I don’t have many rules for my critter drops at SDCC. Just one, really. One critter per finder. Find one, take a pic, tell me where its new home will be. Then leave the rest for others to find.
A photo had surfaced on Instagram of a veteran finder with a critter in hand. I was initially excited about it, thinking that the finder had brought one of their older finds back to SDCC for the photo op. Then I noticed a detail in the photo that indicated that this wasn’t an old critter that was brought back, but one of the new ones that I had made for this year. The problem is that this person had already found and checked in a new critter earlier, and it wasn’t the same one in the Instagram photo, which had supposedly been checked in by someone else. They found two and faked a check-in for one of them. The part that’s even more upsetting is that this is someone who’s been looking for my critters for years, and someone that I’ve befriended over time, and they still didn’t honor the rules. At one point I ran into them in person during SDCC and they were even showing me that they could’ve picked up other critters throughout their time at SDCC, but stuck with the rule of taking only one, which turned out to be untrue.
I’m fully aware that there’s many ways someone could be dishonest and find a workaround to the “one critter per finder rule.” But I do this entirely on the honor system that people will respect the work that I’ve put into this. I give a lot of leniency to my drops. I don’t mind proxies, because that way folks with mobility issues or with small children can still participate. I don’t care what you do with the critter once you’ve taken it, you could dump it in the trash immediately, and while that would make me sad, it’s entirely in your right to do so. One critter per finder. Not even one per household, per finder. That’s it.
It’s been 15 years of spending my own time and money to make these critters for people to find. I don’t do this for clout or money. Each one is handcrafted, and I do it strictly out of seeing the joy that it brings to people, and I’d like to make sure as many people can have that chance as possible. I’ve been doing this with the philosophy that you get back what you put out in the world. But that relies on me placing my trust in people to do the right thing.
I shouldn’t have to police my own hobby. I’m not really sure where to go from here other than monitoring my drops, which I really didn’t want to do. I take the “dump ‘n dash” approach because SDCC is a busy time, and I don’t always want to hang around to see who picks up a drop. I also kind of like having the mystery behind not knowing what happens when I walk away.
What’s done is done, but for those of you who have enjoyed the hunt and respected the rules, thank you for all that you do. You’re the ones who have brought just as much joy to me as I hope my drops do for you. I do this for my own enjoyment, and the day it stops being fun, the drops stop. This has been a hiccup in the running vein of trust that I’ve built for my critterdrops, and I may have to change how I do things. But for now the show goes on.
Until the next round of drops,
~Cindy
