Honestly, it’s pretty simple. Like it says in my previous blog post, the only illegal bit about these spores is if you try and grow them. I sell them for people who are into microscopy, but really you could do almost anything else you liked with them. Bake ’em up into a ridiculously expensive and no-different-in-flavour pie, have the world’s shortest-lived watergun fight, fashion yourself some kind of bizarre spiky superhero-esque suit, whatever, I don’t care.

The only thing I care about is that you don’t grow them. That would be illegal, and if you done did that, and you messaged me about it, then I would (and will!) immediately ban you from any future sales or replacements. I’m not about to jeopardise my entire business or risk not watching my son grow up for the sake of you trying to grow magic mushrooms, and it’s a bit presumptuous to assume that I would.

Gotta love Scarfolk

Now I know that it can get a bit confusing; after all, my personal stance is that magic mushrooms are great, and that they should be legal (why the fuck nature is a crime, I have no idea), and yes, that’s what sorta got me interested in this industry, but that’s not what Orangutan Trading Co does. Orangutan Trading Co sells spores for people to collect. My personal views are, obviously, distinct from what the company does.

I mention this in the purchase email, in the letter that comes with the spores, as an automessage on all of my social media accounts, several places on the website, in quite a few social media posts, and now obviously in this blog (and the last one) just so that everyone’s on the same page. I hate having to ban people, like I say, it doesn’t fit with my personal ethos, but as a business, Orangutan Trading Co sticks to the literal letter of the law. Microscopy, I could help with, but growing magic mushrooms? Yeah, I know how to do that thanks to having a curious mind, but I’m not helping you do it if you live somewhere it’s prohibited.

People tend to get quite indignant when they are too smooth-brained to understand this basic rule. They take it very, very personally, a lot of the time. I think that’s because I’m quite open and personable on blog posts and social media (I don’t just use AI to fill the space with meaningless words, like some of my competitors), so there’s an amount of “personal relationship”, for want of a better phrase, that exists. People take it like I’m judging them (and I am, not for growing mushrooms but for being dumb/entitled enough to ignore the rules), or that they are only one person and so surely a bit of illegal chat is totally cool this one time bro have you got a telegram maybe I could talk illegal to you there and nah, no, that’s not what I do, you have somehow got it wrong and confused me with a business that helps people to grow magic mushrooms, which isn’t the case.

Sometimes, sometimes, people take this the right way and say “whoa shit sorry man, I fucked up, my bad”, and we part ways forever on good terms. I feel bad about this still but the law’s the law, I can’t do a fuckin’ thing about that, and hopefully they’ve learned a decent lesson there for the future. The other times, I get emailed a whole load of abuse. Here’s the thing though: it’s me, Dan, on the end of the emails, and I am not some badly-paid customer service representative who’s gotta follow the script no matter how rude people get. I can, and happily will, tell them to go fuck themselves if they’re being dickheads. I don’t want dickheads as customers in the first place (they can go and use the competition), so it works out fine for both of us. Contrary to any normal business advice, I would much rather turn away a sale from someone who’s an arsehole because my principles matter more to me than money does. Here’s a little example of a message that I got sent just yesterday, from a particularly hard-of-thinking fella who is no longer able to purchase spores from me:

Clown-shoe kinda guy

Personally, I think it’s probably a bit of a clue as to the nature of this chap that he’s happy to email me, from his partner’s email account: “I would fuck your kid”. Somehow that’s become normalised to him. Transphobic, homophobic, misogynistic, and quite happy to say that he’s a paedophile. This is not the kind of customer I would like to be serving in the first place, to be quite honest (not much of a shock, I know). I would be surprised that somehow he’s managed to ignore the content that I’ve produced that might clue him into the fact that I am not into that kinda shit, but I don’t think his reading comprehension is all that great so he might’ve missed it.

I wouldn’t normally even bother posting an email from someone who was mad that they were banned, but maybe it needs saying: “don’t send me photos or text about crimes, don’t get mad if you get banned when you do, and for the love of god don’t write to me telling me you want to fuck my kid unless you want me to go ‘what the fuck bro’ and post it online”.

Most customers are super fuckin’ cool, and are able to read and realise that it’s microscopy only. I’m lucky to have such an awesome customer base, so shit like this doesn’t really bother me on a deeper level (and it has provided some laughs so hey, it’s not all bad), but this chap could’ve saved himself a few minutes, not bothered writing that email, and instead spent the time reflecting on why he’d like to tell a stranger that he’s a paedophile. Might’ve been a bit more constructive.

Anyway! Magic mushroom spores for microscopy (or growing if you’re in Austria or Brazil or wherever)? Yeah man got loads of them and they’re fucking ace.