If that kind of general, not-directed-at-YOU commentary still burns you after almost a decade and a half, I don't think Yaqi is the one with the problem at this point.
It doesn't burn me. You'll notice that in my previous link I acknowledged that he wasn't wrong, and he's not. At this point I'm basically just like, "yeah, that happened. Here's what went down." I mean, it's TMF history and obviously, a lot of people missed it.
How I feel about it at this point is basically threefold.
One, I feel that if he's still doing business, people need to know how he actually feels about his customers. This community has the attention span of a retarded goldfish, and Yaqi would space out his rants/releases long enough for people to forget that he'd done the former when putting out the latter. Even today a lot of people have no idea how much he hates the community he's "serving". It's shifty and disingenuous. Especially the repeated "retiring". The thing that actually did burn me about the whole situation is that we weren't allowed to point out that he kept doing it. I don't feel "well he's not talking about me so I shouldn't care" is a worthwhile excuse. "I hate you, give me money" is not a business model
any of us should support. If you want to do business with him, fine. But that's your decision knowing what you know.
Two, I'd be totally fine if he had come back later and apologized. I mean, dude was dying. I know when I'm having an off day and I come here shit sets me off and I feel bad about it later. This is really neither here nor there, just saying. If he came back tomorrow and said "yeah, my bad, I was in a bad place" I'd totally be like "cool. Glad you're back."
Three, it's the perfect example of how messed-up this community is. Producers like Tommy get piled on for saying the most innocuous things, and yet for some reason Yaqi gets a pass despite calling us all rat-fuckers and sea cows
in a press release to Howard Stern. Even today people are all like "yes, yes, he hates us all, when's his next video coming out? I need to give more money to the guy insulting me." Given how often people post about the bullying they put up with from friends and family over their fetish, I feel like there's an observation to be made, there. At the very least, he was the outward-facing, well, face of this community for a long while and he hated us. What does that tell you?
Anyway, I don't hold a grudge. But I'm also not going to let comments like "oh, he was such a chill guy" slide when he was anything but. When he was active on the forums he was a raving asshole, and like I said, people have poor memories. Pursuant to point 2 above, he's probably mellowed out over the years. And if he has, again, more power to him. That doesn't mean I want to do business with a guy who held such open contempt for the people supporting him, and I feel that anyone choosing to do so should at least know what they're getting into.
I feel the same way about any artist, producer, model, or whatever who does the same thing. I'm not personally the kind of, uh, person who can separate a person from their content. If I know a musician is an asshole, I'm not buying their music no matter how good it is.
