Look, this is an unpopular opinion for real... but writers have been fighting the wrong battle all along. Piracy has never been the enemy. Readers, viewers, distributors... aren't the enemy.

The enemy is a society that squeezes every drop of capital out of its citizens.

We shouldn't be fighting to get paid for our work. We should be fighting for everyone to be paid a living wage. Everyone, not just writers.

And our special skill is our voices—using them in a powerful way—so we have a special responsibility to fight for more than ourselves.

I want people to read my work, AND I want to be able to eat and have health care.

I don't want to be able to eat and have healthcare BECAUSE people read my work.

I've lost friends over this distinction, so I've learned to keep my mouth shut. But I don't deserve basic rights because I'm a writer. I certainly don't deserve basic rights because I'm a good enough writer to make it.

I deserve basic rights because I'm a living, feeling being.

So, yes, Disney should pay their writers. Publishers should pay their writers.

But for goddamned hell's sake, that shouldn't determine whether anyone can afford food and health care. And when we act like that's WHY they should pay, we've already fucking lost.

When corporations are able to turn the argument into one of survival instead of ethics, they can make us turn on each other because pirates are taking food out of our mouths.

But pirates never took food out of anyone's mouths.

The ability to write great fiction should NEVER be a prerequisite to basic survival. When the corporations hoodwinked us into believing it was, they got us to turn on everyone doing the hard labor of working at restaurants, grocery stores, hospitals, care facilities...

We're not better than other laborers, and since writers use their voices to invent new worlds, steering the direction of this world by effecting what this world is able to imagine, we owe everyone else better than clutching at the dollars that piracy might represent.

So, yeah, I know that a lot of the people I know are gonna hate this thread.

But I've been scared into being quiet about this for too long.

Everyone deserves food, health care, shelter, and warm clothing. Not just those of us who can spin our words into fancy tapestries.

I support universal basic income.

Once we have UBI, then anyone can be a writer, and it won't just be for the privileged. Which, to be clear, RIGHT NOW IT IS.

Society needs to take care of everyone. Not just people who can somehow prove their worth by making art.

And yes, I know, it's possible to care about more than one thing at a time. And yes, it doesn't have to be one thing or the other...

Except it kind of does. Because when you say you need the money represented by piracy in order to eat... you're buying into the broken system.

If you don't buy into the broken system that blames writer-hunger on pirate-theft, then suddenly you need the money represented by piracy because...

Um...

You want it?

Doesn't have the same ring, does it? To get that extra punch, you have to throw everyone else under the bus.

We make the narrative. It's time we made a better one.

Okay, so, this was fun. Time to take my dog on a walk, and try to ignore the fact that I've basically just asked all of writer twitter to hate me forever.