This is recurring topic that people love to discuss and it’s reared its complicated, spiteful head again.

I can’t say that I’m a fan of Louise Distras.

I’ve never bought her merch or gone out of my way to see her perform and my personal interactions with her have been brief, infrequent and a little uncomfortable, but I’m bored of seeing this topic being repeated and deteriorating a little more with every occurance.

I’m really disappointed to see the same people getting some sort of perverse pleasure out of it, particularly the people I know and hold to the higher standards they claim to have.

Something that really stands out is that while there’s a significant amount of venom directed towards Louise on a regular basis, it doesn’t seem to happen to others who have behaved similarly or worse. The idea that other musicians (who’ve received significantly more money through pledges than Louise has) might have defrauded their donors simply doesn’t enter into the conversation, and people whose behaviour is worse aren’t mentioned at all.

So what happened?

Louise set up a Kickstarter to request funds to record a new album. £12,654* was pledged by fans, which 15% more than the amount she aimed to raise.  Some members of the public who haven’t pledged a single penny to her are very annoyed about there being no visible product (that they wouldn’t buy anyway) and no clear account of how the Kickstarter money has been spent.

Lots of bands, including the likes of UK Subs and Hands Off Gretel, have also used crowd funding platforms to raise cash for recording. These two bands used Pledge Music which displays the amount raised as a percentage rather than a figure – for example Hands Off Gretel raised 212% of their goal but the actual amount of money they raised isn’t shown. Kickstarter shows both the total amount raised and the percentage of the goal amount, so the fact that Louise raised £12,654 for her new album is publicly available information.

Crowd funders can be set up for almost anything – medical bills, housing and food costs, potato salad (?) or a Mexican border wall – and they frequently offer rewards to pledgers. The rewards offered by Louise Distras, UK Subs and Hands Off Gretel are all pretty similar to each other and include merchandise, artwork, used equipment, or a private gig in your house.

There have been some high profile cases of crowd funding fraud – for example a recent one where a couple raised $400,000 for a homeless man under false pretenses and spent most of it on themselves. The cases that receive such scrutiny, however, tend to involve significant amounts of money (£300,000 +) rather than the £12,000 that is grumbled about in Louise’s case.

Prof. Ethan Mollick of the University of Pennsylvania has been conducting research on Kickstarter for several years and this has culminated in the Wharton Crowdfunding Study, which aims to understand the impact of crowdfunding on creators, backers and society. Prof. Mollick states;

“Fraud is rare, though delays are common. Crowdfunding has been remarkably free from fraud, even though over 75% of projects deliver late.”

One key piece of information that Louise’s detractors have conveniently forgotten is that when backers pledge to a Kickstarter project they’re investing in it, rather than buying something.

They’re willingly and voluntarily donating their money to her.

Willingly and voluntarily donating.

Many Kickstarters offer rewards to backers that tend to increase in proportion to the size of the pledge (for example, someone pledging £5 might get a sticker and postcard whereas someone pledging £500 could receive the whole finished product with event tickets and bundles of merch) and this is where the confusion lies. People frequently misinterpret investing in a project to mean that you’re buying the rewards.

Kickstarter has guidelines and terms of use published online and every Kickstarter project has a “report this project” option. In the terms they state that they don’t get involved in disputes “…between users and any third party relating to the use of the Services. We don’t oversee the performance or punctuality of projects…”  

In law a third party is someone who is not directly affected by or involved in a matter, so unless you’ve contributed money to the Kickstarter(s) you are a third party and you’re not entitled to report a complaint about the project.

You’re not entitled to see accounts, receipts, or any form of transparency about how the money has been spent.

In the law of England and Wales there’s the Contracts (Rights of third Parties) Act 1999, but I think anyone would be hard pressed to prove in a court of law that Louise’s Kickstarter forms a contract with third parties or that Facebook complainants can prove they’d benefit from the Kickstarter in any way.

The backers have willingly donated money to her for recording and for airfare to/from Punk Rock Bowling. Those who are the most vocally upset about it haven’t given her any money, so it’s hard to comprehend why there is a such an intense, recurring outpouring of rage.

Parallel to this is another issue that isn’t receiving attention. Pledge Music seem to have been having serious issues and the money Hands Off Gretel’s fans pledged to their campaign (over £25,000 according to an interview on https://www.rgm.press/ dated 26 February 2019) is in limbo. They were, however, still able to release their album as fans pledged even more money to them directly.

That’s more than double what Louise was pledged however I haven’t seen Hands Off Gretel receive anything remotely like the venom that has been directed towards Louise.

Surely there’s more to it than this, though?

