The Facebook debacle & other issues

 

i do very much miss Figure.fm; at it's best, it was SUCH a well-meaning site.

i was an active poster there, and found two of my 1/6 girls thanks to fellow members' sales (VOLKS Ah! My Goddess Skuld and AZONE HAF Fate Stay/Night Altria/Saber)

Edited December 4, 2021 by Tasuke

On 12/2/2021 at 5:56 AM, Yumeiro said:

I wouldn't call his antics mistakes. Especially since there aren't much of an apology or recognition of him having made any mistakes.
If I may draw a comparison to SoulDoll, who recently released a doll with "soft mud brown" skin. They got called out on that, in english, it may be quite an offence name.
SoulDoll acknowledged this and decided to rename the skintone, with a contest. (submit a name suggestion and if your name win, you'll win the new doll)
I don't even think they'd need to go that far to give away dolls - but I'm certainly not against it!
Anyway, no one had to get banned, or blocked. SoulDoll didn't throw a tantrum, or blow up at anyone.

See the part you don't see when you just get on the hate train and never look back is that Danny Choo has had criticisms he thought were valid that he publicly apologized for.  For example, when he first announced Gemini, he ended up using a term that was derogatory that he didn't know was derogatory (I didn't either) so he apologized for it and stopped using the term. There are other examples. The whole reason he discontinued the previous "cocoa" skin and developed a new version was with the input of a POC, because original cocoa did not look like any brown skin on earth (he often self-deprecates his design decisions on past cocoa by calling it "purple.") So he has accepted criticism, apologized, and even spent real production money to correct his mistakes. If you only look for the bad in someone then that's all you will find.

On 12/2/2021 at 3:51 AM, ebil said:

I agree the antics of Culture Japan/Danny don’t compare to like, outright slur using racists and sexual harassers, it’s usually more like when Elon Musk is being obnoxious on social media (and since it came up earlier, I’m not saying Danny himself is like Musk very much, just saying both of them sometimes post stuff that causes outcry lol)..

but personally the brand operations do approach that “problematic” territory for me sometimes. See the Smartdoll response to the disabled fan posting publicly about their frustration with a repair, where the product pages were then updated to say “if you have poor dexterity or hand strength Smartdoll isn’t for you :)” or something like that, after making so much sing and dance about representation and inclusivity. And myself and other brown and black fans have pointed out that the racial aspect of the promotions and ads can sometimes come off as insincere or self serving, coming to a head when there was the whole “Smartdoll owners are the oppressed minority of the doll world so hashtag BLM” fiasco, but that’s been talked to death already.

tl;dr I agree this behavior is mostly just silly or frustrating rather than “problematic” or “-ist”...but his actions and words on behalf of the company do feel pretty uncomfortable sometimes.

This has been referred to before but I haven't seen the whole details, is there a post you can link to so I can read the whole thing?  Sometimes when people bring a disabled person into the conversation it's because they want to point to a real case of ableism which if Danny is ableist then yeah, that is the one thing that rises to "this sucks" territory and would make me more wary of him. But also sometimes people bring a disabled person into the conversation as if to say "you can't argue with anything they say or want because they're DISABLED!" and that's actually just another form of ableism that also sucks.

Although I will also say that either of these could be the kind of thing many well-meaning people accidentally engage in and like I said, I don't cut people off permanently for mistakes because I'm human too. So I want to actually read what went down and not what people say second-hand went down to make the judgement for myself.

3 hours ago, youdawurst said:

If you only look for the bad in someone then that's all you will find.

I don’t think most folks here are only looking for the bad. This thread focuses on the bad, as does the “toxic” thread, and there is an old “feedback” thread too. Those threads amount to .015% of the threads on the forum. By post count this thread may well be our most active thread, but it’s still less than 1% of the total posts. This forum is basically a hobby forum for folks who need or want to share enthusiasm for this particular hobby, so you will find a lot of positive stuff, and much of it from people who post some criticism. I would probably say that adoring fans who want to live in an echo chamber aren’t going to be happy here, but there are fans of his products here, and I am pretty sure they just ignore this thread - quite possibly by using the ignore thread feature.

There are maybe two or three people whose feelings are on the order of anger or hate, we’ve had to remove a few posts that broke the rules about insults, but there are a lot of people who do vent here about the social media things they see. For most of us I believe this is at best an academic discussion, and at worst a mildly entertaining shitshow. I doubt anyone here expects anything to change because we don’t like stuff Danny says or does.

