Game developer's $40,892 Kickstarter project goes unfinished, donates remaining funding to Feminist Frequency, changes name.

[Electrostatik]

She should have paid Uncle Sam with the money.  He's far scarier than angry backers and #GGers

[Trik'Stari]

If I had donated, I'd sue for fraud. Because that's what that is.

 

People are harassing you because you have ripped people off for their money, to serve your own political agenda, and that's not right. If you want to raise money for a charity, do it, and do it for an actual charity and not for Sarkeesian's ego.

[KingDaddyDaniel]

That somehow makes what she did okay? I don't think so. It's her own fault for not planning her Kickstarter campaign better to begin with. She should have known she would need to pay taxes on that Kickstarter income. Complete mismanagement of funds, and then she donates it to Feminist Frequency?

 

If she had donated the money to sick dying kids with cancer, then it might have been an acceptable temporary outcome. But that? Well... I'm not surprised people are angry.

 

Of course, that doesn't give them the right to harass her or threaten her (if that part is true, I honestly have no idea and have not looked into it).

Aren't sick dying kids with cancer people? Everyone is equal sHe chose the charity that they liked best

[Mattk50]

Harassment is never the answer. An organized boycott or protest against a company sure, expressing your opinions publicly to friends or directly to her once is fine. Harassment on the scale a lot of people have experienced for a lot smaller perceived crimes is appalling and at least very close to criminal.

Not to say she isn't a douchebag though, there isn't a valid way to "undonate" money unless it was very recent (i.e. not processed yet, depending on the payment method) so I doubt she has much worth suing over, but there should be legal action made against her, to put it lightly, and unless all of the quotes are wrong or were all jokes and she secretly really is working on the project she'd almost certainly lose in court.

But again, harassment really doesn't help.

I don't think you need to convince anyone, in fact, is anyone even harrassing her? She claims she's being harrassed but it seems she's conflating valid criticism and outrage, which may be a stressful situation for her, with harrassment. Playing the victim card in other words. It's very shady and has now become very common in what appears to be her social clique, including Anita.

[Trik'Stari]

I don't think you need to convince anyone, in fact, is anyone even harrassing her? She claims she's being harrassed but it seems she's conflating valid criticism and outrage, which may be a stressful situation for her, with harrassment. Playing the victim card in other words. It's very shady and has now become very common in what appears to be her social clique, including Anita.

Welcome to the world of SJW's, otherwise known as professional victims.

[LAwLz]

That somehow makes what she did okay? I don't think so. It's her own fault for not planning her Kickstarter campaign better to begin with. She should have known she would need to pay taxes on that Kickstarter income. Complete mismanagement of funds, and then she donates it to Feminist Frequency?

 

If she had donated the money to sick dying kids with cancer, then it might have been an acceptable temporary outcome. But that? Well... I'm not surprised people are angry.

 

Of course, that doesn't give them the right to harass her or threaten her (if that part is true, I honestly have no idea and have not looked into it).

Even if the money was donated to some cancer research I would have been mad if I backed her. People backed her to help her develop a product, not to then have her give the money away to the charity of her choice.

Besides, it's against the Kickstarter rules to donate the money raised to charities.

 

Also, I looked through the comments on the KickStarter as well as Twitter and I didn't really see any harassment. I see people asking if they can get refunds and people telling her (without being overly mean or insulting) that what she did was wrong. I saw A LOT of tweets from here where she lashes out at people, threatening to commit suicide, calling people transphobic and so on though.

 

 

 

If I had to guess, she's probably figuring that if she plays the victim card hard enough, somebody like Polygon/Kotaku will pick up the story, make her sound incredibly sympathetic, and then she can start a Patreon account for all the people who feel bad for her.

She already has a patreon, and is now selling a shirt which says "please stop hurting me". Yeah she is probably hoping for some website to pick the story up and twist it to make her look like a poor victim who did nothing wrong.

Right now she is getting 506 dollars a month from donations. I wouldn't be surprised if that skyrockets soon (assuming it gets picked up by some major website like Gawker).

[Jerakl]

I don't know what to say to this.

[Scionyde]

She already has a patreon, and is now selling a shirt which says "please stop hurting me". Yeah she is probably hoping for some website to pick the story up and twist it to make her look like a poor victim who did nothing wrong.

