fuzzy post-it

Hello.

Unless I missed something big, the only part of my post that might be up for debate thanks to Vee’s document is a single sentence where I mentioned Pengo supposedly asking PK about pricing. Vee disputes Pengo’s claim, but has no proof aside from denial and a rhetorical question.

I could cite the other people who were around during the incident in question, but I preferred to leave them uninvolved. I can assure you that they agree with my perception of events, though.

“Why would PK suggest that Pengo and Curly use prices she finds insulting, anyway?” Vee asks this despite spending dozens of pages demonstrating that, for whatever reason, PK does indeed frequently agree to and encourage things they find ‘insulting’ (taking Pengo’s friend to the con, providing prints, etc). In a way, Vee made Pengo’s claim even more plausible by demonstrating that PK has a clear history of this type of behavior.

I’m baffled as to how you could have possibly read so much and absorbed so little. The “whatever reason” is made very clear: PK does not like to turn down requests from people when put on the spot. This is much of the reason she found the requests insulting in the first place.

My rhetorical question asks why PK would offer to do something she found insulting, whereas you yourself say that she agreed to things she would rather not have done — because she was put on the spot. The circumstances are completely different.

It might be unfair if I were leaving blatant untruths uncorrected in my post, but the only thing that Vee’s document disputes is a single sentence

My document was not a response to your post.

and the “complete, utter, absolute annihilation of Pengo’s accusation” used to disprove that sentence boils down to someone who wasn’t even there claiming “Nuh-uh! Did not!” on PK’s behalf. (A whole bunch of Vee’s points boil down to that, actually. It’s really disappointing, not to mention misleading.)

As I said, what I wrote was based directly on what PK told me about the weekend. Our desks are about two feet apart.

What are your credentials, exactly? To my understanding, not only were you not at the convention, you don’t even personally know any of the people involved.

I’ll eventually update my post with my thoughts about Vee’s document, and take note of the actual inconsistencies that it highlights.

Oh, no need. Allow me.

Right now, things are all very ‘he said, they said’ and skeptics are crying ‘how do we know it’s true??’ left and right. So, let’s start this off by not even considering Pengo’s callout.

Let’s just look at PK’s side—their original post that started it all. That’s all we really need. The fact that PK even made that post says a lot about them and the way they relate to others.

…

This is not a new concept. It’s called ‘punching down’ and it’s the bread and butter of PR disasters. Even the most heartless public figures understand that most people don’t think it’s fair or admirable when a huge entity steamrolls a smaller one in a fit of pique. People who are well-known generally choose their words very, very carefully and only publicly go after opponents who are on the same popularity footing (or who are pretty heinous).

That said, let’s look at PK’s original post. PK was just doing what many people do… complaining about a tough weekend and a harrowing friend problem. They were stressed after a long, tiring convention and wanted to vent about a person’s behavior. That’s just fine, right? A harmless Tackle, right?

Right, except PK chose to address their complaints to their level 100 fanbase.

No, she didn’t. She chose to address her complaints to her personal blog, which is orders of magnitude less popular than her main blog.

PK’s post has 61 notes. Yours has 899. Pengo’s short one has 1,636.

Your idea of “steamrolling” seems to be slightly backwards.

The term ‘rabid fanbase’ exists for a reason. In any group of admirers, there are people who will jump to harass, defame, and threaten anyone who inconveniences their idol. (I guess they think it makes them look cool and tough?) With a fanbase like PK’s, this can easily, easily escalate right up to rape threats, death threats, and doxxing, along with a very nasty hit to the victim’s online reputation.

I’m not just pulling theoreticals out of my armpit here. PK’s partner has openly admitted that even ‘griping’ about someone to their vast following can result in death threats to that person.

That post of mine is referring to incidents that have involved me alone, which is why it says “I”. I don’t have a vast following; I have fewer followers than there are notes on this post of yours. This does not support your assertion; in fact you’re demonstrating that the effect you claim can happen even without a fanbase. Come to think of it, you’re making a pretty good case that you shouldn’t have written this post at all.

Also I said death wishes, not death threats, and quite deliberately so.

So, PK knows that talking negatively about someone to their fanbase can invoke terrifying abuse.

Your “evidence” — the post I wrote — was written eight months after PK’s post about Anime Expo.

That honestly does sound incredibly stressful. I can imagine all the misunderstandings would make for an unbearable weekend and a horrible month stewing about it afterwards.

But is it worth possible death threats?

For PK, the answer seems to be “yes”.