Some of the stuff in this thread can’t be directly attributed to Danny. Some of the things that his fans say at times gets conflated with things he has said. An example would be the stuff about not wiping face-ups or customizing his dolls that has, to the best of my knowledge, only ever come from fans, but people keep attributing it to Danny directly. When we realize that’s happening we try to point it out so false accusations aren’t being made.

I don’t believe most of the opinions here are set in stone. Sometimes something that gets posted has more context added later, and that context alters opinions about the situation.

 

3 hours ago, youdawurst said:

This has been referred to before but I haven't seen the whole details, is there a post you can link to so I can read the whole thing?

It’s in this thread, but I don’t have a pin-cite. If memory serves me the context was a disabled owner had a public meltdown over a problem handling their doll, and Danny’s response was to suggest that people with disabilities think twice before buying. I can’t recall if his response was on Instagram or a post on the SmartDoll website. I’m sure from his perspective it seemed a reasonable premise, don’t spend $600 on something you can’t enjoy, but for a number of our disabled members it read like “being disabled” was now a blanket add to the long list of “reasons not to buy a smartdoll.” It was a hamfisted response to something that would most likely have been handled quite differently by a real PR person; that’s the drawback to not hiring a skilled professional into a role that is known to require someone with real training. 

3 hours ago, youdawurst said:

See the part you don't see when you just get on the hate train and never look back is that Danny Choo has had criticisms he thought were valid that he publicly apologized for.  For example, when he first announced Gemini, he ended up using a term that was derogatory that he didn't know was derogatory (I didn't either) so he apologized for it and stopped using the term. There are other examples. The whole reason he discontinued the previous "cocoa" skin and developed a new version was with the input of a POC, because original cocoa did not look like any brown skin on earth (he often self-deprecates his design decisions on past cocoa by calling it "purple.") So he has accepted criticism, apologized, and even spent real production money to correct his mistakes. If you only look for the bad in someone then that's all you will find.

Edit: His "apology" was accompanied by a lecture on the proffering of business cards in Japan, along with a self-deprecating reference to the "social beating" he received for the Gemini post. That's like... directing attention away from the main issue while playing victim at the same time. All his fans were so quick to rush to his rescue by calling those who pointed out Danny's insensitive remarks snowflakes or bullies. That doesn't really seem like a genuine apology to me.

What about that time Danny referred to his dolls as the minority of the doll world? He deleted his post super quick after that and tried to claim he was only trying to speak out against racism by posting a different photo with all 3 skintones. Did you see the original post? Because that post was removed so quickly, most fans believed Danny to be the oh-so-brave hero speaking out against racism, but screencaps have been taken of his original post. I don't see him apologizing for that.

You know what I think? He knows how much he can get away with, so he only apologizes when he absolutely has to. The slur with Gemini was too public and widespread that the only way he could do damage control was to apologize. More than half the initial comments were telling him that the word he used was derogatory, and many were from his fans. If he had gone his usual route and played his "British humor" card, sh*t would have hit the fan. There are limits to how much people can accept even from their idols, and I believe Danny himself knows where those limits lie.

Don't assume that people "just get on the hate train". One apology for a "mistake" that could have brought down his brand doesn't mean all his other antics were "mistakes" as well. Neither does it negate all the bullying he encourages in his fanbase. Oh! Did I mention that he advocates bullying?

Edited December 5, 2021 by bbotss

1 hour ago, bbotss said:

One apology for a "mistake" that could have brought down his brand doesn't mean all his other antics were "mistakes" as well.

There is something to be said for the idea that to err is human, and to forgive divine. That said, I believe that saying is valid because the process of growth involves making mistakes and learning from them so you don’t make the same mistake twice. We’re all supposed to recognize that making mistakes are a part of being alive, so we have some obligation to forgive, but that obligation tends to wane if the mistake keeps getting repeated. If someone isn’t learning from their mistakes you can reasonably ask “why?”

A person can learn from the small mistakes, but keep repeating the big ones, and that also begs the same question as to “why?”

I had forgotten all about the bullying post, and yeah, that was pretty disgusting. That’s one of those things that makes me say he’s an influencer first and foremost; rallying the core fans to go harass people is so on-brand for the toxic sort of influencer. 

@youdawurst So, I've been following how Danny's posts are received by people for a very long time, and if anything, I've seen the opposite of people getting on a hate train and never looking back, thus missing important context like apologies...because many of us remembered him to be a kind person who treated his fans with great civility and politeness back in the day, I've seen people who are disappointed but hang on for years hoping Danny will give them a reason to believe he's changed or at least reversed this trend of behavior, or people who already had faith in him or respect for him have it gradually chipped away until they can't forgive another antic. 

