Amanda Palmer

[Blunch]

OooooOooft! The thread I needed!

Things that piss me off about Amanda Palmer:

- her eyebrows
- the way she sings like a cross between veruca salt and miss hannigan from 1980s Annie
- that one time she tried to "hire" backing musicians for her tour, but for free / beer money. Proper classical musicians like, not your mate with a set of bongos
- after getting over a mil to fund the album + tour on kickstarter, that is
- her eyebrows
- about 5 years ago she posted a pic of kids in punk clothes at Camden Market all sat in a circle on their phones and mocked them for not being real punks (sorry no receipts and can't find the facebook post... Will dig about a bit more). A bit fucking rich Amanda
- that whole "I'm more INTENSE than You" vibe
- her eyebrows

 

[WadieHaddadsChocolates]

Just caught up on all the Amanda Grifter Palmer and Neil Bloody Gaiman since 2021.

well.

Can't say I am surprised at the following revelations:

Amanda is still talking obnoxious me me me shite and is now defending Russell Greasy Brand. Edgy gurl does edgy gurl stuff. 'he was lovely to me' .. yes well, it's all about you, isn't it. That's the important thing, the only important thing to the terminally self-absorbed person.

They got divorced - imagine my shock. One of those marriages between two utterly self-absorbed 'artists' that is destined to end. Usually the ones that last are between an Utterly Self-Absorbed Artist and a Self-Sacrificing, Put-Upon Spouse Who Stays in the BackGround, Suffering.

Neil is, as I thought, not a 'lovely' or 'nice' as his sickeningly twee PR suggests. Very few people of course are 'nice' in the way Neil portrays himself as, and of those that are, I can guarantee none of them are the creature known as a 'writer'. They're gnarly creatures generally and the dude versions tend to come with insane amounts of ego and expectations of their partners. Often unfair ones. I could reel off a list of Great Male Writers who treated their spouses and partners utterly appallingly and but let's just add Neil to the Minor Twat List and leave it there.

It's sort of sad, realising that people you admired when you were young and read their stuff are just flawed, idiotic humans, often so flawed as to be quite appalling characters, especially domestically. But that's life innit. I say, if you want to idolise something, idolise the work, not the human.

 

[WadieHaddadsChocolates]

But the last few years she seems to have become more and more...how can I say...grifty? I wonder if Gaiman initially saw her as a younger, oh so arty, quirky second wife and as her career has faded the shine has worn off.

She's been a balls-out grifter since that appalling 'Art of Asking' book (or whatever it was called). Then having a Patreon and acting La Starving Artiste despite being married to a fucking millionaire. She's an example of making a very little talent go a very long way with an immense amount of self belief and confidence, tbqh. She cannot sing and in the end, became little more than a wandering noisy cult of personality with the aforementioned dodgy self-help type book. Spare me the tales of lift hitching and fan floor sleeping when your husband is minted and now so are you.

As for quirky second wife, the moment Gaiman got with her I thought, haha, you found yourself a 15 years younger Poundland Tori Amos since the original you liked so much wasn't free. He's looked like a fucking bag lady midlife crisis wanker ever since he's been with her. Clearly has a boner for eccentric artist women anyway.

Apparently they both slept around as part of their open relationship then had the combined balls to get butthurt about each other or whatever. Pretty immature for a pair of middle aged and above people. He's 60 now and has probably given up and decided to stick around for the kid. Typical older divorced dude with much younger wife and very young child. The classic 'do over family' because you fucked up with the first one. At least Scientology isn't involved this time. Maybe.

I find Gaiman's 'nice' image increasingly likely to be a typical smokescreen for not being quite as nice as you'd want. I always wondered if like Palmer, he shagged fans. Note most of Neil's uberfans are women on the younger side. With a dose of the kind of quirky he obviously finds attractive.

 

[brianbutterfield]

Does anyone know why her and Neil split, he says it was his fault?

