About us

PaperDemon.com is an art and writing community focused on supporting neurodivergent artists find acceptance and motivation. Our Art RPG inspires artists to create by providing creative prompts and rewarding participation with virtual items.

Learn more about the PaperDemon Art RPG

 

Why did we create PaperDemon?

Hi, my name is BogusRed and I'm the creator of PaperDemon.com.

 

For most of my childhood, I was bullied.

 

My learning disability and difficulties making and maintaining friendships left me with seriously low self-esteem. My childhood is full of traumatic memories of being bullied and trying to fit in and feel accepted by my peers. It wasn't until I discovered my talents for the arts that I started to develop some semblance of self worth.

I was a teenager right around the dawn of the world wide web, when Americans were just starting to get online with services like AOL. I frequented many text chatrooms where I did a lot of Dragon Ball Z roleplay. It was fun at times, but my difficulties with being bullied continued even online as I continued to struggle with poor spelling, grammar, understanding social cues, and fit in with others.

I created PaperDemon to be the community that I needed as a young person. I place where neurodivergent creative people can feel accepted and supported; not bullied or ridiculed. I believe there's a huge intersection between neurodivergent people and creative people. Neurodivergent people like those with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Attention Deficit Disorder often struggle to fit in. But the act of creating has the power to heal and build self-efficacy. It is our passion for art and our common neurodiversity that brings us together to support one another and build up our confidence.

I've heard from so many young creators over the years how they've also struggled to fit in with their relationships both online and IRL. There are many toxic communities and environments online and on social media that don't offer strict consequences for toxic behavior. I believe strongly that strict community guidelines, swift consequences and zero tolerance for bullying are important for fostering a positive community where marginalized creatives can feel comfortable enough to speak up, share their passions, and thrive.

No one deserves to be bullied. We owe it to ourselves and each other to create a space where we can feel accepted and encouraged to create. I hope you will join me in building a place that makes a real difference in peoples lives.

Much love, sunshine and rainbows,

~BogusRed 

PS: If you see a PaperDemon moderator in the chat, shower them with love for all that they do. They work tirelessly to keep our community safe and enforce our community guidelines.

 

How do you make money?

PaperDemon makes money via these avenues:

  • Since 2021, our members can purchase premium virtual items from our shop.
  • Since 2020, other Art Role Playing Game communities came to PD to host their Art RPGs on PaperDemon. Some of these larger communities pay PaperDemon a monthly fee to host their groups on the PaperDemon platform to get access to special moderation tools to help them moderate and run their game.
  • Since 2019, we've been supported by our Patrons on Patreon.
  • Since who knows when, our members can to a Premium Account to get extra account features.

As of the time of this writing in 2023, all money made is reinvested back into creating content and development of PaperDemon. Prior to summer of 2020, PaperDemon had never generated enough income to cover the expenses to run it and the majority of the costs were covered through the out-of-pocket expenses of the founder, Susie.

In the past, PaperDemon had been supported by minimal advertisements and premium membership purchases. We tried an advertisement based business model and it didn't work too well for us. In order for this to work, we'd have to spend a lot of time chasing down people to buy ads and/or plaster annoying ads everywhere. We have no intention of ever going back to an ad based business model.

 

History

The PaperDemon website originally launched on the domain bogusred.net in September 2002. It later moved to PaperDemon.com in 2005.

In 2017, it was formalized into PaperDemon, LLC as Susie Sahim began to pursue PaperDemon more seriously as a business. Some time around them we launched the XP feature for participating in art challenges that we hosted.

Around June 2020 we reorganized our challenges into a structured Art RPG and launched the first Art RPG challenge.

I should probably write more here at some point sorry. But you could poke through our news section to find old news to get some history.