Jordan Owen, interviewing his shoe
Alleged filmmaker/bipedal mammal Jordan Owen has a few choice words for critics of the new trailer for The Sarkeesian Effect, the allegedly finished documentary he and white nationalist (on paper) Davis Aurini have been spending other people’s money on for the past who the hell knows how many months.
Wait, did I say “a few choice words?” I meant this gif:
Stung by criticism of the trailer’s jarringly inept musical score, which he “composed” and “performed,” Owen posted a thoughtful response on TwitLonger today.
Fuck you.
Yes, you read that right. Fuck you.
The trailer has been getting a lot of great response and we really, really appreciate that- but if you have a problem with any aspect of the production, fuck you.
I don’t care if you donated $10,000.
I don’t care if you donated $10,000,000.
I don’t care if you donated BONE MARROW.
Fuck you.
As Owen sees it, the music is utterly perfect as is. It’s not the result of dropping a couple of kittens on some old Casio keyboards. It sounds the way it does ON PURPOSE.
Because I write that music and I’m proud of it. It sounds EXACTLY like what I want to get accross, which is why I wrote it that way.
As for one critic who suggested that maybe Owen should just grab some reasonably competent royalty free music off the internet and use that instead, because, holy crap, even that would be better than what’s on there now, Owen respectfully disagrees with this assessment.
Well listen Bobby, I know you think your heart’s in the right place, but the human heart is located in the chest cavity to the left of the esophagus. Not up your ass.
You send me a link to a bunch of shitty 2 chord guitar vamps and dubstep loops and think I’m going to write back and say “Gee willakers Bobby! That’s some great stuff right there! I sure am glad I listened to your opinion instead of thinking I knew what in the fuck I was doing!”
The music I wrote for The Sarkeesian Effect sounds fucking amazing- you know how I know? Because I like the way it sounds.
Sure, Owen admits, to undiscerning ears the music might sound a tad dated, but guess what: he meant to do that.
I keep getting these people writing in and telling me “This looks great, but the music sounds like it was done on a Casio keyboard from the 80’s.” Well there’s two reasons for that:
1. We’re doing a movie about video games, broadly speaking. Didn’t you ever stop to think that maybe it was supposed to sound like that?
2. I sent Davis a remixed, remastered version of the music with more realistic string sounds, realistic bass guitar sounds, and realistic drum sounds. He wouldn’t put it in. I have no idea why. Ask him.
Yes, that’s right: the music sounds perfect as it is, but it is Davis Aurini’s fault that it sounds like ancient Casio crap because he used the ancient Casio crap version.
And for those who have wondered out loud how someone who was actually trained at the Berklee College of Music could possibly produce something like that, Owen has a response to this as well:
JUST BECAUSE YOU HAVE IT IN YOUR HEAD WHAT KIND OF MUSIC A BERKLEE GRAD OUGHT TO WRITE DOESN’T MEAN WE FEEL IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM OBLIGATED TO ACCOMMODATE YOU!
And I wrote that preceding paragraph in all caps because I was trying to create the effect of screaming at the top of my fucking lungs. Are you really so goddamn arrogant that you think in your infinitely pedestrian opinion that you know what sort of music Berklee grads ought to be writing?
To be fair, I’m pretty sure that there are a lot of other Berklee grads out there making truly horrible music.
Owens’ little essays ends much as it began, with a giant “fuck you.”
So rest assured the music is going to be written by me and its going to sound exactly like it should sound. Tough shit if you don’t like that- no please go take your good intentions and pave somebody else’s road to hell.
Meanwhile, on YouTube, Owen has been similarly responsive to his critics. And by his critics, I mean Davis Aurini, his erstwhile film buddy:
My only question is what exactly they will be opening in six weeks. Birthday presents? An Arbee’s franchise? Their mouths?
Whatever it is, I’m looking forward to it.
H/T — r/GamerGhazi
……aaaaaaand this is why artists go to art school. Where they are taught such important lessons like:
“Don’t fall in love with your first idea”
“don’t take things too personally”
“Learn to take criticism”
“you will fail any times before you succeed”
“just because you spent hours on it doesn’t mean it’s good”
I should have predicted that Dumb and Dumber would lose their shit over criticism of their film, since the film itself was born from their inability to handle criticism over video games.
