Maximum Fun STILL Isn’t That Fun
I got a lot of response to a Medium post I made awhile ago. I was really appreciative of everyone who responded, regardless of if you agreed with me or not. In fact, I got some pretty crazy responses from the two hosts of The Greatest Generation! All of those responses gave me a lot to think about, so I wanted to write a follow up responding directly to some criticism, touch on a points that I maybe didn’t make clear, and make one new point.
Let’s start with the elephants in the room.
Comments From The Greatest Generation Hosts
I was completely shocked that they would read the Medium post. I truly didn’t imagine they would take the time to read this. Wouldn’t have changed what I said, but I’m still floored.
Let’s address what Ben Harrison had to say first.
The Greatest Generation got permission from Dark Materia for The Picard Song. We got it after we started the show, but before the show was monetized. We didn’t expect anyone to listen at first! He was really nice about it, and we credit him at the end of the show.
In this, Harrison admits that they asked for permission after they made the episodes and used the songs. Which was the point I was trying to make about fan art and how Maximum Fun deals with that. The Picard Song is Star Trek fan art. They used said fan art, without asking, as part of their specific podcast’s brand. Once they were going to make money, they asked for permission. That’s the specific point I was attempting to make, and this doesn’t go against that point.
The challenge coin is something that was designed by one of our listeners, and we used sales of it to raise thousands of dollars for a science education on our 2017 tour. We had some extras and we put them on the MaxFunStore rather than melt them down. When we get a payout from MaxFun we are planning on donating the proceeds to the same charity.
While the Star Trek challenge coin wasn’t my best example, it still looks like Star Trek merch to me. Donating proceeds to charity doesn’t change anything for me as it relates to the overall Maximum Fun fan art ethos from Jesse Thorn, the face of Maximum Fun, but it is nice that you donated money.
And maybe just more broadly to adress the general thrust of your post: Adam and I have been on the network for a little over a year, and we barely know the SPY guys or the MBMBAM guys or the Smirl ladies. We like them but we don’t work directly with them or anything. Citing something we did to make a broader point about the network or another show on the network is unfair.
This is the one point that I truly don’t understand. If you didn’t want to associate with Maximum Fun you didn’t have to. You’re part of the Maximum Fun Drive, you’re getting “donations” through their network, and you’re getting advertising within the network. All of that association is, as far as I can tell, completely okay. But, when I have a broader point to make about why I, some internet random that used to contribute monetraily, distrust Maximum Fun then we’d like to pump the brakes on the association with the network. It’s a position I truly don’t understand.
Let’s move on to Adam Pranica.
You don’t know what you are talking about. The problem is, if you had asked us any questions we would have had answers that didn’t correspond to your narrative.
If you bothered to ask us how we create our merch, you know that we work WITH our listeners to design it, while taking care not to tread on IP, which is why we don’t use official imagery from the show in any of our merch. We could have told you this if you had asked.
Also, we asked for (and were granted permission) to use The Picard Song by the song’s creator, Dark Materia. We credit this person at the end of every show. We’ve talked about this fairly often on the pod; do you not even listen to the show you’re disparaging? If you’re not a listener, we still would have told you about this if you had asked us.
I could point-by-point the rest of the crap that pertains to our show (I don’t know the Smirls or the MBMBAM bros), but the burden of research should really be on the author, and why spend my Friday night feeding a troll that couldn’t do the bare minimum amount of research on their “pretty troubling” hit piece?
Do some homework. Try harder.
I don’t have a ton to say about this one. I guess the one thing I’d like to know is how much they pay their listeners to design their merch. I did listen to the podcast for awhile, which is why I knew that for the first few episodes Dark Materia was credited, but later on they both talked about how Dark Materia was cool with it being used after it had already been used.
I do like that I was called a troll for just writing about some personal feelings towards Maximum Fun and the network in general, though. With all that out of the way, I’d like to go through a point one more time, but with better examples. Let’s talk fan art.
Fan Art & Maximum Fun
Last time I wrote about the Greatest Generation challenge coin and how I thought it looked like fan art. As you can see from the TopatoCo page it’s the Enterprise D from above with two of the handheld phasers crossing each other, one over the Enterprise D and one under. The thing with this example is that it is branded as Greatest Generation, which makes the argument a bit murky. That’s on me, because there are currently two shirts with the same design that would make for a much better example.
Here we have the Drunk Shimoda shirt. We also have a screen grab from the TV show, which shows shimoda in the same exact position. The Drunk Shimoda shirt, as far as I can tell, has no Greatest Generation branding. No name, no logo, just a reference to a bit they made. The title of the shirt is also written in what is supposed to approximate the Star Trek: The Next Generation font. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think this was something off of Redbubble or TeeFury. This is Star Trek fan art without overt mention of The Greatest Generation. It’s fan art being sold on the Greatest Generation storefront. I’m not sure if these proceeds are also getting donated, but that doesn’t change what I’m seeing here.
