Working with
The “Institute” has been tweeting a lot of posters lately…including, of course, the give us money kind.
What does that mean? Works with them how? It’s very vague and general – could mean anything or nothing. Is that an accident? Or could it be because they don’t actually do anything? Except self-promotion?
Contribution for what purpose? What do they do?
Maybe they go around to the world’s trouble spots, installing special emergency stations on posts. They look a bit like those “Take a book, leave a book” boxes you sometimes see in suburban neighbourhoods, just a little more serious and severe.
On the box there’s a sign that says:
IN CASE OF GENOCIDE, BREAK GLASS.
Inside, on a tightly folded piece of paper are the words
STOP! DON’T DO THAT!
That is all.
Looking at the website, as far as I can tell it’s a distributed group of couple of academics leading a bunch of interns. They gather information produced by other organisations, then issue Statements and Reports and conduct Training. I certainly don’t see any harm in that aspect of their work. It feels a bit duplicative and derivative, with touches of stolen valour in that they are using others hard work to gain attention and kudos for themselves. Not a grift as such, but a little grift adjacent perhaps. I mean, if they want to amplify the work of Bellingcat and others, all they need to do is to publish to their website and social media accounts without all the claims of being an Institute. It would achieve exactly the same thing. Well, they wouldn’t then get to bask in the glow of being an Institute doing something about genocide.
I am pleased to announce the founding of the Screechy Monkey Foundation for Sobriety Prevention.
Donations are accepted in cash or other liquid (ahem) asset. But not crypto, we have principles.
Screechy, I would like to collaborate with your Institute (remotely sadly). I will raise several toasts to you and any others who wish to join us over the holidays.
Rob,we at the SMFSP appreciate all the help we can get on this vital mission.
Rob @ 2 – Thanks for the information. It feels to me more than a bit duplicative and derivative and stolen valour – it feels tacky and exploitative and obnoxious. I share the work of other people too but I make that clear up front by linking, and I DON’T call myself a dang institute!
I hate that kind of sly self-promoting deceptive crap – it’s Edwina Rogers and the “Secular Policy Institute” all over again. Some grinny photos, a website, and…nothing. No added value of any kind.
Ophelia @6, my better angel was trying not to be too judgemental based on the limited information I could gather. The angel on the other shoulder was muttering ‘fucking grifters’.
The whole thing reeks really, all kinds of different reeks. You know, a bunch of us here could always set up the Charlotte Clymer Institute for Gender Studies. Screechy can be in-house counsel – he’d probably advise us to name ourselves after someone dead, but that’s lawyers for you. There are a heap of well read, articulate and interesting people here. I can… well I can, make tea? We’ll figure out the details later. The important thing is website with a donations link and a veneer of respectability and relevance.
What about his deadname; is that available? /s
Look, the important thing is to generate lots of poster-like images to use in tweets, especially ones about our DONATION DRIVE so that we can urge people to GIVE US MONEY so that we can generate more poster-like images to use in tweets. It’s very expensive, generating poster-like images.
They’re grifters, nothing more.
We could use posters with pink and baby blue LASER EYES! People are saying, tears in their eyes, that this is a beautiful, perfect way to raise money. The best way.
WAIT!
WE NEED A LOGO!
It’s gotta fit into a corner of our poster-like images. We could use it on our letterhead, if we ever bothered to commit anything to paper. Or pay for postage. Our logo has to be something
convincing enough to make people think we’re more authentic and bigger than we really areboldly dynamic, engagingly synergystic, with exponentially mobilized potential to leverage strategic, global-stakeholder partnerships. Something Institutional. Without one, how will anyone be able to tell our Official Institute Communications from those of some ersatz, wannabe “Institute” that’s just somene else with a laptop? We have to have some way for ourmarkssupporters to be able to distinguish OUR laptop from everyone else’s, so that the money reachesour hot little handsthis most worthy of causes.Do we design the logo in-house, or farm it out and write it off as an expense? (If one of us happened to become a “Graphic Design Company” we could do both at the same time! Which reminds me, we’ll need a book-keeper.
Ethical standardsHours flexible.)There should be a committee. Maybe a “Standing Committee” or an “Ad Hoc Committee,” whichever one sounds like it would be something you’d find in an Institute. (We could form a Committee to look at the use of committees by other Institutes. Just so we follow standard Institututional Committee Practice.) Once that Committee reaches its conclusion, we can use those findings to form the Logo Design and Approval Committee.
T-shirts. There have to be T-shirts. (Or at least pictures of T-shirts (or pictures of a T-shirt mock-up.)) Until an Official Logo is designed and approved, we could use a Provisional Logo for the T-shirts, so everybody knows we’re a Real Institute, (or soon will be) that means business. And has T-shirts. (Or at least pictures of T-shirts. (Or pictures of T-shirt mock-ups.))
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