シェアKickstarter Suspends Funding for Woman Seeking $5K as Fair Pay for Reading Jonathan Franzen
No justice, no peace: Kickstarter has suspended one entrepreneurial woman’s
crowdfunding campaign
to receive fair compensation for the complicated, prolonged odyssey into the male mind we otherwise know as “reading Jonathan Franzen.”
On her
campaign page, Amy Collier wrote:
You couldn’t pay me to read anything by Jonathan Franzen. Just kidding, if someone wants to pay me $5000 or more to read one of his books and then make fun of it a lot I will.Here are my Franzen reading rates:Freedom: $5,000The Corrections: $10,000Purity: $25,000Breakup Stories: $100,000The rates are negotiable, but not that negotiable. (You are always welcome to pay me more than the base.)
We wrote about the brave endeavor on
Tuesday, when she’d already made $1,242; on Wednesday, Kickstarter informed Collier that the project had been suspended.
Collier wrote back asking for details, and Kickstarter responded. (She provided us with both emails.)
Well,
I
think it’s pretty clear what Collier was creating: a collective journey into the dark. Nevertheless, Kickstarter appears to believe that a woman reading Jonathan Franzen is
not
a finite experience that onlookers can enjoy—we disagree—and Collier has sent us this moving statement in response.
BOSTON, MA It is with great pleasure that I inform you I will never have to read Jonathan Franzen because as of 1:32 PM Friday March 18, 2016, Kickstarter suspended my campaign asking $5000 or more to get me to read Franzen’s books.According to an email explanation from Kickstarter: “While Kickstarter is a tool to fund and support creative output, our focus is on projects that ultimately offer a finite experience or product.” You know, such as a $50k+ potato salad. When I asked if they would reconsider the suspension should I offer a more concrete statement of exactly how I would deliver my project’s promise “to read one of his books and then make fun of it a lot,” they welcomed me to resubmit my project from the start. Oh the shade of it all.While it is no longer possible to donate to get me to read misogynist male writers that everyone seems to read, those who wish to support parity in canon can donate to UncoveredClassics.com, a website that promotes work by overlooked 20th century female authors.For further information contact @Amy_Corp
The potato salad thing is
real, in case you forgot about it. Let Amy cook, Kickstarter! Because we believe in
@Amy_Corp, we are also including her formal bio:
About Amy CollierAmy once saw Fabio at an airport. Fabio is an Italian model who has appeared on many classic romance novels, such as Love Me with Fury, Lovestorm, and More Than a Feeling. He has been the spokesperson for The Geek Squad, OralB Sensitive Advantage Toothbrush, Nationwide Insurance, Versace, and the American Cancer Society. He is 6'3" barefoot; usually in cowboy boots.
But has Fabio ever imagined phone sex from the point of view of a teenager and, in the process, described eating
delicious chocolate poops?
Image via screenshot
Deputy Editor, Jezebel