Everyone following the Gemini thing probably also saw the apology for it, for example. The Gemini post is notable for being about the only time he apologized for one of the social media outcries; for comparison, he responded to the "don't compare buying Smart Dolls to being an actual minority, for god's sake" issue with his BLM posts by claiming people thought he shouldn't speak out about racism while being a mere doll manufacturer but he wouldn't back down and would keep using his platform to decry racism. He made it sound like people thought he was wrong to oppose racism or had angered people by being pro BLM when that's not the reason people disliked the remark at ALL >__> back to Gemini, that apology had the unfortunate snag that when most of the replies to what he posted where people saying "oh, folks will get offended at anything these days, you have nothing to worry about" he was liking replies like that, and coupled with the fact most of it was about the business card thing, the overall effect was not sincere. But again, it WAS at least an actual acknowledgement he did something wrong, so he gets credit on that one.

I was trying to find the posts from the disabled collector and felt like I was losing my mind because the search terms that should have worked were not bringing it up even though I was positive I remembered it correctly...well, that's because it was posted as a screencap so obviusly the search wasn't picking it up :s It's on page 64 of this thread. https://www.dolldreaming.com/topic/17079-the-facebook-debacle-other-issues/page/64/ scroll til you see the post by bbotss. The specific wording of what Danny wrote on product pages isn't included there, but I'm pretty sure it was "this product isn't for people who don't have enough strength in their hands" or "if you don't have much hand strength, you should not buy Smart Doll" or very similar to that, someone else might have a screencap.

If you're interested in seeing the primary sources for the other things, they're scattered throughout the thread, so it's not too easy for people to provide them, but you can scroll around the thread and will run across many direct screencaps and links.

Edited December 5, 2021 by ebil

Found the post with his response to the removal of the post where he equated BLM and SmartDolls. 

And screen caps of the removed post.  

 

8 hours ago, youdawurst said:

 I don't cut people off permanently for mistakes because I'm human too.

So the absolute irony of this comment is that THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT DANNY DOES.

Complain once? BANNED. Voice a legitimate concern? BANNED. Make a mistake in addressing the quality in one of his products? BANNED AND BULLIED. 

Everyone makes mistakes, including doll collectors, but he then absolutely loves to put them on blast and stalk them mercilessly (thus his "hammertime" list) and encourage his loyal followers to join him in it. So while he loves to toit how much holier he is than all else, his actions prove otherwise. 

Edited December 5, 2021 by Ageha

Sorry if this is lengthy, but I was a bit miffed at the ‘hate train’ implication. As others have pointed out I’m kind of puzzled that the example of an apology and reflection on actions (The Gemini thing and the ’minority’ thing) you’ve given was a total non-apology and him literally pretending the tonedeaf post didn’t happen. That ‘smartdoll are the minority of the doll world’ post, he didn’t even acknowledge he screwed up, he just quietly replaced it and then as Ebil said acted like any criticism was people mad he was talking about race at all. 

Meanwhile we’re still waiting on apologies or reflections for…

*Lying directly and deliberately to his fans about Volks calling Smartdolls Dollfie counterfeits and prohibiting them specifically from their Dolpa events. Volks has had the disclaimer about non-Volks dolls not being allowed, a reasonable request for a Volks event for Volks products, for as long as Dolpa has been a thing, something Danny knows well given that he used to regularly attend.

*Lying directly and deliberately to his fans by telling them that JP fans ‘agreed’ with him about the above (ie that they think it’s terrible of Volks to be ‘elitist’), and to check JP Twitter to see for yourself…but when I checked I instead found a whole lot of JP doll fans (and not just DD fans) expressing confusion and disgust at ‘the smartdoll guy’ for getting upset about such an obvious rule to the extent he’d try to slander -another company- on his own Twitter. Plenty of tweets about how that behaviour turned them off the brand, too.

*Lying directly and deliberately to Kitsooni - accusing her of making that nazi banner for the group she was in literally only because her friend was…well, that was the entire reason this thread exists, so no reason to rehash that whole saga.

*Lying directly and deliberately to his fans about what really happened with the wig bbots received, and the boots that other buyer received, etc.

*Every other incident in this thread in which he has banned someone for a rule that didn’t exist until he decided it did.

*How about his story post for one of his doll characters [EDIT: This is the Tea version of Courage] where he literally compares actual historical slavery to what he endures in customer service? He did that. He literally said the equivalent to slavery in the modern age is dealing with entitled customers. Never mind that slavery DIDNT go anywhere in modern times and to compare people having their rights stripped away and being owned by other people to ‘a customer was rude to me :(‘ is not only beyond tone deaf but actually disgusting. That description is still online. Why on -earth- he realised the ‘minority’ post was tone deaf while that one is fine I’ll never know. 

