"TLDR"

Give this artwork item Community Awards if -- and ONLY if -- you want to give me a gift (or you just have a bunch of Point Shop points you don't care about). If you want the full lore, read on. :)

I like buying things in the Points Shop; this must be distinctly understood, or nothing meaningful can come of the explanation I am going to relate. Unfortunately, the total cost of the things I want to buy there -- and the things I may want to buy in the future -- outstrips my current point balance.

Now, I could ask people who enjoy what I do, to shower me with Community Awards, which give points. However, that brings up a complication: I actually believe in the Community Awards system and it would make me feel bad for a comment, or one of my guides, or even my profile page to get a ton of awards dumped on it because that's not an accurate reflection of the community's sentiment toward that work (or toward me in general, in the case of my profile page).

A lot of people would no doubt say it's useless, or even cringe -- a brutal insult of our times -- to care about this stuff..."the sanctity of Community Awards". That's fine; I care about it nonetheless, even if other people don't. It makes me happy when people award my stuff, because it means something, even if it's something small.

Unfortunately, there's no way to transfer Points Shop points between users other than Community Awards. I'm sure Valve has its reasons for not letting you just put them into a trade offer or something, but here we are. And I didn't want to ask people to just give me a bunch of Awards because I genuinely believe that would damage a system that gives people a way to spread a little bit of goodwill in the world. I've got a Viridi guide with a few Community Awards on it right now, and I wouldn't want hundreds dumped on it -- even though I do like getting points -- because that's not organic. Every one of those existing Awards was put there specifically by someone who thought the guide was awesome, and that makes me happy in a way that a pile of hundreds of paid-for (or even donated) Awards never would.

And therein lies the conundrum: I want people to be able to give me points, but I don't want them to just put them on content/comments/posts or even my profile...so how do I get the points? And that's where this artwork comes in. It's a content item that is clearly not awesome (perhaps a little clever?) that can ethically be used as a points target because nobody will ever wonder if it's legitimately earned the awards (as it clearly hasn't).

WILL people actually donate points here? Admittedly, the chances are low. But having it here gives me a place to direct people who want to give me a gift that won't cost them anything (assuming they don't also value their points, but a lot of people seem not to), that I can feel good about.

"And that's enough for me! :)"