In 2012, popular internet comic Matthew Inman, better known as The Oatmeal, published his most-viral comic to date – an ode to Nikola Tesla, who he called “the greatest geek who ever lived.” In it, he argued that the only thing Edison ever pioneered was douchebaggery, and that Tesla was the real hero who should be championed.
Shortly after, Inman announced that he was spearheading an effort to buy back Tesla’s old laboratory and repurpose it as a museum. The lab, located in Shoreham, New York, is known as Wardenclyffe Tower and had recently gone up for sale. Inman felt that it was his duty to preserve this final workplace of the unsung hero who “drop-kicked humanity into a second industrial revolution.”
He started an Indiegogo campaign, seeking $850,000 to outbid the current buyer and help a non-profit organization erect the Nikola Tesla Science Center.
The campaign garnered over $1.3 million.
Here’s the thing – that money raised via crowdfunding is amazing, but it’s only enough to save the location. To build the museum and fully realize the Tesla Science Center, it’s going to take millions.
Naturally, Inman thought to ask the decidedly not poor founder of Tesla Motors, Elon Musk, for help.
Earlier this week I got to speak to the man directly, and he promised two things. 1. He’s going to build a Tesla Supercharger station in the parking lot of the museum. 2. He’s donating $1 million dollars to the museum itself. Elon Musk: from the deepest wells of my geeky little heart: thank you. This is amazing news. And it’s Nikola Tesla’s 158th birthday.
That’s awesome. What else can we say?
$1 million from Elon Musk! And a supercharging station! Thank you, Mr. Musk!!!
— Tesla Science Center (@teslascience) July 10, 2014
Apparently, people refuse to leave Matthew Inman alone and just let him continue to be one of the funniest people on the internet. The creator of The Oatmeal webcomic finds himself the target of yet another lawsuit, reports Ars Technica.
This time, Inman is in the sights of a Massachusetts-based greeting card company who claims that The Oatmeal’s foray into greeting card sales violates their trademark.
Recently, The Oatmeal went into business with Recycled Greetings, the card company responsible for the Papyrus gifts and cards chain. Together, they produced a set of Oatmeal greeting cards, which are available for purchase on The Oatmeal site. The Massachusetts greeting card company, Oatmeal Studios, says that Inman’s use of The Oatmeal is too similar to their brand, as to cause confusion. Oatmeal Studios claims to have been in the greeting card-marking business for the last 35 years.
According to Ars, trademark infringement is the only claim that Oatmeal Studios has made, and they’ve yet to ask for any specific amount of damages.
Like I mentioned above, this isn’t the first legal battle that Inman has found himself in recently. The last one all started when Inman published a blog post showing how the site FunnyJunk was republishing The Oatmeal comics and monetizing them without attribution. Later, FunnyJunk hired famous sex.com domain litigator Charles Carreon to demand damages from Inman on the grounds of defamation.
Inman responded, but probably not in the manner that Carreon expected.
Instead of obliging, Inman drew a picture of Carreon’s “mom” having sex with a bear. He also asked the internet community to raise money for charity (which they did, to the tune of $200,000+). He never paid Carreon or FunnyJunk any of the money, and now that ridiculous suit has been closed.
But from the ashes of one, rises another. This story is developing and we’ll let you know when Inman responds (which we’re sure he will).
Matthew Inman is the writer of a unique webcomic called, the Oatmeal. He was having a great time creating content for his comics when he began to notice them appearing in various places on the web without his permission. One of those sites was FunnyJunk.Com.
Since he wasn’t being credited in any of the posts he looked at, he contacted the site administrator and asked that the images be removed. Of course, he got no response. After months and months of being ignored, he began to notice even more of his work being stolen with no mention of him as the creator whatsoever.
Finally, in the middle of last year, he took action and published the following blog post:
Here’s how FunnyJunk.com’s business operates:
1). Gather funny pictures from around the internet
2). Host them on FunnyJunk.com
3). Slather them in advertising
4). If someone claims copyright infringement, throw your hands up in the air and exclaim “It was our users who uploaded your photos! We had nothing to do with it! We’re innocent!”
5). Cash six figure advertising checks from other artist’s stolen material
I first contacted them about a year ago after I found a handful of my comics uploaded on their site with no credit or link back to me. They took down the offending images, but since then they’ve practically stolen my entire website and mirrored it on FunnyJunk:
After quite a bit of hubbub stemming from the conflict with FunnyJunk.Com and their fans, the site’s administrators finally agreed to remove all of Inman’s work. He considered it a victory, more or less, despite his not wanting to be a watchdog for copyright infringement. He though the matter was closed.
