MAJOR SALES PLATFORMS ARE ERASING REFERENCES TO HIM FROM THEIR SITES. DON'T LET THEM WIN.
Daisy
Founder, CEO, Good Girl
I think we have all passively accepted the consistency of which we are bent over and fucked by the powers that be. We accept the inevitable unfairness. We accept that the game is rigged, and we continue to play it because we don't feel like we have a choice. Sometimes, it takes something happening that cuts so deep that you have no choice but to build an entire website about it.
In November, my 1 year old puppy started coughing. Within 2 days, I was in the hospital with her being told she most likely wouldn't make it through the night. She was in full congestive heart failure with something called Dilated Cardiomyopathy or DCM. One of the first questions the vet asked me was, "Do you feed her grain-free food?" My heart sunk. I considered myself a responsible, thorough pet owner. I did research. I looked at reviews for what was giving her. I bought pricey food from a local mom and pop store that only sold expensive boutique pet food. I got all of her shots and checkups on time, her last one taking place at 6 months old didn't trigger any concern from vets about the state of her heart. I got her the most expensive insurance plan with the lowest deductible and 90% reimbursement so that regardless of my finances, I could provide her with any care she may need. I didn't go into dog ownership lightly. I covered my bases.
Now, here I was, laying next to an incubator, my puppy gasping for oxygen. I oscillated back and forth between praying to a god I didn't believe in and deep-diving into FDA reports, court cases, and class actions lawsuits against dog food companies that sold grain free food.
All of the information was buried. I was 10 pages into an FDA report before I found out that the food I was giving Daisy was the third highest reported in cases of DCM, a rare condition at one point, only found in certain breeds, it had increased exponentially year after year since Grain Free food arrived on shelves. No matter how many dogs died, they wouldn't pull the food. The dog food companies countersued people for defamation (after essentially killing their dogs), and won. This was the start of it. You can make the best decision you can with the resources you have, but what if the resources are hidden in the name of financial gain?
​
The injustice of this felt staggering. In the weeks to come, i learned the gravity of the situation we were in.
Daisy's prognosis was 1-2 years at best. She was put on 6 neds 4 times a day. She became incontinent at night due to medication. We were driving several hours a week to cardiologist appointments. Our whole lives changed.
​
We did our best to find our new rhythm. Daisy was stable on her medication. I started to try and accept the truth of it all.
All the dust was kicked up again when I received a notice from her insurance company claiming none of the costs of her medical bills would be covered as they had deemed it a pre-existing condition. The night in the emergency room that saved her life cost about $6k. Her subsequent cardiologist appointments were about 3k. Her prescriptions were close to $300 a month. As a freelance artist & designer in an industry being taken over by AI, even with the generosity of friends and strangers who donated to a gofundme, the debt was insurmountable. I did my best to work as much as I could and still give her the level of care she needed. Around that time, the CEO of United Healthcare was shot in the street, a clear message left in the evidence. I don't condone violence. I've always maintained that there were better ways, that it doesn't heal or fix, it just breaks and fragments further. But now, I didn't feel like answers were black and white, and as I watched the direction we were headed in as a country, I could no longer think in moral absolutes.
A Few Acceptable Etsy Products
So i made a prayer candle. A silly candle of Luigi holding moo deng like little baby Jesus, and I put it on Etsy. Within minutes, I started seeing traffic come to the page. This is unusual for Etsy as it's very saturated, and normally, you have to pay for ads or direct people to a page that's never had a sale. I watched it go into carts, saved as a favorite in several accounts. Within hours of posting it, 100+ people organically found the item, and the purchases started rolling in.
Finally. A win. I scrambled to buy packaging, more printer ink, another box of prayer candles. I signed back into my Etsy account and started buying shipping labels, but then, an error message popped up...
"Your item violates our policy. It has been removed from your shop."
Ok.
I thought there was a possibility of this. It does feature a person allegedly involved in a murder...
But then I started looking at other items sold on there and I was floored. Pages upon pages or serial killer merch, nazi memorabilia, vile shit, items that celebrated accused murderers in various stages of the legal process. Joke gifts that made light of rape, murder, cannibalism, genocide, none violated their policy.
But in a country where you're innocent until proven guilty, a man not yet convicted of anything holding a baby hippo was decidedly a line that was not allowed to be crossed. I thought of every explanation for why this item was singled out and found examples of items being sold that disproved those explanations every time. It became clear to me that what this person represents is a huge threat to the powers that be. They don't want us to remember that right or wrong, we have choices. They don't want to rile up the poors. They don't want us to remember we outnumber them.
So now this stupid candle that I put on Etsy as a joke to make a little extra money started to mean something bigger. It represented the things they want hidden, the violence they find unacceptable in a sea of violent imagery.
So i bought this domain, and what started as a silly one-off joke to make a few extra bucks became a website.
Growing up in Boston, I'm a gifted shit-talker. I'm fluent in roasting and have a sense of humor darker than most. This is what I can do to survive. This is me refusing to shut the fuck up. My hope is that I can turn it into something actually useful, but in the meantime, I'm fucking pissed and I'm using my spite to dig myself out of the hole I ended up in by staying obedient to the machine.
I appreciate you being here. I feel your pain. I'm scared and angry, just like you.
More to come.
Thank you for listening and supporting my small act of rebellion.
