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The empowerment of knowledge and how Hirtes fears it
15 years ago
General
My Chief Engineer wants a bucket of chicken lumps. This is a repost of a journal by 
archekruz. The original, with discussions, can be found here.
----
Every now and then, artists gets shafted by commissioners. Most of the time, these are one-time incidents by first-time offenders. While there is little one can do to avoid these types of scammers besides being constantly vigilant and wise in your business dealings, there are things you can do to avoid being shafted by habitual scammers, and that comes primarily in sharing knowledge of known charlatans and blacklisting them collectively. I am here to do my duty as a fellow artist to warn everyone around me of a particularly nasty case I've had the misfortune of witnessing, and this person is called Michael Hirtes, but before we can delve into his activities as a commission scammer, we will have to dig into his past activities to see what kind of a person we are dealing with here.
Michael Hirtes began his streak of online infamy nearly 20 years ago on the furry usenet groups, where he was seen posting an unending torrent of hostile and inflammatory comment. Since, back then, all he was doing was being a white noise poster, he was quickly dismissed as just one of many trolls, and pretty much forgotten by any sensible person.
Fast forward a few more years, and we would have found out that he is living on government welfare in a government housing estate, earning extra money on the side by harassing artists to get them to donate their works to a fanzine series he had been making. It worked for a while until he stepped on the wrong toes and got told on. He was sent a letter which pretty much stated that if he is earning good money from his fanzine operation, he has no need for welfare checks. What did he do? Well, he halted the production of his fanzines, and continued to get his welfare checks.
What do we learn from this? We learn that Hirtes is a particularly belligerent character who would jump on the chance to earn money off the backs of the hard work of others, and a lazy welfare parasite who who would rather suck on the government teat than earn a living. (Albeit dishonestly) With his fanzine operation shut down, he was left with nothing to do but to resume being a dime-a-dozen troll on the now defunct CYD forums, spewing hateful vitriol on artists who refused to be a doormat for him.
Now with that out of the way, we fast forward a few more years to a much more recent time, with events that are still pretty fresh in existing memory. With the creation of the WTFur branch of the WTFUX imageboard community, (Which later became Sidechan before splitting into e621 and Lulz.net.) Hirtes found another outlet to spew out more hateful vitriol, in what he thought would be an anonymous manner. However, his brand of histrionic vitriol is more than what even the regulars have patience for. His ID and writing style is quickly recognized and met with the status as persona non grata. It is through those exchanges that we found out that he has been commissioning artists for harem toe ting fetish fanart, and that the circumstances of the closure of those commission deals are shady at best. We also learn that he's a hateful misogynist. We had our theories, but since nothing was confirmed yet but the fact that he likes to harass the artists he commissioned in order to squeeze out as many sketches out of them before allegedly dropping the commission altogether, we just poked fun at him for his weird fetish and how he deals with artists, for the sheer novelty of getting replied to with a comically overblown hostile response. There was also a story of him knocking down a female artist at a con, and then making off with her artwork that he claimed that she owed him.
My theory is that he has been shafting artists back then, and since they are practically unknowns in the fandom who are unaware of any possible recourse, their word of mouth did not carry much of any weight and was not spread around as far. He probably gained hubris as time passed, eventually getting the idea that he could con artists into doing many sketches for him, before making off with them without paying. It is the only explanation I could find that would lead to his eventual attempt at conning more fandom-visible artists such as chill , mirandaleigh or midori .
While disaster was averted for most artists, fluffball wasn't so lucky. However, it is through that incident in which we discover his exact mode d'emploi in which he uses to scam artists. He would seem to be actually complete the commission deal, then find something that the artist did (posting the image in their gallery being one example) as an excuse to demand a full refund lest he file a grievance with PayPal and have them force a refund payment. Whatever happens... whether the artist drops the commission, whether they cease to play along, or in any other method when Hirtes sees that he is not going to be able to abuse them into continuing to do as he wants, he will attempt to play the wronged party, making numerous public posts (both under his own name and anonymously) to attempt to vilify the artist and make them out to be the cheat.
This "victory" of his, however, turned out to be very Pyrrhic in nature in that while he did get the 10 dollars refunded to his account, all of fluffball 's friends and colleagues rose up in indignation and donated and gave her generous commission offers. In the end, she had gained far more than the 10 dollars she lost to Hirtes, and a lot more are aware of his unscrupulous dealings. In his mind though, the 10 dollars was very much worth it. He eventually got banned from FA, causing him to take refuge in Lulz.net where he spewed more hateful vitriol about the incident.