More recently, Inman received a letter form an attorney claiming to represent FunnyJunk, who was suing him for Defamation, and demanding $20,000. ARS Technica featured the letter in their coverage of the story. Take a look at what this guy wrote:
Naturally, this really pissed Inman off. He immediately rendered this drawing (featured as the lead image) of the lawyer’s mother trying to solicit sex from a poor brown bear. While contemplating how to get the picture into the hands of the attorney, he came up with a great idea. He would raise the $20,000, take a picture of it, give it to charity, then deliver the image and the photo to the lawyer’s doorstep.
This spawned operation, “BearLove Good. Cancer Bad“. The slogan he used, “I’m trying to raise $20k to donate half to the National Wildlife Federation (for the bears), and half to the American Cancer Society (because cancer is shitty)”. He raised the $20,000 in just over an hour and went on to raise $100,000 for the charities in two weeks.
A job well done for sure. I can’t believe FunnyJunk even had the audacity to hire someone to write that letter. Lawyers can be shameless, but it sounds like the people administering FunnyJunk are worse. Regardless of where you stand on the copyright issue, it’s a great story that ended up benefiting cancer research and the Wildlife Federation. Good deal.
Matthew Inman, otherwise known as the guy who created and updates The Oatmeal web comic, has an awesome ability to condense things down to the nitty-gritty, cutting through the weeds to get to the good stuff. Take his latest creation concerning how to get more likes on Facebook.
Inman naturally, and rightfully so, skewers the attention seekers, reducing them to attention whores who define their self-worth based on how many likes their Facebook posts receive. An example of his biting observation starts with a helpful tip:
While this should, perhaps, be common knowledge, clearly, it is not. Can you not feel the desperation coming from requests like these? Inman did, and to him, such requests make the person look like this:
Inman also offers the following public service announcement for proper Facebook etiquette:
To avoid such embarrassing moments concerning your hunt for Facebook likes, Inman suggests something people apparently aren’t considering: Create something awesome. Create something that makes people laugh, cry, or inspires them to do something other than peruse Facebook, trolling for likes. To find out the comic’s suggestion for these kinds of posts, be sure to check the rest of Inman’s creation out over at TheOatmeal.com. Trust me, you’ll be a better Facebook user for it.
The description for the Top Tweets Twitter account is as follows, “Top Tweets algorithmically selects and retweets some of the most interesting tweets spreading across Twitter.” So, basically, if your tweets get a bunch of retweets, there’s a chance they might appear on this certified account that managed by Twitter, or, at least their algorithms.
So what happens when the sycophantic Twitter content like this meets The Oatmeal’s ability to skewer:
I say “sycophantic,” because, let’s be real, who the hell else would retweet this except Katy Perry freaks?
Anyway, what happens when this kind of content meets the sarcastic genius of Matthew Inman? Something great, that’s what. With his latest web comic, Inman absolutely skewers the Top Tweets offering with his interpretations, one of which can be seen leading this article. I don’t know about you, but I seriously want a jet train now.
Kirstie Alley was not the only one to fall victim to Inman’s biting satire, although, instead of reposting his entire comic, I’m only going to take one or two more snippets and hopefully, you’ll navigate over and see the rest for yourself. Work this great deserves its own web traffic. As extra motivation, take a look at two more top tweets that Inman addressed. You won’t be disappointed:
Inman also issues a statement for those of you who want a particular tweet for him to draw. You can do so via Twitter with the #drawtoptweet hashtag. For my money, seeing his take on things like this would be golden:
@KhloeKardashian KhloéKardashianOdomRumors are carried by haters, spread by fools, and accepted by idiots.1 day ago via web · powered by @socialditto
In fact, I’d probably pay to see the Khloe Kardashian tweet come to life via Inman’s talents; although, it might lead to a case of laughing myself to death. Whatever. It’s worth the risk.
Do you ever get so perplexed by something that you start to think of strange ways to apply the same logic? You know, real word examples of philosophical issues?
I wouldn’t go so far as to call the current Netflix situation a philosophical issue, but I would call it a bit perplexing. It seems that most people on the interwebs feel that same kind of confusion regarding Reed Hastings’ Sunday night announcement regarding Netflix’s new DVD-only sister company Qwikster.
