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Comments
That sounds like all professors in college
While I won't argue with the accusations of mediocrity, I don't get the hostility at her doing a kickstarter at all. She's offering a service (providing videos on the internet), is asking for help from those who partake in that service in order to make it better, and enough of those people like her service to provide vastly greater funding than she expected.
Could she have done this out of her own pocket? Maybe. Could someone do more with less? Probably. But... who cares? The people providing these funds are most likely adults who make decisions every day about how to spend their disposable income, and in this case they thought that investing in this kickstarter would be money well spent. Whether she is able to deliver on this remains to be seen, but such is the state with any kickstarter.
I don't like seeing mediocrity make money, even if it's for a good cause.
I also feel the cry for cash is disingenuous. It makes me question how dedicated she really is to this program that could have been done with what she had on hand.
Well, yeah but the point stands that it's the same as if I started to ask for money for a film project when I already have all the tools I need to provide that service and I'm already doing it.
And, I mean, people are giving her money because of...what, exactly? I mean, is the project really that impossible to continue without money? She seems to be doing well from here.
But to do this you're making assumptions about her personal situation, making assumptions about her mindset, and ultimately getting upset that the people actually giving her the money for this don't share your opinion on those assumptions or the quality of her work.
She's not strong-arming anyone, and it's not like she's asking for money to take down Kony or anything. She got the money either from a few well-off individuals, or a bunch of people throwing in a dollar or two that they otherwise would have blown on a cup of coffee or something. Either way, those people liked her work enough to feel that their donations were worthwhile.
If you don't feel like it's something worth donating to, you can just refuse to do so and move on. Other people feel differently, and are in a far better position to judge how best to spend their money than a random internet observer is. They're not hurting themselves or anyone else with their money, so again, who cares?
On the other hand, though, these people think their money is going to accomplish something by helping her, when...really, it's not. That isn't a good thing. These people have the right to donate their money, sure, and I'm not annoyed with them about it.
>But to do this you're making assumptions about her personal situation,
She's pretty clearly well off enough to own all three consoles of the current generation and legitimate video equipment. Sorry if I don't think she's justified in asking for better stuff.
It's like someone with a perfectly functional car asking for a sports car to drive around. Sure, you can ask but it's pretty assholish to not just make do with what you have.
Er, not really? I mean, I'm just working under the things I've seen, which are:
*She has a mildly succesful internet series that discusses a rather touchy topic.
*She has been able to produce content consistently at a bimonthly interval for at least one year according to Youtube dating (Which is awful and doesn't let me see the rest of the dates from the past 2 years of her works for some reason)
*Her videos don't really use any special effects or anything of the sort. She's just talking to the camera (I clarify that I don't think there's anything wrong with this)
So if I, say, question people paying to watch a horrible money, am I being a bad person, then?
I mean, the issue here is simply that this is a topic that I would like to see being addressed but it's being addressed in a weak manner, and by supporting that particular series, you inherently support mediocrity in the discussion of a very important topic in regards to media and women. (Because of blah blah blah succesful golden standards blah blah blah)
They're not hurting anyone. And really, you seem to be assuming that we are somehow saying that this is a rather critical matter. We're just questinoning the necessity for a kickstarter. It hardly seems necessary or even productive in any shape but giving her money. If she has said anything to the contrary, if she has brought up any reason why she needs the money (Such as buying videogames to comment on it, which while flimsy, is good enough for me) then I wouldn't mind. But there really isn't a reason for it.
^^ My wife and I own the big three consoles, a hand-held, two pc's rigged for gaming, and video equipment that she uses to promote her business. No one who visited my home would know it just by looking, but we are not "well off" by any means, especially in today's economy... the funding for all of that came from saving up and making careful choices to ensure that we weren't taking money that was essential from another area of our budget.
If I decided "hey, I'd like to get $5,000 dollars worth of additional video equipment to help me improve the quality of these free videos on cheese-making I'm putting on the internet in my spare time", I sure as hell wouldn't be able to do it on a whim. I may not even be able to get it in several months depending on what's going on with higher priority expenditures at the time. If 2500 people liked my cheese-making videos enough to kick in a couple of bucks a piece, though, then it would be doable, and we would hopefully all be able to enjoy the deliciously cheesy fruits of their generosity.
