The Wages of Anonymity

So, I've had this lady pestering for the last few weeks by sending me messages on Goodreads and leaving comments on posts on this blog. Honestly, I don't really read my messages on Goodreads since they are mostly board spam and comments like that on blogger are usually spambots. So, in the immortal words of Dory the fish 'just keep deleting, just keep deleting." However, after the third little note hassling me for $42 I decided to use Goodreads messaging as a shield and try to get to the bottom of it all.

I was pretty sure that there was a real person behind it all for three reasons. 1. each of the notes was worded differently, spambots usually just send the same message over and over. 2. she had attempted to reach me through two different sites, albeit the only two that I allow to be linked to each other, again a spambot usually just hits one site. 3. I backtracked her user information on those sites and found many of her online community pages including both her facebook pages, deviant art, and furaffinity profile pages.

Well, I was right and I got in touch with a very feisty artist from Minnesota. She does anthropomorphized fox illustrations. Most definitely a real person.  So the story is that she landed a commission from somebody using "umberle" as a handle on furaffinity. She delivered the work, and the person didn't pay. Being a fairly intelligent young woman she apparently started looking for other sites with umberles. That got her to my blog, and from my blog to my goodreads profile which currently features a fox sitting on a stack of books. So, it's not unreasonable to assume I'm the same person as this furaffinity umberle. Unfortunately for her, I'm not the same person and the fox thing is a coincidence.

So here's the thing about the internet. Everyone is on it and there are a lot of people creating handles out of the same 26 (or so) characters. This makes commerce on the internet for an individual very chancy at best. That's why there are so many sites like ebay and etsy. They provide a modicum of security or at least traceability. Commissioned art doesn't have similar site as far as I'm aware. The best most artists can do is insist on a deposit or partial payment before sending the work. Still risky though.

I feel a great deal of empathy for this young lady. It really sucks to put work into something that you think you are going to be paid for only to get stiffed in the end. All the elation turned to frustration.

So if ya'll are at all interested in fox people illustrations, swing over to her site on furaffinity or deviant art and give a sale.