Last night was the grand premiere of The Sarkeesian Effect (Team Jordan Owen Edition), and the response from critics and audience members alike has been overwhelming!
That video of crickets has gotten more than 3,344,825 views on Youtube. That’s 371,647 times the number of people who apparently showed up at the Sarkeesian Effect premiere/#GamerGate Meetup at the Landmark Midtown Art Cinema in Atlanta last night.
Yep. According to the organizer of the #GamerGate meetup, only nine people showed. Including the director.
@mundanematt @jordanowen42 But yeah, including me, Jordan, and my bf, only 9 people showed up.
— Artist Lisa M (@ArtistLisaM) August 1, 2015
Meanwhile, on Reddit’s Kotaku In Action subreddit, one of the main #GamerGate hubs, the excitement was palpable.
Even Jordan Owen — the director of this incarnation of the Sarkeesian Effect — was uncharacteristically quiet; his reports from the premiere consisted mainly of photos of the screen, evidently his attempt to prove to the critics that, yes, the film exists.
https://twitter.com/jordanowen42/status/627336679112736769
https://twitter.com/jordanowen42/status/627343425369702400
https://twitter.com/jordanowen42/status/627350752097341440
Those last two pics seem to suggest that the insidious “Sarkeesian Effect” that gave the film its title is Ms. Sarkeesian’s uncanny ability to cause her critics to wear plaid shirts vaguely similar to her own signature look.
Online, the only people excited about the event that I could find were an assortment of popcorn-munching critics of #GamerGate. And they were mostly excited about the discovery of the official Sarkeesian Effect website.
Sorry, I meant to say the discovery of ANOTHER official Sarkeesian Effect website.
You may vaguely remember the official website, unveiled several months back, an amateurish unfinished job, with crappy graphics; the links on the front page to the film’s trailer, press coverage, Sarkeesian Effect wallpapers (!), and a list of theaters showing the film (!!) all led to this page:
And they still do.
Owen says that this unfinished mess of a website is still the official Sarkeesian Effect website. But now it’s been joined by a second unfinished mess of a website that also seems to be staking a claim as the official Sarkeesian Effect website. It’s not clear if this new site is the handiwork of Davis Aurini, or if Owen hired someone to put it together and just forgot about it.
Weirdly, this last option seems the most probable. Given that the site was promoting the premiere last night — a premiere of Owen’s version of the film, which Aurini had disavowed in advance — it seems unlikely that Aurini had anything to do with it.
While a teensy bit slicker than the original, the new site isn’t quite ready for public consumption. Here, for example, are the bios of some of the famous NAMES interviewed in the film.
Yes, that’s right: Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s …
Also, Karen Straughan — the blabby FeMRA videoblogger and “Honey Badger” — is actually three women sitting next to each other.
Alas, the now-feuding “filmmakers” behind the “film” don’t fare any better themselves. In addition to giving both of them the Lorem treatment, whoever made the site also managed to misspell Aurini’s last name.
Clearly, from now on, Davis Aurini will be known as Davis-a-rooni.
Even the site’s Quick FAQs section has an impressive Lorem ratio.
And, yes, it is true that FILM starring NAME, NAME and NAME, has been featured on MEDIA.
This site, as, er, wildly optimistic about the commercial prospects of The Sarkeesian Effect as the old site, also includes a link to theaters showing the film. But instead of leading to a “Coming Soon” page, the new site links instead to … a blank page on Google Docs.
I can only hope that the film itself — presumably headed ultimately for a YouTube release — lives up to this amazing website.
Sorry. I mean BOTH films live up to BOTH websites.
H/T — @tortoiseontour, who alerted me to the website and pointed out the misspelling of Aurini’s name.
I’m shaking with excitement for the inevitable Sarkeesian Effect Riff.
All hail Lorem Ipsum, The Goddess of Unintentional Comedy!
Oh my god. It’s not even a real lorem ipsum. Whoever did that literally just copied the “What is Lorem Ipsum” section from lipsum.com
Come now, everyone. Let’s all give Owen snaps for exceeding the number of attendees who registered on the Facebook event! When I checked the page yesterday there were eleven people going (plus one dude wistfully hoping for a showing in his local theatre, ha!) and Jordan got TWELVE*! This is unheard of in the history of Facebook events!