…and that’s just off the top of my head. These aren’t us ‘looking for the bad’, they are us literally cataloguing things as they have occurred. The only reason a bunch of people are still here is because despite everything, they’re still looking for the good. If all those things are all acceptable to you just because they aren’t terrible crimes like rape and murder then I can’t change your mind, but I’m puzzled why you’d expect us to be talking about ‘actual’ problematic celebrities on a doll forum, especially given that this forum is one of the few places people can post about their experiences without being banned by zealous mods who don’t want to upset Him. 
 

Edited December 5, 2021 by Monty

Here is another one.

For some reason I seem to recall a follow up post somewhere in which clarified that Danny had been trying to contact this customer at an email other than the one the order was placed under, or maybe it was through Facebook. The alternative contact was associated with some posts that were critical of Danny / SmartDoll. Just so it’s quite clear, my memory here might not be perfect, and my recollection could be associated with something else posted in this thread. Sometimes things blur together over time, so take my recollection of this with a grain of salt. 

I can't blame people for arriving in page 110 and assuming we're just salty haters. Especially if they come from DC's perspective. But I do hope you take the time to read everything listed above and form your own opinion with the knowledge about both sides.

As it has been said before, most of us just want to enjoy dolls, and our criticism comes from a place of frustration and sadness when seeing a personality we respect do things we disapprove of. 

11 hours ago, youdawurst said:

If you only look for the bad in someone then that's all you will find.

Especially when the bad outweigh the good..?

Edited December 5, 2021 by Yumeiro

11 hours ago, youdawurst said:

This has been referred to before but I haven't seen the whole details, is there a post you can link to so I can read the whole thing?  Sometimes when people bring a disabled person into the conversation it's because they want to point to a real case of ableism which if Danny is ableist then yeah, that is the one thing that rises to "this sucks" territory and would make me more wary of him. But also sometimes people bring a disabled person into the conversation as if to say "you can't argue with anything they say or want because they're DISABLED!" and that's actually just another form of ableism that also sucks.

Oh look, a disabled person enters the thread! It's super effective etc. 🤣

9 hours ago, BeyondTime said:

It’s in this thread, but I don’t have a pin-cite. If memory serves me the context was a disabled owner had a public meltdown over a problem handling their doll, and Danny’s response was to suggest that people with disabilities think twice before buying. I can’t recall if his response was on Instagram or a post on the SmartDoll website. I’m sure from his perspective it seemed a reasonable premise, don’t spend $600 on something you can’t enjoy, but for a number of our disabled members it read like “being disabled” was now a blanket add to the long list of “reasons not to buy a smartdoll.” It was a hamfisted response to something that would most likely have been handled quite differently by a real PR person; that’s the drawback to not hiring a skilled professional into a role that is known to require someone with real training. 

When I bought my doll, the "don't buy this if you have disabilities that mean you can't remove your Smart Doll's arms, 'cos you'll be doing it all the time" disclaimer was on the site. And yup, it did make me go yikes. I never saw the original posts that led to it, so that kinda thing being plastered all over the site was kinda... why?!? Also, it's solely a problem with the clothes, not the dolls, as I've never had to take the arms off my doll. 🤫

I wish I had taken a screenshot, but back then I didn't know how frequently snide disclaimers came and went on the site. I mean, it's not on there anymore, so we can assume it's fixed right? And not just a grown man lashing out at the internet? /s

Besides, @youdawurst, there's so many posts on this thread where people encourage others to buy and enjoy the dolls. I've probably said about 10 times how much I like my doll, so I'm not gonna bore the regulars with it again. 😝 This thread is pretty balanced, especially when compared to places like TBC where the hate is endless and rumours spiral out of control. It would be so much less painful to just hate on stuff, instead of holding out hope that things can change for the better, because afaik we don't want the dolls to fail.

I'm so frustrated with people calling criticism "hate" so much nowadays. In an age of Twitter pile-ons, harassment, death threats, etc. a thread on one hobby forum discussing the behaviour of the CEO of a company is NOT "hate". (Anger, there can be. People are - well - entitled to have feelings about tone-deaf and ignorant posts on social media, made by this CEO, as long as there is no harassment going with it - which I have not seen, I think if there was, Danny would have posted it by now...).

It's really the same as Goodreads reviews for writers. Unless there is hateful language in the review, people have the right to post their opinions there. Whether Goodreads is a good or bad community is debatable, but leaving a bad review on a book that had harmful tropes is not hate either. People are not hateful when warning each other of company's policies. People are not hateful when they express their opinions about the company.

