huntermoore.tv

If you haven’t heard of Hunter Moore, here’s a quick debrief: The California-based guy in his late 20s has been often touted as the most hated man on the internet. Why? Because he ran a website, Is Anyone Up—a “revenge porn” site that lets people post embarrassing, exposed photos of their exes on the internet (including their names, home towns, oh, and links to their social media profiles).  And while Moore shut down Is Anyone Up in April (ironically selling it to an anti-bullying website), he hasn’t exactly changed his ways.

Moore’s already soliciting posts for his newest online venture, huntermoore.tv. He’s been planning it pretty much since Is Anyone Up shut down, telling The Daily in August that the new venture will be “‘Is Anyone Up’ on steroids.” The site, which started accepting submissions in November, currently has this message displayed for visitors to read:

huntermoore.tv

My name is Hunter Moore and I created Is Anyone Up.com when I was 24 years old. I was broke and sitting on my parents couch in Sacramento, California with -$124 in my bank account. It was for me and my friends to post pictures of girls we were fucking at the time & somehow someone found it and it became what it was. I sold it because i hated what the media turned it into and it could never be what i wanted it to be and always wanted to troll the lame and boring fad that soccer moms love and thats “bullying”. We had too many hackers too much overhead and way too many legal problems. This time I am doing it right. We are going to start off by launching with all the old IAU content and all new content. The submission page has only been up for five full days and we’ve done over 7,000 submission within that time. I am creating something that will question if you will ever want to have kids. I am making something very scary but yet fun. If you remember the old IAU you will have it back but with a mobile APP to go along with it and a very strong social networking site of our community. I hope you are all as excited as i am.

In early November, Moore tweeted that his new site’s posts would include people’s home information including Google Earth directions on how to get there. He also told the New York Observer’s Beta Beat that this feature was “so you can stalk people.” BUT hey, now, Moore was totes just buggin’, ya dig?

In an interview with Salon published this past weekend, Moore said that he’d been “drunk and coked out” and “really [doesn’t] remember” that Beta Beat interview. He also took to Twitter, saying that, “Everyone is freaking out about the ‘mapping’ on user submitted content on the new site. It won’t be apart of the site i was drunk & trollin.”

OH BUT WAITTTT he actually will post some people’s addresses—just only of those who have wronged him: “People that I troll personally, I’m gonna be taking it one step further and making you look like even more of an idiot,” he told Salon. “It’s going to be me doing it and when people troll me I’m just going to do it 10 times harder. It’s only going to be for certain cases, not for everybody. I don’t want people to kill each other.”

huntermoore.tv

But then he goes on to say, “I dunno, honestly, if someone fucking got killed over my site I’d make a shit ton of money, I’m not gonna lie.”

I’m really not sure what the worst part of all this is. Obviously Moore is pretty despicable as far as humans go, so everyone who reprimands him is, in my opinion, right to do so. And yet, there are so many media outlets (and I’m officially now guilty of this too) that have covered Moore: Rolling Stone and the Village Voice, for starters; he’s also been on TV talk shows like Anderson Cooper’s and been written about on websites like Gawker. Some of these media outlets even sort of glorify Moore, making him out to be fucked-up-experimental-dude more than monster. But is it either/or? I’m not sure. And I’m not sure how we combat people like Moore, either. If we don’t talk about him, he gets to go about his business under the radar, with little legal or social backlash. But if we write about him, if we give him the chance to explain himself, if we refuse to ignore the fact that he has over 99,000 followers on Twitter, are we not just giving him the attention he seeks, unintentionally adding fuel to the fire instead of stifling it?

On another level of disturbing altogether, Moore has become somewhat attractive to many women. He told the Village Voice that women come to him wanting to have sex with him, knowing full well that he was pretty much guaranteed to post something about their sexual escapades on his site the next day. There were also cases of underage kids (he wouldn’t post that on his site, come on, he has morals) saying they aspired to be on Is Anyone Up when they turned of age. The whole thing is messed up and makes me feel pretty sad for a lot of what the internet (of which I am a fan, too, don’t get me wrong) has done to us.

twitter.com/huntermoore

Moore gets off by pissing people off, revelling in the shock factor of his actions. He likes to make people mad, and he’s good at it. So what do we do? If it was up to him, we’d celebrate all the admirable deeds he’s done. Moore took to Twitter earlier this week to make that point clear: “All this press wants to focus on is me being the devil & none of the good things iv done.”

http://specialolympicsblog.wordpress. com

“Every day I get closer to living a life like yours.”

It was 2008 when John Franklin Stephens, who has Down syndrome, wrote those words, but their importance has not diminished in the four years that have passed. A Special Olympics athlete and global messenger, Stephens recently had to once again defend his humanity—and, it seems, the world is listening.

