Do the Sarkeesian Effect dudes — now in the midst of a painful and noisy breakup — not realize how ridiculous they look to the rest of us?
Ok, maybe that’s not the right question to ask. After all, we’re talking about Davis Aurini, a sort of low-budget Anton LaVey with a plastic-skull fetish who actually put this picture of himself on his website on purpose:
Meanwhile, Jordan Owen, his former partner in, er, “filmmaking” is a sort of human-bear hybrid who once recorded an hour-long pro-porn diatribe while sitting naked in his bathtub — and then, instead of taking a few minutes to ponder the choices he’s made in his life, he went and put that online.
At the moment, though, the human-bear hybrid is winning the public relations war, largely due to his strategy of not actually participating in it while his former partner spews out an assortment of accusations and insinuations and probably some other kinds of “ations” I don’t even know about.
Yesterday, Aurini — classy fellow that he is — posted an 8000 word log of two private Skype chats he’d had with Owen right before and right after Owen “fired” him from The Sarkeesian Effect. In the logs, Aurini vehemently defends the honor of his “colleague” Roosh V, whom Owen had criticized in a couple of charateristically loooong videos, and demands (among other things) that Owen retract his accusations that Roosh was unable to get laid in Denmark and Norway.
He also tries to convince Owen that he is having some sort of psychological meltdown and repeatedly accuses him of “hallucinating.” After posting the whole log, Aurini tells his readers that Owen is “a man deep in the grips of psychosis.”
Oh, and he tries to blackmail Owen into giving him half of the money left in the budget for the Sarkeesian Effect.
Aurini evidently thought that posting this log would make him look good.
I’ll let you be the judge of that. What follows are what I think are the Top 8 Most Cringeworthy Moments from the Aurini/Owen Chat Logs.
1) In a chat that happened a week before Owen “fired” Aurini, Aurini shows Owen the text of a message he sent to Roosh about Owen’s anti-Roosh video, urging Roosh to “have at” the man who was still at that point his “business partner.”
[2/22/2015 1:36:29 PM] Davis Aurini: I didn’t want you to post this video because I didn’t want you to have a panic attack as your idiocy was demonstrated by others; I need you semi-coherent to finish this documentary. But if you’re going to publicly shit the bed, then so be it. You deserve everything that’s coming to you. I sent the following email to Roosh:
My partner on this Sarkeesian venture decided to post an attack video on you, misconstruing an article of yours. I told him to take it down, mainly because he was making an ass of himself, but he decided that the highest value a man can subscribe to is calling out people on the Right and doing the Left’s work for them.
Link below. Please, have at ‘er. While I’m not going to publicly denounce my business partner, I look forward to seeing others point out the numerous flaws with his video.
2) Aurini, seemingly channeling the spirit of the Charles Boyer character in Gaslight, attempts to convince Owen that his negative impressions of Roosh are based on “hallucinations.”
[2/22/2015 2:09:32 PM] Davis Aurini: You stated that Roosh is spreading STDs; that is false and libelous.
[2/22/2015 2:09:55 PM] Davis Aurini: That is the hallucination; not your disgust, even though you’re making the most uncharitable interpretation possible.
[2/22/2015 2:10:24 PM] Jordan Owen: I’m being uncharitable when he defames all women everywhere and calls for limitations to be put on their freedom?
[2/22/2015 2:10:34 PM] Davis Aurini: You also seem to think that he couldn’t get laid in Denmark, and blamed the country for his own failings. I already explained to you why this is false, but you don’t remember it because you were hallucinating.
3) Aurini tries to convince Owen that he’s also “hallucinating” Roosh’s, let’s just say, extremely cavalier attitude toward STDs.
[2/22/2015 2:16:53 PM] Davis Aurini: You did hallucinate him spreading STDs.
[2/22/2015 2:17:06 PM] Davis Aurini: That’s outright false.
[2/22/2015 2:17:49 PM] Davis Aurini: It’s also actionable libel, though I doubt he’ll sue.
[2/22/2015 2:20:20 PM] Jordan Owen: Everything I was going off of is directly sourced to things that he’s written. He had nine years of unprotected sex without getting tested and openly stated that he didn’t care.
[2/22/2015 2:20:42 PM] Davis Aurini: And you make a leap to “He is intentionally spreading STDs”
[2/22/2015 2:21:22 PM] Jordan Owen: If he’s having unprotected sex with the full knowledge that he’s carrying something (as evidenced by his symptoms) then yes, he’s doing it intentionally.
[2/22/2015 2:21:44 PM] Davis Aurini: Facetious logic.
