How to Make Random Friends and Influence People

OR How I Won the Game and Learned to Love the Trolls

By Damian C Caynes
Creative Commons Non-Commercial Share-Alike Non-Derivative Licensed

The Beginning

What follows is the rags to potential riches story of one man and his quest to make his
passion into his living. From a humble blog, to a 1,200+ member closed Facebook
group, every step and misstep along the way to teach you, the reader, how to do it
yourself; without all the drama I’ve had to deal with.

In the beginning, it was October 2016, and I had been slaving away as a Wordpress
Lead Developer for Interakt Digital since 2009. It wasn’t as glamorous as it sounded, I
was a freelancer working for one client (my boss and best friend, Dale) and as we were
basically a two-man company; he could only afford to pay me $20US. The big projects
were few and far between, and somehow our bread and butter became making
websites for real estate internet marketing gurus.

Every other website would be an ego-driven Internet Marketing Guru promoting
themselves and selling their wares. It became quite tiring and unfulfilling for the both of
us, as Dale was also the graphic designer in the company. However, after more than six
years making websites for Internet Marketing Gurus (the capital letters are essential), I
had learned quite a bit about internet marketing techniques from designing sales pages
for Real Estate Internet Marketing Courses. This mostly encompassed clever ways to
manipulate social media, bordering on plain old spam, but making sure your were
targeting your market; and thus wouldn’t be perceived as spam.

It may seem obvious, but this brilliant concept made these Internet Marketing Gurus
millions of dollars a year, while Dale and I made $500 websites for them year after year.
Something had to budge.

My interest in my old hobby, developing software for the Commodore 64, had re-ignited
this month. I was currently estranged from my favourite brother, after a silly dispute on
Facebook where he blocked me. In my honest opinion, it is far too easy to “rage block”
someone on that social networking website, leaving little recourse to the victim. While I
stewed on this issue, I remembered a game idea my brother had had, more than five
years ago.

“Magic Bag”, a Match-3 Action RPG game. Think Bejewelled with an arcade RPG area
to the right of it, where your adventurer gets stat boosts when you match magic gems,
and also attacks and casts spells depending on which gems you matched. It was a
brilliant, simple idea; and like all of my brother’s ideas it stayed just that, an idea. Over
the years the idea ceased to be as original as it was on inception, to the point where the
yoyogames’ Marketplace has a “​ Match-3 RPG Engine​ ”. The irony could be cut with a
knife, but it was still an original idea on the Commodore 64.

And I was looking for a worthwhile project to pursue on the Commodore 64, to give my
new hobby some focus. Little did I know that this one concept would lead to a roller
coaster of opportunities and melodrama, and the eventual conception of my own retro
hardware company.

I decided to chronicle my journey, and teach others how to make games on the
Commodore 64, with a blog; C64 Code Hacking. I promoted it widely on Facebook and
Commodore 64 community forums, to great acclaim. There hadn’t been a decent intro
coding tutorial series since the ​ Dustlayer tutorials three years ago​ , and in many people’s
opinion; it ended far too early. As was the case with most coding tutorial blogs, on any
platform. It just ceased to be worthwhile for most, due to lack of time and lack of
financial incentive.

At the same time I had developed a social networking technique all by myself, inspired
by the Internet Marketing Gurus I made websites for. I realised, if I added random
friends with ten or more mutual friends, I would most likely not be reported for
spamming, and this could add random Facebook friends with abandon. You can take
this tip to the bank, I had added over one thousand friends in the retrogaming, retro
computing, and arcade machine appreciation communities in one week, with this
technique.

Now I had a marketing user base with which to, well, SPAM. Although because the
majority of these people had mutual interests and mutual friends, most of them wouldn’t
consider my invitations to like my several pages, or wouldn’t mind when I added them to
my closed Facebook group. Yes, there’s the trick, you can add friends to your closed
Facebook group without their permission. I only had a handful of negative responses
from my thousand plus friends, and that was only when I accidentally invited them to my
group more than once. With which my other technique for manipulating Facebook,
came into play.