Now, we reach the current chapter of the Hirtes saga. A month ago, thanks to the reports of skidd in this thread. We found out that he is back to his old tricks under a sockpuppet account again and trying to scam artists, only this time, as is apparent from the report, most of the artists he had approached were already wisened up to him. After a tip off from freehaven , his sockpuppet account was banned. What this prompted was a tsunami of hostile comments, and lame personal attacks from Hirtes that raged all over Lulz.net and TGFB. (This tempest is only starting to peter out now though.) Myself, and a few other artists, bless them, responded by being creative and drawing harem toering fanart for the people he hates, this prompted quite possibly the most hilarious butthurt-riddled messages ever from Hirtes, as shown in an e-mail exchange with Miranada Leigh, and even more vitriol from Hirtes when he found out that his email exchanges were publicly posted. So much so that he made a thread wishing death upon Miranda Leigh. He even had the audacity to not only try leeching sympathy for his self-inflicted social stigma from an artist who just lost his house, but he also dismissed the artists' story as unimportant while flooding the chat with his own petty whining.
Just a few days ago, he decided to attempt to get everyone off his back by producing the most backhanded, venomous, insincere, duplicitous and pathetic excuse of an apology ever seen. He didn't apologize to the artists he had screwed over, he didn't apologize to the artists he have harassed, he showed no remorse or any desire to make amends. He was basically trying to run away from responsibility for his own actions by saying "I'm sorry" but not meaning it. It was proven that he was insincere when he went right back to spewing his vitriol right after his apology was rejected for being insincere. To this day, knowledge of the kinds of tempests that rages in his mind still evades the best of us, but it could be that the coincidental death of his mother 20 years ago may have had something to do with it.
Why I am telling you all this? You may ask. Well, for one, recently I have been hearing from people who are just now introduced to the Hirtes clusterfuck and are posting self-righteous messages about how everyone is being too hard on him and that he is someone to be pitied rather than to be scorned and shunned with extreme prejudice. This is basically my response to them ; Hirtes has had 20 years' worth of a bad track records not only in his behavior, but also of his personality, attitude and business dealings. While I do try to be the last person on the planet to give a wretch like him a chance at redemption, it is proven many times that this WILL NOT happen with him, and any attempts in doing so is an exercise in futility.
The other reason is that part of Hirtes vitriol includes the "argument" that we are doing our duty to inform everyone of his sordid affairs only out of spite and hatred. This story serves as a testament to the fact that those who knows avoided the heartache of having to deal with him, and those who didn't got burned. It serves as a reminder as to why we should do our best to watch each other's backs, because this empowers us to make much more informed decisions as to whom we risk our time and money to. Most importantly, it empowers YOU, the readers, in knowing of one more charlatan to avoid doing business with, and to warn others of him. Sure, ousting ONE person may not seem important, but with every charlatan ousted, the fandom is a slightly more safer place to conduct business in, and in this way, every single one counts.
Hirtes will try to villify us, the empowered informants, as hateful people out to get little ol' him and sell apologetics in order to dismiss the track record of his dishonest dealings. The reality of it, however, is that he fears us. He fears the knowledge we bring, it scares him and keeps him awake at night to know that there is someone out there who is shutting down his scamming operation, and trying to stop him from predating on artists who didn't know better about him.
I live to shut down charlatans like him, and it gives me great comfort in knowing that what I do has a positive effect to this end, however small and insignificant the magnitude of it may be.
To all the artists out there, do NOT be fooled. Even if Hirtes paid you in advance, he will find a way to get it back through refunds when you complete the work, using any petty overlooked excuse to do so.
Thank you for your time.
Αρχή Χρύζ
archekruz. The original, with discussions, can be found here.----
Every now and then, artists gets shafted by commissioners. Most of the time, these are one-time incidents by first-time offenders. While there is little one can do to avoid these types of scammers besides being constantly vigilant and wise in your business dealings, there are things you can do to avoid being shafted by habitual scammers, and that comes primarily in sharing knowledge of known charlatans and blacklisting them collectively. I am here to do my duty as a fellow artist to warn everyone around me of a particularly nasty case I've had the misfortune of witnessing, and this person is called Michael Hirtes, but before we can delve into his activities as a commission scammer, we will have to dig into his past activities to see what kind of a person we are dealing with here.
Michael Hirtes began his streak of online infamy nearly 20 years ago on the furry usenet groups, where he was seen posting an unending torrent of hostile and inflammatory comment. Since, back then, all he was doing was being a white noise poster, he was quickly dismissed as just one of many trolls, and pretty much forgotten by any sensible person.
