I guess tonight’s the night for cigars and Scotch! 15 year old Cuban Padron and Lagavulin 16. Oh and the scent is Creed Oud Zarian. Have a great night brothers!

Dec. 31, 2025 Since today is the last free day, I want to be direct and honest. I joined this community primarily for the visual guide and open learning. With that now behind a paywall, the value no longer exists for me, and that alone is reason enough to step away. But there’s a deeper issue I want to call out clearly. Communities like this are not traditional products. The real asset is not the platform, the tiers, or the “perks”. It’s the MEMBERS. The value is created through shared experiences, daily engagement, questions, answers, feedback, and interaction. Without that, the platform is just an empty shell. From a business perspective, this means the community’s growth, retention, and perceived value are already being produced by the members themselves. Monetizing access on top of that is not about covering infrastructure or basic upkeep as those costs are negligible relative to the scale. It’s about extracting recurring revenue from an ecosystem whose value is largely generated by unpaid participation. Now add the economic reality. A $9 monthly fee may feel trivial to many in the US. For me, it isn’t. I live in a place where I spend under $1 a day on meals, and I often do extended fasts, meaning my entire monthly food cost can be lower than this membership fee. In that context, paying monthly for access that now excludes the very thing I joined for makes no practical sense. Paywalls don’t just filter commitment, they filter diversity, new voices, and international members. Fewer people means fewer conversations, less organic engagement, and ultimately a quieter community. That directly weakens the very asset being monetized in the first place. I’m not saying charging money is inherently wrong. I am saying this direction shifts the balance heavily toward revenue while relying on members to continue supplying the engagement that makes the community worth paying for at all. What originally made this community valuable wasn’t the platform or the structure, it was the people. The questions, discussions, shared experiences, and daily engagement are what turned this into something worth returning to. That engagement is the asset.