You see, if you add friends to your group using the short list that Facebook presents,
you will be banned from adding friends in no time flat, just like adding random friends to
your friends list. But again, there is a technique you can use to circumvent this. Simply
click the + Add button, and you can add up to twenty friends at once; and with the
autocomplete you can simply type A, then AA, then AB and so on to add most of your
new random Facebook friends. Make sure you don’t do this too quickly, as you can be
banned here as well; but by leaving less than a minute between adding twenty friends
and you should be right.

In this way, I was able to add seven hundred random Facebook friends to my C64 Code
Hacking closed group in under an hour. You can take that technique to the bank as well,
and they’ll give you a small business loan to go with it.

So my blog was quite successful, in under two weeks I had had almost one thousand
unique visitors; that’s one thousand readers who had at least read the frontpage, and an
average of two visits for each one. For a blog with only two or three updates per week,
my social networking techniques were serving me well.

But how could I possibly keep up with this progress, when I had to slave away at
Internet Marketing Websites by day? It was then that I discovered ​ 64bites.com​ .

This guy, Michal ​ Taszycki, seemed to be making a living from his passion, and it
occurred to me I could achieve the same thing. He ran a Commodore 64 programming
tutorial series from his website, not as a YouTube channel like many coding tutorials for
other platforms; and his marketing was simply genius. He offered bite size tutorials on
all manner of Commodore 64 programming topics, although in my opinion the order of
the tutorials was somewhat random and shambolic; he was prolific enough to cover
most of what you would need to know to code a Commodore 64 game. It was brilliant!

I immediately contacted him on Facebook, asking if I could interview him; as part of my
new hobby was writing for various Commodore 64 fanzines. He was very welcoming,
and although he was quite a private person when talking about his project, he revealed
he was making enough money to make a modest living; at least in the European country
he lived in which had a low cost of living.

I was simply amazed, because surely a modest living in a poor European country would
be able to match the meagre earnings I accrued as a developer of Internet Marketing
Guru websites.

I thanked him for his time, and forgot all about interviewing him. I would now pursue this
concept and find a way to make a living from my passion. Little did I know the
melodrama that I would generate simply for proclaiming I wanted to make a small
amount of money from selling Commodore 64 software.

At first, I decided to emulate Michal’s success, but on a YouTube channel; as I didn’t
want to directly compete with 64bites. In fact, much later on I would offer Michal free
full page advertising in my Commodore 64 coding magazine, INC $D020.

So I launched the C64 Code Hacking YouTube Tutorials Channel, aimed at beginners as
I had had some requests on the blog for beginner level material for those that were new
to programming the Commodore 64; just like Michal’s 64bites. I wasn’t copying Michal’s
project, it was just that my readership demanded the same service 64bites.com was
offering.

Over the next two weeks I posted An Introduction to 6510 Assembly Coding, several
opinion pieces (most of which were later deleted), as well as Introduction to PC Based
SID Trackers, and An Introduction to C64 Graphics Modes and several overviews of my
early demos to show my viewers what I was capable of. Needless to say some of my
viewers became quite restless and demand to see MORE CODE.

I was running a Patreon crowdfunding campaign in conjunction with the channel, it was
an experiment to see whether I could support myself via Patrons of my channel; in the
same way Michal was supporting himself with subscribers to his website.

Michal had warned me it wouldn’t be easy, and I hate to admit it, but however I marketed
the Patreon project from $2US pledges to a customised software package; nothing
worked. It was a failure, and what was worse, presented my first encounter with a
community that could be sour to the point of being vindictive.

You have to understand, this community was not used to paying for software. They
downloaded their tools, games and software for free, from the many community
websites. Oh in some cases they were willing to shell out cold hard cash for hardware,
or to support a game developer or artist that they liked; but for the most part they were
vehemently against anyone making any money from THEIR hobby. This was considered
an intrusion on the community, and I was certainly branded as an intruder.

