There is no free lunch, right? It gets clearer and clearer with time that “freebies” are usually there to lure us, to trick us and to hook us on to something we don’t really need. We’ve all experienced it, we all know how to stay away from it and we feel like it’s our choice whether we buy something or not. We don’t work for free, why would someone else give us things for free then? Something must be dodgy. Most likely to use our temptation and turn us into their customer on the longer run.

Yup, fair play, we know that. Strangely, the digital world is a different world where equivalents to the physical-reality rules are discarded. Online, everything should be free. Videos — free, apps — free, e-mail clients — free, movies and music — should be free, we’re brainwashed they shouldn’t, but we feel like they should. Now where does that certainty come from? Why do we feel confident that because it is not physical, it’s not exactly real, hence it should not be paid for?

I have personally experienced the strange feeling of “how come this is paid? well, I don’t need it anyway”. Especially when I was to get a tune or a template to design with. There is also this bizarre feeling that “there must be a way to get this for free somewhere”. And there comes the strange guilt and I end up not getting anything. The reason for this mindset is simple — we, the conscious adults, belong to the transitional age. We have come in to the world and got used to its physical goods, toys, the VHS tapes, DVDs, CDs, mp3s etc — things we touch to make them work, which suddenly started transitioning to online, where we simply experience them. They were put there by curious and open humans who were experimenting, they were hardly ever there to maintain someone’s business or living. They were there for fun. So we could just go online, pull that on our machine, enjoy it briefly before we dispose of it and get a new one.

But here we are with our iPhones. Have a look at the machine you’re reading this on. Yes, every single piece of material is the product of many minds, minds with families, jobs, hobbies, passions. Yes, you get that, we’ve paid for these machines, it’s a fair game. Now go to the home screen in that device. Every single pixel on that screen is built by someone. Every service running on that machine maintaining the processes necessary for you exercising your duties or whatever you’re doing there, is built by humans, by minds, by ideas, passions and hard work. It’s hosted somewhere, people are running and fixing things every time you experience a second-long glitch, they are working hard to build the service to please your wishes, to respond to your feedback, to ease your work process, to enhance your life. So every time you moan why that app is paid, ask yourself — why do you get paid?

I have heard many angry feedbacks on the introduction of paid features in startups which were free when they launched. If there is a feature which costs something like your milk or that coffee you didn’t even bother finish, people moan, complain and offend. Where are online startups supposed to be sustained from? How is that daily mindless swiping session going to happen if there are not a few genius people curled in front of their screens, excelling at their skills and perfecting the code which makes that orange magic on the screen happen? Those people are doing what they love most to make the service which you like, enjoy and share. If you were in a café, you would expect to pay for a drink, right? Would you moan and yell and offend the barista if they asked you for £2.50 for the latte? More important: would you avoid to get the paid coffee? Common sense questions, right. But here we are, complaining about this and that. Would you rather buy the cheaper milk and the cheaper meat? Sometimes yes, but usually not, because you know it’s most likely crap. It is extremely puzzling for me to see people unhappy when a service they enjoy is paid. What if the service you give were not paid, how would that feel?

This is not addressed to anybody personally, but to all the people who always question why would they have to pay for this and that when it’s just and app, or just online, and not really in their hands, not there to be touched or eaten. Here is a message — we, humans, survive with our minds, some learn things other can never grasp, but need. Value comes with need. If you need something, be prepared to pay for it. Be happy to pay for it, it could have not been there were it not for the minds that made it. Don’t devalue it because you can’t touch it. I bet I can’t touch your work either, so make sure you don’t moan next time you see an app for £1.29, please. Someone’s come up with that idea, another has given it a face, and a third — a heart and a body, which you need.