I totally agree in principle, but to give this particular article the benefit of the doubt, I feel they’re specifically trying to directly counter right wing talking points. So rather than saying “being a man is meaningless” to a bunch of people who feel strongly about male identity, they’re instead saying “there’s more than one way to man. Here’s a good male role model now!” to try and reach some middle dudes who are conflicted and getting preyed upon.
I agree that in the fullness of time we shouldn’t focus on this stuff, but I’m a bit worried about perfect being the enemy of good, and continuing to preach to our choir while 40% of dudes fall into a belief that women are the enemy and need to be controlled and shit.
I mean, I can’t speak to OP in particular, but there were definitely lots of years where people made shit for free, sold nothing, and didn’t consider it a job.
Like, there was no real mechanism for stick figure martial arts animations to make any money at all. Newgrounds or Ebaum’s World must have made some money from ads, but I don’t think any of that was profit-shared with the creators back in those days. Some of the creators were straight up anonymous because they didn’t even think to put their names on their stuff.
Obviously celebrities and ads and stuff still existed on the earth at the time, but it didn’t spread to the internet in a big way until later.
At least that’s how I remember it…