My mistake? I had developed a software package for my Patrons, of which I had none;
the C64Studio Code Hacking Edition. It was a popular Commodore 64 Windows based
IDE, that not only allowed you to compile source code; but also allowed you to edit
graphics, and disassemble software. In many ways it was brilliant, but unfortunately the
compiler was flawed; being an “ACME compatible” compiler, not a pure ACME compiler.
This introduced many issues, but for me at the time; it was a revelation.

So I packaged it with 90Mb of tested Windows cross development tools, from graphics
editors and converters, to SID tracking software. I had planned to later compile
C64Studio from source, and link in all of these tools to the IDE. I thought it was a
brilliant plan, but my enthusiasm got ahead of me, when I decided to announce it to the
8000+ member Commodore 64/128 group on Facebook, as a $10US shareware
package; as no-one wanted to pay $2US to be a Patron of the project, and I thought
$10US was worth it for my time and effort and after all it was a compilation of Open
Source and Abandonware software.

I was so wrong. There was an immediate backlash against me, and I didn’t react well to
it. Imagine being in an arena in front of eight thousand people and telling them you
wanted to make a mere $10US from free software, and having them throw tomatoes at
you for your efforts. It was just like that, only much worse. Although this treatment paled
in comparison to what came at the end of December, at the hands of a potential
competitor in the retro game publishing business.

The sole administrator of the group deleted my reconciliatory post, and then banned me
when I complained. I am still banned from that group, but the marketing I did whilst a
member more than made up for being persecuted by a community of eight thousand
people. Well, I was sure it would be worth it in the long run, anyway.

So the Patreon experiment was also a failure, and even though I now had more than 130
subscribers on my YouTube channel, there was no way I could support myself from
channel Patrons.

There was one lovely exception. A Patron, who shall not be named, pledged $25US a
month to enlist me as a coder on some Commodore 64 software he wanted custom
made. Now it’s been three weeks, and we have only planned out the software, and auto
FLI slideshow with interrupt loader and SID music. But I needn’t have worried about my
one real Patron losing his belief in me, as at XMAS time when I was broke and it looked
like I would have to cancel my XMAS party, I told my Patron that I would be closing
down the failed Patreon experiment; and would he mind paying me the $25US now
instead?

He readily agreed, but on checking my PayPal account I discovered there was $153AU
in there! I was quite shocked, and told him I would need to give me a refund as there
must have been some mistake. “No mistake,” he said, “Have a merry XMAS and create
great things!” Well, after all that happened, I almost cried for the first time in twenty
years; and I still tear up just talking about it.

The Patreon experiment had been a failure, but I had confirmation that someone, at
least, believed in what I was trying to achieve. And the XMAS party was excellent, I
spent $160 on food and treats and everyone had a great time. Life was good.



The Big Idea

At the same time, I had launched INC $D020; The C64 Coder’s Quarterly Digest, another
attempt to make a living from my passion. Distributed by Blurb.com Print-on-Demand
publishing, and designed with their free but somewhat limiting Bookwright software. I
charged $2US for it and $15 for the full colour printed copy. Unfortunately, after the
Facebook drama, no-one particularly wanted to read anything I had to say and the
magazine sold a handful of copies. Then it experience an influx of readers from a
somewhat surprising source, after a brief dispute over the naming of the release; a
Commodore 64 community site decided it would pirate the magazine and host a copy
of the early PDF of the digest.

Needless to say, I was enraged. The admin who was responsible for the action was a
close personal friend from more than a decade ago, or I thought he was. He proceeded
to defame me, make fun of my mental illness (I have been misdiagnosed with Bipolar
disorder by the public health system), and presently the entire community was both
reading my magazine and laughing at me at the same time. It was largely my fault, but
you’d have to agree this was juvenile and vindictive behaviour on the part of the
community. But small, closed off communities are often like this; so be wary when
directing your marketing campaign at them. Be very wary, because it can get worse than
this, as I would discover at the end of December; much worse.