Right now she is getting 506 dollars a month from donations. I wouldn't be surprised if that skyrockets soon (assuming it gets picked up by some major website like Gawker).

 

Oh geez...I also notice that she's giving support to 15 other Patreon accounts - does this mean she's giving money to them as well? (I'm not terribly familiar with Patreon and its terminology)

[pixeldensity]

didn't kickstarter put up rules in order to prevent this type of stuff already.  if so, kickstarter might want to start enforcing those rules before they lose more credibility from the user base.  

[Yoinkerman]

Are people treating her worse than other kickstarter projects that have failed? Or kickstarter projects where they piss all of the money away? If so, then there's probably a case saying she's being singled out for different reasons.

I wouldn't doubt that people are doing all sorts of terrible harassment. I don't know if what's happening is any better or worse than other similar kickstarter fails.

[Cookie Monster]

Even if the money was donated to some cancer research I would have been mad if I backed her. People backed her to help her develop a product, not to then have her give the money away to the charity of her choice.

Besides, it's against the Kickstarter rules to donate the money raised to charities.

 

 

I doubt feminist frequency is a registered charity.

[Mattk50]

I doubt feminist frequency is a registered charity.

Actually, it is in some states but not in others. A clusterfuck of lies and deceit from every angle.

 

femfreq is such a scam it's incredible.

[mr_pants66]

This is just another incident that shows there needs to be at least some consumer protection on Kick-starter and other crowdfunding sites.

They cannot sit behind the “you are donating” wall when it is clearly shown that you are pre purchasing an item, if that item fails to make it to market then you deserve a refund. Crowdfunding will never make it all the way with issues like this plaguing so many projects now.

It is only a matter of time before a large $2-3 million dollar project goes belly up and when that does happen there will be to many angry customers for kickstater to keep up the standard response.

[SpaghettiCarbonara]

This is so fucked up. I hope this goes to court and she gets the book thrown at her. People like her deserve no sympathy.
 

Harassment is never the answer. An organized boycott or protest against a company sure, expressing your opinions publicly to friends or directly to her once is fine. Harassment on the scale a lot of people have experienced for a lot smaller perceived crimes is appalling and at least very close to criminal.

Not to say she isn't a douchebag though, there isn't a valid way to "undonate" money unless it was very recent (i.e. not processed yet, depending on the payment method) so I doubt she has much worth suing over, but there should be legal action made against her, to put it lightly, and unless all of the quotes are wrong or were all jokes and she secretly really is working on the project she'd almost certainly lose in court.

But again, harassment really doesn't help.

 

I have no sympathy for people who cry and whinge when they get "harrassment". Even if they did nothing wrong, they should be able to deal with it. That's part of being an adult, you learn how to deal with this shit in high school. If they can't deal with it, they should not be on any sort of pedestal on the internet, it's guaranteed they'll get ripped apart by the masses.

Look at Linus, he gets shit from a lot of people (including me) and most of the time he ignores it or just deals with it and he's fairing just fine. What do you think would happen to him if he whinged and moaned that all his fans are "harrassing" him? He'd have no one left.

Stop acting like a fucking child and people won't treat you like a child. (Not you specifically)


Regarding whether or not "harrassment" is an answer, it depends how you take it. If you take it as criticism, it's just fine. If you take it as a hate campaign, you're fucked.

 

Does it actually exist in this scenario? As other people have pointed out, probably no.

[SpaghettiCarbonara]

Also, I looked through the comments on the KickStarter as well as Twitter and I didn't really see any harassment. I see people asking if they can get refunds and people telling her (without being overly mean or insulting) that what she did was wrong. I saw A LOT of tweets from here where she lashes out at people, threatening to commit suicide, calling people transphobic and so on though.

 

She already has a patreon, and is now selling a shirt which says "please stop hurting me". Yeah she is probably hoping for some website to pick the story up and twist it to make her look like a poor victim who did nothing wrong.

Right now she is getting 506 dollars a month from donations. I wouldn't be surprised if that skyrockets soon (assuming it gets picked up by some major website like Gawker).

 

Jesus christ... I'm so fucking sick of this. How can we stop this sort of thing?

WHO DO I HAVE TO SPAM WITH EMAILS AND PHONE CALLS???