[2/22/2015 2:21:50 PM] Jordan Owen: It’s kind of like saying “well, I was randomly firing my gun into a crowd but I wasn’t INTENTIONALLY trying to hit anybody.”
[2/22/2015 2:21:53 PM] Davis Aurini: Yellow journalism
[2/22/2015 2:22:14 PM] Davis Aurini: You also think he didn’t get laid in Norway, despite the fact that he got laid in Norway, and explained how to get laid in Norway.
4) Aurini continues the gaslighting, as he tries to convince Owen that his dislike of Roosh is “irrational.”
[2/22/2015 2:24:58 PM] Davis Aurini: You had a panic attack when we discussed Roosh; you wished his parents had aborted him. This is Elliot Rogers logic. And you suggest that the calm and collected person is being irrational?
[2/22/2015 2:25:56 PM] Jordan Owen: Yes, it gave me tremendous anxiety to discuss him. But the “why” for that is tremendously valid.
[2/22/2015 2:26:29 PM] Davis Aurini: If you’re experiencing tremendous anxiety, that suggests that you’re not being rational.
[2/22/2015 2:26:48 PM] Jordan Owen: Well, I’m not experiencing anxiety now and I feel the same way.
[2/22/2015 2:27:00 PM] Davis Aurini: Do you currently believe false statements?
[2/22/2015 2:27:07 PM] Jordan Owen: No.
[2/22/2015 2:27:43 PM] Davis Aurini: So you realize that Roosh did get laid in Norway? And that he did not intentionally spread STDs?
5) At the end of this chat, which mostly consists of Aurini attacking Owen for his dislike of Roosh, Aurini says he doesn’t really care what Owen thinks about Roosh:
[2/23/2015 10:14:03 PM] Davis Aurini: … Listen Jordan, I honestly don’t care about what you think about Roosh (or vice versa for that matter) I just felt it was very poor timing, and insulting to those supporters of ours who came through my channel.
6) And then there’s the blackmail. After Owen “fires” him, Aurini gives him a counteroffer of sorts:
[3/2/2015 11:09:14 PM] Davis Aurini: We can do this clean or we can do it messy. We can both produce separate films and be polite; admitting that we have different views. Or we can do this messy. …
[3/2/2015 11:10:19 PM] Davis Aurini: Give me 50% of the money that we both asked for together, and we will part ways politely.
[3/2/2015 11:11:06 PM] Davis Aurini: The only reason I’m making this offer is because the ‘messy’ option is unseemly; it’s ammunition for the SJWs.
7) After acknowledging that, yes, he used several thousand dollars of the Sarkeesian Effect budget to buy himself a car, and trying to convince Owen that the real reason he’s moving to Las Vegas is to be “closer to Hollywood,” Aurini makes another counteroffer:
[3/2/2015 11:41:11 PM] Davis Aurini: 1.5k – we go forward together. 4k – we part amicably. 0 – I go public with the facts.
[3/2/2015 11:41:30 PM] Davis Aurini: That’s how honest businessmen deal.
8) But it turns out that Aurini is willing to haggle:
[12:01:53 AM] Jordan Owen: If you won’t consider my terms for severing ties then I have no reason to consider yours.
[12:02:01 AM] Davis Aurini: What terms are those?
[12:03:01 AM] Jordan Owen: What I offered- that I pay you for this month at the usual rate and give you credit in the film.
[12:03:50 AM] Davis Aurini: Make it 2.5; and I will be making my own film with a different title. I will also write a glowing review of what you’re doing, and explain it as differences in artistic direction with no animosity – and I will let you review it before I hit publish.
ETHICS!
ETHICS!!
ETHICS!!!!
H/T — @somegreybloke
re: Moving to Vegas to be closer to LA.
First off, no. No-one who’s serious about working in LA lives 4 hours away from a potential interview.
However, there is the trend of libertarian assholes moving to Vegas to become “professional” gamblers. That narcissistic faith in their own superiority is teflon to logic.
Usually it’s poker or counting cards in single deck black jack. Sometimes their savings will last long enough to see them get a win or two. Just enough to postpone the inevitable – moving to some shiteberg small town with cheap rent to “take a break.” Sometimes you can see them panhandling downtown. Give them 5 seconds of your time and they’ll gladly froth about how casinos “rip you off.”
But…that’s only the TRUTH! Hell, Roosh even wrote a pamphlet called “Don’t Bang Denmark”, which he’s selling for the price of a full-length book. Blames the Danish social-service net (which, apparently, is deplorably devoid of holes) for women being too secure to bother trying to vie for the attentions of weirdos who kvetch about having to practice even the most basic of hygiene. As though they wouldn’t also prefer a nice, attractive (and CLEAN) Danish dude over…well…Roosh!
