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
I played Myst when I was just a young’un… but I can still remember the scene where I got hopelessly stuck and quit the game. Seeing all of these comments makes me want to find a copy of it (maybe GoG?) and try as an adult, to see if I can actually progress. And of course, Google won’t hurt. 😉
@kirbywarp – I used to be way into Minecraft. I don’t have a ton of time and energy for gaming at the moment, but if there was a Mammoth server I might drop in. 🙂 (I’m an “I’m here to make pretty buildings/statues” kind of player, FWIW.)
I find it odd that Aurini would say that Owen, who is an outspoken libertarian, is left-wing. How far off the deep end does one have to go to believe that?
One of the duo’s selling points from the start was that their documentary would be politically even-handed because Aurini is right-wing and Owen is left-wing. And yes, Aurini is so far to the right that an Ayn Rand fan who hates liberals and feminists but stops short of actively supporting rape looks like a hippie to him.
I still can’t get over Aurini posting a chat log where both of them casually acknowledge that they’ve been spending the documentary money on presents for themselves, and thinking it makes him look good. Lord, these boys are not bright.
(Interesting nugget for those here defending Owen: according to the chat, the arrangement has been that Owen collects all the money and pays Aurini $1500 a month. That’s an okay wage, albeit only a fraction of Aurini’s monthly skull budget, but the Patreon brings in almost $8,000 a month, and it sounds like they’ve been getting donations from other sources. Other than what they’ve spent on plane tickets for interviews, I’m not seeing any of that money on the screen. Which means Owen can afford a LOT of bath salts and belts.)
Also: According to RationalWiki, Aurini has written a novel that:
a) is entitled “As I Walk These Broken Roads”
b) according to the author, “explores the ideas of masculinity, brotherhood, social evolution, epistemology, and the nature of violence”
c) was originally “Fallout” fanfiction.
Why have you not informed me of this, David? I feel betrayed.
@Tracy, I can’t imagine what he thinks “University Lecture” style is.
“Look to your left. Look to your right. By the end of the semester, one of these people will get laid in Denmark.”
http://33.media.tumblr.com/7ade79009588d823ccd087b0f9d17d8f/tumblr_mm6qkoY63o1qhub34o5_r1_250.gif
*dies*
http://media.giphy.com/media/6quIvmJFMH7Wg/giphy.gif
Anyway, does that video of Jordan Owen criticizing Roosh still exist? I want to see it myself because I love it so much when these assholes fight amongst themselves.
Oh man, Shaenon wins. I’m sorry, that’s just too great to describe.
Shaenon, please let the delivery service know which colour you would like for the ribbons wrapping your shiny new internet.
To be so invested in making TSE, Jordan Owen presumably plays video games, right? Games in which the villain is usually signposted by the way they dress, their evil grin and by the racism, condescension and general douchebaggery that litters their dialogue.
How did it take Owen so long to realise that Aurini has “SLEAZEBAG” written through him like a stick of rock?
Still, although he’s never likely to abandon his right-of-centre politics or become a totally class A kind of guy, just seeing him recognise shitty, abusive behaviour when he sees it makes me cheer a little. It’s been a loooong while since we picked up on a manospherian from nearer the surface of the barrel. I mean, he’s not a good apple by any means, but there’s apparently still a chunk of him that isn’t rotten.
That’s actually a really good point. Aurini looks like a neo-Nazi skinhead as filtered through Vampire: The Masquerade. His trademark symbol is a fucking skull.
http://33.media.tumblr.com/1a56a684cb6ed7cbc2563f378a430b27/tumblr_mgkn36pm231r2l6zdo1_500.gif
The guys who designed Darth Vader would ask him to turn that shit down.
My jaw hit the floor when I saw that.
Granted, it certainly explains how they managed to blow a five-figure budget on something that looked so comically amateurish (I routinely oversee and sometimes even shoot videos on three-figure budgets that are more polished than what they came up with), but surely if you’re trying to set yourself up as this great champion of ethical behaviour, plain common sense dictates that you not only put every cent towards the production but publicly account for it? Who’s going to back anything else that these bozos attach their names to?
I launched a Kickstarter about eighteen months ago and, like them, we overshot the target – not by much, but certainly by a significant enough sum to make a difference. In fact, come to think of it, I could have bought a car with the difference, but instead my colleagues and I tried the radical tactic of keeping our backers fully informed about what we were doing and what we intended to spend the extra money on, and then ultimately delivering a significantly superior product to what they thought they were backing (three months late, but nobody – and I really do mean nobody – complained, given that we sent them regular updates about the additional post-production work that originally seemed like an unaffordable luxury).
I haven’t needed to launch another Kickstarter since – I’m a big fan of crowdfunding in principle, but I think it should only be used when you really can’t raise the money any other way. Also, it should never be used to cover the entire budget – with my Kickstarter, about 75% of the money had already been raised from industry sources that expected professional production (and accounting) standards and the hiring of people who demonstrably knew what they were doing, so those principles were firmly in place already.