So let me get this straight. PK wrote a post complaining about a weekend (and relationship) gone sour. You believe that she did this expecting Pengo to receive death threats for it, and you base this entirely on a post I made more than half a year afterwards that doesn’t even mention her.

And after spending several screenfuls of text on this assertion, you fail to note that — to the best of my knowledge — Pengo did not in fact receive any death threats over PK’s Anime Expo post.

We’re off to a great start.

To sum that up: PK seemingly decided that their personal right to vent to every stranger on the Internet was worth the risk of having abuse sent to someone who, in PK’s words, had anxiety problems and had already been abused by an ex.

As already mentioned, no abuse was actually sent, which I assume is why you keep referring to it as a “risk”.

I don’t see why someone’s anxiety problems should save them from the fallout of being kind of a dick. She was really upset over the events of that weekend, but you only seem to care about Pengo’s potential feelings rather than PK’s actual feelings — because, why, Pengo’s feelings have a name?

PK also seemingly decided that their right to vent to every stranger on the Internet was worth Pengo’s reputation—and by extension, his livelihood—which PK helped to trash by calling Pengo “crazy”, “utterly nuts”, and “a child” repeatedly. This is doubly destructive because PK and Pengo’s audiences overlap, so Pengo’s friends and customers were more likely to be directly influenced by the outburst.

Wow, we’ve gone from her audience to every stranger on the Internet.

We’ll return to this quote later.

For some reason, PK felt it was necessary to do this publicly in front of an audience, instead of, say venting privately to friends over IM, or perhaps even continuing to use the private, friends-only blog that they set up SPECIFICALLY for the purpose of venting.

Which she would have had to go back and redact or edit or whatever if she wanted anyone to actually see it, since it still had other posts about Pengo on it.

This isn’t an isolated incident, by the way. PK has repeatedly made it clear that they refuse to take their vast influence into account when smacking down others, and they do not acknowledge this as problematic at all.

Oh man those are excellent examples except let’s look at what actually fucking happened.

The previous day, PK posted this ask and response:

I figured out my other character for pmd
A feminist gengar named gendar

no

She immediately got some dipstick anon raving about the evils of feminism:

ew feminism is stupid why can’t we all just be treated equal without shaming men. It’s not that hard all you gotta do is NOT SHAME MEN.

i hope this ask was ironic

otherwise please get away from me and my blog

And:

It wasn’t, feminists piss me the fuck off. Like, honestly, i just ugh. And when you don’t agree with them THEY GET ALL PISSY LIKE IDK MAYBE HOW YOUR DOING TO PROVING MY POINT IDK IDK IDK. ):

please go educate yourself and get off of my blog.

She then got this anon:

ugh man you piss me the fuck off sometimes, like you seem super cool but the way you talk to people and like think that it’s appropriate to shame them or be rude to them is really fucking annoying and disrespectful. You really need to learn some respect. There are gonna be idiots, obviously, that’s life, but you don’t have to be rude and condescending to them. Why not humor them? Or show at least an OUNCE of human dignity, how about?

And from there it escalated, as more and more people showed up to jump on the “PK is so mean” bandwagon. In the meantime, the person who originally told the joke explained and then apologized.

So to recap, the incident you’re citing here is one in which anons showed up to be dickholes, and she shamed those anons.

But you’re condemning her for not taking her “vast influence into account”.

While telling off anons.

PK’s partner has claimed that people who criticize PK’s callous attitude are misogynists—which is definitely an aspect that can contribute to things, but also not always the whole story.

This sentence is fluff.

PK’s partner also uses a factually unsound claim to make his argument, considering he gets criticized about tone pretty regularly.

1. A single ask does not “pretty regularly” make.
2. That ask is from a month and a half ago. The “factually unsound claim” was a year and a half ago.
3. You yourself just linked twice as many criticisms of PK’s tone — on the same day!

But eventually—through PK’s example, no less—I realized that when you give yourself free rein to verbally shotgun people who ‘deserve it’, you can almost always invent an excuse for anyone to deserve it.

This is a dramatic finish to this section, but who is the “anyone”? Who has PK “shotgunned” that in no way deserved it?

Then, a year later, Pengo reappeared on the scene with an industrial-sized callout. He provided context that made PK’s vent even more inexcusable and provided quite a lot of evidence to accompany his claims that PK had engaged in gaslighting, emotional neglect, and manipulation, among other things.

