How to raise over $140,000 for charity, by The Oatmeal

June 13, 2012

Image by The Oatmeal

Rule number 1 of the internet: Do not mess with The Oatmeal.

The Seattle based cartoonist (real name Matthew Inman) has one of the BIGGEST blogs on the planet, so if you tick this guy off, be prepared to have a very difficult life.

This is a lesson that has been learned the hard way by lawyer Charles Carreon, who represents humour site Funnyjunk.

This saga has been going on for a while, but for those who don’t know, I’ll break it down for you as simply as I can:

Basically, last year, The Oatmeal called Funnyjunk out for hosting his comics without attribution on their ad-revenue driving site. While the admin responded and took some of the stolen material down, a fair amount still remained. However, The Oatmeal conceded that it was too much effort to fight for the rest of the rest of the comics, so he let it lie.

Until a couple of days ago, when he gets served papers from Funnyjunk’s lawyer demanding he pays $20,000 to Funnyjunk in damages.

Then my friends, stuff got real.

The Oatmeal has posted the letter on his blog, ripping the entire thing to shreds and dragging Carreon’s name through the dirt. But he hasn’t stopped there. Oh no.

The Oatmeal has decided to end the thing with one big final flourish, that is Operation: Bearlove Good. Cancer Bad.

Basically, in the words of the great Oatiness himself, this is what he did:

1. I’m going to try and raise $20,000 in donations.
2. I’m going to take a photo of the raised money.
3. I’m going to mail you that photo, along with a drawing of your mom seducing a kodiak bear.
4. I’m going to take the money and donate one half to the National Wildlife Federation and the other half to the American Cancer Society.

That was nearly two days ago. So how did he get on?

Well, he raised the money. In 64 minutes flat. And about half an hour ago (12.30 GMT), I went ahead and took a snapshot of the total so far on his fundraising page over at IndieGoGo:

And the thing still has two weeks to run.

Well, that’s if Carreon doesn’t get his way. The lawyer revealed last night to Digitallife that he has tried to get the fundraiser shut down, but is yet to receive a response from the admins of IndieGoGo.

In any case, its turning out to be a very good week for the National Wildlife Federation and the American Cancer Society!

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