At the time he made a blog post and said that he had hurt Amanda’s feelings badly.
I think she and him were all up for the open relationship thing (trying to be cool and subversive no doubt). I think when they had a child together, a lot of the emotional and physical labour fell on (surprise surprise) Amanda and Neil developed relationships with other women because like most men, his life remained relatively unchanged by having a baby.
I remember reading AP’s biography and there was this horrible but where she wrote about the first time she was sick when with him, he completely ignored her and wouldn’t engage. This was explained away by Amanda and she excused him for his shitty lack of compassion by using her usual psycho-babble but that made me feel cold.
Narcissistic behaviour often includes things like ignoring people when they are ill.
Another thing was when she had to make Christmas magical on her own because Neil found wrapping presents “triggering” and was going into “meltdown” about it all and I just thought what a fucking man-child. News Flash Neil. Everyone finds Christmas hard. You just do it for the kids. Really lost any respect for him at this point. He’s just like any other old man of his generation who thinks he still gets to be sexy and exciting, with a fulfilling career when being a parent because the woman is expected to do everything.
That’s my take anyway.
---
And… And (I’m on a roll now!) His insistence in having a room of one’s own to be a creative in is so at odds with family life and drenched in misogyny because women are always expected to just work around the bonkers sleep patterns of their children.

He illicits absolutely zero sympathy in me whatsoever. I’m sure he thought the cross pollination of each of their brands would be cooler and more lucrative than it was.

She is a professional over-sharer while he is the old school keep the fans guessing style of public persona. I felt that he found her breaking the forth wall of their lives very off putting and jarring. He likes to appeal to young goths! It’s not very cool to have the mundane aspects of your domestic life publicised on social media every five minutes. I felt that was a real area of tension for them.

I imagine it was all very exciting at first but Neil always held all the power because he was rich.

She never refers to him any more. I believe he’s done what all rich white powerful men do and gagged her with a NDA. Knowing she’s financially vulnerable and will need the money.

His relationship with Fiona Apple was unsettling at best and if I was AP I would have put a stop to that from day 1 because it made mockery out of AP.

At the end of the day he is just like any other middle classed, white powerful Brit. Abuses his power, gets everything he wants and pays for a good reputation.

 

[Venuslurker]

Maybe in this turmoil, there's a little good news to brighten your day.

I was worried about the Israel/Palestine conflict but then I found out Amanda palmer has a new "him person" and I just feel all fuzzy now.

 

[Muddlinleigh]

My mum died last Thursday: I spent her last days sitting by her bed and holding her hand; not posting thirst pics on social media. Funny that

 

[skronkywildcat]

When "offline" I often pop back online to tell people I'm offline.

 

[virtualorigami]

a few years ago a girl i worked with grifted thousands of pounds from friends by asking for them to donate a few pounds instead of buying her a coffee when they saw her (as if they would?!) so that she could go to a wedding in australia. she was a massive amanda palmer fan and that was what inspired her to do it, like she genuinely thought that was an ok thing to do because of her? at the time people were donating to it without questioning and i was wondering whether i was just a total arsehole for thinking it was cheeky AF.

it’s just totally normalised now thanks to these absolute chancers

 

[Flibbertigibbet]

I went back to Amanda's facebook post about Sinéad O'Connor herself, to see the reaction, and she actually held out her cap for money in the comments. The state of her. After saying that she taped Sinéad's albums off a friend and all! I mean, we all did that as teenagers, but later on when we earned a bit of money we bought copies of the ones we still liked when we were switching to CDs and digital.

 

[Dustye]

View attachment 422064

This is so pretty and awful of me, but something about her mouth really annoys me. I think it's because it turns down at the corners naturally but the way she poses makes it look like she's being super serious and arsey about something all the time. Is it just me?!
Also, boo hoo you have many homes around the world and have been fortunate enough to spend a year in one of the safest and most stable countries on earth, how awful that must be for you.

 

[Flibbertigibbet]

It is true that for some people, a traumatic upbringing can cause them so much harm that they then go on to behave poorly as an adult.

And people do deserve a chance to learn and grow. However there are also some crimes that should never be forgotten or go unpunished.