Which we now, of course, know to be completely untrue. His “quite a lot of evidence” was largely irrelevant to whatever he was claiming, and almost every story he related was a severe distortion of what actually happened.

• Pengo was 19 years old and AX was his second convention ever. A seasoned, experienced convention-goer with years of cons under their belt decided to publicly shame their helper for acting like a scared, frustrated beginner during his second convention ever.

She decided to publicly shame her helper for being an active detriment to the convention, over and over. He would’ve been less destructive if he’d stood staring at a wall for four days.

• Pengo claimed that they made around 50 songs for free on PK’s request. This wouldn’t be worth noting except that PK has repeatedly insisted that artists be properly compensated for their work. PK also claims that asking artist friends for free art is absolutely wrong—even on your birthday. You could argue that Pengo received some compensation when the albums sold—except PK also claims it is wrong for people to approach artists asking for art first and compensation ‘after it starts selling.’ This seems to indicate a discrepancy between what PK preaches and what they practice in their own projects.

Let me ask you a question.

I wrote a story or two for PMDe. Do you think I should’ve been paid?

Riiko wrote a good bit of prose for PMDe. Do you think he should’ve been paid?

Isn’t it curious that of all the people who willingly volunteered their time and skills to PMDe, Pengo is the only one who apparently was compensated unfairly?

Except— wait, Pengo was compensated by those album sales, by quite a bit. Do you know how much Riiko or I got paid for our writing? Do you know how much MissFluffy got paid for all her moderation work? How about the wiki editors, or gallery moderators? Take a wild guess.

It was a free volunteer project. PK wasn’t offering exposure as compensation for a project that sought to make profit. PK wasn’t trying to extract art from a friend by leveraging a friendship. She put out a very clear call: I need some music for this project, I can’t offer you anything, but let me know if you’re interested. Pengo was interested.

Complaining about this now, on behalf of someone else, who agreed to the terms, is not only disingenuous but a slap in the face to everyone else who worked on the project because they wanted it to be good. Just like Pengo did. Until he changed his mind, I guess.

• Pengo and PK didn’t just know each other—they were _dating. _PK was apparently well aware of Pengo’s anxious tendencies… but still decided to not only invite Pengo to a second con, but then make an example of Pengo for not getting over his problems in the middle of a crowded, stressful convention.

Protip: she invited him to a second con because the first con had gone swimmingly.

Also that post is clearly about her, not him, so I can’t tell why you even chose to link it.

At this point, I couldn’t justify or excuse PK’s initial post in the slightest. But, hey, that happens. Everyone has past incidents that could have been handled better in hindsight, and it’s unfair to hold those things against them if they have decided to change their ways since then. The most important part is how people decide to handle things in the present. This could be a good opportunity for PK to prove they could handle the situation like a professiona—

Uh… well then. Wow.

Both PK and Vee then went on to make twin posts whose gists were identical: “Look how hard this is for us! We tried everything in our power because we’re so patient and reasonable, but Pengo was just too crazy to deal with. He just makes stuff up! Who’re you going to believe—poor us, or that nutso?” They decided to go the condescending route as well: “I tried so hard to understand his anxieties and mental issues, but it was so beyond me it wasn’t funny.” “I hope he finds help someday.”

Even if Pengo did make up every single chat log and every single text and PK is 100% innocent of every single thing Pengo said, I’m still astounded that PK and Vee would be careless enough to respond in this way after what PK was accused of. Claiming someone is unmanageable or crazy (with the accuser being the rational, understanding party who is Trying So Hard) is the #1 sign of gaslighting, which is classic abusive behavior and something Pengo repeatedly accused PK of doing. PK appears to be trying to disprove an accusation by doing exactly what they were accused of.

Hold the fucking phone.

“Even if Pengo did make up everything … their response is the #1 sign of gaslighting”

You just fucking said that even if Pengo is wrong, telling him wrong is gaslighting.

That is bananas.

As I said later, I thought the post was so obviously nonsense that a casual reread would demonstrate it as such to almost anyone. I was proven incorrect.

Regarding the original vent post, PK stated, “I have nothing to apologize for in my post except some casual ableism re: terms like “crazy” and “insane”.” So they appear to have no change of opinion since then, aside from a few word swaps. They still seem to stand behind their initial decision to drag private matters into the limelight, punch down, and belittle mental illness (just using more PC words), and they do not seem to acknowledge any fault in that behavior.

I remind you that this entire post is a response to Pengo’s post, in which he drags private matters into the limelight and punches down.

