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

(also, I do sort of have a dog in this race, in that I used to subscribe to kristin hersh's equivalent. may or may not still subscribe, I honestly forget.)

for fuck's sake people, I realize amanda palmer is persona non grata but this is fundamentally no different from everyone else's patreon/cashmusic/other subscription service doesn't seem like a defense of "people who use patreon" but a defense of amanda palmer

and who punched down on music subscription services anyway

the joke of palmer being the poster child for all these services is that where most people using them want to give you a specific item of value in return - even jack pomplamoose makes his one-on-one convos sound like advice consultations - palmer's whole shtick is that the art should be free and it's HER you pay for. her problem with kickstarter was she'd have to keep selling her projects individually. This allows her to treat literally anything she does as being of equal value, as what you're really doing is saying "amanda keep making things" and getting her approval and appreciation in return. this is very different from some "six songs a year, 12 bucks and you get a tote bag" operation

It's patronage. That's why it's called Patreon. While it differs from the historical sense of patronage by virtue of being crowdsourced rather than from a single patron, the idea is the same. It's not inherently better or worse than receiving goods for services. And since it's increasingly difficult to get people to pay for goods, this model may work better for some artists than others. Many (imo) good artists have done better under this model than the project-specific funding model.

xpost Whatever the "things" are, they are likely better value mp3s which you can get for free anyway and are not real objects. She makes artwork, stencils, customised covers (and yes, chewed up postcards) and that kind of thing. Presumably the people who pay are expecting similar, since that's what she has done in the past. I truly don't understand why this is necessarily so appalling bearing in mind the business practices of the music industry over the last 50 years.

so where is her sistine chapel

xpost

again, if anyone is exploiting, fostering and selling cult-of-personality based affirmation on patreon or kickstarter to the degree amanda palmer is, PLEASE NAME THEM cuz i'd love to see more examples. we're talking about something VERY DIFFERENT from "if you give me 5 bucks a song I'll put your name at the end of one of my videos"

or if not very different, a far more extreme version that i think most artists would balk at

PLEASE NAME THEM

As far as I know she actually fulfills the terms of her fundraising, which is not true of many many kickstarters. Her terms are wack as fuck but her fans don't seem to feel ripped off by them?

Her sistine chapel is a piece of garbage she put in her mouth i think

"Exploiting, fostering and selling cult of personality based affirmation" is a pretty good pocket history of the music biz.

I keep thinking back to Momus and "Stars Forever" and dude was way ahead of his time there.

nah momus was openly throwing back to the old days of patronage, which anyone with half a clue should know i'm not hating on

polyphonic how dare you quote PLEASE NAME THEM and then do nothing of the sort, instead making some vague quibble about how her fans don't seem to mind

Well i don't mean exactly like this, but the idea of patronage and crowd funding records and such. Also he actually spent time writing each patron's life stories into particular songs.

cheque your patronage

the joke of palmer being the poster child for all these services is that where most people using them want to give you a specific item of value in return - even jack pomplamoose makes his one-on-one convos sound like advice consultations - palmer's whole shtick is that the art should be free and it's HER you pay for.

― da croupier, Wednesday, March 4, 2015 7:34 PM (29 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I guess this is where we fundamentally disagree, because not only do I not see a problem with this, I don't see any possible problem to see with this besides "I personally dislike amanda palmer and thus this is bad."

Agree with that. It's really reaching to find any issue here if you don't already think of AP as a heinous grifter to begin with.

part of why i keep saying Please Show Other Examples Of Famous People Selling Their Friendship Via Subscription (which apparently no one is capable of doing, which is a shame) is to suggest that my problem is not with Amanda Palmer doing this

believe me, if greg dulli was doing this i'd laugh just as hard

maybe more, because i'd know more song titles i can pun off of

"Exploiting, fostering and selling cult of personality based affirmation" is a pretty good pocket history of the music biz.

― everything, Wednesday, March 4, 2015 4:51 PM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sorry croup, commute time!

yeah everything i read your equivocation the first time

Do you think people pay $250 to see they Rolling Stones because they heard about this song called "Satisfaction" and want to see what the fuss is about?

xpost obv the entertainment industry has long known access to heroes is a salable commodity (HANG OUT WITH METALLICA AND MTV, yadda ya) and you could even argue what she's doing is kinder to the kind of fan that sends in a hundred postcards to hang out backstage. but what kind of person can OFFER that kind of emotional availability simply for a price, other than your l-rons.