[imthewalrus]

She took the wrong turn there by saying that she donated the money to that charity, she should had just payed the IRS, or simply conducted the kick-starter amd borrow money from the banks, not a whole bunch of random people from a website.

[Castdeath97]

It's a shame people like her ruin the feminist movement, what a shame.

[Jasmin]

Let's sum up the whole thing:

JUST FACTS:

0) One successful kickstarter year earlier - LINK

1) She starts a KS with an intent to make guitar hardware, ETA May 2013, gets twice the amount of money required - 20k required, 40k pledged (29th of June 2012) - LINK

2) Over the course of next 13 months she gives regular updates on how the things are progressing. Last open update, claiming that they are almost done (prototypes?????) on 31st of August 2013 - LINK

3) One more update on the 6th of November, private this time, titled "We are nearing the end" - LINK

4) Less than a month later, on 4th of December 2013 she posts a big open update, informing that she has failed. She also states that she is in the process of finding a new job, asks for understanding and promises refunds asap - LINK

5) Fairly frequent updates, private however, over the course of the year. Finishing with the CAPS ONLY post on 19th of November 2014 - LINK

6) Tweets out info about putting her earnings towards Anita's Fund a week later (26th of November 2014) - LINK

OPINIONS BASED ON FACTS:

1) She had obviously no plan for this KS. 20k $ could be enough to sell a cheapo, already made product. It's not a sum to fund even one person on working a whole year and then delivering a hardware product. Not even speaking about 2 or more people being involved in this.

2) Unless a complete unforeseen tragedy happens, one can usually see that they are not going to make it way in advance - she passed her initial target and not even had prototypes ready... She could have salvaged what was there, refund what she could and close the whole thing, instead she dragged it on. She was either lying for some time nearing the iFail statement or was completely delusional.

3) While her original iFail statement proved that she had no clue on how to carry out a project like this, she at least managed to make it look well balanced, grown up and with a promise to repair the damage done.

4) She chose to remain a fairly public person. While she could have gone into hiding, like many of the intentionally failed KS owners have, she left her info out there and kept using twitter tied to the KS

5) Getting a lot of flak and probably much more than was ever deserved, as could have been expected based on many previous cases, she made the 1st major PR misstep of posting an angry rant on the KS, providing a lot of info she should not have, aka problems with taxes (further mismanagement) and general "tough life of an indie dev''

6) Having done the above, she did the most childish, irresponsible thing she could have done in this case (with few exceptions). A week after her rant about being way more in the red, that she can manage, she has made a silly post about donating her first larger income to 3rd party organisation. What is even worse, to one that is questionable at best and openly hated by a large chunk of the internet...

SUMMARY:

She was obviously not suited to start and lead a KS project like that. She has wasted money of many people and most likely lied to them for some time. She had the senses of saying sorry and promising to repair the damages. Rather than staying quiet and trying to do what she can, she puts herself out there, chooses a profession that is almost the least likely to help her in returning defrauded money, gives further proof of major mismanagement of the KS funds, yet still dares to ask people to donate (via patreon). Having all this in mind, she rants, cries that her profession disallows her to lead a normal life and pay back the KS backers, and then openly spends funds on an outside organisation, that is in no way related to her KS, does not directly benefit her backers, does not help her improve her situation, but instead is questionable at best and is openly hated by a large chunk of the internet users.

It's like stabbing yourself in an open wound and wondering why it hurts. Pouring extra oil to a fire that is consuming your own house.

She could have taken many steps to avoid this situation. Most obvious one, considering the situation she was in, being not throwing into the void of twitter info about donating to Anita's organisation. She might have as well went to United Arab Emirates, ran naked through major city and made fun of Quran....

She is either extremely delusional, unable to learn on her own mistakes and is not fit for an independent adult life and requires a lot of psychological help. Or she is purposefully taking actions in spite of people who supported her with full understanding of her actions and their consequences and as such fully deserves the consequences.

One should usually not blame on malice things, that can be blamed on stupidity. Which one is it in her case? And why is she still public...?

P.S. Added point #0 to the facts - she had run a successful kickstarter year earlier... This gives her no excuse... Unless she didnt pay taxes for that one, got fined and used the new kickstarter to pay for the 1st one...

[martinrox1568]

If she's serious, I can see her comitting suicide in the next couple weeks. But it really doesn't seem like she is. 

