First of all, let me say thank you to all who read my original post Douglas Coupland is a Jerk. The post received more attention than I would ever have thought and out of it came a lot of wonderful comments from complete strangers. It’s much appreciated. And without all the attention you gave it, I doubt Douglas Coupland would have ever responded.

Second of all, I have to thank Douglas Coupland for even responding to me at all. I wasn’t expecting a response and, considering he could have just ignored me and everything would have died down over time, it would have been much easier for him to do just that.

And his response was very friendly, in-depth and seemingly genuine in a desire to clear the air. For having just been called a jerk/asshole online, it was very gracious.

I won’t post exactly what his response was, but it can essentially be summed up in two phrases (and I believe he would fully agree with me on this): ‘I didn’t get your emails. I didn’t use your files.’ I might be swayed to believe the latter, but I’m not so sure about the former.

In terms of using the files, I accept that there is a possibility that someone else had also worked on the files and was as meticulous as I was. Douglas Coupland told me where he got the files made and that they developed a method that was quicker (read: cheaper) than how I did it. Without having the actual Illustrator files for me to look at, it’s impossible for me to know for sure. But, I accept that it’s a possibility.

As for not receiving the emails, both of us conversed using Gmail accounts, replying through the exact same conversation thread and I have all of the “missing” emails in my own account/outbox. In my many years of using Gmail, it has been incredibly consistent, reliable and I’ve never experienced this particular situation. I’m having a harder time accepting this.

Also, since writing the original post, I’ve had some people contacting me stating that (a) Douglas Coupland is known for these sorts of situations and (b) something similar has happened to them. It’s a depressing thought.

So, based on all this, I have a new hypothesis on how everything went down. One of the “missing” emails explained that the project was going to take much longer (and therefore, cost more) than I had expected. Once he received that email, he searched out other options (or he was already employing other options, which was something he alluded to in his response to me) and essentially ignored me from then on and assumed, like it seems to have happened in other cases, I’d just go away.

And, to be fair, he owes me nothing. I essentially donated my time on the project to him and it’s now conceivable that he didn’t use my work in the end.

But I should note, throughout all of our correspondance over the last couple days, there was never a statement of apology for how things went down or gratitude for the work I did. While I said he doesn’t really owe me anything, that certainly would have been nice.

My one regret is, from my original post, calling the project ‘stupid’ and I’ve since edited my post removing that word. In fact, I think the project itself is quite brilliant, as a lot of his work is. While my view of Douglas Coupland has certainly been tainted by this situation, I’d like to go see the exhibition — if for nothing else, it would be nice to see my (possible) handiwork in person.

At this point, I view the whole messy situation to be finished with and I wish him well. Is Douglas Coupland still a jerk? I leave it for you to decide.