The outpouring of vitriol has clearly been influenced by personal gripes a lot of people have with Louise over various incidents. Without going into too much detail these include;

• Actions contradict words on several issues.
• Negative feedback and questions are quickly deleted from Facebook
• Favouring female musicians and fans over male musicians and fans
• Claims to be DIY but is rumoured to use PR.
• Has cancelled DIY gigs without repaying deposits/travel costs to promoters, or to tour with a more high-profile band, or without notice to other bands on the bill.
• Unpredictable behaviour, such as confronting people for vague/non-existent reasons, claiming credit where it’s not due, and expecting servitude from others.

Any one of these points could apply to many, many people who aren’t Louise Distras. I’ve been subject to each of the above behaviours multiple times on the gig circuit, but coming from several other people who are not Louise Distras.

Musicians who I know well make statements against rape, then play gigs with rapists. Or are antifascist and go on tour with racist homophobes. Or make jokes about disabled people, child abuse, etc ad infinitum.

Many people cancel gigs without little notice, or do no promotion for a gig and expect a band to travel for 5 hours with no guarantee of a crowd, petrol money or anywhere to sleep. Many bands put money into a gig without seeing any return. Many people are entitled shits who demand to have their bags carried and their food brought to them, and many people use “girls to the front” rhetoric without being shouted down for it.

It’s always lovely to be around engaging, polite and friendly people who behave with integrity and honesty, but you’re not entitled to niceness.

There are difficult, unpleasant people everywhere who don’t owe you anything.

Louise is being singled out over her behaviour whereas there are people with the reputations of P. Paul Fenech or Jorge Herrera who aren’t discussed with the same level of disdain, but are worshipped as heroes.

This would lead one to believe that there’s a bias against this woman, who is being touted as answerable for the kind of misbehaviour that is tolerated, excused, admired or even encouraged in men.

The comments I’ve seen levelled against Louise have been horrible. People have said she deserves HIV or kneecapping, or that she’s used the money for heroin and plastic surgery, and a couple of bands have even recorded songs slagging her off. Some folks are circulating a list of choice quotes slating her and it’s almost comically predictable that it’s mostly coming from the same few men – the same men who tolerate bullshit behaviour from other men.

I suppose that several of her detractors feel aggrieved that Louise is “sullying the scene” and taking advantage of people, and believe that they’re raising awareness of this so that it doesn’t happen anymore.

But that’s utter bullshit because it’s not reaching the people who donate money to Louise, nor the promoters who book her, people who go to see her shows or buy her merch.

There’s no nobility in any of the conversations that are happening. Loads of the people slagging Louise off and threatening violence are the same who take an anti-bullying stance elsewhere, or a feminist stance, or an anti-rape stance, etc but then take part in this crap whilst cosying up to sex offenders, domestic abusers, etc.

At the present time most people probably have a keen understanding of how hate escalates. We know that little bits of aggression repeated over and over – insults, slurs, saying you’d like to hit someone, that they don’t deserve basic human rights – builds up until someone gets physically hurt.

After the recent shootings in New Zealand it’s simply not good enough to say that these statements aren’t serious. This shit has the potential to really hurt someone, if not as a result of a physical attack then almost certainly an impact on someone’s mental health and self-esteem.

There’s a fair bit of addiction shaming going on too, again from the same people who would acknowledge that nobody chooses to be an addict if the subject of their gripe was anyone but Louise Distras.

Paradoxically a few of those writing the hateful comments about Louise are the same who quote Joe Strummer on manners yes still somehow perceive themselves as superior to any of the bottom feeders on 8chan. Their crowing about a recent and potentially slanderous amendment to her Wikipedia page and their spurious claims of fraud do nothing to dissuade one that this is just a big, group-wank of a vendetta.

Sadly these chaps probably haven’t considered that due to this example of their behaviour there’ll now be several women who have silently lost any trust they previously had in them.

*Edited to add – since publishing this yesterday I’ve realised something even worse about this steaming pile of shit.

Some of Louise’s detractors have made spurious fraud reports about her to Facebook and/or Kickstarter, with no evidence that she’s actually committed fraud. Yet in other situations – specifically where a woman has been raped or assaulted – they automatically disbelieve the victim due to there being no proof publicly available and welcome the perpetrator back into the fold as though nothing had happened.

Slow clap, fuckers. You’ve shown your true colours and your behaviour is disgusting. If you want some integrity in the scene do some work on your own fucking integrity.

*some people have been banging on about another, earlier Kickstarter that raised £5,000. I can’t find much about it and I can’t be bothered to conduct any more research on it for the sake of whiny little boys.