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At what price do you sell out on your own wants, creative intentions, and values? At what point is the sum large enough that it becomes foolish enough not to, especially when the thing you'd be compromising on is an otherwise fairly common/expected practice? (1/7)

I've been offered not-insignificant sums of money on several occasions by various companies to put ads in Prismic's Avatar Search. The requests have always been respectful, but I've turned every one down based on my own principles and desires for the project to be ad free. (2/7)

I admit that I don't like ads, but I do respect their place and others' usage of them both to earn money and to promote some genuinely good products. I don't need the money myself though, and personally feel they detract/distract from the thing they're included in/with. (3/7)

But at the same time I've been called foolish for holding this stance. Told it's something normal/expected that many other successful worlds do, and that even if I don't need the money I could be putting it toward good causes, and that to not do so only serves my own pride. (4/7)

To me the world is my creative contribution to the VRChat community; providing something I believe is beneficial to everyone, and I want it to be as unobtrusive as possible as an expression of my vision/values, with no worry of ulterior motive to profit off others' works. (5/7)

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It's hard to write this without feeling like I'm bragging, but I've been called foolish enough that I genuinely want to get outside perspectives. Am I foolish? Is there justification in standing by my principles, even if the thing I'm against is otherwise normal practice? (6/7)

And if there is, does that scale infinitely? If turning a thousand dollars down is respectable, what about a million? Or would it be stupid to value my own self respect over that? Made up those amounts entirely, but I hope my point is made. At what point do you compromise? (7/7)