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JManga Stockholm's Syndrome
Mar. 22nd, 2013 10:22 amSo, I got my Jmanga reimbursement this morning. It was only a dollar on Amazon,but considering that I had less than a hundred points on the site and wasn’t expecting anything, a dollar is pretty generous of them. They weren’t obligated to reimburse me anything.
Actually, they were. That's why they did it.
They didn't give refunds for the manga people "bought" from them because there have been no really major court smackdowns about that sort of crap.
There will be some people who will point fingers and gloat about having not purchased any manga with JManga. To me, it’s about the equivalent of seeing a movie in the theater. I paid a price and enjoyed the media. In fact, reading a manga on JManga was less than half the cost of seeing a movie.
Ms. Friedman, you are a treasure to that internet demographic preoccupied with swordfighting lesbian schoolgirls (me), but this is bullshit. JManga was deliberately marketing towards people who didn't know enough about the internet to realize that the manga they'd bought was going to disappear on them.
"I knew this would happen. I’m so glad I didn’t spend money there."
And my only response is - of course they failed! You didn’t spend money there. If the amount of people I’ve seen said the above in some way shape or form used the service, it would still be running. Easily.
Services like this cost money to run, and if there are no customers - it can’t run.
I know folks complained about the points system, but it really wasn’t that bad - it even worked out to benefit when JManga ran sales and gave out free bonus points.
Supervillain Protip: If you need to disable an economist for long enough to, like, steal the economy? Make them read that crap right there. I learned this handy trick from Lex Luthor.
As of May 30th 2013 at 11:59pm (US Pacific Time) users will no longer be able to view digital manga content on JManga.com. At this time all purchased and free digital manga content will be erased from all JManga Member’s accounts.
You were brought into existence, JManga, by beings who desired to banish the internet again into the maelstrom from which it had formed. As such, your business plan was crafted as a formalized gesture of spite, towards a future in which your creators saw themselves diminishing in stature, becoming mere men, and old. And so they spake, and said,
can we go back to the eighties lets go back to the eighties okay.
(That's what they said.)
And then, JManga, they created you.
You were an abomination. And your life was not a good one.
* You were asking people to pay real-book-type prices for low-resolution scans of poorly-edited manga.
* Which were not downloadable. Not even with DRM. They could be accessed only from your servers, using your website and or your proprietary apps.
* As such - as any erstwhile user of Yahoo! Music or other such services well knew - we did not buy those low-resolution scans from you. We merely rented them, until came the day upon which you would shrug your shoulders, say "welp, I tried," and shut down your servers.
* You didn't actually try.
* Like, your website and apps were so bad? That I think they were meant as some kind of deliberate "fuck you."
* You didn't even release the mobile apps until last October.
* Wait, did the iPad app ever come out? (Edit: It didn't.)
* It's just kind of hard to believe you were serious about entering this market, is I guess what I'm saying, JManga.
* So, I don't really care that you're dead.
* Someone else should probably have delivered the eulogy.
(Tumblr Crosspost)
Who thought it was a good idea to make a shitload of Harlequin manga in the first place? Why does it comprise like 3/4 of the josei catalog? Does anyone under the age of sixty even read Harlequins? It just seems like a huge demographic mismatch.
(those facebook like boxes)
Look at these awful titles:
The Italian Playboy's Secret Son
Sale or Return Bride
The Italian's Passionate Revenge (oh, no! Same Italian?)
The Sheikh's Reluctant Bride
The Sheikh's Contract Bride (the sheikh is keeping busy)
The Billionaire's Virgin Mistress
Married By Mistake! (okay, yeah, that sounds like a manga)
Purchased For Revenge (that, too)
The Forced Bride (this fucking genre, my god)
Cowboys, Babies, and Shotgun Vows (well that sounds crazy fucking romantic)
The Italian's Token Wife (you know it is exactly this sort of behavior that got you guys stuck with Silvio Berlusconi for like nine years)
The Billionaire Boss's Forbidden Mistress (no one forbids the Billionaire Boss! Mistresses, that is. No one forbids him mistresses.)
Pregnant by the Millionaire (she should have held out for the billionaire)
Royally Bedded, Regally Wedded (or maybe whoever this guy is)
The Sheikh's Ransomed Bride (geez sheikh how many of those do you even need)
The Spanish Duke's Virgin Bride (new nationality here, so this story must be completely different from every single one of the others)
The Millionaire's Pregnant Mistress (is this the same as that other millionaire-baby one but retitled? No, it looks like it's different.)
A Date With a Billionaire (she gets a look at his cell phone while he's in the bathroom and the address book is just "virgin one," "pregnant one," "forbidden one," so she walks out and calls up the cowboy. The cowboy is such a good listener.)
Mistress Bought and Paid For (goddamn we are purchasing a lot of fucking women in these stories, what the hell is wrong with Harlequin)
To Marry a Stranger (the stranger has an eyepatch, so yeah this is basically a manga, sure)
Marriage Scandal, Showbiz Baby! (the scandal is that the baby is a reincarnated vengeful alien ghost, right? Because it's manga. Right?)
Claiming His Pregnant Wife (this sounds like a tagline given to a murder by an awful local news station)
Public Wife, Private Mistress (that's generally how it works yeah)
Traded to the Sheikh (I'll bet it was the Spanish Duke initiating this arrangement, I never trusted that guy)
The Billionaire's Secret Baby (oh we all know the billionaire sucks at keeping secrets)
A Wife in Time (I'm unfortunately pretty sure that this isn't about time travel, how are these even manga)
Princess of Convenience (that doesn't even make sense)
The Stanbury Crown, Royally Wed IV - An Officer and a Princess (oh god so someone felt there needed to be three other manga about the royalty of someplace called Stanbury getting married over and fucking over? I bet there are white horses with frilly tack involved.)
