froontherun - the link is already in the post, but thanks!

The book is a compilation of Reddit posts and new material on “pick-up artistry” (PUA). The main point of contention is chapter 7 on “physical escalation and sex”. 

The Reddit post was supposedly pulled by the author due to backlash, but I have no personal knowledge of this. A lot of what people are saying is hearsay, at this point. All I know is this: the content is not on the Kickstarter’s project page.

From Kickstarter’s Terms of Service:

Even with the missing chapter, I’m not convinced that the project qualifies as any of these things, in the eyes of Kickstarter. One could argue that the chapter in question is both offensive and sort of pornographic, but how would Kickstarter see it?

Maybe enough PR drama could force Kickstarter’s hand, but I don’t know that opponents of the project have a lot of ground to stand on where the TOS are concerned.

Here are some things I said while being visited by the Ambien Walrus, courtesy of someone who actually keeps chat logs. For. Posterity(???)

1. Where can I find your comic?

The page in progress on tumblr doesn’t have a proper comic home. It’s a test page for relaunching a project. So, at the moment, the answer is “nowhere” unless you want to look at something I did two years ago. There is a reason that I don’t link to it from here. In any case, I hope you stick around for updates, and thanks for your interest!

2. How long do these pages take you, from sketch to completion?

I don’t know yet. The three pages I am working on at the moment are all test pages. I won’t be able to give an approximate answer until these pages are done. The old MO pages took between 25-40ish hours. The goal is for the newer ones to take much, much less time.

3. Where did you go?

I haven’t really gone anywhere. I just don’t have anything to say. I drift in and out of social engagement, I guess. Even online. I’ll take a page out of a friend’s book, and just call it “health problems”. Don’t worry, though. There’s nothing to worry about, and you aren’t missing anything. 

In Moulmein, in lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people – the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me. 

I was sub-divisional police officer of the town, and in an aimless, petty kind of way anti-European feeling was very bitter. No one had the guts to raise a riot, but if a European woman went through the bazaars alone somebody would probably spit betel juice over her dress. As a police officer I was an obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so. When a nimble Burman tripped me up on the football field and the referee (another Burman) looked the other way, the crowd yelled with hideous laughter. This happened more than once. In the end the sneering yellow faces of young men that met me everywhere, the insults hooted after me when I was at a safe distance, got badly on my nerves. The young Buddhist priests were the worst of all. There were several thousands of them in the town and none of them seemed to have anything to do except stand on street corners and jeer at Europeans. All this was perplexing and upsetting. For at that time I had already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing and the sooner I chucked up my job and got out of it the better. Theoretically – and secretly, of course – I was all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British. As for the job I was doing, I hated it more bitterly than I can perhaps make clear. 

In a job like that you see the dirty work of Empire at close quarters. The wretched prisoners huddling in the stinking cages of the lock-ups, the grey, cowed faces of the long-term convicts, the scarred buttocks of the men who had been Bogged with bamboos – all these oppressed me with an intolerable sense of guilt. But I could get nothing into perspective. I was young and ill-educated and I had had to think out my problems in the utter silence that is imposed on every Englishman in the East. I did not even know that the British Empire is dying, still less did I know that it is a great deal better than the younger empires that are going to supplant it. All I knew was that I was stuck between my hatred of the empire I served and my rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make my job impossible. With one part of my mind I thought of the British Raj as an unbreakable tyranny, as something clamped down, in saecula saeculorum, upon the will of prostrate peoples; with another part I thought that the greatest joy in the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest’s guts. Feelings like these are the normal by-products of imperialism; ask any Anglo-Indian official, if you can catch him off duty.