― da croupier, Wednesday, March 4, 2015 8:38 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there are a million william shatners who will take your money in exchange for a sprinkling of their fame-dust but on some level it'd be weirder if shatner was like NOW YOU ARE MY FRIEND FOR LIFE I SWEAR TO YOU

― da croupier, Wednesday, March 4, 2015 8:39 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

tbf there were some more words in the sentence you quoted xp

Many, many rocks stars have said such things to their fans, even if it's usually from a stage. And AP IS a performer after all. It's a schtick, an act. One you find weird and mysterious obviously but just a performance nonetheless.

in case it's unclear that's a reference to L Ron Hubbard not Jeremy I-Rons.

everything, if you admit it's a shtick why are you bothered that i think her shtick is funny?

and i do think friendship subscriptions are weird (the fact that other people shout "thank you! i love you!" from a stage after applause doesn't change that) but i don't find it mysterious, just amusingly shameless

So is Bono.

i also know the pope wears a funny hat

http://www.gehmanfamily.com/avatars/we-love-you.gif

i didn't pay a dime for my shatner photo:

http://i.imgur.com/AdHvorh.png

he did only agree to take it with me on the condition that neither one of us stopped walking.

Here are a few:

https://www.patreon.com/Porpentine
https://www.patreon.com/artofthetitle
https://www.patreon.com/BreadandRosesTV

If you support Porpentine she can make more free games. You won't get anything for it, except she'll keep doing it.

If you support Art of the Title below $20 they won't give you anything but gratitude. For $20 you get a shirt, which I guess is better than chewing on stuff. You also get some stickers.

For Bread and Roses they'll give you a poster for $20, true, but that isn't exactly their "Sistine Chapel".

With all of these the point is to help them keep making stuff, not so that they can provide you with a tangible thing.

I don't see any possible problem to see with this besides "I personally dislike amanda palmer and thus this is bad."

― katherine, Wednesday, March 4, 2015 5:06 PM (2 hours ago)

katherine otm. i don't see anything wrong with any of this. and vocally hating amanda palmer/pomplamoose long ago crossed over into "omg i love BACON nom nom nom" meme-gang territory.

does anyone besides forks call katherine 'kat' y/n

hey polyphonic when someone says Please Show Other Examples Of Famous People Selling Their Friendship Via Subscription do yourself the credit of not responding with a link to a journalism site saying they'd like you to give them money in exchange for a thank you

i mean god bless the ilxors who don't like to engage in cheap lols at cult artists indulging their egomania because they either love cult artists or hate cheap lols, but i'd respect it a lot more if one could just ACKNOWLEDGE the egomania in ending an FAQ by saying people just call to say they love you before offering your attention for 1k a thingie, rather than indulging in these point-missing "palmer haters gonna hate"/"people asks for money for all kinds of things" weaves.

Have other successful crowdfunders written books/went on talks about how they are visionaries for doing so?

hey croup you are not very fun to talk to

Have other successful crowdfunders written books/went on talks about how they are visionaries for doing so?

― ©Oz Quiz© (Adam Bruneau), Wednesday, March 4, 2015 8:34 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This kind of thing isn't unprecedented...

http://www.milliontalks.com/uploads/monthly_03_2011/post-9-075148700%201300791159_thumb.jpg
http://eil.com/images/main/Timelords-The-Manual-157176.jpg
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51NGQ5ZFT9L._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

I call all katherines "kat", it's meant friendly
Katherine, you mind?

I honestly believe that "I love you" is a pretty FAd Q for Amanda Palmer - she does the cult of personality thing, but emotional labour has always been part of the job for a lot of artists, women in particular.

I also find that I feel differently about this sort of thing after spending too much time reading about GamerGate, but that's a longer post for later.

Basically she emotionally manipulating goths

It is such a shame because goths are so easily manipulated! I mean health goth was bad enough!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwvzP2JcFtg

I also find that I feel differently about this sort of thing after spending too much time reading about GamerGate, but that's a longer post for later.

― Andrew Farrell, Thursday, March 5, 2015 3:18 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not GG related but I was thinking of this other recent famous kickstarter debacle, with Peter Molyneux:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/02/13/peter-molyneux-interview-godus-reputation-kickstarter/

Essentially he over-promised and there are specific things he promised that he didn't deliver on, whether through the natural order of creating a game or because of his being a "pathological liar" as the intro question of the above interview so cuttingly puts it. He was put out to try. A glance at this interview, it is clear that the interviewer wants badly for this guy to pay for his crime of misusing his power. He was trashed in many articles like this.

AP is huge in crowdfunding, but I feel like this sort of thing couldn't really happen to her. Or is this comparable to what she went through w paymusiciansinbeerhuggate?

Put out to try dry.

With Molyneux it's more that Kickstarter provided a specific framework to say "No, you have specifically agreed to do this - and you can't" - he'd had years (decades!) of talking up amazing life-changing games and just making good-to-great ones, and always being a great interview subject.

I don't think that AP has the same golden aura around her in the music press? But then I also don't think that (as far as I know) she's failed any of her pledges - da croupier's distaste is not, at least, a question of ethics.