The Patreon project had failed, the magazine project had failed; but I was still
determined to make this concept work. I would support myself with my hobby in 2017,
or live out my life as a maligned trouble-maker that no-one liked. Preferably the former,
obviously

I had a new, bigger idea. Who would publish “Magic Bag”? One of the three publisher’s
of Commodore 64 games, who were most likely affected by the recent drama? Why not
publish it myself!

At the time, a Commodore 64 based Kickstarter campaign was making the rounds.
“​ Unknown Realm: An 8-bit RPG for PC and Commodore 64​ ”, which was asking a
staggering $65,000 and had been apparently in the works for four years. The main
pledge was a $150US cartridge, with no digital download, as the developers claimed
their cartridge format couldn’t be emulated. This seemed quite unlikely, as literally
anything can be emulated, given the right code.

This made me realise, my fledgling publishing company could make a successful
Kickstarter campaign, especially if I also published my friends’ games. I could function
as a digital only company, offering paid digital downloads; and I would only need a small
amount of money to do it. In fact, I wouldn’t need any money to do it; but to make a
successful campaign I figured I should ask for at least five thousand dollars.

I was wrong, again. No-one wanted to pay for digital downloads, if there was no
physical copy being offered. What was worse, I showed a preview of the Kickstarter
campaign to an influential Commodore 64 hardware manufacturer whose joystick I had
included as a pledge; thoroughly trashed my campaign and informed me I wouldn’t be
using his joystick in my campaign.

Well, I was ruined, this took out all of the mid-range pledges in my campaign, and left
me with a bunch of pledges of less than $15US. I panicked, and posted exactly what
happened on my 700+ member closed group for C64 Code Hacking. Within ten minutes
one of my members informed me he knew of a retro joystick manufacturer, and hooked
me up with him.

Now this guy was very clever, and had already successfully crowdfunded his retro
hardware business. Again, in a community that wasn’t used to paying for anything. In
my opinion, this guy was brilliant, and I would learn a lot from him in the coming weeks.

He had made a quaint, tiny industrial joystick named, “The Clicker”. While I tried to be
enthusiastic about the uniquely styled joystick, we both realised it would be no good for
most Commodore 64 users; unless they had very small hands, or were petite females.

Much more brainstorming ensued, and my hardware partner; as by this time we had
decided to become a partnership in the joystick business; said we should hold a design
competition for someone to build 3D printing plans for a joystick similar to the one I had
been forbidden from using in my campaign.

While this was a good idea, neither of us particularly wanted to throw in $150US each to
sponsor the design competition. It was then that another technique came into play that I
use daily as a web development freelancer; how to make the most of a Google search.
This is a surprisingly simple technique that many people only stumble across and don’t
really realise that it IS a technique. All you have to do, is type in your search, IN PLAIN
ENGLISH. Use the most simple English query that you can think of. In my case, it was,
“Competition Pro 3D Printing Plans”. I was rewarded with the “​ Prof Competition 9000​ ”
on 3dprint.com.

This was EXACTLY what we were looking for; and with no need for a three hundred
dollar design competition. This was 3D printing plans for a joystick that had the style of
the Competition Pro, the most popular retro joystick; but made from real, quality arcade
parts. Well this was right up my hardware manufacturing partner’s alley, as he had
access to the cheapest quality Sanwa arcade parts; right there in China.

We set to work on the “Clicker PRO” or the “Clicker 2.0” as it was initially known as.
Within two days we had a non-functional prototype and my campaign was saved. Now
we did have something we needed to raise money for, and that was five thousand
dollars for the injection moulding needed to produce a quality joystick.