Wife By Agreement (well, that's a pleasant first)
The Stanbury Crown, Royally Wed II - The Blacksheep Prince's Bride (there's supposed to be a space in "black sheep" you terrible prince)
The Stanbury Crown, Royally Wed III - Code Name: Prince ("dude that is the shittiest codename" "look do you want to have a goddamn frilly horse wedding or not")
To Woo a Wife (this is really fucking progressive for these things)
The Stanbury Crown, Royally Wed I - The Expectant Princess ("i am expecting to give birth to a secret fucking agent")
Billionaire Bachelors: Stone (maybe the billionaire bachelors are like, elementally-themed, and they're a team of chosen warriors who fight evil together? Because it's manga.)
In The Arms of the Sheikh ("oh baby i have three or four wives already" "that is so hot")
The Celebrity Doctor's Proposal ("oh baby i want to surgically alter your vulva to be more symmetrical, and also marry you maybe" "no i am going to go see if the sheikh's got any spots open")
Million Dollar Men II - Millionaire Husband (these guys are the Monthly GFantasy knockoff of the Billionaire Bachelors)
Million Dollar Men III - The Millionaire's Secret Wish ("man i wish i was a billionaire bachelor, they have that cool elemental thing going on and takahiro sakurai voices one of them in the anime")
Million Dollar Men I - Expecting the Boss's Baby (there are three dudes on the cover of this one, I'm confident that it's mpreg and not just an establishing shot of this crappy hero team together)
Angus's Lost Lady (gonna pretend this is about some cows)
Daniel and Daughter (uh)
(those facebook like boxes)
Look at these awful titles:
The Italian Playboy's Secret Son
Sale or Return Bride
The Italian's Passionate Revenge (oh, no! Same Italian?)
The Sheikh's Reluctant Bride
The Sheikh's Contract Bride (the sheikh is keeping busy)
The Billionaire's Virgin Mistress
Married By Mistake! (okay, yeah, that sounds like a manga)
Purchased For Revenge (that, too)
The Forced Bride (this fucking genre, my god)
Cowboys, Babies, and Shotgun Vows (well that sounds crazy fucking romantic)
The Italian's Token Wife (you know it is exactly this sort of behavior that got you guys stuck with Silvio Berlusconi for like nine years)
The Billionaire Boss's Forbidden Mistress (no one forbids the Billionaire Boss! Mistresses, that is. No one forbids him mistresses.)
Pregnant by the Millionaire (she should have held out for the billionaire)
Royally Bedded, Regally Wedded (or maybe whoever this guy is)
The Sheikh's Ransomed Bride (geez sheikh how many of those do you even need)
The Spanish Duke's Virgin Bride (new nationality here, so this story must be completely different from every single one of the others)
The Millionaire's Pregnant Mistress (is this the same as that other millionaire-baby one but retitled? No, it looks like it's different.)
A Date With a Billionaire (she gets a look at his cell phone while he's in the bathroom and the address book is just "virgin one," "pregnant one," "forbidden one," so she walks out and calls up the cowboy. The cowboy is such a good listener.)
Mistress Bought and Paid For (goddamn we are purchasing a lot of fucking women in these stories, what the hell is wrong with Harlequin)
To Marry a Stranger (the stranger has an eyepatch, so yeah this is basically a manga, sure)
Marriage Scandal, Showbiz Baby! (the scandal is that the baby is a reincarnated vengeful alien ghost, right? Because it's manga. Right?)
Claiming His Pregnant Wife (this sounds like a tagline given to a murder by an awful local news station)
Public Wife, Private Mistress (that's generally how it works yeah)
Traded to the Sheikh (I'll bet it was the Spanish Duke initiating this arrangement, I never trusted that guy)
The Billionaire's Secret Baby (oh we all know the billionaire sucks at keeping secrets)
A Wife in Time (I'm unfortunately pretty sure that this isn't about time travel, how are these even manga)
Princess of Convenience (that doesn't even make sense)
The Stanbury Crown, Royally Wed IV - An Officer and a Princess (oh god so someone felt there needed to be three other manga about the royalty of someplace called Stanbury getting married over and fucking over? I bet there are white horses with frilly tack involved.)
Wife By Agreement (well, that's a pleasant first)
The Stanbury Crown, Royally Wed II - The Blacksheep Prince's Bride (there's supposed to be a space in "black sheep" you terrible prince)
The Stanbury Crown, Royally Wed III - Code Name: Prince ("dude that is the shittiest codename" "look do you want to have a goddamn frilly horse wedding or not")
To Woo a Wife (this is really fucking progressive for these things)
The Stanbury Crown, Royally Wed I - The Expectant Princess ("i am expecting to give birth to a secret fucking agent")
Billionaire Bachelors: Stone (maybe the billionaire bachelors are like, elementally-themed, and they're a team of chosen warriors who fight evil together? Because it's manga.)
In The Arms of the Sheikh ("oh baby i have three or four wives already" "that is so hot")
The Celebrity Doctor's Proposal ("oh baby i want to surgically alter your vulva to be more symmetrical, and also marry you maybe" "no i am going to go see if the sheikh's got any spots open")
Million Dollar Men II - Millionaire Husband (these guys are the Monthly GFantasy knockoff of the Billionaire Bachelors)
Million Dollar Men III - The Millionaire's Secret Wish ("man i wish i was a billionaire bachelor, they have that cool elemental thing going on and takahiro sakurai voices one of them in the anime")
Million Dollar Men I - Expecting the Boss's Baby (there are three dudes on the cover of this one, I'm confident that it's mpreg and not just an establishing shot of this crappy hero team together)
Angus's Lost Lady (gonna pretend this is about some cows)
Daniel and Daughter (uh)