Fast forward a few more years, and we would have found out that he is living on government welfare in a government housing estate, earning extra money on the side by harassing artists to get them to donate their works to a fanzine series he had been making. It worked for a while until he stepped on the wrong toes and got told on. He was sent a letter which pretty much stated that if he is earning good money from his fanzine operation, he has no need for welfare checks. What did he do? Well, he halted the production of his fanzines, and continued to get his welfare checks.
What do we learn from this? We learn that Hirtes is a particularly belligerent character who would jump on the chance to earn money off the backs of the hard work of others, and a lazy welfare parasite who who would rather suck on the government teat than earn a living. (Albeit dishonestly) With his fanzine operation shut down, he was left with nothing to do but to resume being a dime-a-dozen troll on the now defunct CYD forums, spewing hateful vitriol on artists who refused to be a doormat for him.
Now with that out of the way, we fast forward a few more years to a much more recent time, with events that are still pretty fresh in existing memory. With the creation of the WTFur branch of the WTFUX imageboard community, (Which later became Sidechan before splitting into e621 and Lulz.net.) Hirtes found another outlet to spew out more hateful vitriol, in what he thought would be an anonymous manner. However, his brand of histrionic vitriol is more than what even the regulars have patience for. His ID and writing style is quickly recognized and met with the status as persona non grata. It is through those exchanges that we found out that he has been commissioning artists for harem toe ting fetish fanart, and that the circumstances of the closure of those commission deals are shady at best. We also learn that he's a hateful misogynist. We had our theories, but since nothing was confirmed yet but the fact that he likes to harass the artists he commissioned in order to squeeze out as many sketches out of them before allegedly dropping the commission altogether, we just poked fun at him for his weird fetish and how he deals with artists, for the sheer novelty of getting replied to with a comically overblown hostile response. There was also a story of him knocking down a female artist at a con, and then making off with her artwork that he claimed that she owed him.
My theory is that he has been shafting artists back then, and since they are practically unknowns in the fandom who are unaware of any possible recourse, their word of mouth did not carry much of any weight and was not spread around as far. He probably gained hubris as time passed, eventually getting the idea that he could con artists into doing many sketches for him, before making off with them without paying. It is the only explanation I could find that would lead to his eventual attempt at conning more fandom-visible artists such as chill , mirandaleigh or midori .
While disaster was averted for most artists, fluffball wasn't so lucky. However, it is through that incident in which we discover his exact mode d'emploi in which he uses to scam artists. He would seem to be actually complete the commission deal, then find something that the artist did (posting the image in their gallery being one example) as an excuse to demand a full refund lest he file a grievance with PayPal and have them force a refund payment. Whatever happens... whether the artist drops the commission, whether they cease to play along, or in any other method when Hirtes sees that he is not going to be able to abuse them into continuing to do as he wants, he will attempt to play the wronged party, making numerous public posts (both under his own name and anonymously) to attempt to vilify the artist and make them out to be the cheat.
This "victory" of his, however, turned out to be very Pyrrhic in nature in that while he did get the 10 dollars refunded to his account, all of fluffball 's friends and colleagues rose up in indignation and donated and gave her generous commission offers. In the end, she had gained far more than the 10 dollars she lost to Hirtes, and a lot more are aware of his unscrupulous dealings. In his mind though, the 10 dollars was very much worth it. He eventually got banned from FA, causing him to take refuge in Lulz.net where he spewed more hateful vitriol about the incident.
Now, we reach the current chapter of the Hirtes saga. A month ago, thanks to the reports of skidd in this thread. We found out that he is back to his old tricks under a sockpuppet account again and trying to scam artists, only this time, as is apparent from the report, most of the artists he had approached were already wisened up to him. After a tip off from freehaven , his sockpuppet account was banned. What this prompted was a tsunami of hostile comments, and lame personal attacks from Hirtes that raged all over Lulz.net and TGFB. (This tempest is only starting to peter out now though.) Myself, and a few other artists, bless them, responded by being creative and drawing harem toering fanart for the people he hates, this prompted quite possibly the most hilarious butthurt-riddled messages ever from Hirtes, as shown in an e-mail exchange with Miranada Leigh, and even more vitriol from Hirtes when he found out that his email exchanges were publicly posted. So much so that he made a thread wishing death upon Miranda Leigh. He even had the audacity to not only try leeching sympathy for his self-inflicted social stigma from an artist who just lost his house, but he also dismissed the artists' story as unimportant while flooding the chat with his own petty whining.