And oh, yes, it is punching down. Because in this arena, Pengo has more power. He has the power of oppression, which makes people want to listen to him. As you’re doing right now. He wielded it to great effect.

You say “belittle mental illness” a few more times in the following (largely omitted) paragraphs, which is curious to me. Where has PK done this? In her Anime Expo post, of course, since that’s what you’re talking about. But where, I wonder?

Her only use of “crazy” is this: “Haha, communication? Boy, that’d be really crazy to expect!”

Which is idiomatic and has nothing to do with Pengo or his problems.

Her only use of “insane” is this: “And maybe, maybe I’d have been able to accept what Pengo said IF I HAD MESSED UP AT ALL OR DONE ANYTHING OUTRAGEOUS OR INSANE OR OTHERWISE COMPLETELY UNREASONABLE.”

Which is again idiomatic and is even referring to herself.

So what is her sin, precisely? That she couldn’t handle dealing with Pengo’s paranoia and anxiety, which it appears he had vastly understated?

At this point, I couldn’t help but just sit and stare slack-jawed at the computer. PK is apparently threatening legal action against Pengo when they don’t even have a case

…

This all said, I don’t know the details or the exact reasons for the legal threats and it’s obviously not my place to theorize on what allegations are ‘serious’ enough to warrant legal action.

Well, obviously.

In any case, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone of PK’s renown handle a situation so poorly, aside from a few dubious second-hand accounts I read on Encyclopedia Dramatica. This is incredible, and I feel so, so sorry for Pengo.

I see you’ve long forgotten the wild hypothetical that maybe Pengo is actually wrong about everything. I’m curious how sorry you feel for him now.

All in all, my heart goes out to Pengo and I’m really, really sad and disappointed to see someone I admire act this way. I think it’s clear that PK has chosen to do manipulative and emotionally abusive things in the past, has shown no willingness to change this behavior, and has handled this callout extremely poorly. I hope that they decide to be more considerate of others in the future.

I wish you luck in removing the foot from your mouth.

A few footnotes, since I’ve seen people using some awful logic to trash Pengo:

But Pengo has ~Problems!~ How could he be telling the truth?

What’s the chance that the ‘messed-up paranoid person’ was actually abused? Fairly high, especially if the person accused of abuse is drawing a lot of attention towards the target’s mental issues. People with mental illness are much more likely to be targets of abuse than those without.

Your statistic is completely irrelevant to the question you posed yourself, and your embellishment is again disingenuous.

Mental illness makes a person incredibly attractive to those who abuse others because it provides the perfect excuse to discredit them if they ever dare to speak up: after all, who would ever believe the crazy person? This is exactly the angle that PK has been playing, which makes PK look incredibly untrustworthy.

What angle would you like to have been played? We were completely bewildered that Pengo would reappear after a year with a massive thesis full of falsehoods. The only explanation we could think of — already knowing he was wrong — was that it was due to his paranoia.

You’re approaching this completely backwards. Allow me to demonstrate.

Your assertion is:

• If someone abuses a mentally ill person, then they will use the illness to discredit that person
• PK used Pengo’s illness to discredit him
• Therefore, PK abused Pengo

This trivial error is called affirming the consequent, and a lot of people have made it. Consider the structure of your argument, and compare it to this:

• If it rains today, then I will get wet
• I am wet
• Therefore, it rained today

It’s a plausible explanation, but it’s not the only one. Maybe you just took a shower. Maybe you went swimming. Maybe someone dumped a soda on your head.

Maybe Pengo is actually wrong.

But PK’s livelihood is at stake here! It’s wrong to endanger someone’s livelihood!

You know who else has a livelihood dependent on their Internet reputation? (It starts with P and ends with engo.) His rep was shat on not once, but twice now thanks to PK’s posts after PK started this whole debacle by choosing to post publicly about a private matter.

It’s appropriate that you end your post by shaming PK for hurting Pengo’s rep, despite the very concrete financial damage Pengo has inflicted on PK over basically nothing.

I remind you of what you said earlier:

PK and Pengo’s audiences overlap, so Pengo’s friends and customers were more likely to be directly influenced by the outburst.

Indeed they do overlap. So PK’s friends and customers were more likely to be directly influenced by Pengo’s outburst.

And, indeed, his post only picked up steam when he reblogged it to his art blog several weeks later — it didn’t get much attention at all on his personal blog, just like PK’s Anime Expo post didn’t get much attention on hers.

In conclusion,

Your post is garbage.

Love,
Eevee