Best Music Writing 2012

i'd bet that personal level of outrage towards daphne carr (including demanding one's own $20 back) correlates strongly with self-identification re personal fiscal responsibility

@ sean, speaking from personal experience, the people I know who've received a grant to "make a thing", and that thing is not made, and the money needs to be returned, that money was spent 100% on expenses and rentals and labour, not spent on Netflix. I guess it makes sense that punters would assume that you automatically get a lobster dinner upon receiving a grant but that has not at all been my experience.

the reactionary fury of some of the people who have Daphne's back is completely bewildering.

― sean gramophone, Friday, 23 August 2013 17:47 (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

ya this is it

I'd say it has more to do with self-identification re one's fight vs. flight response

let's just say we're all projecting our bullshit on a fucked up situation

mostly

also, I... don't think this is the "circlejerk crit circle"? the lines are being drawn in weird places compared to what I've seen. honestly, and at the risk of burning bridges: the crowd of people who write for VICE is much more of a circlejerk crit circle.

i didn't donate to this but had i contributed i would've been fine just assuming that shit got fucked up and not getting my money back, but the opposite response is totally understandable/justified

da croupier otm

@ sean, speaking from personal experience, the people I know who've received a grant to "make a thing", and that thing is not made, and the money needs to be returned, that money was spent 100% on expenses and rentals and labour, not spent on Netflix. I guess it makes sense that punters would assume that you automatically get a lobster dinner upon receiving a grant but that has not at all been my experience.

for the record, def not my experience! so many artists and creative types are bad at money management, and chronically broke, which makes them shitty at managing sudden windfalls.

in this case, by "shitty at managing", i mean "wasteful and prone to rewarding themselves for years of ramen with several lobster dinners".

I can just about imagine doing this and then hiding under some coats for a year so I can sympathise, but eventually I would have to face the music, and the least difficult part of that music would be twenty people on a message board saying "this could have been handled better". Sorry about your mate but chill

Xps

I also can't be the only person for whom this Kickstarter con story was fresh-in-mind.

"chronically broke"

because the default state of someone in the publishing industry in 2013 is something else?

^^^

also maybe they were "development grants" :)

xp
What are you talking about? That's what I mean by "bewildering fury". Katherine: I wasn't criticizing anyone. I was just noting this reality.

I guess that's the thing: "con story." To me, "con" says that someone is deliberately out to screw people over. (The legal definition of fraud certainly says so.) And to me, that's a hell of an accusation to make of anyone without ironclad proof. It's not about cronyism, it's not about cliquishness, it's about maybe starting from the assumption that people weren't scammers (or lazy ne'er-do-welling spend-it-all-on-weed types).

I don't think anyone is disputing that this is a shitty situation that could have been handled better, but I also don't think the "reactionary rage" is where people say it is. I'm not furious at all; that's what baffles me, is how people read fury into this side (I hate the term "side" in this context but whatever) of the discussion.

there's just no point to this "fight the real enemy" shit. Sympathetic narrative or not, someone took 15k and wouldn't tell anyone - even the people who were working on the project - where it went. We only found out AFTER people got mean, which sucks, but makes it a weird time to start calling out the meanies. Daphne's said what she's going to do to fix the issue, no one appears to have a problem with it, so this "well i'd still like to vent (even though i'm not personally aggrieved)" vs "well you know who's WORSE?" debate is just hot air. but hey what's a discussion between critics without that.

I'm just glad my long-delayed Kickstarted book didn't have a year in the title. Of course, I raised less money. Also, I didn't give other cranky writers hope of being awarded with prestige for their writing upon completion of my project, which seems like the comically obvious subtext of this particular outcry.

@ sean, speaking from personal experience, the people I know who've received a grant to "make a thing", and that thing is not made, and the money needs to be returned, that money was spent 100% on expenses and rentals and labour, not spent on Netflix. I guess it makes sense that punters would assume that you automatically get a lobster dinner upon receiving a grant but that has not at all been my experience.

― ship who you wanna ship (flamboyant goon tie included), Friday, August 23, 2013 12:52 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

in the less creative more "government grants for something something energy something something security" research world, i'm told that some people are fond of expensing as much in the way of meals and travel as they can.

Katherine, a simple response to any of the folks who politely inquired over the last year long before the Vice article might have indicated good faith, but she never did

Well that and the money xxp

Anyway, if Katherine defended Carr the whole time instead of Whiney, I'd be less offended, what with all the "you're just upset you lost $30 get a real job" bullshit.

I mean, "offended" is the wrong word but w/e

I get that. I really do. But, like, I have emails I've been meaning to send for about three years now if not more, and my not having sent them probably makes me look like the worst person, but if I send them *now* it'll just be humiliating and crushing and impossible to even think about. I suspect lots of people do. (Or maybe I just tell myself that.) I'm not saying it was the right decision -- no one is, anywhere -- and obviously $17,000 from however many people is much higher stakes, but it's a decision I have more than a little empathy for.

xp: no, but it really is silly in a few select cases how outraged people are getting over the cost of a Seamless meaL

I hate that people are automatically jumping to the conclusion that she spent the money on self instead of, say, having any understanding of how things are made, and approaching a failure on that end with anything less than a compassionate attitude. I did not donate to the Kickstarter but I would happily donate $ to Daphne to help cover for her losses

More at the Poynter link from Daphne, who was interviewed by Andrew Beaujon.

