I have read every post on this on this thread (No, seriously!) and a lot of you bring up a lot of good points. Some. . . not so much. I, personally, have not heard of this term you speak of. Nor have I seen this aforementioned comic strip (?) of which this term comes from. I am on 4chan a lot (even with the number of racist comments) and it has never come to my attention. As for the artists and their works, regarding the quality and the time they have taken to release them, I am kind of on the fence.
What's going on may not be wholly their fault. They are just the worker bees, the small fries important in their on way but (especially in these times) easily replaced. They don't truly have power of what they do or when they do it. It is up to their bosses or their bosses bosses what they are to do. Take a few weeks ago, come Friday all Timmy had to give us was the evolution of the Bad Moon EI, I'm sure everyone was like 'WTF?' (I know I was) there should have been 2-3 more EI evolving that week. Or at least one other. There are a number of things these kids could have had to work on.
They had to make sure the zOMG event was running smoothly, they had to make sure the Halloween event was doing its thing, the 'Trick or Treat'-ing in the shops and Towns, and then someone had to make the Halloween Event CS items. Maybe the CS items were a last minute deal, maybe they weren't. Not to mention Thanksgiving and Christmas are around the corner. It also has to be said that it is kind of demanded of them to do bigger and better as they have been doing. Poses are getting more detailed EI are taking longer to get to their final phase. We don't know how long it takes to do these things or what it takes to complete them. We don't know. We don't know what they are doing at Gaia headquarters. Maybe someone got let go. Maybe they had to cut back on something. We. Don't. Know.
As it is prices are considerably high compared to what they were in the past (especially for non-evolving items). I, personally, hardly ever by anything from the CS, just the RIGs which I 'invest', I just wait for prices to fall in the marketplace and buy what I want.
*Looks back over what was typed* Sorry for the long post. . . BTW Can anyone send me the picture/ comic strip(?) that term comes from?