Well this is a sad state of affairs. I used to be a member of Mixed Media With Suzi Blu on Ning but no more. I made a lot of friends on there, which was why I remained a member after the shit went down, but now I’m just too disgusted to remain and I’m sorry to say that any friends I’ve made there will now have to be so outside of Ning.
I used to watch Suzi Blu videos on YouTube and I just loved her! How couldn’t you? She’s quirky, sweet, full of empowering messages, not afraid to be herself, and doing very cool stuff with art (that I had never before seen). I ate up her videos, every single one – I wanted to be like Suzi Blu, she was something to aspire to.
When I saw she had a ning site, I joined, not thinking much of it. But I soon realized that this ning community was unlike any community I had ever been in. It seemed to be full of friendly, empowering, caring women who were all nurturing their creativity. Everyone was so warm and inviting, it didn’t take long before I started to feel like I really belonged there.
And then there was Suzi Blu, who actively participated (is that redundant?) in her community – she was one of us – posting in the forums and groups, joining in the chats, all of it. I was admittedly humbled to be part of that, to be her peer.
Somehow through all of that, Suzi Blu began to show a special interest in me (no idea why) – I knew she had favourites, but I never thought I’d be one of them, so when that happened I was smug as a bug in a rug – I was friends with Suzi Blu! How cool is that? Friends with the woman I admired! I even had her cell phone number so we could text each other! That doesn’t happen a lot in life, does it?
There were other favourites, one of which I think had been ‘favoured’ well before I came along. The rest of us were “new flavours of the week.”
So us gals chatted pretty much every day in the ning chat room, late into the wee hours of the morning and it was a lot of fun – it felt nice to finally have girlfriends again.
Eventually, Suzi began to refer to me as her best friend. She showed great interest in me and said she felt a bond/connection with me. She wanted me to move to California and live with her, people, so of course I thought she was genuine and I was so happy. She also told me that she wanted me to teach a poetry workshop on her ning in the fall (some of you may remember that).
Anyway, during one of our nightly chats, whilst gabbing about what had been dubbed ‘VulvaGate,’ I jokingly said “Vulva would be a good name for a magazine.”
After that, excitement ensued because my joke quickly turned into an awesome idea that we ‘just had to do.’ I thought it was a great idea, though I was a little nervous about taking on the responsibility as I know e-zines are a lot of work and I have trouble with having too much on my to-do list. But instead of voicing that hesitation, I squashed it down and replaced it with the thought that I was just being a scaredy-cat and that this would be a wonderful project to do with these awesome ladies. After all, the work would be shared among seven of us (it was seven to start with btw) so it wouldn’t be that bad.
We were so excited about this and it seemed we all had the same vision: an e-zine that celebrated and empowered women – feminism as it is meant to be, which is true equality. We also wanted a community based around the e-zine: everything about the community would be based on the principles we wanted to convey in the e-zine – it would be an empowering place where anyone could come and hang out as long as they didn’t spread hate.
After more talking and planning, Suzi decided that all of the extra-curricular activities (non-workshop groups) that were going on in her ning should be moved to this new Vulva community: that way, her ning could be totally focused on her teaching… things would be separated (this was just after the whole Willowing/copyright/pimping debacle) so it made a lot of sense.
This explains to anyone who didn’t know why all of the groups and basically all of the fun disappeared from Suzi’s ning without so much as a warning. Yep, another one of Suzi’s temper tantrums for which she’s becoming famous.
Anyway, all was well and we went along with our project as planned (most of which was divulged prematurely by Suzi herself in this video ).
But things started to go wrong. Sunny (the editor) worked on our project as planned, as we believed everyone was doing. The girl was working her little hiney off – taking on more responsibility than she had to because she wanted to make sure this awesome project would actually happen (even though she had just had a laparoscopy and was in recovery).
We held biweekly meetings to discuss progress on the project. These meetings were pretty horrendous for the most part. It often felt like talking to thin air… I’ll just say that there were some people who took the meetings seriously and some people who made it pretty obvious that they would rather have been elsewhere.
We had a ning set up for staff members of the project to plan everything out, discuss, debate, whatever needed to be done to get Vulva off the ground.
If that ning was still around, I would show you that the participation was pretty pathetic. We would ask a question in the forum about the e-zine or the community (as that was our place to communicate about these things) and no one would respond, because no one bothered looking. It was sad.
