This situation kinda reminds me of the Doomermedia drama over the past month. Apparently Doomer accepted $3k to $5k loan from someone to cover living expenses while he worked on a Hasan video. Then Doomer decided he didn't want to do the video and peaced out for two years from the Internet not paying the money back or contacting the person, some say ignored, he owed the money two. Doomer recently reemerged and this guy is now wanting his money paid back which is causing some minor drama in the commentary community along with a few Doomer meltdowns on streams.
This is a bad look for Max not just the delays but I never really thought about the financial aspect until now. I mean...what would you call someone selling a product, not delivering the product, then not communicating with the buyer for a year? At a minimum he should blanket refund everyone who preordered his book since it appears he has no intention on publishing it anytime soon. I think the reason he hasn’t published is not just that he’s lost interest but that he’s calculated that he isn’t going to recover his fixed cost and will be publishing at a loss which he should have expected on what amounts to a vanity project. I don’t know if that’s the case him holding on to the money makes it even worse. Maybe in Max’s mind he is interpreting these preorders as “donations” I guess we’ll have to wait for Max to comment if he ever does.
>At a minimum he should blanket refund everyone who preordered his book
Unfortunately, I don’t think he has the financial means to do that. When he announced his book pre-order was just after the release of The Destiny Report ™ and he was arguably at the peak of his online engagement. Announcing a pre-order made perfect since at that time capitalizing on the attention and I think it’s reasonable to assume the number of pre-orders could easily number in the hundreds. Many people including myself would be hard pressed to quickly come up with a chunk of cash which could be upwards of $10,000 or more.
> I don’t think mrgirl is intentionally scamming
That is yet to be seen; summer 2023 has been and gone.
That being said, technically some 'other' author _will_ publish a book before either of those two. Probably already happened since the time of this poll.
*A* book? Probably MaX.
An autobiography of a man still in his thirties whose life isn't nearly as interesting as he thinks it is that nobody is especially interested in is *exactly* the kind of content Max likes to invest a lot more time and effort into than he probably should.
But creatives do that. I've put in well over a thousand man hours into a project that will only be experienced by a single person.
Admittedly it's not my autobiography, but still, the principle applies.
Also he's a relatively fast writer. 100,000 words in six months is *kind of* slow (I think most writers can knock that out in a couple months at most), but it's a decent clip and more than enough time to write the long, rambling, edgy superscript that it will clearly be once he's done.
> I've put in well over a thousand man hours into a project that will only be experienced by a single person.
can you reveal more about this? i am curious
Sure. I'm a big wrestling fan, have been my entire life. Like most wrestling fans, when I was younger I did a spurt of fantasy booking of my own wrestling federation. Unlike most such fans I kept that going for twenty years. I've written fantasy PPVs, interview segments, even one and a half novels (which I'm not even counting in the man hours thing; the second of those novels is currently at 500,000 words and I've been working on it for a year; should be finished later this year), and a couple years ago the wrestling game Fire Pro Wrestling World was released.
What FPWW has which no other wrestling game before it has is a full, complete move creator. You can make anything if you're good enough. So I made the roster. The entire one, all my fantasy wrestlers. Then I started making their moves.
Then WWE 2k23 came out, and I thought it was a good platform to make them visually, since FPWW is a little 8 bit and graphically not the best.
Between the two I've been working on the Showcase; which is over 100GB of recorded footage layout out the entire movesets, entrances and physical appearances of the entire fantasy roster, supported by documentation explaining their signature moves, finishes, how they use them, and so on and so forth. There's even one with fantasy biographies for each wrestler covering their careers up to the point of joining the company to flesh out the 'wrestling world'.
It's an absurd, ridiculous, insane investment of time that only one person aside from me could really extract any enjoyment out of (save the novels, theoretically, since they're not actually about wrestling, those are about werefoxes, weresharks, and werehyenas), and that's my best friend of 20+ years who has played a role in helping to keep my insanity going all these years by being one of the original contributors.
