Ever heard of “Devi Ever”? Neither has anyone else.
by “Valued Musician”
——
As a prime example of the general craziness of the music scene, and
the greater madness of “crowdfunding”, there is a manufacturer of “boutique”
guitar pedals who has developed another reputation: for online weirdness. Who?
Devi Ever (aka Grace Lynn, aka Effector 13, aka “Pixelgoth”, aka “Amber Coal”,
aka probably several others).
Devi Ever as she would like to be seen (taken from simple Google search).
Devi is a transgender person with a talent for electronic design. And
an even greater talent for messing up her life and creating online drama. She
started circa 2003 as “Effector 13”, and supposedly sold that company to
someone else around 2005 (who apparently later folded). Then she started again
as Devi Ever Effects. Which is still in business,
although I have no idea if anything listed for sale there is actually available
at this time. She sold the company to Dwarfcraft in 2013 and retook it three
years later (?) after fighting with Dwarfcraft’s owner. She found out about
“crowdfunding” circa 2007, and started punching that button over, and over, and
over.
When the Gamergate war started up in 2014, Devi felt the need to push
her ego into the toxic world of gaming, as an alleged game developer and as a
consumer of games—apparently? I can find no hard evidence she ever completed
and marketed a game. It would be impossible to even list all of her past
social-media accounts. We will list the “obvious” ones.
Thanks to her long and “colorful” history she was considered as a
subject for an Encyclopedia Dramatica article in 2015. It appears they gave up
since she’s such a minor figure. And a combative one. I knew about this partly
due to discussions with other people in the business, and partly because of a
thread on Dramatica's forum which has a massive timeline with links and “nude
photos” plus Devi herself showing up to criticize. Also consider the Kiwi Farms
thread where Devi showed up:
As the ED nerd said: “After a single success years ago, he/she
believed it was a viable way to make money, even if the project fails, flexible
funding allows them to keep the money to use for other purposes, while giving
them a ready excuse to not use the funds for what they said they'd use it for.
His/her general strategy of crowdfunding is to join a special interest group
(such as Gamergate, Anti-Gamergate, Ludum Dare, Tumblr,
etc etc), attempt to drum up recognition, and then spread around crowdfunding
campaigns and create loads of drama. When he/she figures that particular cow
can't be milked, they throw a shitfit, burn all bridges, and move to another
interest group (like Guitar pedals to SJW Indie Development to Gamergate to Anti-Gamergate back to guitar
pedals). The cycle repeats. To date, I've witnessed or found evidence for over
12 difficult crowdfunding campaigns, and 7 of those were in 2015. I don't know
how many I missed from before, but the majority of the ones I found were not
completely funded (but all had flexible funding, naturally), not used for the
stated purpose, or were closed early and/or partially scrubbed from history.”
Of course they’re ones to talk. ED is a popular place for angry little
fat basement boys to dump their enraged attacks on GG-involved women. But we
are talking about Devi here, and her story is much weirder than that of the
average GG “combatant”. Allow me to list some of the assorted past complaints
about her activities. Note that this is only a sample of leftover items. Others
have disappeared over the years. “Mysteriously”.
And we must mention the "swatting" attempt from 2015. Even
though she had moved months before and the cops were sent to the wrong house,
someone there was nearly shot by the police. As I understand this, she has a
tendency to move frequently. Probably a good idea if you’re abusing the
crowdfunding system.
Ask Mr. William Corgan, legendary rock star, about her! For a time in
the early 2000s she had a deal with Corgan to make custom pedals. A deal which
soon degenerated into name-calling. Perhaps there’s a real problem when it ends
up on Perez Hilton, eh?
By way of demonstration, here’s a blog post ranting about how
“disgusting” Corgan is, for daring to criticize Devi:
http://bloody-disgusting.com/news/120606/billy-corgan-is-a-complete-waste-of-space/
There are dozens of threads about her on Reddit. This one, from a
Gamergater subreddit, is typical. You can easily find plenty more.
Allow me to list some of the past attempts to crowd fund. Some involve
her idea to make a distortion pedal using gaming cartridges, somehow. The ED
forum thread lists a few archives of posts that failed and were carefully
“anonymized”.