Obviously, for ideological reasons I’m delighted that this project turned out the abject disaster that it did, but the producer in me can’t help but wonder whether they ever thought for a millisecond that spending the car money on a professional cameraperson and (separate) sound recordist might have been a better use of their investors’ funds?
In an argument between Aurini and Owen, I would pretty much always approach the evidence assuming Owen was the better person in whichever dispute they’re having.
Owen comes across like a self-absorbed man-child who has just discovered all the attention the internet brings him. Yes, I know he has been posting inordinately long rants for years, and he has said and particularly done some horrible things, but he really seems naive too, like he is just learning how his words and deeds affect other people. I think he usually has good intentions as he sees things, he just has a very immature view of the world.
Aurini generally plays the part of badass alpha male asshole whenever he is online, but even when you get glimpses behind the curtain like theses chat logs, he is still a horrible person to the core and only the badass part seems faked. He tries so hard to present this persona he has created to the world, when he could be his normal self and still be just as much of a dick.
I agree, but I can’t help but be reminded of a Charlie Brooker diatribe against Britain’s Conservative Party:
Come to think of it, French friends of mine actually did have to vote for the equivalent of Jordan Owen (aka Jacques Chirac) in the 2002 Presidential election, since the only alternative in the two-candidate run-off alternative was voting for Davis Aurini (aka the openly neo-Fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen).
One of my friends said that she seriously wanted to cut her hand off at the wrist after putting a cross against Chirac’s name, since she’d hated him for decades – but she recognised that it was her civic duty, and that she’d want to do far worse to herself if Le Pen had won by a single vote.
I’m not quite sure why a second “alternative” crept in there, but just try to ignore it. Apologies.
So… WHTM book club? Who’s with me? Can we get it for free? 😉
I’m surprised he’d even like Fallout, what with all the women and POC in the game. Though I suppose he could have chosen to play evil. Watching him do a playthrough would be… um… interesting.
If anyone has an hour of their day they don’t care about, Owen’s somewhat revised deconstruction of Roosh:
Aurini has accomplished the impossible: He’s made me like Owen just a little bit.
@Tracy:
Aww, that makes me sad. Aurini’s mind-fuckery caused him to change his video.
But holy fucking shit, Roosh’s “response video” was “I want to make rape legal so that women will be more careful, you’d think any proposal to decrease rape would be welcome by everyone! I don’t understand!”
And he says that with a straight face. Fuck.
What makes hell so hellish is the company.
I think one of the distinguishing characteristics of the Greater Manosphere is to have absolutely no idea what they look like to people outside their bubble. From what I hear, the MRAs were thrilled that GQ sent a nationally-known journalist like Jeff Sharlet to report on their convention. All of us here at WHTM assumed that the convention would be a PR disaster for them, but they apparently expected Sharlet to write a glowing piece about how they were the next great human rights movement, and they were shocked at what he actually wrote. To them, the only possible explanation is a conspiracy to produce a “hit piece” right from the start. Obviously he wouldn’t bring an attractive young woman with him just to help her with her career — it was all so nefarious, such an obvious trap. Like he KNEW in advance that one of the dudes would pull really gross PUA moves on her. In fact, I don’t think he really had any comprehension of what he was going to be reporting on.
I see Jordan Owen as a typical socially awkward nerd who got in with a bunch of jerkwads that he mistook for sophisticated people who had a firm grasp on reality. I’ve seen it happen; insecure, awkward young guys fall for some pretty skeevy acts — con-men like Aurini, who can semi-plausibly claim that they understand how the world works, can easily fool a guy who is scared that he’s abysmally not with it. JO probably thought Aurini was his mentor and Roosh was the reigning expert on getting laid. But then Roosh wrote his thingy on rape, and JO makes the fatal mistake of asking himself, if Roosh really does know the cheat code for getting women into bed, why would he be thinking of making rape less illegal unless (gasp) he was afraid that some of his seductions might be dangerously close to, or even over the line. So he starts asking questions, and then his “friend” Aurini is suddenly giving him the gaslighting treatment and more or less kicking him out of the Aurini’s boys’ club. JO might keep on asking questions, and that might lead to a meltdown (“existential crisis”?), and he might come out on the other side a much different person. I’m not saying it will happen, just that I wouldn’t be shocked if it did. You never know what will happen when someone starts discovering that his mentor/role-model is actually a nasty jerkwad, an each question he has leads to another, possibly bigger one.
I just watched 10 minutes of the Owen video that Tracy posted and for a few seconds it seems Owen is about to see the light. I was like O__o It is a little too much to listen to him for over 10 minutes, at least for me. Has anyone watched the whole video? What did you think?
I got about forty minutes in. While he definitely grasps what’s wrong with Roosh’s position and explains pretty thoroughly why there are so many problems with the “legalize rape” idea, he’s still very opposed to feminism, thinks that Roosh is the men’s rights version of a feminist, and beating the false-rape allegation drum.
If Aurini and Owen’s film is ever completed I predict it will be the Citizen Kane of youtube crazy people video rants. It will have a prominent place in a future Museum of Early Internet Wackaloonery.
You are a god among mortals.