During Monday, Oct. 22’s American presidential debate on foreign policy, outspoken conservative political commentator Ann Coulter set the internet ablaze with her tweet that she approves of “Romney’s decision to be kind and gentle to the retard.”

Coulter meant for the tweet a to be a jab at President Obama. But for Stephens, it was a chance to set her, and the rest of the world, straight on using the r-word. In an open letter on the Special Olympics website, Stephens powerfully and succinctly outlines why using “retard” as an immature slur is so awful. And it has caught the world’s attention, with publications from Gawker and Jezebel to the Daily Mail and Huffington Post writing about it, commending Stephens. Here are his words, in full:

Dear Ann Coulter,

Come on Ms. Coulter, you aren’t dumb and you aren’t shallow. So why are you continually using a word like the R-word as an insult?

I’m a 30 year old man with Down syndrome who has struggled with the public’s perception that an intellectual disability means that I am dumb and shallow. I am not either of those things, but I do process information more slowly than the rest of you. In fact it has taken me all day to figure out how to respond to your use of the R-word last night.

I thought first of asking whether you meant to describe the President as someone who was bullied as a child by people like you, but rose above it to find a way to succeed in life as many of my fellow Special Olympians have.

Then I wondered if you meant to describe him as someone who has to struggle to be thoughtful about everything he says, as everyone else races from one snarkey sound bite to the next.

Finally, I wondered if you meant to degrade him as someone who is likely to receive bad health care, live in low grade housing with very little income and still manages to see life as a wonderful gift.

Because, Ms. Coulter, that is who we are – and much, much more.

After I saw your tweet, I realized you just wanted to belittle the President by linking him to people like me. You assumed that people would understand and accept that being linked to someone like me is an insult and you assumed you could get away with it and still appear on TV.

I have to wonder if you considered other hateful words but recoiled from the backlash.

Well, Ms. Coulter, you, and society, need to learn that being compared to people like me should be considered a badge of honor.

No one overcomes more than we do and still loves life so much.

Come join us someday at Special Olympics. See if you can walk away with your heart unchanged.

A friend you haven’t made yet,

John Franklin Stephens

Global Messenger

Special Olympics Virginia

https://twitter.com/AnnCoulter

What Stephens did is admirable. While Coulter’s comment surely enraged him—and many others—he responded with maturity, poise, and intelligence. It would have been easy to reply in the heat of the moment, lashing out at Coulter, thus sinking to her level. Instead, Stephens acted with the utmost dignity. He was forward and brave with his words, laying blame where blame was due. But he was also honest, sincere, and sensitive, explaining exactly how using the word “retard” as an insult hurts him so much. The letter is both heart wrenching and heartwarming, outlining how Down Syndrome has affected and shaped Stephens’ life.

“I get the joke — the irony — that only dumb and shallow people are using a term that means dumb and shallow,” Stephens wrote in his 2008 Denver Post piece. “The problem is, it is only funny if you think a ‘retard’ is someone dumb and shallow. I am not those things, but every time the term is used it tells young people that it is OK to think of me that way and to keep me on the outside.” And that’s the real shame. Because if anyone deserves to be excluded, it’s Coulter.

The website Two Of Us promotes marriage as “a viable option to 18 to 30-year-olds” and is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the National Healthy Marriage Resource Centre.

The site’s design and polls are reminiscent of a 90’s issue of Seventeen magazine. Side bar polls include such old chestnuts as: do you listen to your partner and can you really change someone?

Gawker took a look at the Do’s and Don’ts from Two of Us; we looked up an old Social Hygiene film from 1949 and found that nothing has essentially changed in the world of dating advice. I’ve embedded the cringe-tastic film above for your viewing pleasure.

In the film, Woody’s mom warns him about the dangers of being late for a date. She dumped her first date because he was late, in favour of Woody’s puntcual Dad. The lesson: tardy people don’t get married. Two Of Us advises coming up with a date-night schedule to ensure you have time to get ready, drive to the date, and park  your car, and to call if you’re running late.

Two of Us also warns readers to avoid getting physical too soon, not for “moral reasons,” but because waiting gives your relationship “a fighting chance.” Woody’s date with Anne drives home this point when she actually runs away screaming as he lunges in for a goodnight kiss after their first date.

If the reason to avoid intimacy isn’t moral then why does an article titled,”Should we live together,” link directly to article on the perils of cohabitation in lieu of marriage, published by the National Marriage Project? The article includes such info as as cohabitation increases a woman’s risk of domestic violence, the risk of divorce and depression. Some of the article’s conclusions have been called into question by the Alternatives to Marriage Project.

Two of Us may offer more carrot than stick than the National Marriage Project, but their goals are the same: to encourage hetrosexual relationships that lead to marriage and babies. Marriage rates in the U.S. have been falling for the last 10 years, while divorce rates seem to hold steady. A website full of dating tips and sketchy statistics probably isn’t going to turn things around radically.