Thoughts on Cosplay Funding

We feel so horribly uneasy about the new "cosplay funding" trend. I want to state first: yes, of course everyone has the right to spend their hard earned money the way he/she wants. And some people want simply to support the cosplayers they appreciate, which I also can understand very well. But the more I see this trend expanding, the more uncomfortable I feel. 

You know, in our eyes, it really depends on a project. Raising a money for a cosplay calendar to help sick kids? Sure. Raising money to produce a calendar for cosplay lovers? Of course. Raising money for a high-quality documentary about cosplay which will represent this hobby really well? Nice.

But to us, this line also ends somewhere here. We think that you can ask for big sums of money to create something unique, but then again, you really should be able to create it. Otherwise it's not justified in our eyes. And then again, what is a big sum of money?

I get that if you want to print a calendar, it may be around 1000-1500$. Maybe higher. If there is a team behind it that will deliver the actual results, we think it's justified. I think that public fundraising in regards to cosplay is wonderful because it allows so much, and yet… we will be very honest here, we have not seen a project yet which was really worth it's money. 

You know, with this trend expanding we get the feeling that many people are actually forgetting that if you choose a hobby, you choose to pay for its expenses. There are projects out there, half-way funded or not funded at all, where people just stand there with their hands stretched out, waiting for money to grab. We just saw a funded project of someone who wanted to gather money for her photo shoot in which she bakes cookies (?!). And she got funded. There are people out there who unsuccessfully tried to gather money for an huge holiday trip, disguised as an epic photo shoot cosplay adventure for, hey, 10 000$ only! 

And this time I ask myself how something like this can even be asked for. 10 000$ is a sum that simply makes me scared. It is just like some people forget what a 10 000$ can do. You can live for a year from this money, pay off student loans in Europe, build a school in a third world country, help someone fighting a horrible disease, invest in you future, gosh, I don't even know. I never even held such a sum in my hands before. It's just like so many people have already forgotten what a crazy, crazy sum of money it is. 

We think that if one wants a sum this huge for a trip, one can also just earn this money. Like, you know, earn through work. Because cosplay is a hobby. It is not a charity. I wouldn't go as far as saying "it does not give you the right to ask for money", because hey, no one should get into people's heads. 

I just think that people should think rationally when asking for money. Apart from common decency (honestly, we can't even imagine asking people on the internet for 50$), raising money for cosplay seems like such a double-edged sword. If you do get people to invest a huge sum of money into your project, you are taking a huge responsibility. In fact, you are giving away a big part of your "cosplay freedom" because now, that you use money other people explicitely gave you for a clearly defined purpose, you give up the right to do as you please. You HAVE to meet expectations and have to use that money in a way that will satisfy other people. In short, your cosplay project stops being about you, in a way. And that, I think, is something many people don't consider when carelessly asking to fund something. When we start talking of thousands of dollars it really becomes "serious business". 

Of course we are always open for discussion and different opinions on this topic