Now, why the CEO of a successful, popular doll company feels the need to "give a sheep" about what people write on one forum, is beyond me. I think the general advice for writers is not to read Goodreads reviews - because it's not productive at all. But the CEO should also be aware that not everything that people write will be positive - and if it's not positive, it does not mean it's hate either.

I do wonder if it wouldn't be a good idea to have the masterlist of issues in the first post or something... While this thread is full of receipts, it is also extremely long, and I don't fault people for not wanting to read it all.

What's especially irritating is I actually appreciate Smart Doll's existence. I think the brand brought a lot into the vinyl market (reguarly available dark - truly dark - vinyl colours, male dolls - for example, I'm sure that without Danny, Volks would have not introduced their own). I used to browse Smart Doll site and want to have one (Ivory, I think). I wanted to visit the store when going to Japan, see the dolls in person and maybe buy one, or some clothes. Monday is just the cutest, she would be perfect for Belle (from Ryu to Sobakasu no Hime). I like their torsos with human waists and accessibility.

Too bad it came to this point.

3 hours ago, Irulazuli said:

Now, why the CEO of a successful, popular doll company feels the need to "give a sheep" about what people write on one forum, is beyond me.

I will continue to harp on about how Danny can spread so much positivity with his following and reach. But he chose to focus on hate, "oh woe is me!", and putting feathers in his own hat.
He needs to pretend not to give a damn about hate, so he can monetize it. And drama drags people in... and boom, more customers.

3 hours ago, Irulazuli said:

What's especially irritating is I actually appreciate Smart Doll's existence. I think the brand brought a lot into the vinyl market (reguarly available dark - truly dark - vinyl colours, male dolls - for example, I'm sure that without Danny, Volks would have not introduced their own).

I 100% agree. Volks has really stepped up their game, whether that is thanks to smartdoll or not, I can't say for sure though.

I like all the smart doll skin tones, but I wish milk skin tone was back but not replacing any of other skin tones. Or from time time to time seasonal. (right now I imagine how I hold milk Entropy head or milk Strength head)

On 12/4/2021 at 5:45 PM, youdawurst said:

 The whole reason he discontinued the previous "cocoa" skin and developed a new version was with the input of a POC, because original cocoa did not look like any brown skin on earth (he often self-deprecates his design decisions on past cocoa by calling it "purple.") So he has accepted criticism, apologized, and even spent real production money to correct his mistakes.

 Actually this is not true.

When he first came out with the original cocoa skin tone, he posted a whole bunch of photos showing women from several African cities and villages that had almost the exact same skin color as Moonlight and the others.  He even posted pics of a very famous runway model at that time that had a similar skin color.  I can't recall if she was working for Victoria's Secret or not but he mentioned she was famous worldwide at that time and also was from a small village in southern Africa where he had seen other women like her.

The reason he changed the tone to what we have now was because people were calling it a fantasy color and that's not what it was and that upset him.  He was trying to make skin tones of smaller groups of real people for diversitys sake (which is awesome) but he got a lot of what he saw as negativity over it and decided to change it to the more brown tone we now have.  

Yes, he has accepted critisizms in the past and owned up to them but as other people have said and noted with screencaps here in this thread, it's only when he *has* to do that.  I wish things hadn't gone the way they have.  I really liked Danny before all this crazy started.  Heck, I still think he has great ideas and dolls and is probably a good person overall.  It's just how he handles things that kills me and a lot of others.  There's a lot more ways to do things without ticking people off and still not affecting your bottom line or your employees.  You just have to WANT to do those things.  Burying your head and ignoring them or lashing out at your customers isn't how to handle things.  We all know it's his business and he can run it however he wants to.  We just want to see him and his dolls succeed.  I don't think that's too much to ask.

 

 

Billy

8 minutes ago, baldylox said:

There's a lot more ways to do things without ticking people off and still not affecting your bottom line or your employees.  You just have to WANT to do those things.  Burying your head and ignoring them or lashing out at your customers isn't how to handle things.  We all know it's his business and he can run it however he wants to.  We just want to see him and his dolls succeed.  I don't think that's too much to ask.

This. Right here. 

 

Heya, there have been too many posts for me to answer them all individually, but I appreciate the responses and especially the sources for issues. 

