2025-11-23
I remember being a prolific pirate as a kid. Of course, I was broke, so how was I supposed to get games and software? I was lucky to have parents that would buy me things, but there was a limit to that. I couldn't exactly justify to them the cost of things like Photoshop or random PHP-Nuke themes. I was lucky enough to have my hosting paid by them.
As soon as I had income, I stopped pirating* and bought what I needed. It felt good. Not in that I loved shoving a hand full of money into someone else's pocket, but that I was in a position where I could now do that without begging my parents for stuff. It feels liberating to have income, especially while still in school without adult responsibilities.
I love free stuff, but I also understand that some things are important and worth paying for. I donate to projects and people when I have the chance. I try not to take things for granted. And I also pay for services that nobody else in their right mind would.
Fastmail
I became acquainted with Fastmail back when Opera owned them. I was a big Opera user before it was sold off, and also used a My Opera mail account. When Opera shut that down, they referred people to Fastmail (now spun-off) and I moved over. I think this was the first service I ever paid for that is considered free. I would later use a domain and now operate most things off of @tchbnl.net. You can send spam to me@tchbnl.net.
Fastmail is the best email provider I've ever been with. There's no gimmicks or a bloated interface advertising other stuff or using your data to build a profile for advertisers. They just sell email hosting. And I pay them for it, which makes me the customer. I'm not the product that Google sells to its actual customers. Fastmail has proven to be reliable, and it opened the door for me considering paid options for other essential services. Email is important to me. It's essentual. It's worth the $50 I throw Fastmail each November.
Kagi
What's crazier than paying for email hosting? A search engine. Search is free. Who the heck pays for search? We have Google and DuckDuckGo. We had (RIP) Cuil. We can Bing it. The idea of paying for access to a search engine is totally foreign to people outside of special fields with their niche services like LexisNexis.
Here comes Kagi. A new search engine startup that offers web search for ten dollars per month. In exchange for those ten dollars I now have access to the richest search results without all the ads and spam of Google. Like DuckDuckGo, Kagi has bangs to make it easier to search other services (I use !wa for WolframAlpha a lot, but Kagi can do most things on its own now). Kagi also has its oen killer features, like being able to hide sites (no more Pinterest spam!) or adjust their ranking in results. I use regex to make all search reddit results open to old.reddit.com. I have custom bangs for work. And I can narrow results down to spheres like forums or trusted news sites.
If Kagi doesn't return results, it's because there's nothing to return. I could have five results from Kagi, but Google returns pages. And it's pages of junk. I stopped comparing results with !g after a month.
YouTube Premium
Yes, I have YouTube Premium. I pay for YouTube. The biggest reason at first was no ads and background play on the iOS app. I caved. But now there's other reasons I happily pay for it. For example, creators I watch still receive a cut even though I'm not served ads. And I understand YouTube is a massive operation with real costs.
But the biggest part of the value prospect for me now has become YouTube Music. I hated it at first. Why am I paying for a service I don't use? I should be able to get a cheaper tier without it. I use Apple Music. But then I realized... YouTube Music also includes YouTube videos. So those 1-hour mixes or songs that aren't on services but in some old AMV? On YouTube Music. YouTube Music also has a music locker, but most of what I'd upload to Apple Music was just ripped from YouTube.
...
I think there's value in paying for services that can be had for free. It's important to show support to the things you depend on. It feels good to be a customer and know a company only cares about you. And I get real value from these services. I don't think I could ever go back to freemail or a free search engine after experiencing the premium side.
*Except for streaming services, because now every grandma has their own and I am not paying that. I do have Apple TV at the moment, though. Pluribus is an amazing show.
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