I had a though today about this whole situation and how ignorance was Olney's ally in taking advantage of people and it really bugged me... so I posted the following in the old thread:
I'd like to request the mods re-sticky this thread.
CBR gets a lot of traffic and it would suck if any freelancers get conned into Olney's shenanigans due ignorance about the man.
It's irritating that the people making all the noise about it are people who had little or nothing to do with Yabs. And I got more complaints about Rick (CBR Rick, not Deadbeat Rick) than I ever did about the Olney thread, so his getting the vapors is kind of embarrassing to watch.Originally Posted by HamsterRage
I've given up reading it over there, I'm afraid.
It's also pretty cowardly of CBR Rick and his ilk. Once we're all gone then they come in on the high horse to condemn the thread. If they had a problem there was ample time to voice it when we were they. But I guess that would take balls and they seem to lack them entirely.
If it were not for that thread there would be no Unscrewed. Without Unscrewed there would be a dozen Olney orphans that wouldn't have received aid of any kind. Without Unscrewed I wouldn't have just helped a freelancer recover almost 10K in unpaid debt.
As far as I'm concerned CBR Rick & Co. can go fuck themselves.
My opinion of CBR Rick isn't particularly high at the best of times, but I will defend him here, he hasn't liked the thread for years and has stated so several times. Whatever else he may be, I don't think he's being hypocritical.
But yeah, the geniuses who say, "all you need to do is post the relevant facts without the other stuff," are fucking idiots. There are a hundred scumbag deadbeat stories in the last few years of comics, and who remembers them?
The people involved and their friends, with a few exceptions.
The Olney thread would not have lasted if it was just, "here's what Rick did, he cheated these people." It wouldn't have stayed on the front page for three days, with the traffic Yabs generates. It was the oddball stuff that Rick did, and the social stuff, that kept that thread going for five + years. It would have been forgotten half a decade ago, if these geniuses had had their way.
And in that five years, Rick would have been forgotten, and would have been allowed to cheat god knows how many people.
That thread brought some of comics biggest names to cbr. It had people like Mike Netzer, Paul Smith, Colleen Doran, Tony Isabella, Kurt Busiek, James Owen, and Mark Waid making people aware of the danger of working for people like Rick, or even attending their fake conventions, or getting involved in any way. If we'd followed CBR Rick's advice, NONE of that would have happened. NONE.
Unscrewed was formed because of that thread, which has already helped a ton of people and will continue to do so. Again, if we'd done a news thread, which would have been promptly forgotten, none of that would have happened.
I can live with some of CBR's biggest douchebags calling me 'tacky' if it saves one working pro from getting derailed and cheated, and it's already saved dozens, maybe even more. Over and over again we got letters saying, "Hey, this Olney guy is contacting me, but then I read your thread..." from freelancers. He was still actively trying to cheat people as recently as TWO MONTHS AGO.
So, my message to CBR Rick is, wake the fuck up. You don't have a clue what you're talking about.
It's easy to be a douchebag who points and says, tsk tsk, or you can do something about it. We did something about it. What we did worked. What they suggest would have been forgotten and replaced by a thread about nothing in about two hours flat.
Couldn't care less what those others say.
What exactly does CBR Rick have against your thread against Olney?
It's a weird thing. CBR Rick was one of our most problematic posters, he said some genuinely stupid things that should have gotten him banned (he called a trans woman by manly names just to be insulting, but apologized pretty quickly so I didn't ban him but it still pissed me off). He's just one of those guys you roll your eyes at all the time.
Which is the only reason this is so ridiculous.
He felt the thread got tacky, which it did, sometimes. But no tackier than a million other threads, including many that he himself posts on, or that he himself was the worst offender on.
And I say again, there are a thousand tacky threads here at BenBo, and a thousand at CBR, and most of them are about not a goddamn thing. The Olney thread got people work who needed money, spread the word about a deadbeat, prevented NEW people from being cheated, helped people with their legal cases, raised money for people victimized by scumbag fake publishers, on and on and on. It DID things. Positive things happened because of it that never would have happened in a million years if we'd done as CBR Rick suggested.
People got offended and people got hot and said mean things in response to Olney's insults and bullshit, but when you have a guy who insults a freelancer he has cheated, who just lost his baby daughter, which Olney gleefully did with one of the nicest creators I've ever met, my opinion is no amount of bile is enough. I've seen the havoc Rick caused by cheating so many people and even THAT I might have been able to shrug off if he hadn't been so hell bent on threatening and insulting them after.
For years, Rick got away with cheating people because they kept silent, and because he threatened them with lawsuits if they talked.
Until he ran into some people who stood up and said, bring it on, then, deadbeat.
Since then, we have over and over again prevented freelancers from being cheated in Rick's cycle of bullshit.
While the detractors look down their noses and go back to their pointless yammering about Iron Man or whatever.
Good luck to them, but I would rather have prevented freelancers from being cheated. Even if it gives people the vapors.
pretty much my point I was making when I posted the thread about how I had been planning on continuing to post on YABS, but was disgusted with how it was turning.
I got my hand slapped for saying that.
but I'm glad others are speaking up as well.
I understand Mark/Perry compromised by removing the sticky and putting a link to it in the one stickied thread. But it should have remained stickied.
one final thought, and then I won't talk about the YABS thread on this. I have absolutely NO issue w/ CBR-Rick on this. Yes, he's a little bit on his high-horse, but at least he *DID* speak up (and pretty often) about his disdain for the Olney thread on CBR.
He's coming across very holier than thou, but at least he isn't coming in after the party's over and decaring "that party sucked!" like a bunch of other folks.
and speaking of sucks. .you know who does? Scumbags who don't pay freelancers who have done work for them (yes, that would be YOU pRick).
"do what bert says" - Flamestar (c/o Ouzo Man)
A sandwich is a sandwich, but a Manwich is a meal
"Evil people can do some non-evil things, and most of them do. That doesn't mean they aren't evil." -- JeffereyWKramer
I agree, cbr Rick is not saying anything he wasn't saying before.
But being lectured on tact by cbr rick is still freaking hilarious.
I didn't like the swipe bouncing boy took at Mac, either.
In fairness, I believe that Mark and MacQ know each other fairly well, and I took that as a sarcastic poke.
I'm waiting to see if MacQ is upset before I judge.
"do what bert says" - Flamestar (c/o Ouzo Man)
A sandwich is a sandwich, but a Manwich is a meal
"Evil people can do some non-evil things, and most of them do. That doesn't mean they aren't evil." -- JeffereyWKramer
CBR rick is also didn't understand that yanking a woman's shirt down against her will is sexual assault.
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