And FWIW

http://no-trivia.tumblr.com/post/59112390393/we-dont-want-our-money-back-google-form-telling

http://drew-york.tumblr.com/post/59112578875/we-dont-want-our-money-back-google-form-telling

If you’re not a total shitlord, submit your name, and let Carr off the hook.

i totally understand telling daphne you don't want your money back when she contacts you but this is some misguidedly pious shit

in any case, i'm not looking forward to the false equivalency salon piece contrasting this and amanda palmer

If we're going to tar the sources of things said that may or may not be true, I don't really give any fucks about what the person who slagged Ebert like, half an hour after his death was announced, thinks is the "decent" thing to do in this situation.

Anyway, I could really use $50 right now ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

for what it's worth (I guess now we're disclaimering?)

- I don't remember what I donated, probably $15?

- I filled out that form because my first thought when I read the kickstarter update was "can I use this email address to tell you to keep my donation because if I can spend $15 on a cab I can spend $15 on reducing someone's crushing monumental guilt a tiny bit," and I appreciated that someone had streamlined the process. I don't agree with shaming people into what they should do with their money in most cases, which is why I didn't reblog the thing.

- I've met Daphne a few times at EMP or wherever and she always seemed friendly and professional -- which means something, but not the grand conspiracy some of the peanut gallery seems to think it is.

@katherine

It appears that almost half of this project's contributions came from those who donated 50 or less, coming from 85% of the total backers of this project. What may be the equivalent of a Seamless meal or six-pack to you is still money. People's attitudes towards money, spending, and their motivations for donating are really complex, and dismissing their contributions seems disingenuous. Without their goodwill, trust, and financial support, the project would have never succeeded on Kickstarter in the first place.

I get that. I really do. And I've tried to make it clear I'm not talking about A) people who genuinely need the money or B) people who have significant personal/financial stakes in the process. But, like, I dunno, I just find it tacky if a person is tweeting about their expensive vacations or nights out, and then suddenly $10 is a travesty.

Those are all completely different spending scenario's where a person's expectations, feelings, etc all vary greatly.

Whiney's stance on this is fucking unconscionable. I don't give a shit if Daphne saves 10 people from a burning building every day, she ran off with people's money and spent it on her own shit. Until and unless Whiney just sends me money for work I haven't done and keeps his mouth shut when I spend it and don't make a deadline he can zip it. "I don't like the people who got fleeced" is the last refuge of dudes who literally deserve to have their shit stolen from them imo

Shit Lord is not the best A$AP Mob release, but still probably my favorite since Cum Lord

she ran off with people's money and spent it on her own shit.

this has been disputed itt most people have agreed she spend it on the book but underbudgeted

does "her own shit" include the project she tried to put out that failed? I ask primarily to head off what I think will be an unnecessary argument (or to help accelerate it if I'm wrong in guessing what you meant, lol)

this has been disputed itt most people have agreed she spend it on the book but underbudgeted

on a daily staff of editors? on offices in which they could edit? this is stuff that could be made clear super-easily, but it isn't. if she had people on payroll was she paying them for...design? here are book costs:

1. printing
2. promotion
3. postage/shipping
4. editing
5. layout
6. advertising

1, 2, 3, 5, and 6 don't enter into it when the book's unpublished. If she dropped 17k on editors without a plan for publishing the book then where people's empathy comes from is beyond me, this is some bullshit, as is the vague apology.

7. logistics on the scale of making 1-6 viable, getting people like questlove involved, administrative stuff

Like almost everything else in 2013, I'm way past the point of being upset at the original incident, and way more pissed at the response to what happened, that I was unreasonable to demand a response to what happened, and that I was a vulture. Fuck that.

getting people like questlove involved

like there's actual publishers making shitty fucking wages and doing right by their authors around the damn world. fuck sympathy for somebody who takes in a pretty decent sum of money, burns through it and doesn't show a balance sheet, and then plans to pay it back over a period of years. obligatory disclosure, I have personal experience of people who take in a bunch of money that belongs to me and spend it elsewhere and I'd love to be paying bills w/that money but guess what it's gone. fuck deadbeats. this ought to be an uncontroversial stance imo, people who defend deadbeats are...like...what the fuck is wrong with people who defend deadbeats, "they meant well" is like that's cool cough up the money and we'll call it even

xp "getting people like questlove involved" is a pretty vague expense. stipend? just sending him money? "administrative stuff"? I run a business with 6 people on the payroll. nobody ever gets stiffed, it's time-consuming and annoying but it's not actually hard. you just have to have "nobody involved with this enterprise is going to get fucked out their money" at the top of your to-do list.

And if she was spending the money appropriately on the project she still should have notified folks within the past year what was going on. Only now does she say in the Poynter.com thing:

“I think it’s fair to say I was irresponsible in my contact with the donors,” she said.

you know what I mean, hiring people with the connections to actually get a press a viable enough presence and following, hiring interns (I don't know whether they were paid, maybe the guy who turned around and talked to Vice can say so), paying for all the hours this took. administrative expenses, in other words. now, I don't know how the money was spent obviously, I have basically nothing to do with this entire enterprise, but historically manpower costs are the ones that eat through your budget more than you expect.

assuming 1-6 are the only things it takes to get a book actually published in a very insider-y publishing field is some bootstrapping rhetoric that I don't agree with at all.

like, when she said it'd take $15K for "editorial stipends, administrative staff, and payment of reprint license" (in her Kickstarter update) I believe her, because it seems reasonable. this isn't amanda palmer deciding $100 filigreed album covers or whatever are more important than paying the band.

Now that there's an actual resolution to this thing with a side accepting responsibility, it's good to see people can still whip themselves into a frenzy shadowboxing over it

^