Earlier quoted context omitted.
his estate is
sorta beside the point. the whole "being dead" part sort of precludes him from spending any of that rap beef money.
Only if you believe he is really dead. Apparently you didn't attend Coachella?
The Oatmeal Fights Legal Threat, Raises $20,000 in an Hour
81–90 of 113 posts
Re: The Oatmeal Fights Legal Threat, Raises $20,000 in an Hour
#82Y'see, this is why The Oatmeal guy is a comic genius. He understands that while "drawing of your mom seducing a bear" is funny, "drawing of your mom seducing a kodiak bear" is hilarious.
He's not a comic genius, he's a marketing genius. His comics are actually quite banal; everyone hates their printers, a list of reasons why makes us feel good but isn't actually funny.
I agree. The first couple Oatmeal comics I saw were amusing enough, but the formula gets old, fast.
Re: The Oatmeal Fights Legal Threat, Raises $20,000 in an Hour
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
um. i guess you have not read "Why Captain Higgins is my favorite parasitic worm" http://theoatmeal.com/comics/captain_higgins Still think its banal and not funny? does everyone hate parasites that can turn ants into zombies?
I'm sure 15 year old girls talk about zombie-creating parasites all the time. Everyone is bored of it ;)
The zombie thing is very cultural and limited in time, it may not be funny after the fashion is gone.
Re: The Oatmeal Fights Legal Threat, Raises $20,000 in an Hour
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm guessing not. This isn't exactly the kind of publicity they need.
What kind do they need? I'd wager they got quite a bit of traffic over this incident, and if the court case comes to nothing, they'll be able to show advertisers their numbers.
I don't know. I've never heard of them before and I didn't click on them because of this (though I did read all the oatmeal blog posts). Doesn't sound like there's a reason to click on them if they just copy other sites for which Oatmeal has a link to the originators.
Re: The Oatmeal Fights Legal Threat, Raises $20,000 in an Hour
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google cache still has all of the content indexed example: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:e8h2n1h...
Looks like FJ's been excluded from the Internet Archive. Is there a trustworthy caching authority, you know, for this kind of situation?
Interesting question - you could take automated screenshots, save them in a lawyer-friendly format (e.g. PDF) and then add a certifying signature with a secure timestamp (perhaps adding the raw pages and images from the site as attachments to the PDF as well).
If the target market was lawyers you could probably charge a chunk-o-money for it as well...
NB I have no idea whether such a service already exists.
Re: The Oatmeal Fights Legal Threat, Raises $20,000 in an Hour
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
Um. Seriously? A unique individual with one of the most brilliant, funny, audacious and original voices on the Internet and you'd like to see him sued out of existence? Because uh ... the Internet's not big enough or what? Wow. Just wow.
> A unique individual with one of the most brilliant, funny, audacious and original voices on the Internet It's always good when one extreme viewpoint is countered with another extreme viewpoint in the opposite direction.
So in your world; wanting someone to be sued to the point that they go completely out of business and can never open again is one side and "I really enjoy the product" is the complete opposite side of the spectrum?
Re: The Oatmeal Fights Legal Threat, Raises $20,000 in an Hour
#87Is there any chance that FunnyJunk has played the Oatmeal for promotional purposes here?
I thought that, too. 'Bad publicity is still publicity'?
> 'Bad publicity is still publicity'?
Obviously. For obscure brands, the first problem to solve is being unknown. It is much better to be hated than to be ignored.
For well-established brands, it may be less true: I guess Shell and Total would prefer no publicity related to oil spills.
But even then, bad publicity can have good outcome. I know from personal relations about a brand that has been under fire on Facebook and blogs: the amount of clients did actually increase during and after the hit.
Re: The Oatmeal Fights Legal Threat, Raises $20,000 in an Hour
#88FunnyJunk is apparently responding quietly on their site, as just searching for the word 'oatmeal' results in no search results (that wasn't the case when this blog post went up). According to people I know that use the site, you cannot add comments with the word 'oatmeal', either. They also deleted every single linked image he exhaustively listed. I have a hard time resolving litigation like this with the fact that…
I don't really know about oatmeal, but they still have thousands of comics from Cy&H: Searching for "cyanide happiness" does not return any result[1], but just "cyanide" returns tons of comics.
1: http://www.funnyjunk.com/search/?q=cyanide+happiness&sea...
2: http://www.funnyjunk.com/search/?q=cyanide&search-target...
Re: The Oatmeal Fights Legal Threat, Raises $20,000 in an Hour
#89Matt Iman (guy behind TheOatmeal), was co-founder & original CTO of SEOMoz and left after his side project (Mingle2) blew up in popularity and was acquired. He mentions in his departing SEOMoz blog post that the company that acquired Mingle2 wanted "to leverage my viral marketing and linkbait abilities" - back in 2007. Fun to look at this through understanding that he's a SEO guru and viral-marketing genius. Perfect…
To his credit though, some of his comics are hilarious. I have a couple printed on my wall (without his permission).
Re: The Oatmeal Fights Legal Threat, Raises $20,000 in an Hour
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think aresant was implying any malfeasance on Matt Iman's part.
Yah not implying anything negative. I am just in awe of how well this response was executed and learning from it.
Yeah Matt's a good guy. I've had coffee with him, worked with him very briefly, know friends of his, he's well liked in the Seattle community, etc. He's smart and talented. I'm watching this with interest because my lawyers have always told me to not fight a legal threat in the press (e.g. a trademark lawsuit I dealt with) because judges don't look kindly on it. But I'm not sure I agree with that so will be interesting to see how/if this unfolds.