The one I was most interested in seeing was the disabled person's issue - and I'm not going to keep using that name for them because it feels gross, so I hereby dub them Alya - based on what they themselves wrote and what has been reported that Danny wrote, it seems fairly well like a stalemate?  I fully understand meltdowns, I have them myself.  If I end up having them in public, I take myself somewhere private if at all possible so that I'm not disturbing other people; I don't make my meltdowns something other people have to manage, aside from having my husband help me with hugs and care. But that's because he's my husband, and even then I don't yell at him about what a horrible husband he is* during said meltdown, though I might rant at him about whatever set me off. I also don't use the opportunity of a meltdown to find the designer of whatever set me off to yell at them about how they're bad at their job and they suck.  If I make online rants, it would be in a place only friends can see, certainly not in any area directly geared towards hurting the feelings of the artist or designer who made the thing I'm mad at.  Cuz see, that would be thoughtlessly cruel. This is what I was talking about earlier, where people do the thing of "since you're disabled, you get a pass on all behaviors" the implication being that we have to treat disabled people as children or otherwise less competent because they're disabled. This is ablest! Don't do it, please! Being disabled doesn't make you a child!  I considered the possibility Alya was an actual child at the time of posting, but I think if they were then they'd have asked a parent to put the arm back in when they couldn't. 

Was Danny's response over the top? Could be! I didn't actually get to see it, unfortunately, since there aren't screenshots. But not all products are meant for all audiences, and saying "if you don't have the hand strength for this product then it's best you don't buy it" is really quite a patient response to "your product is terrible and I hate it." Maybe there are more gentle ways to put it, but it seems like it would be helpful for doll manufacturers to put more knowledge on their websites about this sort of thing, about how much hand strength is required to put the parts together.  I don't know how much strength and fine motor control is required to restring a classic BJD; if I some day have arthritis this would be good information to have, since I own at least one BJD with a string inside and plan to own more. He certainly shouldn't have let hurt feelings run away with him here, but like I said, based on what Alya wrote it seems like a stalemate; they were both wrong. 

Upon consideration I agree that "hate" generally seems like the wrong word but at the same time there are people in this thread and on this forum who will say things like "ha ha I'm glad I got out of Smart Dolls when I did they are so ugly now!" or "the clothes are so drab how can anyone like them?" and similar comments. These aren't really what I'd call criticisms.  They hardly even feel like they're directed at Danny Choo, they feel like they're directed at people like me who like the dolls and the clothes, as if to make me feel bad because I do!

Overall nothing linked has made me reconsider the "crimes" of Danny Choo. He's mean to people sometimes, especially if they get mean with him first. That seems to be about the whole of it. I think I can live with that. It's not like I get to know the personalities of the other doll makers out there to find out if I'd want to eat lunch with them or not. /shrug



*
 

Spoiler

My most recent meltdown comes to mind, because in the moment it might have looked to my husband as if he were the direct cause of it. If we were in a movie I can imagine the audience assuming that we had argued and then I cried because of the argument. In fact I was spiraling out of control because of the meltdown which exploded into full crying. When I was able to speak, I made sure to be absolutely clear to him that my meltdown had nothing to do with him, but because he's a champion and a hero, he already knew that. 

 

Edited December 6, 2021 by youdawurst
adding an anecdote

1 hour ago, youdawurst said:

I don't know how much strength and fine motor control is required to restring a classic BJD;

It can take a lot, even with stringing tools. The tools help you get the elastic through, but sometimes you still need surgical clamps to secure the cord while you add zip ties, knots, or kips. 

I’d definitely recommend getting proper stringing tools and clamps if you plan to restring. 
 

1 hour ago, youdawurst said:

the clothes are so drab how can anyone like them?" and similar comments

I can hardly claim that I don’t like the clothes. TTYA’s designs for shorts, jeans skirts, and pants are very close to SmartDoll. There is some belief that they used to make the clothes for SmartDoll at one point, but Danny moved away from them when he decided to have everything made in Japan. (I don’t know the source, so I don’t know if that’s true.) I have those shorts and denim skirts in every color they make.

I’ve always though his designs were hip, but the prices made me cancel checkout as soon as I saw the totals.

 

1 hour ago, youdawurst said:

they feel like they're directed at people like me who like the dolls and the clothes, as if to make me feel bad because I do!

We have a rule about not directing insults at people. Products and policy can be criticized, so you call the doll ugly or a business practice ugly, but you can’t call Danny ugly. 

I tend to think that almost all of the critical people are supportive of people liking the products, even if they don’t like the man behind them.

I can get feeling like your own taste has been questioned when someone else says a thing you like is ugly, but taste is inherently subjective; there will always be people who hate what I love. I had a friend years ago who would tell people “if it’s not 60s rock it’s not music, and most contemporary music is just an imitation of 60s rock.” Always struck me as both snobbish and ignorant, but it was how he genuinely felt. Sure, I like Floyd and Zeppelin, but I also like classical, jazz, Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, and P!nk; it’s not wrong of me to do so.