(And Norway? Ditto, but with more Norwegians and those cute snow-patterned sweaters they wear. Roosh probably hates dudes who look good in cute, snow-patterned Norwegian sweaters.)
Gaslighting? From a dollar-menu satanic cultist? Say it ain’t so!
Blackmail? From a guy whose middle name might as well be Grifteroo? Well, roll me in Cheeto dust and boil me in Mountain Dew…
These guys are such great comic relief, I almost want to throw money at them just so they’ll keep up this shitshow for another season.
Thanks to you, I have now Googled “Norwegian man in a snowflake sweater.”
I’m mentally writing “Purl Norway” even as we speak.
Sorry, Shaenon! I actually have the Aurini book — well, the Kindle “sample” of it you can download for free on Amazon. I tried reading it, but it was a lot more tedious than entertaining. A lot of really detailed and gratuitous description.
I will give it another look; this is the sort of sacrifice I make in order to do this blog. Since it’s Aurini, there may be some inadvertently hilarious nuggets buried in there.
The Aurini book sounds like it would mesh well with JudgyBitch’s book about Men During War.
@katz,
I could stand it when he was criticizing Roosh. But then he started going off about how Roosh V is undoing the good work of the Don’t Be That Girl campaign, which Owen believes was well-received and raised consciousness about false rape allegations.
friday jones | March 6, 2015 at 3:41 pm
I didn’t even see this until I re-read the comments!
Thank you~
Though I don’t play WoW (I’ve gotten a bit into Path of Exile which plays like Diablo and is freeeee and has gotten lots of praise for Grinding Gear’s excellent business model), so if someone who does wants the stipend thing…
It should be called “50 Shades of Machismo”. Because people making books out of old fanfiction shouldn’t be a thing.
I just assumed Aurini was moving to Vegas for the legalized prostitution.
I’ve added Archimedes’ Ships, Better Records, Controller Block, Enchiridion/Mariculture, Magical Crops, MFFS Calclavia, and Secret Rooms.
Since I’m watching Buffy season 6 right now, it occurs to me that a good analogy for these two would be Aurini = Warren and Owen = Jonathan and Andrew. Aurini is a flat out misogynist asshole villain. Owen, like Jonathan and Andrew is far from an innocent, he’s made bad choices, but he doesn’t fully understand the implications of his choices. Like Buffy said (and I’m paraphrasing a bit) Owen’s not evil exactly, but when he’s near it he picks up its flavor. Like a mushroom.
Whoa, there’s leaked footage of the Sarkeesian effect on youtube. It’s got much better production value than I expected, I’m impressed. High points: Owen in his bath at 4:20. Low points: generalized lack of skulls.
@kirbywarp yeah… Roosh’s modest proposal about making rape legal, the one most of his sycophants say is satire. Roosh actually said in his forum that this is what he really thinks, but nah, it’s satire. People in the same thread, where Roosh writes
go on to say how it’s soooo obvious this was satire, this thing he stated because he really believes it. NOT because he is stating it in a comical way intended to expose foibles, stupidity, etc (which is, for any MRA’s who may be reading, what satire is for chrissakes – good satire is OBVIOUSLY not what the author actually thinks, and is OBVIOUSLY satirical. Sheesh.)
Also TIL that locking your car door decreases car theft. Because car thieves have no way around locked car doors, the poor dears. I suppose if you do not lock your car door, you are implicitly consenting to have someone else take your car. Solid logic.
And in order to incentivize people locking their car doors, I propose that we decriminalize car theft! If you park your car anywhere that isn’t your own driveway, it is assumed that you are willing to lend it out to literally anyone who might want it.
This way is 100% certain to eliminate all car thefts of people who really, really don’t want their car stolen. Anyone who does get their car stolen wasn’t being careful enough and deserved it and shouldn’t expect to be able to ruin a car-borrower’s life with their false accusations.
Sylocat | March 7, 2015 at 9:50 pm
Oooh! I’ve played with Enchiridion (though I didn’t get much into it), Mariculture (which can be a little difficult, but it does have some cool building blocks), Magical Crops (Which gets to be OP as all hell once you can grow diamonds, ender pearls, and ghast tears), and Secret Rooms (which is really fun for hidey-holes).
I’ve also been trying a few mod packs like TolkienCraft II, Mage Quest, and Hat Pack.
TolkienCraft II – I had some problems with the install, and I would ONLY recommend it if your computer’s decent. Mine lags it like the Dickens.
Mage Quest – Not a lot of building blocks, and it’s in alpha and is therefore subject to change at this time, but lots of really cool magic mods! I only wish they’d put Ars Magica II in there. I love my OP Build-A-Spell Workshop mod.