One thing is for sure, I could not have predicted the extent of their absurdly bad PR skills. XD NOT BEING ABLE TO SPELL THE NAME OF YOUR UNIVERSITY!? ARE YOU FOR REAL!?
YMMV. There are other ways to learn those lessons.
I’m a working artist. There is nothing like making something that doesn’t sell to slap you back to reality. Either it’s not the right market, or the right crowd, or the right price range…or it sucks.
The problem is doing “art” for free on the Internet, being lauded by their captive audience. They have no incentive to improve. Being paid in complements doesn’t count…or I’d be rich.
I enjoy Bathtub and Skull so, so much. I hope they never stop doing whatever it is they’re doing. They do it so earnestly, and so terribly.
@bvh
Yeah I definitely don’t mean to imply that school is the only place to learn those, it is, nonetheless, a structured environment specifically designed to teach those lessons. Learning these lessons outside of the classroom also requires a pretty good level of self-awareness and maturity that these clowns clearly lack.
I’d love to achieve the level of ‘working artist’. So far I’m at “doing this in my spare time because I love it” artist. And so far I have gotten feedback of the “your work is sweet and I promise I’m not just saying this to be nice” 😀
but remember everybody, anita sarkeesian is the real scam artist
And this from the person who claims that Anita Sarkeesian conned her backers, by not delivering fast high quality vids quickly enough
@Moocow
“Learning these lessons outside of the classroom also requires a pretty good level of self-awareness and maturity that these clowns clearly lack.”
Shoots and scores. 😉
Yes, learning on the fly outside of a structured environment requires a discipline and brutal honesty with one’s self that is beyond most MRA types.
And, hey, nothing wrong with compliments, they have their place, especially when you’re finding your style/voice. They just should never be confused with $$$$. There’s this perverse thing that happens where you make a glorious work of art everyone gushes over …and no one buys. If you’re lucky, that one person it’s meant for finally drops by months/years later. If not, you take it home and keep it, cuz obviously that’s what it was for.
Good luck with your art!
@Scented Fucking Hard Chairs,
Does the movie poster there really say “There’s two sides to every story”?
Subject/verb agreement in expletive constructs is _so_ hard!
I presume the shitty grammar was as intentional as the shitty music, and meant to serve some higher artistic calling.
@bvh
Thank you so much! My art in question is making video game story reviews as videos on youtube. I love stories in video games and I’ve always wanted to find some way to share my thoughts and ideas with the world. I’m still pretty new but it’s already been such an invigorating experience. I was fortunate enough to have someone who currently runs a successful youtube channel (which just got fully supported through patreon! yay!) and offered to teach me how to record and edit. Since then I’ve learned a ton!
He also had some constructive criticism for me:
He was like “dude I love your script and you’re gonna hate me for this but you should get rid of the story explanation part (which was 50% of my written work), it’s too boring and takes way too long”
I was like “…yeah you’re right! Done!”
Regarding there’s two sides – to be fair, perhaps they were going for the informal version, which is nonstandard, yeag, but very common in English after all.
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002447.html
(I love Language Log)
I mean, I’m not gonna offer any ‘sounds okay’ / ‘sounds bad’ judgements because I’m not a native English speaker, but film taglines can definitely use nonstandard colloquial forms (like gonna or comin’ to get ya and so on).
And yeah, this could be seen as another chance for that charming Mr. Owen to say “no, shut up, it was meant to be that way all along, you are all stupid doodooheads and I hate you”, but… I dunno, just seems like there are enough horrible things about these guys, and even specifically about their video, to get hung up on them using nonstandard colloquial English yaknow?
*yeag = yeah
Those typos, dude. They always creep up on you when you try to make a coherent argument about grammar. It’s misandry!
It’s really lovely when people offer that kind of help, isn’t it? I’ve nurtured lots of people with writing ambitions over the years, and I couldn’t be more thrilled when they actually sell something for the first time, and even more so when their career actually takes off.
