You:

Artists do labor for free all the time **myself included **

I'm glad you've had that privilege. I'm not sure what else you think I might be referring to or how you think this is not 'engaging' with what you said.

I said nothing about the second half of your a message because it's a semantic argument, a.k.a skill issue:

Yeah, go to someone telling them you can do their work better than them, out of the blue, and they're not going to have have a good response.

What if you said: "Hey guys. I love the community! You might have seen me commenting around too. I just wanted to let you know I do art sometimes and if you're ever looking for new assets, like your banner, I'd be happy to collaborate. Cheers!"

Would you be upset at getting a message like that out of the blue? People cold solicit all the time, it's not a bad thing.

But it's not going to work if you present like you know better than everyone else. People disagree with people, not with facts.

My whole point was that being able to give away your time and skill for free is a privilege.

What's the point of clutching pearls at the use of AI, if the result of not using AI is checks notes artists don't get paid for their work anyways because now you can hang the use of AI over their heads to get art for free, with the excuse that doing so 'is not pro free labor, it's anti AI'

Valuing art is giving value to art. No budget for art? Cool, use AI. You get what you pay for. But wait, you're telling me the solution to put more money in artists pockets is instead for artist to give MORE art for FREE? (For the noble cause of avoiding AI of course) See how insane this is?

I have nothing against gifting art. But that is what is it is: a gift. Something of you that has value, with your time as a baseline, that you are choosing to share. Some people are privileged enough to be able to give it away for free. Some are not. The effective reality is that the more art is gifted in the name of moral crusades against AI, the harder it is for artists to live off art in a world where the genie of AI can't be put back inside its bottle.

I hope this makes you happy and engaged lol

Edit: Here's another idea. Want to volunteer for your community? Cool, how about organizing a GoFundme to put together money to commission a banner. Maybe make a post about the possibility of doing that instead.

Bam. You have given to your community for free, you have made a community event of it. And even if all you get is 5 bucks, that's five bucks that some artist got to spend in their gacha addiction thanks to something they created.

That's what I mean when I say valuing art means giving value to art.