If it's something you want to get annoyed about, more power to you. I just don't think it's fair to assume that you know enough about her life to make any sort of judgment on what she's justified to be doing, and it seems awfully nit-picky to boot.
But the whole point is that we don't know how well she's doing economically speaking.
Look, all we're asking is a simple thing: Why does she need a kickstarter? That's all there is to it. She hasn't given us any reason why she needs this money to carry on. She has been consistent with her material and she hasn't shown lack of resources in his videos and so on.
The point is, why would she need the money in the first place if she isn't doing anything else than talk to the camera?
How wealthy she is isn't really relevant, given that her money is to accomplish...um...slightly higher resolution, maybe?
^ I only brought up the comparison to how wealthy I am because it was stated that she was obviously well-off enough not to need the funding. Appearances can be deceiving, and all that.
I just didn't get why her having a kick-starter or not was relevant enough to anything to be worth getting upset over. In response to you Juan, I don't really get being annoyed at someone spending money on a mediocre movie either... neither the producer or the consumers of the media are under duress, so it ultimately seems to come down to being annoyed at people who have different tastes in what they enjoy watching.
If she was actively harming the cause of feminism, I would understand. But it seems like she's trying to help in what we consider to be a mediocre fashion, and has gained the support of people who think she's doing well enough to deserve their financial support. Who knows, maybe those people learned something, and look at the world from a more feminist perspective than they did before, and thus don't consider it to be mediocre at all.
I just don't like seeing people get money for something they don't seem to be good at.
And a lot of money came in after misogynists and racists started attacking her over it, which does kinda make me feel a bit concerned that some people are just giving money to be on the right side, not necessarily after watching her videos, in which case the money could have gone to a better cause.
Well, misogynists and racists attacking her does give her publicity, which helps to increase the donations she gets.
^^ Eh, most people in life are mediocre at what they get paid to do, and it doesn't sound like she's doing some kind of mad ongoing cash-grab here, especially since she's donating the left over money to charity. If she's doing a small amount of good in her "mediocre" work, why worry about whether someone feels it's worth donating to?
It's up to the person giving the money to decide whether the cause is good enough to do so. Who knows, maybe they are also giving to causes you would consider better, but thought hers was a voice they would like to support as well.
That's true.
I mean, I'm not disappointed that she succeeded or anything (heck, at worst, it's still a pretty awesome symbolic occurrence)...it's just that I'd like to see someone who's better at the job succeed too.
Ok, I can see that. Best thing to do in that situation is to donate (either time or money) to those you feel do a better job, to make sure that their voices are heard as well.
Which is funny, because my class watched the Extra Credits ones that are considerably better, less ranty, and also free.
Here's a plan: she's already got the moolah and she really doesn't need it for what she's currently doing. We bitch about the lack of depth her videos have. Ergo, PM her to spend the money on overpriced feminist literature until her gig is as incomprehensible to the average watcher as a Judith Butler book. Ignore the fact that there are enough concern blogs that espouse roughly the same in-depth ideas without the needless name-dropping of philosophers and obscure terminology of that filthy French school. Eventually, her videos will verge towards the standards of an academic audience, thus alienating the laymen viewers who actually need said simple vids, thus safeguarding our privilege. It's brilliant!
Her level of simplicity is "this object that I just showed you is pink. Pink is viewed by society as being for girls." I don't think there are people who need that level of simplicity.
Or god forbid we want somebody who could talk about the issue with others in a simple and informative way. She's got the simple down. Informative, not so much.
Yeah, that's a better way of putting it.
I think people are following this project and coming to this woman's defense less because her videos are high-quality and more because the flaming she received for her Kickstarter was so blistering. Her videos are so bland that in any other situation, she and the project would probably be ignored.
According to kicktraq, she hit funding well before the flaming came to public attention.
Well, one things for sure, this thread wouldn't have existed without the flames.
The substantial difference here is that you speak of being upset when I speak of questioning. It's also a somewhat big deal if only because whatever you buy you will get more of in the future.
^^Not really. I was going to make this thread regardless.
If you say so