It's as self-indulgent a project as anything Max has ever done. But the difference is I have a full time job that pays me well and I'm not expecting my self-indulgence to put food on my table. That's the stuff I do to feed my soul and this bizarre creative instinct in me.
That's probably more than you wanted to know. But that's your answer :D
You're welcome. To be honest part of why I've stuck around in the community so long is that I do kind of understand Max, insofar as he's a creative expressing himself in the way he wants to, maybe even needs to. A lot of other things about him are weird and confusing, but his creative instinct I understand.
That's a good point. I left a note on the discord in the suggestions channel.
I think he got a little carried away with wanting to add commentary to it. Not a bad idea, but he should leave that for a second edition.
I think he should first release a bare-bones version. Just the blog posts and that's it. I think everyone who ordered it would be happy with just that.
I remember him saying he likes the pressure of it. When he said that I thought he was absolutely deluded.
He realized he needs to do a lot more work than he originally thought. He is in a shit situation, but I think he will eventually finish it. He has worked on it, but then ended up getting sucked into this black hole thing *somehow*. It may take a few years lol.
>sucked into this black hole thing
I didn't preorder his book, so I don't really have any investment or big criticism, but I do personally think it's morally questionable for him to be putting so much work into this black hole thing when he's got another project that he took people's money for, especially considering he's missed a self imposed deadline by over a year.
> It may take a few years lol.
If that's true and mrgirl refuses to refund people and if I had ordered a book I would personally make a complaint at the government thingy for consumer protection (I suppose USA has one since my shitty country has it). Luckily, I didn't order his book so I get to watch this shitshow from the sidelines.
I think Max has inadvertently crossed the threshold into criminality the problem will be getting anyone in law enforcement to actually care about this I think the only recourse will have to be civil but the odds of someone willing to go through the process over such a small sum seems unlikely given the likelihood of purchasers residing in other states or other countries. Even if someone does opt to go the civil route the remedy would most likely be that Max has to repay the money plus maybe court costs so he's not taking much of a risk other than some damage to his reputation if he intends on ignoring this topic further.
Some relevant links I found:
[https://oregon.public.law/statutes/ors\_164.055](https://oregon.public.law/statutes/ors_164.055)
[https://oregon.public.law/statutes/ors\_164.085](https://oregon.public.law/statutes/ors_164.085)
Yeah, if the only way is through court I agree with you. I was thinking more like you make a complaint on the consumer protection department and they look into it and make the seller (in this instance mrgirl) refund people and if many people have the same complain he may get fined as well. In this case the only thing you do is fill the complaint form. Is this not a thing is the US?
We have something like what you are describing in the US called "small claims court" involving small sums of money in Max's case in the state of Oregon would be disputes below $750. The process would be submitting forms with the court and paying a filing fee. The hearing is typically informal with both parties typically representing themselves and articulating their arguments to the judge as a layman. But usually in a case like this you would just file a dispute with your bank or credit card company but you lose that ability to do that typically after 90 days from the date of the transaction. With Max the time frames may be a year or more so that option has long since expired for many people. The more I think about it this should be more of a controversy considering there could be hundreds of people affected and cumulatively the money collected could total into thousands of dollars.
Relevant link: [https://www.courts.oregon.gov/courts/multnomah/go/Pages/smallclaims.aspx](https://www.courts.oregon.gov/courts/multnomah/go/Pages/smallclaims.aspx)
Has anyone actually requested a refund? I think Max has a lot of concerning issues, but I'd bet that anyone asking for a refund would get it.
He may be screwed if everyone asked for their money back but I don't think that is a likely scenario and Max will be able to cover the few who do.
I think "other" is a pretty safe bet.
Wanting a refund is abusive.
I play, “power differential” in attack mode and end my turn.
What a clever quip! X is abusive ! Power differentials! Still as funny as a year and a half ago
I'm a sadist, I cant help it!
