I’ll always remember the time when Alex Day was performing with Chameleon Circuit at Vidcon 2011 and he was like “I’m gonna throw my Vidcon lanyard out into the crowd, they’ll go nuts.”
We were all like “dude it’s just a lanyard? That’s pretty arrogant that you’ll assume anyone will want a piece of paper that says ‘Alex Day - VIP’ in a little plastic sleeve.”
Then he threw the lanyard out and the crowd was like “WWWHAAOAAOAAAAAAAA” and all jumped to catch it.
He didn’t really gain anything from throwing out the lanyard. Maybe an ego boost? Except he’s running at max ego already. It was a just cool bit of showmanship I guess, in that it inarguably totally worked and some fangirl got The Alex Day Lanyard.
So like - it’s arrogant to assume people want it… but… like, he was totally correct. Is it arrogant to correctly acknowledge that people want it?
Like if Johnny Depp is like “I’m famous”… is that arrogant? If he was JUST famous, and not mega-rich as well, and needed some cash, and correctly acknowledged that someone out there would totally pay $10k to have lunch with him, what do we think about that?
Penny Arcade want to raise money for this thing, they correctly acknowledge that there’re people out there who will spend that much money on having lunch with the pair of them. From the D&D Podcasts they seem like nice, agreeable & funny guys to hang out with. I’m sure I’d enjoy a lunch with them.
(They’re not even valuing A Lunch With Them at $10k. It’s a fundraising reward, jesus! When I raffled off my Sudoku book for $20 a ticket - I wouldn’t even sell it for $10! It’s a fundraising reward, it lives in a totally different field to buying something at a shop. Would we be making fun of the people who paid $100 - A HUNDRED DOLLARS - just to choose who to pie in the face on stage? Are we SO ARROGANT to assume that the GRAND PRIVILEGE of choosing who to pie is worth $100?)
Oh christ and as for making fun of the actual dudes for being middle-aged nerds & not as cool-looking and youthful as their in-comic avatars, just… come on, guys. We’re making fun of nerdy looking people now? It’s a god damn comic, I don’t even think it registers as wish fulfilment, the in-comic versions are just characters with roughly corresponding personality traits. You might think “oh but they have the same names”, except the characters are called Gabe and Tycho and the dudes are called Mike and Jerry. So, whatever. I don’t know.
tl;dr some dudes successfully executed a kickstarter campaign and looked like nerds. You’ve got the dickwolves, if you wanna hate on them just use that, it’s plenty.