 

1 hour ago, youdawurst said:

Overall nothing linked has made me reconsider the "crimes" of Danny Choo.

I think for most of us it took a long time for us to go from the first incidents to being fed up. People make mistakes and we can look past them, but as the same mistake is repeated over and over it ceases to be a mistake and becomes a deliberate act. You can only turn the other cheek for so long before saying enough is enough.

No one is suggesting that you have to dislike Danny to be here, but we do support the right of people people to politely express discontent and that’s why this thread is here. If they become impolite the post gets edited or deleted. 

1 hour ago, youdawurst said:

Heya, there have been too many posts for me to answer them all individually, but I appreciate the responses and especially the sources for issues. 

The one I was most interested in seeing was the disabled person's issue - and I'm not going to keep using that name for them because it feels gross, so I hereby dub them Alya - based on what they themselves wrote and what has been reported that Danny wrote, it seems fairly well like a stalemate?  I fully understand meltdowns, I have them myself.  If I end up having them in public, I take myself somewhere private if at all possible so that I'm not disturbing other people; I don't make my meltdowns something other people have to manage, aside from having my husband help me with hugs and care. But that's because he's my husband, and even then I don't yell at him about what a horrible husband he is* during said meltdown, though I might rant at him about whatever set me off. I also don't use the opportunity of a meltdown to find the designer of whatever set me off to yell at them about how they're bad at their job and they suck.  If I make online rants, it would be in a place only friends can see, certainly not in any area directly geared towards hurting the feelings of the artist or designer who made the thing I'm mad at.  Cuz see, that would be thoughtlessly cruel. This is what I was talking about earlier, where people do the thing of "since you're disabled, you get a pass on all behaviors" the implication being that we have to treat disabled people as children or otherwise less competent because they're disabled. This is ablest! Don't do it, please! Being disabled doesn't make you a child!  I considered the possibility Alya was an actual child at the time of posting, but I think if they were then they'd have asked a parent to put the arm back in when they couldn't. 

Was Danny's response over the top? Could be! I didn't actually get to see it, unfortunately, since there aren't screenshots. But not all products are meant for all audiences, and saying "if you don't have the hand strength for this product then it's best you don't buy it" is really quite a patient response to "your product is terrible and I hate it." Maybe there are more gentle ways to put it, but it seems like it would be helpful for doll manufacturers to put more knowledge on their websites about this sort of thing, about how much hand strength is required to put the parts together.  I don't know how much strength and fine motor control is required to restring a classic BJD; if I some day have arthritis this would be good information to have, since I own at least one BJD with a string inside and plan to own more. He certainly shouldn't have let hurt feelings run away with him here, but like I said, based on what Alya wrote it seems like a stalemate; they were both wrong. 

Upon consideration I agree that "hate" generally seems like the wrong word but at the same time there are people in this thread and on this forum who will say things like "ha ha I'm glad I got out of Smart Dolls when I did they are so ugly now!" or "the clothes are so drab how can anyone like them?" and similar comments. These aren't really what I'd call criticisms.  They hardly even feel like they're directed at Danny Choo, they feel like they're directed at people like me who like the dolls and the clothes, as if to make me feel bad because I do!

Overall nothing linked has made me reconsider the "crimes" of Danny Choo. He's mean to people sometimes, especially if they get mean with him first. That seems to be about the whole of it. I think I can live with that. It's not like I get to know the personalities of the other doll makers out there to find out if I'd want to eat lunch with them or not. /shrug



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My most recent meltdown comes to mind, because in the moment it might have looked to my husband as if he were the direct cause of it. If we were in a movie I can imagine the audience assuming that we had argued and then I cried because of the argument. In fact I was spiraling out of control because of the meltdown which exploded into full crying. When I was able to speak, I made sure to be absolutely clear to him that my meltdown had nothing to do with him, but because he's a champion and a hero, he already knew that. 

 

I'm sorry but...no one here is trying to convince you to change your mind, nor do they have to. You do and think what is best. You're entitled to do so. I feel like everyone has basically said what needs to be said about DC and his actions. I'm not sure why you insist on framing it in such extreme terms. Everyone who replied I feel was pretty clear about the thread's purpose. This isn't about being buddy buddy with him or "wanting to have lunch with him".

