded very different. or if you had written that you won't buy anyone a coffee because you'd rather give that money to more worthy causes, or if you said that you can't afford to support them, that would be fine too. but to tell someone: "your blog should be free. you should not ask for money." that's extremely inconsiderate.

you claim to know how much $4 is. no you don't. in some countries $4 can feed a whole family for a day. maybe the author lives in such a country, or they support people that live there. you have no idea how far those $4 will go. unless of course you are talking about a specific blog and you know where the author works. but you didn't do that. you addressed the general case.

blogging should be ... whatever their author wants it to be. if it is free, be grateful. if they ask for support, be tolerant. you don't know their life situation. you don't know what they do with that money, why they would need it. maybe they are in a badly paid job or even unemployed and are trying to make their life a little better. maybe they are paid well but are trying to get out of their job because they see no future in it, so they are trying to build up a second income. maybe they are trying to save up for a new computer. who knows.

you can of course compare their blog to others which don't ask for money and decide that you like those better, but then please go and read the other blogs and don't bother the author of this one whose motivation for asking for that coffee you know nothing about.

“In rejecting the materialistic values of bourgeois society and indulging in the myth that they could exist entirely outside the dominant culture in bohemian enclaves, avant-garde artists generally refused to recognize or accept their role as producers of a cultural commodity. As a result, especially in the United States, many artists abdicated responsibility both to their own economic interests and to the uses to which their artwork was put after it entered the marketplace.”

So, regardless of whether you ask for donations, do copyright your creative work, even if it’s just blog posts. It’s the responsible thing to do.

But it depends upon what the person is doing, I found value in that project so I had no issue. So, for the article's author, it depends upon what the person is doing or writting :)

Sometimes people include payment links though, which is odd, I agree.

Oh? Many people have turned their hobbies into full-time jobs. Just because you don't like the idea of making money, doesn't mean everyone has to give away their work for free.

I turned my hobby into a million dollar business. It's actually pretty nice to be able to wake up and make money from something you truly enjoy, instead of some crappy CRUD app (now vibe-coded). Freedom to me, means being able to make my own decisions during the day, and working a regular 9-5 definitely doesn't allow for this.

For someone who said they hate all of the negativity on the Internet, you sure are being negative.

"Let our little corner of the internet, shaped by freedom and connections, be a place where we can forget the draining nature of capitalism."

You can do anything you want, but as soon as you start making money, you are evil and we need to stop you.

It's Authoritarianism dressed up as 'freedom'.

As soon as I see "buy me a coffee" I get the sense that there is some kind of community, fandom, or other groupthink or ulterior motive potentially tainting the honesty of what I'm reading.

It may not be a conscious bias that the blogger has, but it makes me curious. If their blog is too similar to the other people they associate with, their credibility drops a bit. If I dig enough and find their little cult, I'm out. If I wanted to read that shit I can just go to reddit.

> This irks me primarily because I'm so tired of ... constant advertisements.

And yet advertises on their site. Shame.

Asking for donations has nothing to do with "capitalism", and asking for one on your own blog nor is it "advertising".

If the author is tired of capitalism, he should give up direction of his blogging to hire authority. Otherwise, he's engaging in rampant capitalism.

"an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market"

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/capitalism