The original post: /r/3dprinting by /u/Geeksylvania on 2025-01-01 22:32:48.

These posts are nothing but upvote-bait and they’re all the same. Just because someone is selling something for a certain price doesn’t mean people are actually buying it, and the internet has always full of people selling overpriced junk to people too ignorant to know better. (And as some comments point out, some of these prints aren’t even that overpriced when you factor in the time cost and potential cost of failed prints.)

I follow this sub because I like to discover new designs and learn more about the technical side of 3D printing, but there are a ton of posts that are just people being bitter about 3D printing going mainstream or some random person selling generic prints online. There is a real issue of people selling prints of other people’s designs without permission, so posts on issues like this are perfectly valid, but if the whole point is getting mad at a random person on Facebook Marketplace charging too much for plastic toys, then it’s just ragebait.

I know this post will probably fall on deaf ears, but all the bitterness and negativity in 3D printing community really takes a lot of fun out the hobby. It would be more productive to have discussions on how someone can sell 3D prints in an ethical way without ripping off their customers or other creators. But a lot of the time, the point seems to be getting mad that 3D printers are becoming more user-friendly and some people are trying to take advantage of that to make money.

3D printers are only going to continue becoming easier to use, and there are going to be more and more people trying to monetize their prints, so I wish people would stop pretending to be surprised by this.