Oatmeal Creator Posts Photo of Giant FU to FunnyJunk Made from Over 200 Grand in Cash
Last week, after nearly a month of steadily intensifying drama, troll lawyer Charles Carreon withdrew his lawsuit against The Oatmeal creator Matthew Inman and retreated to his bridge, declaring victory as he slunk.
A quick refresher: Carreon filed a suit in early June on behalf of social aggregation website FunnyJunk alleging defamation against his client over a post Inman published detailing how his comics had been unapologetically lifted from his site by FunnyJunk without attribution.
Carreon demanded $20,000 from Inman to make the lawsuit go away. Not interested in being blackmailed, Inman responded by launching a "defense fund" on the crowdfunding website Indiegogo, promising to send the money not to FunnyJunk, but to cancer and wildlife charities instead.
FunnyJunk and Carreon would not be leaving empty-handed, however: Inman vowed to mail them a photo of the cash, as well as a drawing "of your mom seducing a Kodiak bear."
Within minutes Inman raised over $20,000. A few hours later, the fund had amassed over $100,000. By the end of the fundraiser, Inman had received over $200,000 in donated cash from fans and fans of justice alike. As promised, Inman withdrew all $211,233 (and 54 cents), and shot a few photos to send to his admirers, Carreon and FunnyJunk.
In the comment section, he offered some background on the money transportation process:
I had to order the money from Bank of America about a week ahead of time and then go pick it up at a local branch. I didn't want to take the photo of the money while inside the bank because they only had a tiny room and I felt a bit more secure taking it offsite to somewhere private. One of my oldest friends happens to be tall, scary, heavily bearded, and have a large selection of (licensed) firearms. I asked him to come with me and play bodyguard. We took the money to my office and shot pictures of the photos on the floor. It took about two hours and we returned it to the bank, where they machine-counted all the bills. The whole experience was basically like the movie "Bodyguard" except Whitney Houston had a beard and guns and no one got naked with Kevin Costner.
Though it would be ideal for this story to end here, legal experts expect we haven't seen the last of Carreon.
Then again, considering the truly epic trolling taking place on both sides, and the amount of much-needed charity funds being raised, perhaps a few more salvos couldn't hurt.