A Message From RiffTrax

[knowMATTER]

Anarchemist [whom I 100% agree with] wrote "If it were not for this site and torrents, chances are I would just forget Rifftrax exists at all. I bet a lot of people would."

There's the notion that if we weren't DL-ing this stuff, we'd pay for it. Thus it's theft. But this is easily understood to be false. 2 examples.

1] A grocery store may be giving away a cookie in order to entice you to buy a dozen. You may take one. But what if they charged .25 cents? Would you be willing to buy it, now that it's not free? Most (I venture) wouldn't.

2] Some religious groups on the street have something similar; they offer you a book of their teachings for free. You take it. Then they ask "Would you care to make a donation?"

My point is, there's a crucial conflation going on in the economic logic when our critics presume, "These illegal downloaders would be buying this legally, if it weren't for torrents, &c." This just isn't the case, whatever the morality: it's just demonstrably false. We'd just move on to something else.

[OldSkoolRulah]

"These illegal downloaders would be buying this legally, if it weren't for torrents, &c." This just isn't the case, whatever the morality: it's just demonstrably false. 

This. It's why many companies do not pursue pirates, as they understand that piracy =/= lost sales. Many of them also understand that a lot of pirates still buy plenty of other things, sometimes even stuff that they have previously pirated.

[Anarchemist]

So glad to see not everyone here is stupid.
Can anyone see in my earlier comment how I pretended it was noble to steal or how we are like Robin Hood?
I said a healthy fandom includes bootlegging. When they stop caring enough to steal your work, they stop buying it too. I'm not claiming anything whatsoever about morality.  I know exactly what I can afford and I feel 0 guilt about anything I have ever downloaded here.  I am guessing the guy who is gung ho about being a thief has more than enough money to buy Rifftrax but prefers to steal it. The only bit of "morality" in my original post was "Do what you love and give it away, the universe will reward you".

[portharlot]

A solid reminder of why I just come here for the links and leave.

This approach is becoming more appealing by the day.

[JJohnson3000]

Hi Rifftrax,

I regularly purchase from your site, and donate every year $275 or more to your Kickstarter.  Each month, I purchase between $15 and $60 of content from your site.

The only thing I got here are subtitles for tracks I couldn't find from your site, or synched files of stuff I already purchased (and already own the DVD, but my laptop has no drive so I can't synch them together anymore).

I use Plex to view my Rifftrax, and I have over 200 movies and over 350 shorts purchased from you.

[oriface137]

Just donated a little bit. After all the years of laughs and good times these guys have given me, how could I not.

[SuspiriaTrumpsItFollowsCrap]

Hey Folks, RiffTrax here!

So to start off, quick question: what the heck?

Yours in riffing,

-The RiffTrax Team

Well, here’s the “heck”.

The Spongebobbian contingent of Rifftrax, compared to the MST3K alumni, are to that alumni what Yoko was to Paul, John and George.  You (and the other ”ancillary writers”) are the YOKOs.

“Hi there! Paul, John, and George would like you to donate to the current and upcoming albums, and purchase them, even though almost all of the songs on those new albums are - and will be - written by Yoko, plus some writing by utterly-forgotten flunkies of Warhol’s ‘The Factory’.  But we promise that all these albums will be as fantastic as Sgt. Pepper’s!” 

Uh huh.

You can’t squeeze Johnny Quest blood out of a Spongebobbian Stone.  What you can squeeze out of Spongebobbian-writers is a fluid which is only valuable if you own a Stillsuit from the 1965 Dune novel.  Kevin, Bill, Mike, Bridget, Mary-Jo (and on occasion, Josh) combine to make that Stillsuit. 

As opposed to most of the jokes in Hack o-Lantern and other recent Riffs with most jokes written by the “Yoko’s”. The jokes are nothing more than the millions of gormless, half-hearted, unfunny tweets made by millions of millenniwanks every HOUR, which all of the world can suffer/read for FREE. No-one is gonna feel guilted into subsidizing those non-jokes.

Kevin or Bill might rebuke this. But, once someone becomes merely the voice over artist for the badly-written non-jokes of others, their potential rebukes mean nothing. They are now the "bosses", not the writers. Crap jokes are the bailiwick of the WRITERS. The crap jokes on rifftrax come from Spongebobbians.

At this point, any money tendered merely subsidizes a lot of non-funny jokes written by unfunny Spongebobbians, which are then spoken into microphones by funny people. Yoko’s “music” isn’t worth “swiping”, much less paying for, even if John Lennon sings it.

Money donated for K/M/B jokes is worth it. Money for jokes written by for MJ and Bridget is worth it.

Money donated to Spongebobbians (not to be confused w/TALENTED Gen Y’s!) "pretending to write jokes" is simply $20 bills tossed on a bonfire.

THERE is your “heck”, Spongebobbian YOKO.