Then there was the other ning, the public ning – vulvazine.ning.com - that was to be the awesome community we had planned. Hours and hours and hours of work was put into that ning, setting up, designing it, getting discussions started, all kinds of crap that I don’t even know about. We had groups for knitters (called “Yarncore”), groups to talk about periods and menopause, a group called “Getting To Know Me(me)” where members could fill out silly questionnaires to get to know each other better – there were over 25 groups to cover every aspect of an art-based community for women, all with hilarious hand-picked graphics that took weeks to accumulate. The problem was though, that all of this work was being done by ONE person. One person out of seven. Doesn’t seem very fair eh? I helped :P and so did some other people who weren’t even staff and had no obligation, but the majority of work was done by the editor, one woman.
As time went on, it felt more and more like this was not a team project, that most of the people involved didn’t take it very seriously and had no idea how much work actually goes into this stuff.
One give-away that was pretty ridiculous was the fact that most staff members didn’t even know the link to one or both of our ning sites.
We continually gave people reminders that they needed to really get to ‘so and so’ because the ning community was almost ready to be open to the public and people were still sitting on their asses.
Some helped, some did not.
Suzi Blu did not appreciate being asked to participate (and by participate, I mean that we asked her to make a thread in our book forum, “Cliterati,” about the book club SHE started and deleted from her own Ning) in a community that was mainly her idea, or that’s what I’m assuming, because right after, she basically said ‘listen ladies, this was not what I had in mind – this is not what I signed up for – I do not have the time to participate in this community – I have to paint it’s my income blah blah blah’ and more better-than-though bullshit And I think I forgot to mention that all this time, requests from staff members, Suzi included, for adding new groups to the new ning site kept coming in.
I guess Suzi thought she was the only one who shouldn’t have to sacrifice anything for the project - she was certainly not the only one of us who depended on an income from their art. But it was apparently okay for Queen Suzi (as she likes to call herself) to be excused from any responsibility because for some reason, her stuff is more important than anyone else’s.
Okay so we were a little shocked to say the least… wasn’t it her idea in the first place to go through with all of this? Weren’t we following her plans out to a T? Everything said in that that video about VULVA was what we were working towards. We were quite confused.
So Sunny and I had a discussion and came to the conclusion that in light of Suzi’s sudden change of mind (which I’ve noticed is a pattern with her) we should change things so that the community would be more self-sustaining and there would be less pressure on all of us staff members.
We called an emergency staff meeting that very night to discuss this new idea and to see where everyone was in regards to the project.
When we all arrived at the meeting, the first thing I did was ask everyone how they felt about the project so far. But instead of this being a productive, adult discussion, it turned into a 40 something year old’s temper-tantrum.
Suzi proceeded to pick a fight with Sunny, unprovoked, right from the start of the meeting. It’s fine to argue with someone over actual faux pas, but when you start getting personal for no apparent reason, then you are in the wrong.
The meeting didn’t last long, Suzi stood on her pedestal and proceeded to tell us why this was not her vision, it was Sunny’s and it’s not her fault if Sunny “ran away with it” and how she doesn’t care about community.
She came into the meeting with her defenses up and ready for a fight, and since no one was willing to engage in that pointless nonsense, she said “fuck-it” (literally, she said those words) and promptly left the conversation.
Her next words via text messaging were “I’m done,” which we all interpreted to mean she was done with the whole thing. We spent hours and hours in that chat room feeling upset about what had happened (because we all wanted to remain friends – Vulvazine or not), some of us already suffer from really bad anxiety so we weren’t doing very well to say the least. We waited and waited, meanwhile discussing what had occurred and why it could have possibly happened and analyzing everything to death because not one of us had a clue why this had just happened. We waited for her to calm down and come back in and tell us what she meant and what she means to do. We waited until 5 o’clock in the morning. She never did come back.
So we waited longer. We waited a few days hoping she would come around and communicate something, anything.
We had to make a decision – Vulvazine was to open to the public within days, on April 1st – we debated and thought about what we should do. We all agreed on the same thing over and over again: our friendships are way more important than any of this.
Vulvazine now had this awful stink to it – I certainly felt the need to take out the trash, rid this project before it could do anymore damage to the friendships we had built.
So after writing explanatory letters to both the staff and to the members of the public zine that had come in early to help us build content, we braced ourselves and hit the delete button. Vulvazine was no more.
