An article is posted to /r/sanfrancisco about the impending death of the city's art scene. Redditors (who happen to be a significant factor in this cultural shift) commence to climb all over each other to see who can post the most dismissive comment of non-STEM leeches on society.

Art can be made anywhere. I don't see how we have to massively subsidize artists lifestyles so they can live in one of the most expensive cities in the world.

This is so backwards. Reddit circlejerking can be done anywhere, but artists need a local ecosystem far more than programmers do, since many of them actually produce physical things and develop ideas off of each other.

Art isn't dying in San Francisco, San Francisco is building the largest, most well-funded community of art buyers in history. The problem with artists is that they have to suck for a while before they get good, and these spoiled children think they're owed $100,000 for every painting.

Reading between the lines, this redditor's logic is "rich programming redditors are moving in, so there's all this capacity to buy art eventually someday if we ever get around to giving a shit, but you haven't served us enough coffee yet."

If "characters" want to sit around and drink and smoke pot now, it's easier now more than ever, thanks to our ever growing support system, it's just that they're more likely to have to do it in Tracy rather than in an awesome place like San Francisco or New York, poor babies, while those of us morons who work every day supporting them with our taxes have to commute for hours from the suburbs to our jobs in the city.

Yes, you just sit around unemployed and get high and somehow magically art appears and then you get rich and famous. It's not like making art requires materials and promotion and time and talent.

I wanted to and tried support the arts in SF - I fully realize I'm a techie probably displacing someone. Went to as much local music as possible, but for actual artwork and exhibitions... spending $500 on a very average painting to hang in my crappy studio never worked out.

Supporting the arts is more than throwing money at art you don't understand and drinking beer at venues. It involves opening your eyes and your mind and actually trying to relate to and empathize with another perspective. No wonder this redditor's toe-dipping into the glamorous lifestyle of patronage failed to work out.

Except that most of them have very old rent-controlled leases. They're leeches and they're not going anywhere.

I doubt this redditor knows a single artist, but he somehow knows all about their tenancy arrangements and how hard they work.

The GI Bill still exists. Any of the artists who can't afford to live in the city can join the military just like Heller, do their time in service, and reap the benefits of the GI Bill.

Usually there's at least one guy like this telling all the poor people to suck it up and learn to program. But I haven't heard "join the army" before.

I actually made a lot of money doing a hobby I loved. But I knew it wasn't sustainable, so I pursued something that was. No one's stopping anyone from pursuing art, but living in the most expensive US city while having one of the lowest paying "jobs" is not simultaneously realistic anywhere.

To a redditor, art and hobby are synonyms, and San Francisco will be so much nicer once all the non-high-income professionals are expelled.