How was that constructive or beneficial to the conversation?
You complain about others until you find out it can be venting, then you DO what you complain about.
Just to make this interesting, do you realize that the making of beads is just as cyclical as anything else. Hell, those beads go back a long way in time and they have not always been popular. People "rediscover", that is the buying public rediscovers, and in this age, the video media sure goes a long way toward helping them.
What would you do if everyone, rephrase that, make it "nearly" everyone, stopped buying beads made by you, but kept buying the stuff in the local college bead shop, you know , the places stocked with the cheap imports. Now imagine the passing fancy of the public has attached itself to something else, like polymer clay. Enough so that even the cheap bead shop can't stay open, (happened not far from me, for real) what are you going to do?
You are a bead artist, how do you pay your bills? Sure there is some interest, but not enough to justify your expense. What do you do?
I made my first bead in 1984, fused my first plate in 1984, bent lamp panels starting in 1982, don't be snide in your remarks, fusing and lampworking is subject to the same cycles as anything else. It isn't that there will be "no one " interested, just not enough to keep the doors open.
AND while we are at it, do you have a storefront that you are paying the tab for with your beads? Or are you a basement bandit? Working out of your home? only have one "set" of bills to pay? I would keep the snide remarks to myself unless you can step up to the plate in the same "even playing field".
And if I had a line of giftware boats were doing all that great, I wouldn't spin my wheels selling supplies and teaching classes unless it were to supplement my income.
I just know the profit margin is really big on glass and supplies.
That last line was a joke.