Oh, say it ain’t so! The creative team behind The Sarkeesian Effect has fallen apart in a wave of mutual recriminations and accusations and general bad feelings! Owen is accusing Aurini of blackmail! Aurini is accusing Owen of being a nerd who can’t get laid! They’re both accusing each other of trying to take the money and run!
And apparently Roosh V — yes, that Roosh V, do you even know of any others — played the Yoko Ono role in this breakup. (Sorry, Yoko, it really wasn’t fair to drag you into this, so I’ll post a video of your awesome Walking On Thin Ice at the end of this post.)
Owen announced the firing of Aurini in this video:
Oh, sorry, that wasn’t Owen announcing the firing. That wass Tammy Wynette singing D-I-V-O-R-C-E. Here’s Owen:
Whoops. That was “The Breakup Song” by the Greg Kihn Band. HERE’s Owen:
Ok, that was actually Frida — you know, from ABBA — doing “I Know There’s Something Going On.” I dunno, it’s a pretty good song, don’t you think? And it’s sort of relevant.
Anyway, here’s the actual video from Owen. It’s not that long. You should watch it. He’s fully clothed in this one. Well, at least from the waist up.
I’m not quite sure if Owen actually has the authority to fire Aurini, but then again I’m not an expert in Shithead Breakup Law. In case you didn’t watch the video, he says he plans to finish the, er, film without Aurini. And he apparently has all the money.
Aurini, meanwhile, has offered his side of the story in a blog post:
Jordan Owen has decided to split the partnership he and I formed to produce the GamerGate documentary about Anita Sarkeesian, with the planned title The Sarkeesian Effect. Conveniently after collecting the funds I begged you for in my last post.
Aurini, despite being fired and not having access to the duo’s Paypal account, pledges that he too will see the, er, film to its completion, thus raising the possibility that there will be TWO COMPETING SARKEESIAN EFFECTS, sort of like when Black Flag got back together, but as two competing bands, with one touring as Black Flag and the other just as Flag.
“This project will see fruition,” Aurini writes, “and it will be a palpable blow against the Social Justice movement.”
A BLOW, A VERY PALPABLE BLOW!
Alas, I knew him, Horatio.
A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!
Anyhoo, Aurini claims that the film “is as good as in the bag,” with not much beyond editing left to do, and claims to be puzzled as to why Owen would take his ball and go home at this late state in the production. He claims
there was absolutely no disagreement over the film at all, and Jordan’s role as Producer, by this point, had mainly devolved to signing the cheques while I did the editing, and others did the animation.
The only logical reason to split the project at this point was because he’d just received the final month’s funding…
But just when you think Aurini is going to start in on a rant on what a dirty thief Owen is, he heads in a totally different direction, insinuating that Owen’s REAL reason for the breakup had less to do with money than it did with, well, let’s let Aurini explain:
After the past two months of communiques with Jordan, I strongly suspect that he undermined this project because of an irrational jealously of Roosh, and any man who’s able to relate to women easily.
He’d been asking me for advice about women since the get go – which led me to recommending my colleague Roosh who has done much to support us – but every time I spoke about him, it seemed to fill Jordan with rage. Eventually leading to a panic attack that got him kicked off of an airplane – the last time I saw him in person.
That’s right. He’s saying that Jordan Owen is some kind of Omega Male Luh-huh-LOOOOOSER who can’t score the HBs!
Then Aurini asks for more money:
I ask that you continue to support me as I pull the last strands together, and cancel your financial support to Mister Owen. He does not have the technical capacity to put this film together the way it needs to be done.
Oh, this is going to be good.
Oh, and here’s that Yoko Ono song, which seriously is probably one of my top ten favorite songs of all time.
H/TÂ — Skiriki, for being the first to alert me to this exciting development.
H/T — To Mike in the comments, who pointed me to that pic of the formerly dynamic duo, which I knew was out there but just couldn’t find!
This. Is. GLORIOUS!
Roosh does relate well to women. Whenever I see his blog posts, I just think, finally! Someone who gets me!
Christmas again so soon?
My only question is who gets custody of the skull.
I’m disappointed that there wasn’t a breakup video of Owen eating a pint of ice cream or something.
My personal Gamergate themesong: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcTCMvYfer4
Keeping the Shakespearean vibe
“Two assholes, alike in infamy,
In fair Canada where we set our scene …”
http://media.tumblr.com/c98649ac7cba2f4d6c2e00d506ee0b5e/tumblr_inline_nedplmiBmG1r047he.gif
But things were going so well! If their teasers were any evidence, this video was going to be cutting edge and really finally put the death blows to all those horrible people who want “social justice.” So sad. The only silver lining is that now there’s the possibility of two… TWO such high quality videos exposing the truth about Anita Sarkeesian. But it’s a sad sad day when these two stand up guys… these TITANS with such lofty and important goals in life can’t get along. Oh well.
It was because of the skulls, wasn’t it?
Roosh relates to women? He’s related to women, but I don’t think that’s the same thing.
So… accusing people of doing things just for the money (even when there isn’t a ton of it at stake) and because they can’t get laid. Seems to be their go-to argument, for women and men. Maybe they are equal opportunity, after all!
Two belligerent, self-obsessed misogynistic manchildren couldn’t cooperate on a project? Shocking!
I saw an article about this on Twitter, and bolted straight over here. My jaw has been hanging open for about ten minutes straight.
I mean, I imagined lots of ways that the project might end, but this wasn’t one of them.
Holy poopnuggets.
To quote Raylan Givens:
Wonderful things happen when you sow seeds of distrust in a garden of assholes
What the heck’s an HB?
So much for uniting under a common enemy. Having seen Aurini’s other “movie”, I decidedly don’t want to watch this one. How the manosphere reacts to it, however, I’m really curious about.
http://i.imgur.com/S1fSk.gif
@runsinbackground: I’ve always understood it to mean Hot Babe, but I could be wrong.
As much as these guys horrify me, it’s as funny as a reality show train wreck.
It’s either Hot Babe or Hot Body. It’s often followed by a number from the classic and adolescent scale of 1-10, though the notion of an “HB 1” is kind of contradictory–you’ll generally see them talking about “HB7”, at the lowest.
You missed this wonderful picture from their honeymoon, in which Owen seems already haunted by the things to come, while Aurini is still, uh, smiling (?):
Yoko rocks.
http://youtu.be/kve_s_9TXVw
There are still people in the comments sections saying that this duo, and this project, is more trustworthy than Anita’s stuff. Despite Anita having no personal falling-outs, nor anything that would even suggest her project wouldn’t move forward as planned.
And then there are others that think the whole shebang is gonna devolve into yet another of Owen’s ill-filmed rants.
That would be hilarious. Owen’s version reduces to an hours-long rant with interviews cut-and-pasted in between slightly more professionally than holding a laptop up to the camera, while Aurini’s version is going to be “Ethics in a Time of Sarkeesian.”
And yes, he’s going to totally have an imaginary ninja battle against Anita. And lose.