the sims 4, in my experience, has been an extremely toxic community. simblrs (tumblr blogs dedicated to sim content) are notorious for controversy. what some custom content creators do can impact all of us in a negative way when it spreads. people constantly sending asks on blogs where items are when theres a 'where can i find' page and ignoring said page can cause a creator to close their asks for a while, if not indefinitely. some people feel threatened to release content by the community, because as soon as youve started releasing content, people want more. if you take a break from making content, ive seen creators get harassed on their blogs about when such and such is going to come out. they arent machines, theyre people. as a lot of simmers tend to only focus on content posts and not real life posts, i dont think they remember that.
some problems are from creators themselves. a lot of creators release custom content on patreon as exclusive content. thats allowed, but it has to be released to the public after a certain date. thats the policy of maxis. ive seen multiple users bypass this policy and nobody is complaining. everyone just donates to their patreon to get these 'exclusive downloads', nevermind that by copyright law, they should be public access by now. how are they supposed to get money without patreon? paysites. simblrs have actually been banned from tumblr for using a paysite called ad-fly that directs you to the site while showing you an ad. the problem with ad-fly is that it showed malware, and sometimes actually installed malware. i needed to install about five adblockers to protect my laptop before i could use those links safely. there are other alternative paysites simblrs use, but all of them are bad because most of them have the same thing - malware. any site that serves your customers malware isnt worth your time as a creator. thats why i havent monetized my content as of yet; i have yet to find a link shortener that gives money and doesnt serve malware. one may not exist.
another thing is that some people get harassed by others about how they do things. ive seen just about every type of body-shaming there is when it comes to creating sims because of preset downloads. instead of letting people enjoy making their sims, people take downloads and use them to harm others. ive seen a larger sim preset used for fat-shaming videos, which the creator specifically said, dont use this for fat-shaming. the reddit page is particularly mean-spirited. ive seen posts directly making fun of the 'generic tumblr sim' in a few posts. why are they making fun of how people make sims? making sims and sharing them with others is the whole point of the community. this is proof of how cruel the community has become in a whole for me.