What usually happens is that they’ll email me out of the blue asking if I have any writing commissions going. Usually, it’ll be pretty clear that they’re amateur enthusiasts rather than professional writers, but that’s cool (talent is talent, after all) – so what I do is look up one of their pieces and send them a professional-quality edit and accompanying notes, as if they’d formally submitted it to me for publication.
And what happens next will dictate whether or not I want to carry on dealing with them.
The biggest problem that I encounter with beginners is that they sometimes get incredibly precious about every last syllable, as though making any changes at all would be like physically harming them. And, worse, there’s usually a very strong correlation between that personality type and people who badly need the services of a professional editor. The point they most frequently miss is that they’re not being asked to write whatever the hell they like, they’re being given a house style and a word count (the latter usually for practical physical-space reasons) and are being paid to stick to that.
But if they are prepared to co-operate to help create the best possible end result (because this absolutely isn’t an ego thing on my part), the sky’s the limit. In fact, one of my protégées was so successful that she ended up commissioning stuff from me – and I couldn’t be prouder.
@Penny – I know what you mean. I’m not necessarily hung up on it so much as amused because these kinds of errors are so indicative of a lack of reflection and revision. There is nothing about “There’s two sides to every story” than “There are two sides to every story.” The latter puts an emphasis on the state of being and will not give the reader pause. The point of phrasing is to think about audience reception instead of just insisting that no one understands.
It seems as though so many folks enjoy pointing out inconsistencies and errors in the video that it seems a little odd to get hung up on my pointing out colloquial English, yaknow?
Yeah, I know; and I apologise for using the ‘get hung up’ phrasing, I was worried about that after I posted. I don’t think that talking about the English register they chose for the tagline is any less relevant than talking about the music, or the editing, or Owen’s stupid socks. They’re all aspects of the same thing.
It’s just that, as someone who deals professionally with languages (I’m a translator), I always get a bit wary about these… grammar-pundit-y rules. You know, the ones about not splitting an infinitive or not using ‘they’ to refer to a single person (both of which are perfectly standard English with many precedents from over the centuries), or about how our culture is heading down the drain because people are using ‘literally’ as an intensifier (just like with ‘really’, for example). It’s a bit hard to articulate what exactly about it bothers me, though, and the whole thing is kind of a tangent on my part anyway, so I’ll leave it be.
It’s not that the grammar about it bothers me – it’s that the tagline “There[‘s] two sides to every story” doesn’t seem to match what’s going on in the trailer, and I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess the whole “documentary” doesn’t either. Instead, it seems as if one side of the story is being told, which is fine because that means more laughs, but then a better tagline would have been something like “the untold story” or “from the eyes of Gamergate” or anything along those lines.
Then again, it’s from the Skull and Bath Club, so I guess I’m expecting them to think too hard.
@Penny Psmith – I understand and I apologize for my snark. I definitely agree with you about avoiding that kind of prescriptive grammar, in general. However, in this case, these guys are at least attempting to project a professional tone. I, too, deal with language in my professional life and I spend a big portion of my time telling my students that how they present something they write is as important as what they present. These guys have no sense of rhetorical purpose, audience, or anything else that needs to be present in a professional piece of communication.
I guess I’ll put it this way: I have no problem with the phrase “There’s two sides to every story” in a colloquial context. In theory, these two want to present themselves as professional critics coming from an intellectual perspective (remember, I wrote, “in theory”). Colloquial tag lines, particularly cliched ones like what they have chosen, shows them to be amateurs, as much as the poor framing and wardrobe choices.
I’ll quit with the semantics for now.
I know what you’re talking about. I think this is actually very similar to the stupid socks – in that there’s nothing wrong with dressing casually, but when you’re trying to look like a professional, at least give up the white sports-socks (and at least pull them up).
And yeah, as AbsintheDexterous said, the real problem is with the content. Talking about ‘two sides’ sorta implies that you intend to show both sides, not just one.
I read the “two sides” to mean that we all know the Feminist Frequency side because it is the only side getting any attention. I think this is what they mean to convey in the first segment of the trailer. Then there is a second, unknown side that no one knows about and/or is being suppressed. Of course everyone who knows who Anita Sarkeesian is knows already that there is a very vocal opposition.