Hat Pack – A pack from a subgroup of the Yogscast, Hat Films. Their pack is smaller than the Yogscast Complete Pack, and has a few different balanced mods for a varied experience, and it’s updated to 1.7, while Yogscast’s pack is only 1.6 (though I think they’re in the middle of moving to 1.7 right now, they’ve just got a LOT of people who are all working separately to move about).
I’m not going to lie, someone should really reach out to Owen. He seems super upset and not really that bad of a guy. Having been someone that’s been an asshole in the past in part because of my mental illness I can really sympathize with him to be honest. Also, if I had to spend more than 10 minutes a week in a room with that cueball piece of crap I’d probably have a panic disorder too.
I tried to send him a nice email but I couldn’t find his address anywhere and public twitter seems rude. If any of you guys know about where to contact him in a private way you should do it/tell me.
Aurini really believes he has superior intellect to Owen’s, doesn’t he? With all that psychoanalysis bull and telling his *friend* how and what to do. But in truth his replies are juvenile: ignoring Owen’s points about Roosh, changing the subject at more delicate points, adding personal attacks. It’s like reading replies of a high school kid. And why is he so obsessed with Roosh’s sex life in Nordic countries? He keeps coming back to that, why does he care what Owen believes?
Owen might have his issues but at least it seems HE is the one able to think with his own head about certain issues and trying to make sense of it. Considering the company he’s in, being bombarded with MRA rhetoric how equality is bad, his views on some issues are very advanced. The result might still be PUAhate but unlike Aurini he’s not blindly worshipping. It’s really ironic that Aurini finds himself smarter. And it’s likely Owen believes it too.
Nick:
It is tempting. I’ve known otherwise normal, kind dudes who go a little weird in the wrong company. (OK, not “make a dumbass movie about a pop-culture critic because her Kickstarter was successful” weird.)
Maybe Owen could benefit from a little honest empathy. At the same time, he’s not actually alone. He’s in a band, he probably has friends, some of whom might even be women. Whatever triggers his RP tendencies isn’t going to respond well to a total stranger reaching out. Best case scenario – you get your own hour long video response about the SJW’s trying to take advantage of him while he’s vulnerable.
I’m conflicted on whether or not an intervention would help Owen. He really buys into the false rape allegation hysteria being stirred up by the MRAs, and he thinks that Roosh is terrible because he’s being just as bad as feminists.
“You also seem to think that he couldn’t get laid in Denmark.” This is Wes Anderson dialogue if ever I heard it.
“You also think he didn’t get laid in Norway, despite the fact that he got laid in Norway, and explained how to get laid in Norway.”
I AM DYING.
I guess I’m more sympathetic to Jordan because I’ve been a fan of him, but this whole struggle with Aurini is flat out telling.
Recently in one of his videos Owen stated that some men don’t deserve to get laid and some shouldn’t if they don’t immediately get laid or something, and in a past video he said that maybe he will never find someone to love. However he apparently asked aurini about women and how to get laid or something. Very contrasting and telling. He has struggled with OCD in the past apparently, I wonder if other things are present.
Jordan seems lost. I feel as if he should take a long break and think some things through. Why he would think getting Aurini as his “colleague” was a good idea is beyond me. That is instant bad PR, no way around it. As for Aurini, jesus he is hopeless. I couldn’t even begin. Aurini has said a lot of slut shamming things while Jordan has always championed women sexuality (I’ve read his novel supporting the porn industry). How these two could work together defies explanation.
Yeah so tldr, Jordan take a break and do some soul searching and focus on your literary works because you’re a talented writer. Aurini? God help you.
I can’t help feeling sort of sorry for Jordan Owen. He seems like he does have some obsessive problems – for god’s sake, the man’s posted something like 12 hours of Sarkeesian rants. Honestly, I think he’s secretly in love with her or something, the amount of time he spends obsessing over her. And he is obsessed with women and female attention, you can see that from his porn fixation. Let’s be honest, Anita’s an attractive woman. There’s no way there’s not some creepy transference going on.
The thing about these MRA guys is that there’s always some disturbing overlap between attraction and hatred. “I’m attracted to you but I assume you won’t be with me so I hate you.” And while I’m sure he does disagree with what she says, the way that he fixates on her is pathetically personal.
Enter Aurini, the overblown windbag. They’re all pretty twisted up people, but Aurini is confident and controlling, and Owen is insecure and obsessive. No wonder he finally snapped. Deep beneath the insecurities, Owen actually has a conscience, unlike Aurini.
To be fair, there is a lot Gail Dines doesn’t understand; about sex workers, trans people, the construct of gender, and humanity in general.