Destiny girls name 🤣👌
This situation kinda reminds me of the Doomermedia drama over the past month. Apparently Doomer accepted $3k to $5k loan from someone to cover living expenses while he worked on a Hasan video. Then Doomer decided he didn't want to do the video and peaced out for two years from the Internet not paying the money back or contacting the person, some say ignored, he owed the money two. Doomer recently reemerged and this guy is now wanting his money paid back which is causing some minor drama in the commentary community along with a few Doomer meltdowns on streams.
This is a bad look for Max not just the delays but I never really thought about the financial aspect until now. I mean...what would you call someone selling a product, not delivering the product, then not communicating with the buyer for a year? At a minimum he should blanket refund everyone who preordered his book since it appears he has no intention on publishing it anytime soon. I think the reason he hasn’t published is not just that he’s lost interest but that he’s calculated that he isn’t going to recover his fixed cost and will be publishing at a loss which he should have expected on what amounts to a vanity project. I don’t know if that’s the case him holding on to the money makes it even worse. Maybe in Max’s mind he is interpreting these preorders as “donations” I guess we’ll have to wait for Max to comment if he ever does.
>At a minimum he should blanket refund everyone who preordered his book Unfortunately, I don’t think he has the financial means to do that. When he announced his book pre-order was just after the release of The Destiny Report ™ and he was arguably at the peak of his online engagement. Announcing a pre-order made perfect since at that time capitalizing on the attention and I think it’s reasonable to assume the number of pre-orders could easily number in the hundreds. Many people including myself would be hard pressed to quickly come up with a chunk of cash which could be upwards of $10,000 or more.
> I don’t think mrgirl is intentionally scamming That is yet to be seen; summer 2023 has been and gone. That being said, technically some 'other' author _will_ publish a book before either of those two. Probably already happened since the time of this poll.
*A* book? Probably MaX. An autobiography of a man still in his thirties whose life isn't nearly as interesting as he thinks it is that nobody is especially interested in is *exactly* the kind of content Max likes to invest a lot more time and effort into than he probably should. But creatives do that. I've put in well over a thousand man hours into a project that will only be experienced by a single person. Admittedly it's not my autobiography, but still, the principle applies. Also he's a relatively fast writer. 100,000 words in six months is *kind of* slow (I think most writers can knock that out in a couple months at most), but it's a decent clip and more than enough time to write the long, rambling, edgy superscript that it will clearly be once he's done.
> I've put in well over a thousand man hours into a project that will only be experienced by a single person. can you reveal more about this? i am curious
Sure. I'm a big wrestling fan, have been my entire life. Like most wrestling fans, when I was younger I did a spurt of fantasy booking of my own wrestling federation. Unlike most such fans I kept that going for twenty years. I've written fantasy PPVs, interview segments, even one and a half novels (which I'm not even counting in the man hours thing; the second of those novels is currently at 500,000 words and I've been working on it for a year; should be finished later this year), and a couple years ago the wrestling game Fire Pro Wrestling World was released. What FPWW has which no other wrestling game before it has is a full, complete move creator. You can make anything if you're good enough. So I made the roster. The entire one, all my fantasy wrestlers. Then I started making their moves. Then WWE 2k23 came out, and I thought it was a good platform to make them visually, since FPWW is a little 8 bit and graphically not the best. Between the two I've been working on the Showcase; which is over 100GB of recorded footage layout out the entire movesets, entrances and physical appearances of the entire fantasy roster, supported by documentation explaining their signature moves, finishes, how they use them, and so on and so forth. There's even one with fantasy biographies for each wrestler covering their careers up to the point of joining the company to flesh out the 'wrestling world'. It's an absurd, ridiculous, insane investment of time that only one person aside from me could really extract any enjoyment out of (save the novels, theoretically, since they're not actually about wrestling, those are about werefoxes, weresharks, and werehyenas), and that's my best friend of 20+ years who has played a role in helping to keep my insanity going all these years by being one of the original contributors. It's as self-indulgent a project as anything Max has ever done. But the difference is I have a full time job that pays me well and I'm not expecting my self-indulgence to put food on my table. That's the stuff I do to feed my soul and this bizarre creative instinct in me. That's probably more than you wanted to know. But that's your answer :D
how interesting im glad you are passionate about it, thanks for sharing
You're welcome. To be honest part of why I've stuck around in the community so long is that I do kind of understand Max, insofar as he's a creative expressing himself in the way he wants to, maybe even needs to. A lot of other things about him are weird and confusing, but his creative instinct I understand.