Just a few days ago, he decided to attempt to get everyone off his back by producing the most backhanded, venomous, insincere, duplicitous and pathetic excuse of an apology ever seen. He didn't apologize to the artists he had screwed over, he didn't apologize to the artists he have harassed, he showed no remorse or any desire to make amends. He was basically trying to run away from responsibility for his own actions by saying "I'm sorry" but not meaning it. It was proven that he was insincere when he went right back to spewing his vitriol right after his apology was rejected for being insincere. To this day, knowledge of the kinds of tempests that rages in his mind still evades the best of us, but it could be that the coincidental death of his mother 20 years ago may have had something to do with it.
Why I am telling you all this? You may ask. Well, for one, recently I have been hearing from people who are just now introduced to the Hirtes clusterfuck and are posting self-righteous messages about how everyone is being too hard on him and that he is someone to be pitied rather than to be scorned and shunned with extreme prejudice. This is basically my response to them ; Hirtes has had 20 years' worth of a bad track records not only in his behavior, but also of his personality, attitude and business dealings. While I do try to be the last person on the planet to give a wretch like him a chance at redemption, it is proven many times that this WILL NOT happen with him, and any attempts in doing so is an exercise in futility.
The other reason is that part of Hirtes vitriol includes the "argument" that we are doing our duty to inform everyone of his sordid affairs only out of spite and hatred. This story serves as a testament to the fact that those who knows avoided the heartache of having to deal with him, and those who didn't got burned. It serves as a reminder as to why we should do our best to watch each other's backs, because this empowers us to make much more informed decisions as to whom we risk our time and money to. Most importantly, it empowers YOU, the readers, in knowing of one more charlatan to avoid doing business with, and to warn others of him. Sure, ousting ONE person may not seem important, but with every charlatan ousted, the fandom is a slightly more safer place to conduct business in, and in this way, every single one counts.
Hirtes will try to villify us, the empowered informants, as hateful people out to get little ol' him and sell apologetics in order to dismiss the track record of his dishonest dealings. The reality of it, however, is that he fears us. He fears the knowledge we bring, it scares him and keeps him awake at night to know that there is someone out there who is shutting down his scamming operation, and trying to stop him from predating on artists who didn't know better about him.
I live to shut down charlatans like him, and it gives me great comfort in knowing that what I do has a positive effect to this end, however small and insignificant the magnitude of it may be.
To all the artists out there, do NOT be fooled. Even if Hirtes paid you in advance, he will find a way to get it back through refunds when you complete the work, using any petty overlooked excuse to do so.
Thank you for your time.
Αρχή Χρύζ
doesnt matter how many times he gets tossed out, he will use proxies to get back to just to bicker more.. he's really a very sad and pathetic person who leechs from others.
can someone look up what name he is using at the given time? I have been scammed from others before, but at least not in such a hateful manner.
Sadly, Herpes ... sorry... Hirtes... (Meh, both a disease.) orders adult art pieces, which gives him more power over the Artists. "Money back or I tell PayPal you are selling adult stuff through them."
Every artist should always follow PayPal's Seller Protection policy when doing art and should be very cautious of selling adult stuff via PayPal. The only times this may not be followed as a policy is when you explicitly trust the person paying not to potentially screw you over.
Ship ONLY to a verified address by PayPal. Avoid digital copies, since you cannot prove shipment. Use traceable shipment methods. Don't ship until payment is received in full and verified.
Honestly, I'd love to see Hirtes put away hard, whether it be losing his government checks on a technicality, or something as serious as wire fraud charges. Really depends on how serious somebody he tries to scam is. Sounds like he's getting way too many sketches of harem girls with toerings. Maybe we need a proper self-destructing sketch example. Furry DRM? :)
but maybe I'll just send the money back and deal with harassment nonsense instead. I can easily refuse to get a payment in a foreign currency with a click.
I would also love to see him hitting a wall headfirst with no way to avoid it, after 20 years of dicking around. what I have read in that abovementioned blog has left me between laugh and anger. and there is still somethign left...
One of those was a fanzine called (I believe) Furabian Nights, publish by Mr. Hirtes.
I soon got a SCATHING letter back threatening my life and well being because I wrote the letter not to Hirtes, but to Furabian Nights instead. Because there was no Furabian Nights listed as an 'occupant', the landlord intercepted the letter. I found out how this made me a 'horrible' person as he got in a lot of trouble over running a 'business' from his home, which was a MASSIVE No-No.
I do admit, I was so bothered by this, I actually consulted Legal Counsel on the matter. For a while there, I was using my friend's place as my mailing address because she was my legal representative, just in case something else bad came from all of this. It was not until years later when I had a letter from Mike Curtes (for Shanda Fantasy Arts) tell him that Hirtes was just a dink and I should just put him out of my mind.
=^.,.^=
how is that not considered a death threat by law - ie - get the cops involved? o.O