amanda palmer's open poem to jonathan chait (and other crimes)

look, i think it's great amanda palmer has had some success with her schtick. i kinda feel dumb for piling on. anyone who can bull their way into the public consciousness the way amanda palmer has, and can finance the music they want to make - it's impressive. not every self-aggrandizing narcissist can pull that off.

but not every artist is a self-aggrandizing narcissist, or lucky. so her prescription isn't applicable for everyone, or even for most. i mean, once you start talking about hey, how SHOULD work that doesn't pull in financial remuneration in predictable or traditional ways (making music, running a household, raising a child, caring for someone with an illness, writing a book) be compensated, you start dealing with fairly fundamental, non-futuristic political issues

okay, so i've been pointedly not mentioning this but I happen to be good friends with the guy who booked the amanda palmer TED talk and we had dinner tonight and when i broached the subject it was clear that he had no idea there had been any negative backlash at all.
he asked me to mail him a few negative articles. Can i get a reader's digest of links? People wanna post their faves?

lol

i mean i could just mail him this thread but no

I'm still baffled he hadn't heard one negative comment. He was honestly totally surprised?

he thought i was talking about the way she had handled the hiring free musicians thing; he was not aware of any negativity surrounding the TED talk.
He's a good guy and genuinely curious to hear why people might have had an issue with it; I'd like to send him some cogent commentary on the subject from people who actually cared enough to write about the more problematic issues with that talk. Maura?

is he tuomas? i mean i appreciate that you're trying to help a bro, but is publicity not his alleged game?

it's not; he booked the TED talk. but as long as we're talking about it, do you know of any articles discussing logical/ethical issues with that talk?

smdh @ this from ap's blog

"i wound up in a fit of weeping a few days ago when my old piano teacher and mentor from college posted on the TED website that i was a manipulative piece of shit.
i cried for a good 10 minutes. i went to twitter for comfort….and someone sent me a link to the local newspaper article explaining that she’d had a stroke and couldn’t play piano for a while. and i started weeping all over again"

xpost

I don't know of many articles about it, but they critically discussed the TED talk on this podcast (starts 19 minutes in):

http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/culturegabfest/2013/03/culture_gabfest_podcast_channing_tatum_vs_taylor_kitsch_amanda_palmer_and.html

smdh @ this from ap's blog

"i wound up in a fit of weeping a few days ago when my old piano teacher and mentor from college posted on the TED website that i was a manipulative piece of shit.
i cried for a good 10 minutes. i went to twitter for comfort….and someone sent me a link to the local newspaper article explaining that she’d had a stroke and couldn’t play piano for a while. and i started weeping all over again"

It's funny that she was upset at her teacher for calling her a manipulative piece of shit while writing something that illustrates perfectly why she is a manipulative piece of shit.

another critical mention of the TED talk en passant: http://gawker.com/5989280/when-people-write-for-free-who-pays

It seems like its more something that gets invoked as part of broader arguments rather than a sufficient hook for an article on its own. (i guess despite declining journalistic standards, "this person was on youtube and now i'm so irritated" still doesn't quite make the cut).

Send him this thread

The EMP Pop Conference event in NYC in April will also feature a keynote talk by legendary producer Joe Boyd and a live-streamed keynote discussion by singer/composer/online entrepreneur Amanda Palmer

She's making the rounds

Followed by a stint as a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

i sent him the thread and a handful of other links. c'est la vie

http://www.soundonsight.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/madame-medusa-rescuers.jpg

Yes!

I don't know what a TED talk is, I'd sort of assumed it had something to do with the recent film...

So anyway, it seems to be in summary:
1) APalmer says something unconcienceable
2) People want to physically assault her for it.

Guess i don't have to see that movie now

great summary

shes doing the fucking keynote at EMP?!

just what we needed http://amandapalmer.net/blog/20130421/

You don't know how to get your eyebrows back

I have seen the dark universe yawning
Where the black planets roll without aim-
Where they roll in their horror unheeded,
Without knowledge or luster or name.

^ hp lovecraft's preemptive poem about reading amanda palmer's poem about dzhokhar tsarnaev

amazing

she is seriously the worst

you don't know how much I don't need your poem right now

Site wanted me to download malwarethe Amanda Palmer app

Dear God,

Thank you for inventing the Comments section of every website ever.

Love always,
DDW

I love this.
I'm 18. He's a year older than I am. I think it was so strange how the media was interviewing his friends and acquaintances. They all said basically the same thing, that he was nice and friendly and this is totally unexpected.
Then I sat there and kind of realized that's the scary part. He was human and pretty 'normal'.
Some people are saying we should kill him or hate him. I hate the act he committed. I hate the pain he caused. I don't think I could ever hate him though, or wish death on him.
Or anyone else like him.
I was just talking about your bully blog last night actually. When I was about 12 or so I was on the beach down the street from me when the schools most renowned bully and all of his friends showed up. They pushed me around and called me a 'fat faggot' over and over again and broke my glasses and left me there.
Last year we were 17 and he threatened to blow up the school and he's now on house arrest. His futures permanently scarred. No one likes him. And he has no social life.
I was a victim of his and yet I feel bad for him.
Clearly he has problems.
We all have our own problems.
I wish people would remember that.
And I wish people would remember how fear is such a more intense feeling than happiness. It's more controlling. It's more physically shaking and paralyzing and controlling than a lot of our other emotions.
I'm glad they didn't kill him.
I hope he grieves.
And he fixes the damage he's inflicted somehow. By jailtime or something. I don't know.
But I also hope he finds himself again. And I hope he escapes whatever hell that's been shaking him.

followed a link to her blog from twitter on my phone -- the site asked if i wanted to install the amanda palmer app for android

surely that's worse than that simpy troll poem

the schools most renowned bully

i'm still trying to parse the outpouring of sympathy

smdh

So:

At the end of the poem, there's a link to donate to a relief fund for victims and survivors of the bombing.

IMMEDIATELY AFTER, there's a link to donate to Amanda Palmer, to compensate her for her time in writing her own blog.

this is so funny

five dollars, wonder what her acceptance rate is

this is messed up

Jesus, I always think you lot are a little bit harder on her than she deserves - I mean she's just a narcissistic nut doing what narcissistic nuts do - but this is really insane. It must be great to live so completely without embarrassment though.

you don't know how great it is

warning: hateful commenters trying to hack the blog by mimicking regular benevloent users’ names. please proceed with caution and respect.

. . .

you don’t know how to tell the girl in the chair next to you that you’ve been peeking at her dissertation draft and there’s a grammatical typo in the actual file name.

Oh my God you guys the fans of her fans are almost worse than her own fans.

where do i find the fans of her fans, is there some kind of earth-2 ilx for that?

just mention her on twitter and they come swarming

Hey Amanda Palmer, I heard you like fans, so I gave some fans to your fans so you can brag while you blog.

we're going to poll the poem, right?

Amanda Palmer Mod • 17 hours ago −
there has to be more than the news, the facts. making art is how I deal.

connect the dots

we all are.

That's a terrible Gary Numan lyric.

that poem is the same icky nonsense as that sufjan song about john wayne gacy

commenters doing God's work over there

ugh, forgot about that song