But we finally did hear from Suzi Blu after I don’t know how many days… yes… I woke up the next morning to find an email in my inbox addressed to all members of Mixed Media With Suzi Blu. If you were a member at that time you got it too:
It would seem Suzi Blu had thought nothing of re-registering Vulvazine.ning.com after we’d deleted it and doing the project all by herself… a project that was never hers to take… a project that we were in together… I was so hurt when I got this email, I just couldn’t believe she could do that! That was so low and disrespectful and sneaky! Yeah that email cut pretty deep. She didn’t even have the courtesy to let any of us know her plans, or any sort of communication whatsoever.
The first thing I did was text her to ask her what was going on. Her reply was that it would be better this way, this way she was in charge.
Okay then.
I don’t remember how long it was before something made Suzi change the whole thing from Vulva to A Lovely Dream [perhaps the threat of the vulvazine.com domain that had been purchased being used for nefarious purposes], but she did, and of that I am glad.
Still unsure if Suzi and I were still friends (as she still hadn’t really said anything to anyone about anything, and ya see I was her best friend, remember? Plus, I had never done anything to her that would make her mad at me – THIS is the first and only) I joined her new Ning and tried to process all that had gone down.
So far Suzi’s behaviour had been passive-aggressive.
I ended up flat out asking her after a week (give or take) if we were still friends and she responded with a very flowery ‘yes of course, I’ve just been so busy with everything but I swear I’ll talk to you as soon as I get a chance.’
I don’t know if this will surprise you or not, but she has yet to talk to me LOL. I gave up any hope that that would ever happen a while ago, despite advice that if she had really been my friend, she would never go that long without talking to me when I needed her (which I did, and told her so).
But you live and learn.
Because Suzi had told everyone our Vulvazine plans before any of it got off the ground, she has made us look pretty foolish because it never did get off the ground.
As far as I know, no one ever explained what happened to Vulvazine… it just didn’t happen and no explanation was given to the public.
We knew what happened, but rather than start needless fights and whatnot, everyone went about their lives and tried to put that whole VULVA mess behind them.
I was perfectly content with leaving it at that, though I wondered why no one was asking, that seemed odd. (I’m still curious about that, actually.)
Well for those of you who wondered, now you know. Now it’s out in the open for all to see… all exposed.
The more I got to know the real Suzi Blu, the less respect I had for her. She says one thing and does another. She is a hypocrite, a phony, a fraud, a charlatan.
Suzi Blu wants women to be empowered and strong and stand up for themselves and not let wolves into their lives and all of that wonderful stuff, but while getting to know her, I’ve seen how she reacts when actually faced with women who possess these qualities: if you disagree with Suzi she does not discuss it nor respect it, she becomes mean and attempts to brow-beat you into submitting or she runs away and lets everyone else clean up the mess. She cannot handle not being the Queen and if anyone dare try, you either give in or you somehow disappear from her magical kingdom, without explanation.
Seriously, have you ever noticed how she is never to blame for anything, no matter what? Ha!
All the time I spent on ning with her and the other members, I have never seen nor heard of anyone disagreeing with Suzi Blu. Why is that?
Well, she seems to thrive on having minions who follow and admire her every move. She’s addicted to having her ass kissed, to put it plainly.
She wanted to get rid of one of the other Vulvazine staff members for no reason other than the girl ‘bugged’ her. Some team player.
We realized that Suzi’s vision of things greatly differed from our own as time went on.
First of all, Suzi Blu makes fun of her ning members/friends behind their backs. Women she is publicly friends with and with whom she preaches her woman empowerment bullshit to. She mocks them for doing the very things she encourages. It’s disgusting.
Even more disgusting, she has forwarded emails she’s received from her ning members so that we could all have a good laugh at their expense.
If you’re sitting here reading this thinking she’d never do that to you… think again, she does it to her ‘friends.’
I have found out the hard way that the real Suzi Blu is nothing like the Suzi Blu she shows everyone. Her videos are bullshit and I feel cheated.
She claims to want to empower women and wants to encourage women to get in touch with their own femininity, yet when a woman does, she makes fun of their self expression behind their back! When all that woman was doing was exactly what Suzi encouraged her to do!
And we all know how she feels about supporting other women artists… she’s all for it as long as you’re the flavour of the week… you can’t just be any woman artist, you have to be Suzi’s friend – she has her conditions… I didn’t know support and empowerment had conditions, but what do I know? And even when she does support her fellow artists, it always seems to turn out badly; the supported artist quietly disappears from Suziland.