@Wetherby
It is! And that’s awesome that you’ve helped so many people with their writing! Someday I hope to have enough success to do the same
Hah, that was actually his other piece of advice for me “Don’t worry about that part, it’s fine and nobody will notice, you’re trying too hard to be a perfectionist”.
> I keep getting these people writing in and telling me “This looks great, but the music sounds like it was done on a Casio keyboard from the 80’s.” Well there’s two reasons for that:
> 1. We’re doing a movie about video games, broadly speaking. Didn’t you ever stop to think that maybe it was supposed to sound like that?
So they’re trying to emulate games older than their average donors? The 16-bit era died 20 years ago! To say nothing of the fact that their crap is a lot more Shaq Fu than F-Zero.
Oh look. Another MRA strawman who can’t take any criticism or dissenting opinions. Must be Thursday. He’d probably be taken more seriously if he didn’t cuss out his critics for pointing out that his musical skills leave something to be desired. Or if he actually attempted to listen to them and realize that it’s a critic’s JOB to offer constructive criticism and advice. Maybe then he can take that advice, look over his work and realize that maybe it does need improvement, and improve on it for next time.
“Because I write that music and I’m proud of it. It sounds EXACTLY like what I want to get accross, which is why I wrote it that way.”
In addition to being unable to take any sort of criticism and correct his music, he also can’t be bothered to correct his spelling.
Well listen Bobby, I know you think your heart’s in the right place, but the human heart is located in the chest cavity to the left of the esophagus. Not up your ass.
You send me a link to a bunch of shitty 2 chord guitar vamps and dubstep loops and think I’m going to write back and say “Gee willakers Bobby! That’s some great stuff right there! I sure am glad I listened to your opinion instead of thinking I knew what in the fuck I was doing!”
If all else fails, use a last resort: ad hominem arguments accusing them of patronizing you, and make sure to add in some hyperbole for extra effect.
The music I wrote for The Sarkeesian Effect sounds fucking amazing- you know how I know? Because I like the way it sounds.
Just because you like the way your music sounds, Mr. Owen, does not mean that everyone else likes the way it sounds. Bottom line, don’t create a video on YouTube and not expect criticism where there is a comments section that allows viewers to post their thoughts on a video they just saw. Simple as that.
It might be time to roll out the old joke, in fact:
We’re using a 64-bit processor to view a 32-bit video with 16-bit music written to be reminiscent of the 8-bit era, composed on a 4-bit Casio by a 2 bit musician who can’t stand 1 bit of criticism.
Someone else may already pointed this out, but I had missed this hilariously dubious claim:
Sure, tons of people, no doubt.
I feel very strongly that there is no objectively “good” or “bad” or even “fitting” music, and I have genuine affection for that retro-but-not-really-retro-enough sound, so I sympathize with Jordan in that way, but there is such a thing as your BGM measurably muddying up the clarity of your interviews because it’s just TOO DAMNED LOUD.
But strictly from my own tastes: yeah, the pacing is awful, the music is too long in the tooth, starting your 3-minute trailer with 38 seconds of news footage feels incredibly clunky, it’s weird to see the interviewers framed like that in every shot (as people have mentioned), and for two people who harp on FemFreq for (allegedly) not improving production quality enough, they sure do rely on canned transitions, simple artwork, and unoriginal fonts.
But as much fun as it is to hate on the crummy quality, let’s not forget the only thing that really matter here: the asinine, illogical content. If someone brilliant made a film like this, the ideas would still be good. Then again, it takes so much professionalism for a feminist to be taken seriously, I can’t remember the last time I saw anything comparable. I guess the end goal is anyone anywhere being able to make a bathtub rant video and still hold onto someone’s respect.
@EJ, hahahaha, okay, that is solid.
My golden rule when I submit a professional piece is that I archive it for safe keeping but never, ever re-read it unless it’s absolutely unavoidable. As far as I’m concerned, the final published version is the definitive one, even if the editor did something toe-curling to it in between. (And nobody else would know about that.)
“My only question is what exactly they will be opening in six weeks. Birthday presents? An Arbee’s franchise? Their mouths?”
Look, either say Arby’s or Hardee’s. They’re different places but equally appropriate.