Last week, the satirical website The Hard Times took to social media to announce the creation of their Patreon as a way of supporting their continued publication. In a post explaining their decision, the staff of The Hard Times cited algorithm restrictions and blacklisting for causing many issues recently.
For example, if the website mentions a political figure or term, anything even remotely risque, or features swear words, then they’re punished with advertisers blacklisting them or seeing a restriction on their content by social media algorithms. In fact, this drastic decline has resulted in The Hard Times needing dire financial assistance, which they hope to satisfy with their new Patreon.
This completely DIY publication—though they did sell Hard Times before almost immediately purchasing it back—is completely owned and operated by its original creators, who run this publication because it’s their passion. “We don’t want to be dramatic, but your support via Patreon is the only way to keep Hard Times and Hard Drive alive,” the post says, “We’ve always resisted asking our audience for financial support and used as much personal money as we could to keep things afloat, but transitioning into a partially community-funded thing is our last real option.”
Their Patreon currently has three tiers: Poser ($5), Poseur ($10), and Hard Head ($25). Perks for patrons include exclusive articles, making playlists and articles about supporter’s bands or indie video games, giving merch discounts, and much more. Another community project of theirs includes “ a Hard Times and Hard Drive dating service where our editors will help satirically exaggerate facts about patrons, hype you up, and post what looks like screencaps from this made-up satirical Hard Times/Hard Drive dating profile to our social media and tag you.”
The post finishes by promising to refund patrons if their goal isn’t met and the Patreon shuts down. “Thanks for reading and the years of laughs, comments, and energy either way…P.S. We thought about making this funny but decided creating funny content online is what got us into this mess in the first place.”
You can subscribe to their Patreon here.
