[chefandy]

I think people confuse prudent with good. I don't think this person would be delusional enough to think their choices were prudent by "polite" society's standards, especially when describing himself as a crust punk-- a subculture that prides itself on eschewing damn near everything that "polite" society values. However, it's also pretty bullshit that someone who makes art that people want and has an opinion interesting enough to have academic cachet needs to essentially bottom feed to stay afloat in the most fundamental ways. Art is important to humanity, but capitalism isn't super great at supporting things with intrinsic cultural value but no mercantile utility.

Especially since the popularization of AI image generators, many folks in the tech crowd-- few of whom could name a single influential work, author, or organization in arts scholarship-- have unwarrantedly strong opinions on the nature of art. They tend to cite the lack of market value in fine art as justification for neither paying artists for their ingested works, nor for the amalgams the produced models spit out. But when confronted with the fact that most artists are not working in fine art, but working commercial artists, they will cite their commercially concerns as evidence that modern art and artists are soulless and not worth protecting to begin with.

Honestly, the longer you work in the arts the more you shrug your shoulders at it. People have spent millennia holding all but the most famous artists and designers in contempt while art in some form, deliberately and thoughtfully made by someone with great skill, imbues nearly every aspect of our cultures. There's always a new cohort of people wanting to extract more out of artists for their own gain-- either in art or income-- while calling artists selfish for wanting a slice and telling them to get a "real job". Such is life.