I've seen some rumblings this morning about "Patreon banning all Japanese-style art" and just wanted to say a couple of important things about it: please don't panic and fly off the handle based on a random Twitter screencap and please don't punish the creators you support for Patreon's business decisions (if, on the off-chance, any of this turns out to be true).
Both of these are extremely important.
It is super-easy for misinformation to spread, particularly on Twitter, and it pays to maintain a healthy skepticism any time something obviously wrong and stupid appears to raise its head. If Patreon is discriminating against creators who do things relating to Japanese-style art (which most people are interpreting as "anime") then that's obviously a bad thing, but until we hear any sort of official word on the matter, I would encourage you to keep an eye on the situation, but not make any sort of knee-jerk reaction.
Secondly, many creators rely on Patreon as a primary income stream. I'm fortunate (well, kind of) in that I have a day job through which I can support myself, and my Patreon income is additional pocket money I can use to invest into my site, but there are plenty of creators out there using Patreon as their primary source of money coming in each month. If you quit Patreon over these rumours — as I've already seen some people do, though thankfully no-one among you lovely people — then you're punishing the creators you support more than Patreon themselves.
Patreon isn't perfect. But at the moment, it's the most well-known platform for creators to crowdfund ongoing support for their work; people are hesitant to trust other platforms such as SubscribeStar for various reasons and I completely understand that. Just please remember you're supporting creators more than Patreon themselves.
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