At the end of the day, he's very much an influencer as well as a head of a doll company that sells dolls. Much of his appeal (as well as what reels many in to buy the dolls) is his personality and how much he shows his face and communicates via social media. It's been said before that it would actually be a better business move to have a PR team take care of customer inquiries and criticisms in a measured way instead of DC himself who is overly sensitive about such things. The people here are mainly consumers of the dolls. I personally could care less about getting to know Danny as a person. I'm interested in the product. Now obviously if he was shown evidence of being offensive and doing problematic things that I personally have issues with, then yes, I might have to consider if I want to buy from and support someone who acts in that way (and ultimately that is what I did.) And no it doesn't have to be major "crimes". The ultimate thing that stopped me from buying from him wasn't even his overall personality, but how he ran the business. He went back on his word many times. He has been rude and banned people for asking very innocuous simple questions that anyone should ask when buying these dolls. He even discourages people from buying his products because that's how sensitive he is. He doesn't want to take responsibility for his brand and its quality. If you don't feel that way, then that's fine. If you'd like to buy a Smart Doll, by all means, do so and please enjoy them. But that's kind of the point. It isn't just about him, but the products he sells and how he goes about it. 

25 minutes ago, ladyandlion said:

And no it doesn't have to be major "crimes".

Just so everyone is clear, I’m the one who brought up major crimes, but only as a way of illustrating a specific point. No has said Danny needs to be a murderer before it’s justified to dislike him. 

1 hour ago, youdawurst said:

I fully understand meltdowns, I have them myself.  If I end up having them in public, I take myself somewhere private if at all possible so that I'm not disturbing other people; I don't make my meltdowns something other people have to manage, aside from having my husband help me with hugs and care. But that's because he's my husband, and even then I don't yell at him about what a horrible husband he is* during said meltdown, though I might rant at him about whatever set me off. I also don't use the opportunity of a meltdown to find the designer of whatever set me off to yell at them about how they're bad at their job and they suck.  If I make online rants, it would be in a place only friends can see, certainly not in any area directly geared towards hurting the feelings of the artist or designer who made the thing I'm mad at.

Well, good for you.
However I don't think one persons meltdown has to be equal to anothers. Have you seen people having meltdown when losing in a video game? You can bet the company gets blamed. In the heat of the moment, any and all deities get blamed! Often it get taken to the internet to rant (and to cool down). You can't expect everyone to have the capability to think rationally in such as state... Yeah, it's likely to be in poor taste to write a rant cursing everyone when things don't go your way. Not everyone has a husband to lean on. Some only know people on facebook, or what have you, that are interested in games, or in this case, dolls, that might understand, listen, help, or empathize. Many are not disabled, nor children.
I understand your will to defend Danny, but I don't think your approach is fair.

5 minutes ago, BeyondTime said:

Just so everyone is clear, I’m the one who brought up major crimes, but only as a way of illustrating a specific point. No has said Danny needs to be a murderer before it’s justified to dislike him. 

You're good.  

1 minute ago, Yumeiro said:

Well, good for you.
However I don't think one persons meltdown has to be equal to anothers. Have you seen people having meltdown when losing in a video game? You can bet the company gets blamed. In the heat of the moment, any and all deities get blamed! Often it get taken to the internet to rant (and to cool down). You can't expect everyone to have the capability to think rationally in such as state... Yeah, it's likely to be in poor taste to write a rant cursing everyone when things don't go your way. Not everyone has a husband to lean on. Some only know people on facebook, or what have you, that are interested in games, or in this case, dolls, that might understand, listen, help, or empathize. Many are not disabled, nor children.
I understand your will to defend Danny, but I don't think your approach is fair.

There's still levels to this stuff. You can rant on your own personal Facebook page, or even on your own Youtube or twitter account, that's different from going to a Facebook page dedicated to the game/product or designer-run forum and ranting there because you lost. Yeah not everyone who does that is a child but they sure are acting like children when they do that, and I certainly don't look at someone behaving badly online as a model of behavior. Besides, there's a difference when I see an Angry Video Game Person on Youtube yelling about a "Triple A" game because it has gambling mechanics versus seeing a Karen going on a locally owned restaurant's Facebook page and yelling that they didn't serve her enough breadsticks.  First because the games industry is now more lucrative than the films industry while locally owned restaurants are constantly on the verge of failing, and second because the skinner boxes employed by the games industry are inherently unethical while breadsticks are a non-issue.  Like I said, levels. I, too, had to learn that there are OK ways to treat people and not OK ways to treat people, and even though it's possible to dial up whoever you want on the internet and call them the worst name you can think of maybe to be a complete human being you should try not to. That's not to say you can't use online support and can't rant online, just don't pick small business owners or other distant strangers as your punching bags.