Paid Members' FYI (Patreon)

Thanks for supporting Digital Adiposity in these uncertain times. I had a discussion with a rl friend about the situation regarding AI art today, and they encouraged me to clear some things up with my supporters. It feels necessary to do this at this point because, frankly, I'm thinking of quitting and never coming back to Patreon or social media in general in this form. $5 is apparently not high enough of a bar to prevent assholes from coming in and harassing me when I'm struggling with autoimmune illness and seasonal affective disorder, among other things.

I used to draw a bit, but I started creating artwork with a computer in 1997 because a car accident left me with an injury to my dominant arm. I was living in the US at the time, and received as much physiotherapy and other treatments as I could afford, which wasn't much for a 20-something temp worker with no health insurance. My injury limits my ability to hold a pen or pencil to write or draw for long periods of time. I can doodle or take notes for a bit, but pushing too long results in painful spasms and migraine headaches. I do a daily routine of exercises so I can use my injured arm at work, and typing has never been an issue. The only available solution continues to be expensive and risky surgery that may not even give me that much relief, so I've avoided it.

When my 3D art started gaining popularity in the early 00s, it was met with disdain and resistance from the fetish art drawing community. When I explained my situation, many didn't believe me or their answer was always the same heartless bullshit - "just draw/draw or GTFO". I persisted with my art until online harassment forced me to quit. Years went by where I merely lurked in the FA community.

It took a while for me to decide to make a comeback, there were clearly people who appreciated my work and were trading what they'd downloaded online. Patreon was also getting started as an option to make some income on the side. Of course I knew there would be people who wouldn't let me do this without a fight. It's been a bumpy 10 years, with some great times around 2022.

When I began experimenting with Stable Diffusion in November 2023, some of you loved it, others not so much. The drawing artists were back with a vengeance because "aLl AI aRt sTeAlS OuR JerBz!" and I'm worse than Hitler all over again. Here's the thing, and if you don't believe me or you think it doesn't matter due to polarized thinking, at least I tried one last time to reach you in good faith:

I run Stable Diffusion as a local installation, mainly as a denoiser or glorified Photoshop filter. I don't use any major AI generator hubs when creating content. No monster computer god data centers are involved. All the models are trained on Creative Commons licensed images or images I own. The only exceptions to this are a few freely available examples on CivitAI from when I was starting out.

I'm just an admirer of large women, fantasizing to extremes, doing what I want within reason. I'm no fan of the push to adopt and accept AI technology in peoples' lives. My views do not align with techbros, libertarians, or big business. I hate chatbots and AI-powered search engines, they LIE by design. Bots post on Reddit constantly and it sucks. You can't upload anime girl designs to deviantArt without a 18% chance of a bot flagging it verboten and having it reported to some concerned citizens brigade. I'm also not a fan of polarized/all-or-nothing thinking.

Digital Adiposity was never about trying to "make it big". Having enough to pay for my gaming and streaming services and Daz Platinum membership was nice for a while. Your support also helped me get a better computer for producing art, and I was able to gradually pay off a huge loan to fix my credit after my divorce.

Those days are apparently gone: there are fewer subscribers than ever, people can't be bothered to interact or leave feedback nowadays, hardly anyone likes or reposts my work on social media because they're scared of being seen as "going against the herd", and some psychos are willing to pay $5 or $10 to pitch a fit about AI art on my Patreon.

I just ignore the exit surveys these days, either people want to soapbox about how bad AI art is, or they're bitching that I'm not giving them enough.

I'm tired, boss.