[StingBull]

Kickstarter should require a business degree before you can set up a project from now on.

She is beyond fucked. This is the kind of shit that would get you killed if you don't end up in prison first.

[LAwLz]

Kickstarter should require a business degree before you can set up a project from now on.

She is beyond fucked. This is the kind of shit that would get you killed if you don't end up in prison first.

I don't think that's a good idea though. There are plenty of successful projects which have been started by people without a business degree. Palmer Luckey for example was studying (not sure if he finished) journalism.

 

I think the problem is that people don't look up the people they are pledging money to. It's easy to have 20/20 hindsight but right now it's easy to tell that she is not suitable to manage such a large project with so much money involved. To me it seems like she has severe mental issues. A lot of people get fooled by slick marketing videos and don't realize they are giving money to a bozo. Then again, she seems to have a good track record of making sound effect pedals so maybe it was impossible to foresee what a disaster it would become.

 

I really doubt she will get killed. First of all, people who use Kickstarter are not your average criminal. Most of them are nerds who wouldn't harm a fly in real life. Secondly, it's not *that* much money.

Judging by her comments it's far more likely that she will kill herself rather than someone killing her. Personally I think her comments about suicide are just an attempt to guilt trip people though.

[HippY]

I don't think that's a good idea though. There are plenty of successful projects which have been started by people without a business degree. Palmer Luckey for example was studying (not sure if he finished) journalism.

 

I think the problem is that people don't look up the people they are pledging money to. It's easy to have 20/20 hindsight but right now it's easy to tell that she is not suitable to manage such a large project with so much money involved. To me it seems like she has severe mental issues. A lot of people get fooled by slick marketing videos and don't realize they are giving money to a bozo. Then again, she seems to have a good track record of making sound effect pedals so maybe it was impossible to foresee what a disaster it would become.

 

I really doubt she will get killed. First of all, people who use Kickstarter are not your average criminal. Most of them are nerds who wouldn't harm a fly in real life. Secondly, it's not *that* much money.

Judging by her comments it's far more likely that she will kill herself rather than someone killing her. Personally I think her comments about suicide are just an attempt to guilt trip people though.

She is not going to commit suicide, and I do believe that no charity got any money.

 

The biggest problem with KS is that many people got Large sum of money ( that you usually work for 2 years while spending most of them for living) suddenly, and they think that it will be enough for everything then spending it on many unnecessary things, and once you got a depleted account. Actually I read a study that most lottery winners lose their money in a year or two, as they cannot understand and use that amount of money that they got for free.

 

I am not sure what is the situation in USA but in UK you CAN find a job to sustain yourself, with no degree what so ever. Not a high paid manager job, that is right, but in a factory for minimal wage, that you can live off.

This is more about trying to play the victim card, as mentioned before.

Charity account for herself, where she gets $506 per month?

Selling shirts that says "Stop Hurting Me"?

Mentioning a large organization, that is famous about it`s power over media, that hides behind a good cause, but while supporting different ideas?

Playing every card possible (The transgender broken ill woman, who tried so hard, and has good heart, but attacked and harassed on a daily basis by one person and many people online because of her decisions) to get sympathy?

 

It is happening with her for a reason, and she knows it well too

[Orblivion]

She had a previous kickstarted project that was actually completed successfully and it was funded at 10k, so nobody can convince me she wasn't prepared for the taxes on Kickstarter income.  It's the donation and the "woe is me" mentality here that I think is pissing people off so much.  Most of the time I am of the mindset that if you pledge to a kickstarter and the project ultimately fails, that its just the cost of taking a risk like that.  In this situation however, where the remaining funds were given to something not even remotely related to what they were intended for, it just seems flat out crazy.  Now she's playing the martyr, as if her self-imposed financial issues should excuse her from criticism for her actions?

 

Did she have a mental breakdown at some point, I can't imagine how she could have possibly believed that her backers would have been okay with what she used the money for.  

[alicskysareblue]

Wow you known when your donating money your kind of giving money away, thats sort the whole point.

 

not that I think she should have gave the money away, thats rather unprofessional HOWEVER,  the bit about the IRS is legitimate and  stalking and harassing her in any way is wrong also stop saying she is "playing the victim card" because she is a victim of harassment,

[WolfDeville]

What a pathetic, lying scumbag...