The Lawyer Suing The Oatmeal Takes Contact Info Down, Reports ‘String of Obscene Emails’
As we reported earlier, webcomic The Oatmeal posted this week about a request for $20,000 made by FunnyJunk, through a lawyer, ostensibly due to damaging statements made by the former in a year-old blog post.
The situation with The Oatmeal, if you recall the original post, was frustrating enough just to read about- so it must have been pretty sucky for cartoonist Matthew Inman, the guy behind the site, to deal with. Sites like FunnyJunk tend to take other people’s content and monetize it, which is not well regarded among content creators, but easy to do with the sheer number of memes floating around the web.
Inman was a frequent victim, finding his unique comics reposted on FunnyJunk with little recourse to prevent someone else from making money off them, and then the offending site turns around and sues him for talking about it. But again, as we reported, The Oatmeal- instead of acknowledging the shaky claim- decided to raise $20,000 in response to the claim.
Not to give it to FunnyJunk, though. Instead, Inman decided to donate half the funds raised to a wildlife fund and half to a cancer charity. And as you can see, the push was successful- nearly $100,000 over the $20,000 goal was raised- and the lawyer that wrote Inman has been on the receiving end of some complaints from fans of The Oatmeal as well.
Somewhat amusingly, lawyer Charles Carreon huffs to MSNBC:
“I really did not expect that he would marshal an army of people who would besiege my website and send me a string of obscene emails… I’m completely unfamiliar really with this style of responding to a legal threat — I’ve never really seen it before. I don’t like seeing anyone referring to my mother as a sexual deviant.”
Carreon has responded by attempting to get The Oatmeal’s fundraising attempts quashed under IndieGoGo’s terms, a move that will probably only increase the negative response.
