*Update 18 June, 2011* - The shirt has now been taken down by Redbubble, likely based on a complaint made by this person (or who knows… someone else?). I’ll be discussing this directly with Redbubble, and hope to have it replaced.*
Okay, so it’s not really hate mail, more like criticism mail. Someone sent me an email to let me know how much they disapprove of one of my t-shirts. This is not something I expect to find when I open my inbox. I usually expect to wade through the numerous bits of spam that has slipped through the filter, and occasional reminder that I didn’t sell any t-shirts this week… but today, there it was, with the innocuous subject line:
“Question/Comment about a design of yours….”
Hmmm, okay. Non committal, vaguely reminiscent of those occasional 419 emails that slip past my spam filter. I chose to click, ever ready to report as spam if the contents mentioned African princes or enlarged penises.
Hi Paul,
Oh, hi! It knows my name… but that doesn’t prove anything. It’s in my email after all.
I really like lots of your work, and saw some of it on Redbubble.
Thanks. But I’m still not convinced - this isn’t the first time a yahoo email address has mentioned redbubble without saying anything specific enough to rule out spam. In fact, it’s pretty much always spam.
It seems a strange introduction in hindsight… especially as the positive attitude in this one line preamble seems to be nowhere to be found in the rest of the email.
One particular piece caught my eye, and I needed to ask you about it. The piece is called “The things inside my head.” Two characters on it—one says “Kill all humans.” The other says, “rape their corpses.”
Oh wow, that’s a real verifiable reference to a specific item that actually exists! This email isn’t spam after all!
Yeah, I like that one two. It’s a pretty old gag, juxtaposing cute cartoon creatures and having them say or do something completely at odds with their cuteness.
Murder & rape are not funny.
Oh… I, uh… do you mean objectively speaking?
I suspect I’m in for some constructive criticism.
Read More