On Indiegogo:
Kickstarter:
Gofundme, yeah, plastic surgery is admittedly costly:
She tried to “bail out” of the pedal business in 2012, as noted here.
But is still going as of 2018.
There were many other news/blog items and forum threads which have
since been deleted/disappeared. No one even knows for certain how many funding
attempts she has run, except Devi herself. Devi has burned a lot of bridges in
the music world by misusing crowdfund sites and social media. There were other
threads discussing it on synth and guitar forums, but they seem to have also
"mysteriously disappeared”. It's just too easy to raise money on
crowdfunding sites, when you've got a viral happy-click campaign going on
social media. Or a fan following in the guitar world. Devi’s story also
demonstrates the tendency of modern-day Internet feminists to give considerable
leeway to outspoken transgender women, regardless of their dubious personal
histories.
And oh, one last bit of free advice: don’t get involved in squabbles
in the video gaming world. That is assuming anyone notices or cares about this.
We hope you are at least “slightly amused”…..
OMG does anyone find this wiperag funny? This shit stupid nigga
ReplyDeleteThat you, Devi?
DeleteThank you, 'bot.
ReplyDeleteI think it's a bit of an overstatement to say she has/had a talent for electronic design.
ReplyDeleteShe started off sort of wanting to be Z-vex junior when the fuzz factory was all the rage.
Her designs are basically circuit bends of a pretty simple cascaded emitter follower...like a lot of fuz face style stuff.
The bends aren't really engineered - try starving here, feedback loop there -- if you notice, a lot of circuit bends start sounds the same after a while.
her ex GF talked abut coining "guerilla engineering" to sort of aggrandize that process.
But like the console design -- that was outsourced to her then roommate of infanem electronics who has some chops
When she made the move to videogames she even said she never knew what she was doing in electronics (sort of burning that bridge, assuming she'd never be back)
Devi's thing was hype and doing the artwork
Fake it till you make it? Some of her fuzz pedals are absolutely amazing. I had an early Hyperion and later a drone fuck drone ( amazing). I guess a big part of fuzz is starving. It worked though. She even got recognized by whoever made the music for the latest Doom remake, as they used devi ever fuzz pedals in the process. She lived in Austin before transitioning and had made hyperions even back then, when I got mine. It could have just started with circuit bending, but hey, it worked.
ReplyDeleteI remember Devi (tim - not deadname,was their name at the time) from the HC days.
Deletelike back when the SCP was upholstered and Devi was sort of a ZVex worshipper so I remember them (that's Devi's pref'd prnoun now BTW)getting their start.
in fact, that's where she went to ask a lot of questions about electronics and the whole gang helped out
They were always more of a "pedal maker" (their own description). Devi was never much for electronic design. it's always been pretty much exclusively fuzzface variants and bends
that's not intended to be a knock against them, but it isn't so much electronics in the broad sense of dealing with the core subject
nor design since is was all mainly stumbled upon (devi even said themselves they didn't really know what they were doing)
I'd put it more in product development than electronic design
I think it's more fake it and keep faking it in terms of having "a talent for electronic design" and that's what the OP is talking about. it's not designed which is the OPs point.
ReplyDeleteIt kind of started AND ALSO ended with bending though. That's why all her stuff used the same topology and never really advanced beyond sputtery sizzle territory stuff. Like the OP was saying the heavier lifting for anything else was done by other folks.
it's sort of like stumbling on a signature dish by trial n erroring that one thing. It doesn't really make you the same as a chef or a good cook or anything. I mean, I like my GF's chili, but I would never ever ever giver her a good cut of steak or fish to cook - she makes a really good chili, but she doesn't have "a talent for cooking"
That's sorta the sense I got. IIRC one of the criticisms that Corgan made that sent Devi off was he didn't find it very consistent or controllable for live. Devi went off(now deleted, so you really only see Corgan throwing insults, the narrative is altered)talking about lacking creative bravery and being artistically bankrupt. But she never really addressed he's doing programmed stadium shows so maybe consistency is important
DeleteI mean I get minimalism and letting something chaotically behave, but that's if it's a decision. Basically, she can't design more consistent stuff.
She didn't really have much real knowledge of the field.
I think her punk ethos is a little more like an excuse...soot the arrow,then paint a bullseye around whre it stuck sorta thing.