I did not know what to expect with this book but I know what reaction I had as I read it and prepared for the interview: Fear. It's an understandable reaction, methinks, when doing an interview with a person best known for brilliant put-downs and messing with the heads of those who interact with him.
We deal in the interview with the semantics — most articles I found while researching this refer to him as a prankster, but he prefers to consider himself a satirist, someone more in the vein of Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal as opposed to the show Punk'd.
You may not recognize his name — he long went by the name 27bslash6, a reference to George Orwell explained in the interview, but you will probably have heard of some of his work, the most famous being the one about the spider which you can read here.
His invites to what turned out to be a fake "Kate's Party" drew much media attention including this article.
His fake McDonald's memo, in which it is suggested there's a policy of omitting items from customer's drive-through orders, while hilarious, cost him some legal hassle. Snopes, one of the best BS detectors on the internet, sums it all up nicely here.
He may be best known to catlovers for his missing cat poster emails which are hilarious.
So you can see why I asked, when setting up the interview, for a promise I'd not be messed with myself.
"How do I know you won't prank me if you don't like the interview? Do I get prank insurance?" I asked if any topics were off limits.
His response: "And there are no topics off limits; If I like the interview I will teet/facebook a link to it, if I don't, I will just link to youtube videos of cats jumping into boxes instead.
His book's introduction ends with this: "A big thank you also goes out to the people who link to, tweet, repost, and frequent the 27b/6 website. Without them, the hit counters would be only in the double digits"
And with that let's cut to the interview before I say anything that might get me rickrolled.
Do you consider yourself an "evil online genius" as per the book's title? How so?
I have no idea why the publisher decided to add that title to the book cover. Seeing the proof for the first time, I stated "people will think I have given myself that title." Having been in the design industry for over fifteen years, I almost had an aneurysm when I saw the pointy random blue starburst. Expressing this to the publishers, they declined my request for it to be removed. If anything, with every email I sent them, it became more pointy and random. It looks like it has been done by a child. With Palsy. Also, people will probably point and say, "Hey, there's that seven legged spider — welcome to the Internet... two years ago." which is quite hurtful. I have written quite a bit since the spider exchange. Mostly about cats because everyone loves cats.
Article comments
1 - mike
This guy has taken peoples money and not provided the book. Google "David Thorne Book Trauma".
2 - Scott Butki
Did you see the part where I asked him about this - I take it you disagree with his assessment of that part?
3 - mike
Search for "David Thorne Book Trauma" for a list of disgruntled consumers.
4 - Chris
Hi Scott, as one of the alleged 116 people and one of the people that the Kimberly persona communicated with that both didn't get their book and had their bank and payment details posted online by David I would say his account of things is understandably biased.
While they may well have had issues with their publisher I personally had been in communication with them regards my missing book for some time prior to this and had been offered several other excuses along the way that though most of my emails went ignored. I was promised a refund on three different occasions, once before this story broke and then, after they stopped replying to emails twice after when they were forced to start again.
I didn't ever get that refund but I did get a halfway apology email from David when the bank details were mistakenly posted on facebook for several days.
The facebook group I see he has started again, he seems to do this both to try to manage/put down people who haven't received the book and also to stop them posting on his own site. He deleted the previous facebook group, following several peoples personal and private information being posted along with several of the fake profiles he was using there were being outed as fake.
I do think he finds it all a game to some degree, which is fine and as seen in his writings this can certainly be funny to the casual reader. However I would certainly not ever have any dealings with the man again given my lack of book and/or refund, its a real shame that all for the sake of adressing a problem in the first place it blew up into this.
5 - Chris
I actually wonder if the 'Mike' commenter is one of Davids people trying to make sure complainers reach a place he can control - sounds paranoid I know but it really wouldn't surprise me following what he did before.
6 - Mike
I'm pretty sure that I'm the only non-David who's posted here. Pretty sure. How sure are you?
7 - Mike
Other than Scott, but then again maybe the entire internet is David Thorne.
8 - Mike
Also, I'm not the first 'mike' as you, hopefully, could tell by the capital 'M' in my name.
9 - Scott Butki
i'm not david but i did hear david on npr this week
10 - Christine
Ah, I ordered my book on June 18th 2012, and he still hasn't sent it. He did offer me a refund, but that was the last I heard from him. As I was a student at the time, and wasn't making very much money, close to thirty dollars US was a pretty substantial loss for what essentially amounts to a huge headache, and feeling like someone stole from me...
11 - Christine
2010. Sorry.
12 - Tracey (Carpe Librum blog)
Just read this interview and thoroughly enjoyed it, thanks!!
13 - Scott Butki
You are quite welcome, Tracey. Thanks for the compliment and comment.