I didn’t realise at this point that the joystick would eventually become the entire focus of
my fledgling business; but I would be forced into abandoning the software publishing
business and associated Kickstarter campaign that I had worked so hard on, and you’ll
find out why in a quite shocking story coming right up.

You see, there was still some opposition to the concept of paid digital downloads, which
we initially were planning to offer for $9.99US; but during a Facebook thread in the
closed FutureVision Retro Publishing House group of over 1,200 members we decided
to drop the price to $4.99US, as well as eventually offering our games on disk and
cassette instead of just 64kb cartridge. But it was also in this thread that I met my
demise.

I am always actively on the alert for “trolls” on my groups and pages, they can be
disruptive to the community and even personally abusive; and I would not tolerate them.
One such troll posted his life story to this productive thread, and claimed that offering
digital downloads would ruin the community and painted me as some kind of money
grubbing monster.

I responded with a level headed comment that basically told him we would, in fact, be
offering digital downloads for $4.99; as other Commodore 64 game companies did as
well, because I am a socialist capitalist and believe in everyone getting a share of the
loot. Well, this guy was a member of the ZX Spectrum community, and apparently
“home brew” software was some kind of holy grail that mustn't be soiled by paid
downloads.

Little did I know, this guy was also a well known ZX Spectrum software publisher, and
had hundreds of active followers. Little did I know this when he continued to troll other
threads, little did I know this when I blocked him permanently from the closed group,
and little did I know this when I sent him a private message asking what his problem
was; and who was he anyway?

Well he didn’t respond well to this at all. I didn’t realise, but my community manager had
invited him to the group because he thought we could work together; maybe I could
publish his games on ZX Spectrum cartridge because no-one else was publishing ZX
Spectrum games on cartridge.

This would be my demise. I am known to react badly to disrespect, and this guy was
thoroughly disrespecting me. The next day, one of my group members seemed to be
trolling me; and I sent him a Private Message to check whether he was really trolling, or
I was just being sensitive again.

He told me an intriguing tale of how he was trolled by my troll, and we were in this
together. It turns out he was lying, but he showed me a video my troll had made
“roasting” this guy. It was quite vehement, and his followers seemed to be attacking this
guy as well.

Well, I wasn’t in the mood for having one of my follower’s trolled by this terrible troll, so I
left a rather rude message on the video. Then I realised the err of my ways and deleted
it. But it was too late, my troll was still notified of the offending message. And boy was
he offended!

Later that day he put up a hateful forty one minute podcast on his new podcasting
platform on Podbean. I didn’t really listen to it, but from the introduction it was clear this
was a direct attack on my credibility and reputation; from a potential direct competitor in
the retro software industry.

I was incensed, and immediately sought options to stop him. I sought the wrong ones.
Whatever you do, never try to intimidate someone with a cease & desist order taken
from a template; and definitely do NOT add the contact details of a defamation lawyer
who is closed for the XMAS holidays.

The troll saw right through it, and taunted and laughed at me in emails. So I took the
next best step, and contacted Podbean administration to let them know of this breach of
their Terms of Use. It took them eight hours to remove it, and by then at least one
hundred people had downloading the offending podcast, and many more had likely
listened to it on the site.

I was a little bit worried; as this guy seemingly had a lot of supporters, and it seemed
like he was encouraging them to persecute me. This time, I was so right.

While I thought this would be the end of it, after having the offending podcast removed
within twenty four hours; this was only the beginning of the demise of FutureVision
Retro Game Publishing House, and all my dreams of making a living from my passion.
At least for a couple of days, anyway.

The troll, or at least someone in his community, put the podcast on a private server
along with a libellous meme with the title, “Damian Caynes MUST BE STOPPED”, to go
along with the slanderous podcast; that made me look even more like a monster. Over
the next couple of days it expanded to encompass every single thing I had done on the
web; and focussed on the particularly negative aspects.