I feel like she is trying to suggest that forgiveness worked for her, so it should work for everyone else. On Facebook her fans are lapping this up. They are like a cult that can't think any thoughts unless their leader approved them first. Some of the patreon comments are more critical and pointing out that this doesn't seem to mesh with some of the other views she supports.

Exactly. Rape is not just an offence against a person, mostly a woman or a child; it's an offence against the law because we as a society decided that it is really fucking wrong.

So many people defend Polanski for evading justice because his victim wanted to put the whole thing behind her. But raping a child is a crime in California, as it is in all the civilised world, and while we hope his victim is ok now, California has every right to pursue the prick for the rest of his rapey days.

These women saying that they got on ok with Russell are completely missing the point. And any decency or empathy. As I pointed out on another thread, I would be HORRIFIED if someone I had slept with had gone and raped someone else. You wouldn't hear me saying, "he was nothing but kind to me" because I would be too busy trying to unclench my horrified vagina.

 

[Sideboard Bob]

I was a Neil fan first and will always be, but he has disappointed me a lot.

Me too. When he flew across the world during lockdown it made me think of a Good Omens quote that, (if it wasn’t one of Sir Terry’s), he probably wrote! “How can somebody as clever as you be so stupid!”

 

[Hollaaa]

The middle aged woman, still wise beyond her remaining years, let out all her breath in one long exhale. If you listened closely enough, you could hear it, expelled almost like a newly-formed song into the air "ohhhh fuckkkkk offfffffff".

 

[Lucky Escape]

Cross-posting from the Jack Monroe threads with an AP anecdote:

I tagged along with a friend who was interviewing her for a fanzine about 19 or 20 years ago.

There was an incredibly awkward moment when she sneezed over his notebook; no-one said anything, and by the time it became clear that she wasn't going to apologise or even acknowledge it, the opportunity for him to have laughed it off had passed. So he had to pretend that it hadn't happened, and continued to scribble through the splotches of her snot. I can replay the moment in slow-motion in my mind, it was like something from a 1970s sitcom or a Douglas Adams short story.

...

(I've since checked with my friend - apparently the interview was with both[?] of the Dresden Dolls, but it was definitely Amanda Palmer who was the sneezer. He's promised to dig out the notebook in question, so stand by for some snot-stained pictures in a day or two...)

 

[Pixieboots]

I was a Neil fan first and will always be, but he has disappointed me a lot.

 

[Flibbertigibbet]

Holy I'm-Not-Like-The-Other-Girls, Batman!

Russell has already tried the sex addict and personal demons excuses. They didn't work, so he went down the conspiracy warren. Does Amanda seriously think he's capable of honesty, let alone remorse? The thing that stood out for me from the testimonies was the victims describing a glazed/dark look in his eyes. He's a sociopath. And I think Amanda is too.

 

[Scoopy79]

It's the drama of the whole flying 10,000 miles and then driving from one end of the UK to the other during a global pandemic that irritated me. Neil mate, couldn't you have rented a house near your son so you could still be with him?

 

[traumatised sideboard]

I was a massive Dresden Dolls fan back in the Myspace era but I struggle to listen to them now knowing what a horror she is. Another one for the list: she attracted a lot of criticism for writing a terrible poem about the Boston marathon bombing and managing to make it all about herself (it's called 'A Poem for Dzhokhar' if you're not familiar and want to look it up). I also remember reading an article where she said she was the kind of person who would rip her tampon out and throw it across the room at a party to get attention

Hard agree on the eyebrows as well. Absolute crime.

 

[FamilyDollarSushi]

When you think she can't get any worse

View attachment 2597229

From personal experience people like this make dealing with loved ones in Critical care or hospice 100% MORE STRESSFUL

If you are in this situation and have a worthless idiot like this taking pictures of themselves and or the person in hospital…save yourself the grief and kick them out even if that includes shoving their phone somewhere sideways.

 

[Nahhh]

Soooo here for this thread. Used to be a huge fan but as I have gotten older and wiser I see right through her ~~~oh so deep and profound~~~ words and realise she is just a huge attention seeker. The fans I met at her shows are the absolute worst too and eat up everything she says as gospel.