What else does she detest… oh that’s right, drama! Yes of course. She hates drama, we all know that right? The truth is she thrives on drama, almost relies on it to keep people interested in her and seems to be continuously enmeshed in it. She creates drama, but is crafty enough in her shenanigans to always come out of it smelling like a rose to her loyal, ass-kissing followers. I’ve seen more drama since knowing Suzi Blu than I’ve seen in all my life.
I can’t believe I ever looked up to this woman. I wish I had never gotten to know her, then I could sit back and watch her videos and enjoy my ignorance… but now it’s all ruined… I can’t watch her videos without feeling hurt, without seeing through her bullshit.
She is not the woman she portrays herself to be, she is just a very good actress who has no problem making a profit by manipulating innocent women. She presents the face she does because it makes her money.
I was deceived. I was a paying customer too – if I had known what she is really like, I never would have wasted a dime supporting her.
Though I do feel sorry for her, I am freeing myself of any correlation between Suzi Blu and myself. I will find artist’s communities that are built on art, not on bullshit. If you have any to suggest, please let me know.
I guess I’m not Suzi Blu’s best friend anymore eh? She dropped me like a hot potato and made a new best friend without blinking. I don’t need to say this person’s name because if you don’t already know who I’m talking about, it doesn’t really matter.
What you should know, though, is that some of us took a double-take when we saw this new development. Ya see, because the new best friend was someone who Suzi Blu spoke pretty bad shit about just prior to her move to California. She left the pretty strong impression that this woman was someone she didn’t want to give the time of day. That’s all I’ll say about that, but it’s just a wonderful example of how two-faced Suzi Blu really is.
I got to know her well enough to find that out.
Suzi Blu talks about helping out her friends but publicly scolds me for sending a message to my FRIENDS about a contest supporting Sunny (an artist and ning member) because it was US. Sunny is a PAYING member.
Now Suzi Blu has a new “crew” of friends to admire her. Like I said earlier, she was going to have me teach a poetry workshop on her ning… now she’s got a new person to fill that role… how easily dispensable we are.
I’ve always wondered what ever did happen with Suzi’s “Dutchie Girls” – were they easily dispensable too? Makes you wonder what really happened with that roommate in Virginia, huh? And sadly, I feel for her current posse… but I can understand their position because I was there too.
Basically, I don’t believe a word the woman says – she’s bad-mouthed people and I’ve believed what she’d said, then later found out through various sources that she was full of shit. (*Ahem Gary Reef*)
I have watched as she has flat out LIED to her followers and students in videos, in videos where in the next breath she's coyly chastising another fellow artist *ahem Jared* for doing the exact same fucking thing. A fellow artist who she's dubbed a "wolf" because all men who don't fall for her Suzi ways are wolves. Now he may be, I don't know him, but from what I now know of Suzi, I take the story she told us of their relationship (online relationship) with a VERY large grain of salt.
I have watched her LIE AGAIN in videos to her followers and students about who she was talking about in previous videos on copyright and promoting your own projects in her community. Flat out lied. Many many times in the same verbal paragraph.
Suzi’s most recent temper tantrum is the straw that broke the camel’s back.
If you’re a member of her ning, you received her mass email on Tuesday night telling certain people to stop “pimping.”
Well this email arrived shortly after Sunny and I sent out messages to our FRIENDS on ning: the messages were not spam, they were a request for help for one of our fellow artists and paying ning members.
If I remember correctly, when KY Kelly sent out a mass email requesting votes for the Shutter Sisters back in late March, there was absolutely no issue about it.
There was no difference between her email and our email, yet OUR email is being called spam, and pimping, and inappropriate, etc. Our email has somehow sent Suzi Blu into another one of her temper tantrums.
She loves to play the victim role and she has hundreds of gullible women there to support her – seems a tad cultish but what do I know?
Anyway, once again, things have not gone exactly her way and so she is now once again inconveniencing her members and paying students by creating yet another new site where things will be different and better as she tends to promise us time and time again. But this time she’s decided to charge you a fee for the pleasure of her company.
I’m going to end this message by saying that I am so happy to finally let this information out, to let people know who the real Suzi Blu is and just maybe prevent some poor girl with low self-esteem from being pulled in by her act and strung along for her amusement to be ultimately left in the dust for someone new and even more gullible.
Her façade can’t be kept up forever and I’m relieved that other people are finally noticing what’s between the cracks. It’s only a matter of time before these familiar Suzi patterns begin again. In fact, if you look close enough, it’s already begun.
-Love Marylin.
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Read the CommentsHow To Get Your RefundLabels: artists, friends, pissed off, projects, suzi blu