The announcement was wrapped up inside a supposed apology for the way Netflix handled the whole plan-restructuring, price change, whatever you want to call it. Hastings admitted that Netflix might have been in the wrong by just splitting up the streaming and DVD services, subsequently upping the prices by 60% in one fell swoop.
Basically, “I’m sorry for that whole splitting up thing we did a few months ago, we’re going to make it better by splitting it up some more.”
This is a perfectly understandable decision if you think that Netflix is trying to package their DVD service in order to get rid of it. It’s a mind boggling decision to Netflix customers who have valued the functionality and simplicity of the service for all of these years. Those customers are a little confused as to why the two services that they know and love are suddenly being disintegrated.
Back to that part about simplified scenarios helping us visualize what’s going on. This comic by internet comic force The Oatmeal is about as good as it gets. It imagines Netflix and a sandwich shop, one that decides to make an interesting decision regarding what they want to sell at their location.
Whether or not this actually happens has yet to be determined, and, in fact, it probably won’t be for some time yet, but there’s a growing meme about Facebook becoming MySpace, thanks to the influence of Google+. In fact, a number of publications are writing articles about this very topic. None, however, have captured the idea quite like Matthew Inman, otherwise known as the creator of the brilliant Oatmeal web comic.
Are you ready to abandon Facebook for Google+? Has Facebook’s shelf-life expired, dooming it to another MySpace ending? Let us know what you think.
Inman’s latest creation is about as awesome an satirical image can be, and it captures the whole “Facebook is the next MySpace” angle completely. In fact, articles haven’t been written about the subject yet that are as articulate as the Oatmeal’s “FaceSpace” page. Instead of giving you the entire image, there’s only going to be a snippet, but that alone will be enough to capture the mood:
It’s important that you see the rest of Inman’s “FaceSpace” creation, if, for nothing else, the sparkly gifs and the wall comments. If you only view our snippet, you’re only cheating yourself. There’s also an awesome video that tries to defend Facebook, but in the end, Google+ becomes the more logical choice — well, something you can’t fight — at least for Epipheo Studios, the video’s creator:
Is that where Facebook loses? The fact that Google can integrate all of its products into Google+? Facebook, while ubiquitous, doesn’t have anything besides its platform. While there is a messaging service, the reception has been paltry, especially when compared to Gmail. There is no Facebook YouTube, either. Sure, they have similar services, but they fail when it comes to user comparisons. Consider chat. Gchat is a welcomed addition to Google+ because it functions just like it does in Gmail. It doesn’t take up portions of your screen and it’s usually only noticeable if you want to use it.
Meanwhile, Facebook chat has been beaten around the eyes and ears, ever since the update took hold, anyway. An example, courtesy of Hejibits.com:
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t remember witty web comics trashing Google’s chat system.
Web comics and videos are not the only place the “MySpaceing of Facebook” is available. The mainstream media is at it as well. Just ask the Washington Post and Fox News. While both are speculation-filled articles, there is a portion of Fox News that is not hyperbole:
The second point is a lesson about social behavior. Switching from one network to another may just be an inevitable part of our social habits. Every once in a while, we simply need a change. No one can eat the same meal every day, and we can’t visit the same bar or coffee shop every day without getting bored. Some folks have been on Facebook for nearly 7 years; that’s a long time to be hanging out at the same watering hole. And what is it they say about the 7-year itch?
Does that mean in seven years, people will abandon Google+ for the next big thing in social media? Considering the roller coaster-like lifespan of Friendster and MySpace, it’s certainly worth considering.
And then there’s the PC Magazine survey Brent Csutoras pointed out. The title — 50 Percent Will Abandon Facebook for Google+, Poll Finds — says it all. Granted, surveys like these are voluntary response based, meaning the bias is awfully high. Nevertheless, there’s either a lot of PC Magazine readers who are going to leave Facebook for Google+ (3091 out of 6237 respondents).
The question is, at least to me, is whether or not Facebook can survive these defections? Until Google+ is embraced by the general public, and businesses start steering their potential traffic to G+ instead of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg’s creation remains incredibly viable. That being said, it wouldn’t be surprising if Zuckerberg cashed out while the getting is still profitable.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was Facebook or MySpace, for that matter. Google has time on its hands with G+, and the integration of all its products — YouTube, Blogger, Gmail, Gchat, Google Reader — there’s a good chance it will succeed at a substantially faster rate than its predecessors. Agree? Disagree? Let us know in the comments.
