October 20, 2022

😤 If you're not the turn the other cheek sort...

YOU'RE IN GOOD COMPANY!

As you can see, we have a new set of kitchen towels up top, inspired by us being totally over tolerating bad behavior. When we started Boredwalk we were more inclined to just ignore trolls and quietly deal with people stealing our art behind the scenes. Lately, we've been feeling a lot... um, wrathier... and serving up clap backs and smackdowns* when people have it coming.
 
For example, telling a recent Instagram user they had to delete their unauthorized use of our work to try to go viral (without crediting us, as usual). We had the same conversation on Twitter 24 hours before that with a person who ignored our request, forcing us to make Twitter remove it.
It's so predictable what people are going to say when we catch them using our work and implying it is theirs by not crediting us. Every. Single. Time. "I tried to find the source but I couldn't." This is a very obvious lie because if this person had searched for the work in question they would have seen Boredwalk was the very first result on Google for the work in question. They didn't try to find the source, and they didn't want to, because crediting us doesn't help them; it helps us, and they don't want that. They think our hard work is there for them to take for free and benefit from while they do harm to our business.
 
* Someone actually had the temerity to complain to us earlier this week that speaking to our audience about the grimy stuff that goes on behind the scenes like being stolen from or having people make rude comments about what we have to charge to be able to support ourselves and our team is "childish" and "unprofessional." I have a feeling that if this person had strangers showing up to THEIR job all day telling them they and their colleagues deserve a pay cut and that they shouldn't complain about being stolen from they'd be salty about it, too.
Boredwalk customer calls out account posting our art without crediting us, account claims they couldn't find the owner of the art
Shoutout to NappieDee for alerting us to this account posting our work without credit, implying it was their work. If you're wondering why this matters I explained in greater detail here how this has a real tangible impact on our ability to earn a living and have money to pay our team.
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In one last bit of MUCH more pleasant housekeeping news...hello there, international subscribers & customers! We've missed you!

If you live outside of the US & Canada and have been following Boredwalk for a while, you know that around May 2020 we had to stop accepting orders from other countries. 
 
The grounding of 90% of commercial flights leaving the US at that time — which is how a lot of international shipments from the US move around the globe — meant packages were taking a REALLY long time to get out of the US, and in an effort to avoid disappointing anyone expecting their Boredwalk goodies in 2-3 weeks instead of 3-6 months, we made the decision to temporarily suspend international shipping.
Then, once that problem was solved, Boredwalk (and every other small business around the world) had to contend with navigating a host of new rules & regulations governing import duties, taxes, and other dreadfully boring minutiae related to shipping packages into the UK, EU, Australia, and other regions.
 
Well, thanks to our awesome Operations Manager Marlene's hard work, we're VERY excited to announce that we've resumed accepting orders from 31 other countries! Yay!
 
Others may be added in the future, so if your locale is still excluded please know we want to ship our products to as many places as possible, but for now we hope this will help a lot of you who have been itching to order some Boredwalk merch for the last 2+ years but were unable to. Huzzah, and happy shopping!
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Alright! Moving on to other news, it's American Frog Day, which is only interesting to me because one of my favorite things a colleague said once was "If you have to eat a frog, get it out of the way as early in the day as possible." He doesn't eat actual frogs; it's really a metaphor for getting something unpleasant out of the way as fast as possible so you don't have it hanging over you all day. Very good advice. On days I have to eat a metaphorical frog I always try to make it a breakfast course.
 
It's also International Day of the Nacho, which is something I do want to eat, like all of the time. it is truly one of my favorite junk foods.
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Let's wrap it up with a few famous birthdays and historical facts about October 21st:
 
• Born on this day: actress Carrie Fisher and inventor/scientist Alfred Nobel, who is best known for bequeathing his fortune to establish the Nobel Prize
 
• On this day in 1949 US President Harry S Truman appointed the first female federal judge in the nation — Burnita Shelton Matthews from Hazelhurst, Mississippi
• On this day in 1945 women in France got the right to vote in parliamentary elections, something French womens suffrage activists had been working on since the 18th century
 
• Finally, Thomas Edison applied for a patent on the incandescent light bulb on this day in 1879
 
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OK, that's it for this week! We'll be back here in your inbox on Monday with a fresh email and a fresh customer Q&A! If you'd like to be featured in an upcoming email reply to this and let us know!
 
Peace, love, and wrath (when it's warranted),
 
Meredith

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