I Would Like To Offer A 50 Dollar Gift Card To Our Store To The Vine Star Who Originally Posted the Miel Bredouw Video Before Miel Bredouw And Is Getting No Credit

Vs.

So by now everybody knows we’re getting dragged across the Internet for posting Miel Bredouw’s video without credit to her. I was just going to leave it alone, but it appears she is on a self congratulatory media tour for taking us down. Yup the same sites and same authors with the same agendas who rip us for every little move we make are now congratulating her for such a wonderful unique idea and praising her for her courage. Well surprise surprise the video we allegedly “stole” from her wasn’t even a unique concept to begin with. Another Vine star had already gone viral with the same exact song long before she did. I’m talking the original has over 1 million loops which is still more than her video of the same thing. And yes Miel was a big vine person when the original went viral so it seems hard to believe she wasn’t remotely aware of it if not fully aware of it. Some have even hinted that she waited till Vine got shut down to repost it, but I refuse to believe she’s that insidious. And don’t get me wrong we still look like idiots, but our only crime was being stupid. We didn’t borrow another person’s idea and pass it off as our own and let everybody talk about how great we are. I’m not sure the same can be said for Miel Bredouw.  Regardless I’d like to make it right and offer the original creator the same offer our lawyer offered Miel.  A free 50 bucks to our store for merch.  Who says I have no heart?  What is fair is fair.

Also truth be told I was so mad at our own guys for the way we interacted with Miel in the beginning that I didn’t realize at the time we were dealing with a full blown Barstool hater. I didn’t know she had an agenda, but after reading some of her quotes it’s pretty obvious she hates us and there is nothing we could have done that would have satisfied her.  I mean look at these quotes from her LA mag article.

All quotes from From LA Mag

Quote 1

“People were responding to their tweet and demanding they credit me, but they weren’t responding publicly at all, even though they were still actively posting,” Bredouw says. “I responded myself. I asked why they couldn’t just retweet from my account if they wanted to share the video. Instead of doing that, they had uploaded it to their own account and then linked to their ‘Chicks’ account. The implication of the way they posted it was that my video–my face–was somehow involved in Barstool, and I could not want to be further from Barstool. Even if they had given me credit, I just didn’t want to be connected to them.”

Listen as I said from the beginning she NEVER reached out to us directly to claim credit for the video. We thought we had obtained it legally. We had no idea there was an issue until we got the DMCA notice.  Well now Miel has clarified what she meant when she said we ignored her requests for credit in the beginning.  Here is her own tweet in which she essentially calls me a liar for saying she never contacted us about asking her for credit.

Apparently she left a comment underneath the original twitter post and that’s what she means when she says we ignored her and that’s why she filed the DMCA?  Umm Honey (Honey is what her name means in Spanish not huney as in babe) posting a comment underneath a tweet on an account with a million plus followers is literally yelling at clouds. We post tweets everyday all day long on twitter.  We have multiple people running the account.  We get thousands of submissions and comments. We don’t scroll through every tweet to read the comments.  We post and move onto the next. For her to expect us to see her comment is like a needle in the haystack. If it was as big a deal as she has made it out to be you’d think she would have Dm’d us or emailed us directly. She never did.

Also she seems hung up on the fact our twitter account tagged @chicksintheoffice. Like we were trying to mislead people to say she created this for us. I guess I can see how somebody unfamiliar with us could get confused, but we always tag the accounts we think are most appropriate for each video. Hockey videos get @spittinchicklets. Pizza videos get @stoolpresidente  This one we sent to Chick in the Office so they could talk about the video and actually draw attention to her.  Nobody thought we were taking credit for her work.  Hell I’d argue posting a video off her even without credit helps her build her brand.

Quote 2

“Twitter took it down within about 30 minutes. About 10 minutes after that, I get an email from some guy on Barstool’s social media team saying it was an accident,” Bredouw says. “He asks me to ‘remove the strike’ and offers to repost it and he’ll credit me this time. I didn’t want that, so I didn’t respond. It’s just, like, I don’t want you to post my video, and I don’t owe you an explanation,” she says. “It’s mine and I can set that boundary. You stole something of mine, I reported it. This is exactly why that system exists, I didn’t abuse it, I’m not going to lie for you. Goodbye.” I want nothing to do with this website. I don’t want their money. I am not interested in doing them a favor, and I’m certainly not going to perjure myself and lie and say I’m the one who was wrong, oops, never mind, so basically I’m just not going to give them the thing they want,” she says. 

Again this just flies in the face of her original thread in which she said if we gave her credit the first time she would have been fine with it. That she only got mad when we ignored her.  Below is her own tweet saying she asked for credit, was ignored and that’s why she filed the DMCA.  This was one of her very first tweets explaining this incident.

Vs.

I didn’t want that (credit), so I didn’t respond. It’s just, like, I don’t want you to post my video, and I don’t owe you an explanation,” she says. “It’s mine and I can set that boundary. You stole something of mine, I reported it. This is exactly why that system exists, I didn’t abuse it, I’m not going to lie for you. Goodbye.” I want nothing to do with this website.

Again as she herself admits she never contacted us directly and clearly had no desire to fix the situation.  I get it. She hates us. That’s fine. But she made it seem like we willfully ignored her.   That we were acting devious.  She’s the only one twisting the facts.  There was nothing sinister going on.  We tried to fix this situation as soon as we became aware of it.  When people ask us for credit we always give it.  We have nothing to gain by not giving creators the proper credit.  We never asked her to lie for us. We were trying to fix the problem. We were willing to pay her for the right to use the video and hence eliminate the DMCA strike.  This is what everybody who is reasonable and doesn’t have an agenda wants. Find an amicable solution. This is what we wanted.  Her saying we asked her to perjure herself is insanity.

Quote 3

“Based on my history, when you have an angry man approaching you in a private space, and you tell them you aren’t going to give them the thing they want, that doesn’t usually go well for me, as a woman.“I’m shocked they’re moving forward with this,” she says. “But they shouldn’t be allowed to use these intimidation tactics to profit off other people’s work. And I know I’m not the only person they have done this to, so we’ll see.”

Let me ask you a question.  Do you find this message intimidating?

Because this is what we sent her along with that dumb 50 dollar gift card offer.    Then we sent her a bunch of messages telling her to check her DM’s.  She ignored all of them.  Our guy continued to send messages because he was worried she just hadn’t seen any of them.  Once she blocked our accounts we stopped sending anything. Listen I have no idea Miel’s past or what she has gone through in her life.   But to turn this into a #MeToo issue is BANANALAND.  It has nothing to do with being male, female, etc.  This is us just trying to post funny material.  We made an honest mistake.  We tried to fix the mistake and make everybody happy.  There was zero harassment or intimidating messages.  If offering to pay her or reaching out to try and make it right is an intimidation tactic than sign me up to be intimidated.  But if you read the headlines and listened to Miel speak you’d think we committed a capital crime. It’s insanity.