* Can we not just seperate the joke from the person who made it? Like, for example, Harry Potter is a great series of books, but the person who wrote it is fucking awful (massive transphobe). But do we not read Harry Potter because of her? No! We pirate it so she gets none of the profits!
Now you can't exactly pirate a meme, but you can seperate the art from the artist (or in this case the joke from the jokester)
Hey, they still put effort into it! If you're going to consume their products and not pay them for it, that's money that could have gone, would rightfully have gone, to their employee's paychecks! Imagine working your whole schooling life to get into the gaming industry and signing up for Nintendo, only to be layed off because the company "can't afford to keep spending so much". I'm not saying dump your money into them, but you wouldn't take the products/services of a grocery store without paying for it, would you?
It very much is.
What, you think just because they have a lot of people and a lot of money they don't care?
Of course they do, managers still have souls.
Even if they're small ones...