Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut luctus eget tortor nec tincidunt. Donec quis augue ex. Etiam scelerisque justo quis tincidunt varius. Etiam sollicitudin finibus quam, non laoreet nisi aliquet eget. This is to clear the public portion.
As you all have probably noticed, while private facing stuff is still "fun", I've done my best to clean up the public facing portion, which includes the byline and any titles going forward, the content itself. And some more dubious changes, like hiding the monetary support amount.
I'm not hiding it from you, you can always ask me or estimate it. Per recommendation, I am hiding it from the company that is parodied by FinBro in the game.
You might be aware that online spaces are fairly hostile to us, especially financial services which put it in their ToS dubious stuff about the type of stuff you can get financial support for and are applied haphazardly without explanation or recourse. Which is obviously a death sentence.
This was one of the recommendations, along with sanitizing the forward facing portion of the website, making it easy for them to ignore it. All of them basically kinda turn a blind eye to stuff and offer very little recourse.
Even this platform, or Google, can just ban you and never explain why or give you a chance to restore your standing, even if your account is decades old. Our own Swagmaster got banned without any recourse recently, I lost my Google account due to not being online for a year. They have no customer support, or even when they do, they just give you the run around. It's easy to get f'd, even easier than in Bindr.
The number was also a gross ~100% overestimation
There's a lot of stuff to consider, while you can expense a lot of stuff on an LLC, there is still healthcare (which isn't free anywhere, even in Europe, they sit on your salary from what I understand), taxes, minimum wages for retirement build up etc. Effectively, you get slammed by at least 40-48% on whatever you make, and there's also a lot of kerfuffling if support comes from different countries, existing and non-existing tax treaties and stuff.
There is the secret ingredient of crime, where I could "obtain" stuff through different channels or you know, ignore the IRS, but I am not ready to replace the hospital bed with a prison cell as I live in a place where copyright infringement and stuff is serious business.
In the end, at the moment, I am about 40-50% below the federal poverty line (FPL) and thus why I can't make this my full time job yet, but I am treating it as such as I am with my family until I get better and get back my software engineering job. They're very gracious and are just happy I'm alive right now. But that won't last forever, I will have to get back in the saddle at a "real job" eventually.
This really isn't about "making it big"
My previous software engineering job was on the low end for the type of work I did, and I brought home around $6200 / month, most of which was eaten by living costs. Bindr was never matching that, not even at its peak. At best, my hope was to do this for a living one day. But that was never mandatory, it isn't mandatory. I never needed it.
F95 is often filled by people from Europe, places like Georgia, where they perceive the incorrect "big" numberand think I'm out here buying Lamborghinis or whatever.
Everything is pretty much reinvested, right now I have $218 on my personal account. I couldn't afford a month's rent if my life depended on it (shoebox is 10x that). I am eating my mom's food.
I don't know, man, even at my peak, I had none of those things. I didn't want them either, to be honest.
I am super grateful for all of you. 🥰
This post is just about transparency. You guys are keeping this project alive, without exaggeration. In a perfect world where I didn't have to bother with staying alive and stuff, I'd do this pro bono because it's amusing as fuck.
But that's not the world we live in, and these days, it feels like it's getting worse.