M.I.A. has launched her own Patreon.
As for what she’ll be doing with the page, she explains that she would like to do a bit everything: “I also want to make this fun and random: It might be ASMR Sri Lankan cooking, or I might go and stay in a silent Ashram in India for a month and just not speak, or I want to interview interesting people, do some reporting, make clothes, make paintings, just see where it takes me.”
She feels traditional platforms are too limiting and fake. She also called out platforms for selling users data to Cambridge Analytica: “I’m doing a Patreon, because I make so much stuff and record so many things that aren’t music and don’t fit on other platforms,” M.I.A. told Rolling Stone. “I’ve tried all the other platforms and it’s like: this one is too mean and hateful, this one is too fake and self-obsessed, and this one just sells all your data to Cambridge Analytica… Hopefully, this one is going to be just right.”
She went on, “I want to use the subscription money to feedback into the Patreon page; I want to really go and do a project that can help some people. Build a school or put on an exhibition, help upcoming artists or even build something you guys want me to build. It’s an] evolutionary process. I want to get back to using the internet in a positive way; I don’t want to be an influencer. I want to be a truth dispenser.”
Check out M.I.A.’s Patreon here.