Get your wallets out! It’s that time again!
Welcome to the Slightly Belated Second Quarter 2016 We Hunted the Mammoth Pledge Drive!
Let me repeat my standard pitch, with a few little variations:
If you enjoy this blog, and can afford it, please click on the “donate” button below and send some bucks my way!
You don’t need a PayPal account; credit cards are accepted, and there are other options as well. If you’re outside the US, PayPal will automatically convert your non-American money into American bucks.
You can also set up recurring payments through PayPal if that’s more convenient to you.
Small donations are welcome, as are stupendously large ones. I appreciate them all!
To everyone who donates, no matter how much, thank you, thank you, and thank you.
And thanks to all those who donate between pledge drives as well!
Asking for donations is always a bit awkward for me, which is one of the reasons I’m always running late with the pledge drives. But We Hunted the Mammoth as we know it could not exist without your help.
As all of you who regularly read this blog know, I’ve shifted the focus of my coverage over the last year or two, from focusing mainly on misogyny among Men’s Rights activists and pickup artists and their ilk to a broader focus on the reactionary resurgence that first started to take shape in and around the Gamergate movement and that now revolves around Trump.
In some cases this has meant following people like Roosh and Heartiste as they dialled back their discussions of “game” and dialled up their racist and religious hate. But it has also meant, to an extent, moving on from so intensively covering a Men’s Rights “movement” that seems to have lost its mojo and devoting more attention to the resurgent far-right.
While the central focus of this blog remains misogyny, I’ll almost certainly be paying a lot of attention to Trump and his fans between now and what I hope will be his defeat in November. I hope you all will support me as I do what I can to make sure he’s never elected president of anything.
I’ve lived through some strange political times but this year in many ways is the strangest and scariest yet. I hope this blog can continue to serve as a rallying point and a meeting place for those attempting both to understand and to thwart Trump and his allies.
So if you can afford it, please put some money in the hat.
And if you can’t, well, as I’ve noted many times before, I also greatly appreciate all the non-monetary things you all do to support the blog, from contributing smart and funny comments, designing graphics, sending me tips on stuff to write about, sharing posts on Twitter and Facebook, alerting me to trolls in the comments, and more.
You folks keep this blog going, and I’m eternally grateful for that.
Thank you all!
I get feeling awkward asking for donations – I probably would, too. But if you were producing this content in any other medium, you would be paid. I think pretty much everyone understands that. Plus, you’re never pushy or demanding. You understand that it’s not always possible to donate.
I have spent countless hours (too many hours tbh) hanging out here over the last 5 years or so, enjoying the mockery and the feeling of community. Although I completely understand that it’s your blog and you can stop at any time for any reason, I would be very sad to see it go, so helping to keep it afloat is one of the best uses for some of my entertainment budget. So, if anything, I appreciate the quarterly reminders.
I’m guessing Patreon isn’t an option because it would open your backers to retaliation?
David, have you considered setting up a Patreon account?
Thanks for all you do. If I get a paycheck this month (shaky startup I work for may be hit badly by brexit) I will donate either way.
I’ll be donating after the weekend. Keep up the good work, David.
I would donate if I could afford it. Instead I try to signal boost your work with other people, because you deserve more signal <3 Thank you so much for writing this, day in and day out. you're a breath of fresh air.
I'll be sure to include your name on the list of people to be spared for the pending robot apocalypse!
Thanks, everyone!
For those who can’t donate, I understand! Scildfreja, I definitely appreciate signal boosts!
And at some point (hopefully soon) I will set up a patreon.
David: If you’re thinking about setting up a Patreon, I would recommend doing a LOT of research on it, considering there’s still a few loopholes which assholes can, and will, exploit.
For instance, the one problem I hear cropping up again and again is people pledging money, and then asking for a refund a day or so later, once they’ve gotten all the extra Patreon-only goodies they want.
I don’t know if you’d be offering Patreon-only goodies (it would be a cool idea to get people to donate), but some people (artists I follow, mostly) have set up their Patreons in a way so that after they get the money (on the 15th of every month), THEN they post last month’s stuff.
For instance, they’ll post April’s stuff (WIPs, finished art, etc.) after May 15th, so not only are they only making sure that people are less likely to scam them (because they’ll only get the old stuff and not the new, and they’ll already have the money from April’s backers), they have an extra month to make sure all the Patreon-only stuff is only given to people who have committed to paying for it and aren’t going to weasel out of it.
Of course, that only really applies to art Patreons and the like, so I don’t know how that would help you, but I still felt it was good to mention. : /
Another thing you’ll want to keep in mind with Patreon is that they take a good chunk of the money on smaller donations, at least according to Jill over at the Nerdy Bird. I’m guessing they take a transaction fee rather than a percentage, or maybe a little of both. But take a look at that.
I finally got to donate! Yay, regular employment. Not so yay, AUS – US exchange rate :/
I was about to write something about how much I appreciate this blog, but Viscaria put it perfectly already :).
The expanding coverage makes sense to me, David. It’s connected in many ways and these are … interesting times.
Excellent advice re Patreon from people above. Amanda Palmer is a big fan of it, and she’s written quite a bit about how to manage it, what the possible pitfalls are, and so on (she’s also incredible however she earns her money, but enough about my crushes).
Here’s a tip for you:
Apparently, our old friend GayLubeOil was just removed from his moderator’s post at /r/TheDonald, which appears to be in the midst of some sort of schism. Part of the reason is because he kept on promoting redpill/PUA stuff and even the other Trump supporters weren’t all comfortable with that. And part of it was because he and his friend CisWhiteMaelstrom kept using the subreddit to promote themselves personally. (Actually, isn’t that sort of behavior rather Trumpian in itself)?
You’ve written about GayLubeOil before….maybe it’s time for a “greatest hits” thread about him?
Oh, and I think I figured out where he got his nom de plume from….
Do you accept GBP? You might not want to for the foreseeable future.
@ Hu’s On First
There was a self identifying Nazi on a forum I frequent (thankfully who has moved on) that was banned on Stormfront. How terrible is that, to be so awful as to repulse even that sort of scum? I think that when/if Trump goes down in flames, they’ll all turn on each other.
This is what makes me happiest about having a bit of money; being able to support people and causes I love!
One thing that would make me happier vis-a-vis Trump coverage, is to find some cute kitties/bunnies/puppies/lizards/horses/cute-critters-of-your-choice to stand in for the Trump photo-ops. I feel like I can’t look at any media anymore without seeing his, er, unpleasant visage.
Just a timid suggestion! Not a demand, not even a request; I’ll happily continue to just scroll past him like I do everywhere else online.
@Hambeast, I know what we need! Recently when our Prime Minister here in Aust gave many of us the same reaction (i.e. visceral disgust) there was an app you could get which auto replaced any pic of Tony Abbott’s face with a kitten.
I wonder if there’s one for Trump? ?
I shall investigate – onwards!
Thanks and thanks again to everyone who’s donated!
And thanks for the advice on patreon; I definitely need to figure some stuff out before I launch it, which is one of the reasons I haven’t gotten around to it yet.
throwaway, paypal handles the currency exchange stuff but yeah, looks like brits won’t be getting a lot of bang for their pound, at least right now.
Ok, i have been able this time.
I hope you delete any trace of our real names and such once you receive the money, cause i do not like to have them on the internet. Databases remain so crackable… orz