Seriously though this shit is amazing. I’m terribly sad that we are nearing (have reached?) the inevitable denouement of this hilarious, wonderful mess.
* well, okay, including Jordan himself.
@Kootiepatra
that @CuriousSeaLion twitter feed is pretty great. Thanks for pointing it out 🙂
It’s a good thing they used donations to buy themselves cars because, boy, the proceeds from this film won’t get them far.
We need a RiffTrax version of The Sarkeesian Effect. I bet we could get more than nine people to show up for a viewing of it.
Where did you get the 12 figure from? From what I’ve read, that’s an optimistic estimate 🙂
@Moggie
Yeah, I guessed the “bot” site was put together by some random GGer who wanted to promote the film but forgot to update the site.
@davidknewton
I… can’t read 🙁
I am feeling some actual pity for Jordan Owen, if only because he likes cats; and I dislike Aurini a hell of a lot more with all his gaslighting and DARVO behaviour.
Then again, I really want to see this film so I can point and laugh at it. Hopefully it won’t be too long before it’s on YouTube.
I’m also hoping Aurini cobbles together his own version so I can point and laugh at that one too.
I’m genuinely curious to see this movie because I keep wondering what the Sarkeesian ‘effect’ supposedly is. They’ve never actually explained what their thesis is.
If laughter is healing, you’re an excellent doctor, Futrelle.
Wow…that was so pathetic I actually feel sorry for them now. But let’s not revel in their failure, let’s be more compassionate than that. Afterall, as a great man once said:
[IMG]http://i682.photobucket.com/albums/vv183/Psykotto/private/gandhi_zpsgkk8gmro.jpg~original[/IMG]
Ugh…of course that didn’t work.
I still want to know how the breakup/getting back together/breakup is affecting the most important and sympathetic member of the film-making trio, Decorative plastic skull. Does either website answer this question?
It’s been explained to me but I keep forgetting. It has something to do with Sarkeesian’s fundraising. I think it’s something about how the massive unwarranted backlash raised people’s awareness on her and her project, and therefore she met and exceeded her donation goal, whereas she might not have if people had ignored her. Basically the Streisand Effect in reverse.
I could be mistaken, however. Tom and Jerry certainly don’t go out of their way to tell you what it’s supposed to be, do they?
Oh my Lorem Ipsum, it’s Paul Fucking Elam — sorry, NAME — in a black silk shirt. UNBUTTONED, to boot. Be still my beating Lorem Ipsum ralphum barfum.
I keep reading pro GG comments which accuse Sarkeesian of raising more money than she needed, then not making the videos promised. Any truth to that, anyone?
Last time I checked her channel, she’d been putting stuff up just a few weeks ago.
http://i.imgur.com/OBejvDy.jpg
On a possibly related note, anyone have any idea why my Google app just recommend Roger Ebert’s 2001 review of Freddy Got Fingered because it was “popular with readers of wehintedthemammoth.com?”
Also, it TOTALLY looks like Dunderf00t is talking about NAME right next to him.
@gosuamakenatek,
I’ve not managed to embed an image here yet.
@Scented Fucking Hard Chairs,
that looks like the story board of Aurini’s road trip to wherever it was.
@sn0rkmaiden: that’s frequently claimed by the #GamerGaters but Anita is required to file a tax return since Feminist Frequency is a non-profit and I never see any of them dare to audit her publicly available tax return.
In other words, yes, that claim is utter bullshit. She did raise more money than she needed but that’s because of the harassment actually. She had enough to do Tropes vs. Women in Video Games. Then the harassment started, she got a lot more exposure, and people came out of the wordwork to donate. And the videos she’s released are extremely high quality.
This interview with ICP about their Christianity (this journalist and several others repeatedly refer to them as Christians; they don’t object, though they themselves talk about god, never Jesus or Christianity) is freaking amazing. It’s well worth reading all the way through if you’re not triggered or overly repulsed by ICP lyrics.
Wait, I think I posted in the wrong threadf. Where is the ICP discussion?
Comments! How do they work?!