I started out pirating some of Ren's music (although the majority of what I downloaded were free singles and EPs to begin with); this was back when I didn't have a bank account and had no income. As soon as I had a source of income and set up my bank account, I ended up buying everything I'd wanted to, and splurged on all the physical releases I'd had my eye on.

I'm an artist myself; I sell prints of my work. But I don't really have a problem with someone printing my art out from their home printer and sticking it in their binder/on their wall/wherever. I've had fans share my work around with their friends this way, helping me gain exposure and new fans, and they eventually bought my stuff once they could afford it/started making income. I can sympathize, since I've been there myself, and I still continue to support (though exposure, and now, financially) the artists whose work I'd print and stick in my high school binder some 10+ years later. From my experience I find it's generally true that people who pirate things do end up supporting you once they're able to.

Now, ripping someone's entire library of work en masse, altering/selling it as your own, or leaking subscriber-exclusive content when an artist has explicitly stated their disapproval of doing so—that's taking things too far. I've seen people try to pawn off bootleg lapfox merch, and I flag that stuff as I come across it. I can't imagine anyone wanting inauthentic merch (especially when thieves often use whatever badly-compressed jpeg images they can find lol), but it happens, and it's disrespectful to do such a thing in the first place.

IMO, it's one thing if you're a consumer of a product and you can only pick up little bread crumbs here and there with intention to buy the whole loaf once you're able to; it's another to clear the shelves and take everything indiscriminately, to ignore a creator's wishes, and to try to pass off another's work as your own.