I originally wrote this on my Facebook after a brief little arguement about the new Avatar DVD release. It leans more to the lines of the comic convention crowd, but there's some things in here that I think some of you will appreciate too.

Next week a special collector's edition of Avatar is coming out on DVD. This is only 6 months after the first DVD release came out, and less than a year after the movie was released.  Do you think there's a reason why they couldn't just release the regular DVD and the Special Edition DVD at the same time like so many other companies do?  Hell we all know it.... more money.

I hesitate to call it explotation, but at the same time I don't know what else to call it.  A company offers you Version A and you buy it. Six months later the same company offers you Version B which is superior in every way.  And one year after that they offer you Version C which is the best of all.  Of course they could had offered Version C when they originally offered up Version A, but that means they wouldn't have had those extra opportunities to make money.  Explotiation? Well if not, you give me a word for it.

Ultimately, this is just another example of a very bad trend that's going on in all areas in the Entertainment World - squeezing every nickel and dime out of the fans.  Maybe I'm romanticizing things, but I swear I remember a time when creators, artists, and actors seemed to give a shit about their fans or at least weren't so blantently obvious in saying "give me more of your money bitch."  It seems like there was a time we were treated more like fans rather than consumers.

It's this same attitude that's turned me off so much to my once beloved convention scene.  The $20 autograph is almost a thing of the past.  Now it's ranging from $30 to $50.  Froggy's Photo's are making it near impossible for personal photo's and doubling the price in the process.  Hell, it's this very thing that transformed ComiCon from a comic book convention to a media outlet.

So whose fault is this?  Do you blame Gene Simmons who put the Kiss logo on anything it could be put on?  Do you blame Peter Jackson who put out 17,000 different Lord of the Rings DVDs?  How about Marvel Comics for releasing the same comic with 6 different covers?  No.... ultimately it's our fault. We're the ones that buy 3 versions of the same video game to get an extra level in each pack. We're the ones who stand in line to pay $200 to have our picture taken with Patrick Stewart. And we're the ones who will buy the special edition of Avatar knowing full well than 3 months before the sequel comes out yet ANOTHER even more special edition will be released.

We're idiots.

Maybe I'm being an idealist (something I've never been called), but I think we could fix it. I think if we showed a little restraint with our fan dollars we could get exactly what we want the first time around instead of being taken advantage of.  I may not be able to tell you what to do with your money but I can ask you to respect yourself a fan. Or rather value yourself as a fan. If it wasn't for us, these guys would be nowhere. And even if they've forgotten that, we shouldn't.