I was really worried now, but was sure it wouldn’t affect the deal with a major retro
hardware company that may have been interested in a bulk order of my joysticks. This
could potentially even pay for the injection moulds and remove all need for a Kickstarter
campaign.

I was almost delirious with the possibilities over those tumultuous days, and reassured
myself with the fact that this CEO knew who I was and respected my work. He even
said he was “disappointed there’s only one of you” as a joke when we first met online.
But it was all going to come falling down around my head on New Year’s Eve, when the
CEO of this company informed me he could not work with me in the short term; as he
had been thoroughly trolled by my troll’s supporters and even some of his friends had
now warned him not to work with me.

The retro community is just that small, and my troll, unbeknownst to me initially; was a
major player in the wider retro community. And my whole focus since the Facebook
debacle had been on the wider retro community.

I was ruined. My New Year’s Eve was ruined, and the Commodore 64 Game
Development Competition I had planned to launch that night, would be doomed in this
suddenly toxic environment.

Now I haven’t shed a tear for more than twenty years, but if I could have I would have
balled my eyes out all night after this development. This was the end of my journey, I
now believed, and there was no coming back from it.



The Final Plan

Again, I was wrong, and this time for a good reason. My hardware partner, also
happened to be close friends with my personal troll; decided he would stick with my
project, even though he was copping pressure from all sides to publicly denounce me
and my project and ruin me completely. But he had had similar troubles with his
campaign initially, and it was my troll that helped him in that situation.

So if I kept him a secret, and claimed I had procured another hardware partner in China;
he would continue to be a partner in my business.

Well I was a mess on New Year’s Day, my entire project in ruins with seemingly no
hope for recourse. But my hardware partner reminded me, you have a joystick business
now; focus on the Clicker PRO and all will be well.

Actually it was a whole day of brainstorming, that led to a new plan. I would do the New
Enterprise Incentive Scheme in the New Year, which taught you how to write a full
business plan, gave you 39 weeks of financial sponsorship in the form of a Social
Security payment that was unaffected by your earnings, as well as a business mentor
for twelve months.

After this three month course, or sometime during the course, we would launch a private
crowdfunding campaign on my website; as my hardware partner had done with his
project. All we would need is five hundred pre-orders for the Clicker PRO, and our
injection moulds would be paid for; and there would be no need for the scrutiny and
potential trolling of a Kickstarter campaign.

In one day, from 2016 to the beginning of 2017; my business was destroyed and then
reborn. I was now well on the path to realising my dream of making a living from my
passion; and the trolls could fester in their crapulence forever as far as I was concerned.
They were no longer a threat to my business.

So I made one final statement regarding the debacle, letting my community know that
this troll had instigated a hate campaign against me and ruined my chances of starting a
business in the wider retro community. Then, because I’m a cheeky bastard sometimes,
I notified my troll; and let’s just say he was more than a bit uncomfortable being
revealed as the king of trolls who had driven a potential competitor out of the industry.
Oh, how the tables had turned.

My hardware partner then had yet another brilliant idea. “The repenting sinner”, he told
me, was a very popular thing. He told me I should make a public apology on the
Commodore 64 community forums, and I wasn’t sure about the concept initially; but
after I had calmed down later with some “smokeable inspiration”, I had a cunning plan.

Yes, I would play the repentant sinner, apologise for my actions in the community; and
let the Commodore 64 community know what the ZX Spectrum community had done to
me. You have to realise the brilliance of this; as the two communities have always been
at each other’s throats over which classic computer was the best. The Commodore 64
was, of course, and I knew that the community would rally around such a story of woe;
of a Commodore 64 hardware developer being persecuted by those nasty ZX Spectrum
users. I also let slip that we would be holding a private crowdfunding campaign on my
website at some point, with the Clicker PRO at $14.99 for a pre-order, and also
cartridge cases in five colours (and transparent) for only $3US and $2US for orders of
fifty or more. And let me tell you, many a Commodore 64 users is pining for a nice new
cartridge case for their naked cartridges. No-one produces them for the community.