And to get ahead of a “chicken or the egg” argument that may get made, I was able to find this specific screen grab on the Greatest Generation wikia as early as October 27, 2016. This design was posted by the designer on February 23, 2017. I wish I know what search results were coming up for “Drunk Shimoda” or “Shimoda Star Trek” around that time, because right now that specific screen grab is a top result.
That right here shows perfectly why I’m not down with Jesse Thorn’s policy on Maximum Fun fan art. While I understand that Star Trek is a big brand that’s going to make money no matter what with Star Trek, that doesn’t change that this shirt is Star Trek fan art with no branding or way of knowing, unless you already know about the show, that this is related to The Greatest Generation. It’s being sold on their TopatoCo platform. It’s linked through Maximum Fun’s main TopatoCo store. But, Jesse Thorn is against you selling fan art of “his” things. It’s blatantly hypocritical, and I wish I had used a better example from the start. Speaking of Jesse Thorn, let’s talk about him for a bit.
Jesse Thorn
While I’m somewhat glad that Jesse Thorn read the first post, I wish I had known that he would ahead of time. I feel like I missed my opportunity to address him directly. Well, more directly than I have in the past. Jesse Thorn has said some things that really rub me the wrong way, to put it mildly. I made a thread on Twitter about it, but that’s not the best platform for stuff like this, so I’ll expand my thoughts here. Feel free to look through that Twitter thread, though.
During a previous Max Fun Drive, someone in their reddit brought up to how Squarespace was allowing White Nationalist/Supremacist sites, which were violating Squarespace’s ToS, on their platform, and that Maximum Fun was still letting them advertise on the platform. That user explained that this is why they were no longer going to donate. The above is Thorn’s response.
Outside of the guilt tripping Thorn lays down (“If you think this is the best way to with this…”) there’s something in this response that really gets me. He says, in regards to Squarespace allowing White Nationalists/Supremacists:
Is that the decision we’d make in a similar position? Not sure, maybe not.
I would imagine that a ”similar position” would be the podcast network he runs. Hypothetically, if one of their podcasts took a sharp turn into that territory, he’s “not sure” of the decision he’d make. I’m sorry, but if you’re “not sure” what you’d do with White Supremacists/Nationalists spreading their hateful, violent, and bigoted ideology on your platform, as someone who would be targeted by said people, I just have no reason to support you. But, they pay Maximum Fun, so he’s gonna keep them around and guilt you for not wanting to support that.
Speaking of guilt tripping, we have some weird guilting of people during Max Fun Drive.
I make my quick point in my twitter thread, (“insinuating that all of the ‘developing’ world is poor and you’re mooching if you don’t donate to his advertiser-supported network”), but let’s dig into a point I forgot to make originally.
In the last tweet, he mentions that “[Maximum Fun] isn’t a charity,” which I find very strange when almost all they their branding and terminology is “donating” and they aren’t even a 501(c)(3). “Contribution” I can understand, but “donation?” It’s just more guilting, all while trying to wrap this up in a message about “clarity and character limit.” When you use “donation,” when you actually mean “contribution,” you’re not being clear. Those words have different connotations, and you’re not being clear when you use a word whose connotation doesn’t fit what you actually mean or are doing.
This one is self explanatory in my thread, but for the sake of having this all in one place, let’s talk about this tweet. Here Thorn defends Roseanne Barr due to the fact that she faced hardship, and is willing to completely ignore someone’s politics because of that, even when they would directly affect Thorn’s family. It’s not like Roseanne’s transphobia is unknown, and it’s still weird to allow someone off the hook politically for so little. This comment also puts his “well, actually” of Louis CK into perspective a bit.
This is all to say, I don’t trust Jesse Thorn. He’s made a pattern of not caring about things that aren’t directly in front of his face, and he’s not a person I choose to support. Thorn and others would say that if I want to spite the content creators that I like by not donating, that’s my choice even though it’s “hurting”the content creators. If there was a way to support these content creators more directly I would definitely support that, and if I was still into their podcasts I would be doing that myself. However, to support Maximum Fun’s content creators I’d have to support Jesse Thorn, and after seeing all this, I’d really rather not. He doesn’t deserve my support just because he convinced content creators to use his network instead of Patreon, so I won’t give him my support.
A Final Thought
I encourage everyone out there to support content creators you like as directly as you can. When I’ve talked about this stuff in the past, people take this all to mean that I don’t think you should support artists. That’s really not what I’m saying, and I hope that this comes across better this time around. I just can’t bring myself, in this very specific instance, to contribute financially through Maximum Fun because I don’t want to support Jesse Thorn and the network he made and profits off of. This is me laying out my issues with the network and the face of the company because I know I’m not the only one out there who feels this way. I truly hope the network and the people at the top change, but until that happens I can’t support Maximum Fun.