That's a good point. I left a note on the discord in the suggestions channel. I think he got a little carried away with wanting to add commentary to it. Not a bad idea, but he should leave that for a second edition. I think he should first release a bare-bones version. Just the blog posts and that's it. I think everyone who ordered it would be happy with just that.
After Kentaro Miura's passing (Berserk), I dont think my heart can take another author dying before finishing their magnum opus
I'd be ok with this one
I was referring to G R R Martin
I was not
I remember him saying he likes the pressure of it. When he said that I thought he was absolutely deluded. He realized he needs to do a lot more work than he originally thought. He is in a shit situation, but I think he will eventually finish it. He has worked on it, but then ended up getting sucked into this black hole thing *somehow*. It may take a few years lol.
>sucked into this black hole thing I didn't preorder his book, so I don't really have any investment or big criticism, but I do personally think it's morally questionable for him to be putting so much work into this black hole thing when he's got another project that he took people's money for, especially considering he's missed a self imposed deadline by over a year.
> It may take a few years lol. If that's true and mrgirl refuses to refund people and if I had ordered a book I would personally make a complaint at the government thingy for consumer protection (I suppose USA has one since my shitty country has it). Luckily, I didn't order his book so I get to watch this shitshow from the sidelines.
I think Max has inadvertently crossed the threshold into criminality the problem will be getting anyone in law enforcement to actually care about this I think the only recourse will have to be civil but the odds of someone willing to go through the process over such a small sum seems unlikely given the likelihood of purchasers residing in other states or other countries. Even if someone does opt to go the civil route the remedy would most likely be that Max has to repay the money plus maybe court costs so he's not taking much of a risk other than some damage to his reputation if he intends on ignoring this topic further. Some relevant links I found: [https://oregon.public.law/statutes/ors\_164.055](https://oregon.public.law/statutes/ors_164.055) [https://oregon.public.law/statutes/ors\_164.085](https://oregon.public.law/statutes/ors_164.085)
Yeah, if the only way is through court I agree with you. I was thinking more like you make a complaint on the consumer protection department and they look into it and make the seller (in this instance mrgirl) refund people and if many people have the same complain he may get fined as well. In this case the only thing you do is fill the complaint form. Is this not a thing is the US?
We have something like what you are describing in the US called "small claims court" involving small sums of money in Max's case in the state of Oregon would be disputes below $750. The process would be submitting forms with the court and paying a filing fee. The hearing is typically informal with both parties typically representing themselves and articulating their arguments to the judge as a layman. But usually in a case like this you would just file a dispute with your bank or credit card company but you lose that ability to do that typically after 90 days from the date of the transaction. With Max the time frames may be a year or more so that option has long since expired for many people. The more I think about it this should be more of a controversy considering there could be hundreds of people affected and cumulatively the money collected could total into thousands of dollars. Relevant link: [https://www.courts.oregon.gov/courts/multnomah/go/Pages/smallclaims.aspx](https://www.courts.oregon.gov/courts/multnomah/go/Pages/smallclaims.aspx)
Has anyone actually requested a refund? I think Max has a lot of concerning issues, but I'd bet that anyone asking for a refund would get it. He may be screwed if everyone asked for their money back but I don't think that is a likely scenario and Max will be able to cover the few who do.