At time of writing, that repenting sinner post has had over 150 views; that’s one hundred
and fifty potential customers, with many more to come.

So know this, even after you’ve been dragged through the mud and your name is worth
dirt; there is still a chance to come back from the edge. Although after reading this book,
you shouldn’t have to encounter the melodrama and persecution that I did. Just market
to your niche; and don’t feed the trolls!

Now I begin another phase in my journey; the road towards full time work. Oh it
probably won’t pay very well, but I will be able to live comfortably in a poverty stricken
European country; and that’s nothing to laugh at.

Then I wrote this book on New Year’s night, and the tables were turned. Suddenly the
hate campaign was laughable, and boy did I attempt to make it a laughing stock. But
while I was suddenly liberated from the personal effects of the trolling, my best friend in
the industry and hardware partner informed me at midday on the next day, when I was
very tired and not in the mood for more drama; that I must now apologise to his
associates. Because one of them told him “You cannot work with this person who
teaches people how to spam for money”, or some such. Had none of these backwards
ZX Spectrum yokels ever heard of Internet Marketing, social media manipulation and
did they even realise they were using a social NETWORKING website with which to
communicate? Apparently not, it was apparent that I was the only one who knew these
things, from my years of making cheap websites for Internet Marketing Gurus.

So here’s a valuable tip, don’t let on to your target community that you are using
Internet Marketing techniques on them, they don’t need to know, and you don’t need the
potential melodrama generated by the revelation.

One of those associates was my personal troll of the past week whose campaign had
led to me losing a major business deal with the CEO of another retro company. My
hardware partner informed me, in no uncertain terms, that if I made a mess of this
apology, he would no longer work with me; and effectively ruin my business all over
again. This would have to be dealt with promptly, and with the reconciliatory emails of
two days ago as evidence that I had tried to call and end to hostilities and had offered
my personal troll a FULL PUBLIC APOLOGY. Well, that certainly wouldn’t happen at
this point, but I was willing to make yet another private apology to George and his
associates; whomever they were. But it would have to wait until the afternoon, when
they were awake, and I had gotten some bloody sleep...

Well I eventually refused to be ambushed in a group chat later that day, after a solid
hour of arguing with my “best mate in the industry” of TWO WHOLE WEEKS. That’s
right, I had known this guy for less than two weeks, and when I asserted the fact that I
would post MY apology in a post to my timeline; my hardware manufacture just up and
left the project in a huff, convinced to continue was an unwinnable war. Well, we had
been WINNING up until that very moment, actually. And any “business partner” willing
to abandon me at a moment’s notice, was surely no business partner, and certainly no
friend. So, I gave him a really hard time to make him feel guilty about burning our
partnership and burgeoning friendship, and blocked him on Facebook. As I said at the
beginning of this story, it is far too easy to “rage block” someone on the social
networking website.

I immediately contacted the first hardware manufacturer in China that I found in a quick
Google search, and applied for a quote for a working prototype of the Clicker PRO. Now
my hardware partner said he was, “a man of his word”, and would still send me the
prototypes he was building. Why? I asked him, they’re literally worthless to me now.
And I very sternly told him he’d better not consider manufacturing his OWN Clicker PRO
joysticks, as even though it was his prototype, it was MY MARKETING. The Clicker
PRO was MINE.

Now I would have to shave, and go into the NEIS office the next day and openly lie
about having a manufacturing partner in China, but it wouldn’t make any difference to
them, and besides, I was maligned in the retro community as quite the liar.

The full time business would still go ahead, and so would the private crowdfunding
campaign. I had already been burned many times, and I would keep on burning until
both ends died off. The Clicker PRO business would continue, and I would continue to
apply myself to the NEIS business short course.

But that’s a story for the next book, for now, it’s goodbye from me; and hello to the
Clicker PRO!