A certain segment of the tech crowd is aghast at the prospect of the return of Hunter Moore to the so-called “revenge porn” segment of the web. A breathless story by Jessica Roy in the New York Observer makes him out to be a modern day Antichrist of the Internet, but I can’t help feeling as though Moore is punking the Observer and its outraged readers – any insight from the disinfoverse?
…Mr. Moore is the proprietor of Is Anyone Up, which until last Spring was the web’s most prominent revenge porn hub, a site where spurned exes post embarrassing images of former lovers. Deemed The Most Hated Man on the Internet by Rolling Stone, Mr. Moore revels in his position as a professional antagonist, gleefully flinging around his favored retort—“I really don’t give a fuck.” He doesn’t sleep well at night, but not because his day job haunts him: he’s an insomniac. As for guilt, he absolves himself by reasoning that it’s not him submitting the photos. He’s simply providing a platform for others to do so.
“Why should I care?” Mr. Moore said, taking a sip of his drink. “It’s not my life. It’s literally just a business. It’s stupid not to monetize it.”
Mr. Moore has built a lucrative career off of other people’s naked pictures, and he’s amassed a veritable army of fans in the process. Comprised primarily of young women who tweet him nude photos, and star-struck bros who wish they too could get paid to see girls naked, Mr. Moore boasts close to 100,000 Twitter followers eager to angrily and passionately defend him should anyone challenge his activities.
Prior to starting Is Anyone Up, Mr. Moore said he did party promoting and lived off of money he claimed he got from a lawsuit after he was sexually assaulted at 19 years old while working a retail job. “That’s some crazy shit you sue over,” Mr. Moore said of the incident. “Not some shit like you fucking stuck your fingers in your ass and sent it to some cute boy you met on the internet and then you wanna sue me for that?”
Last spring, following an incendiary Village Voice cover story on his empire, it appeared for a moment that Mr. Moore had had a change of heart. He sold Is Anyone Up to James McGibney, the owner of Bullyville, an anti-bullying site, and wrote a letter claiming that he was a changed man, no longer interested in facilitating the proliferation of revenge porn. It may have been his slyest provocation yet.
“I literally had a half pound of cocaine on a fucking table with like 16 of my friends and we were busting up laughing taking turns writing this stupid letter,” Mr. Moore said of the incident. “I think bullying is bullshit and it’s just a soccer-mom fad.”
Now, Mr. Moore is launching a new project: a revenge porn site called HunterMoore.TV, that will include all of the old content from Is Anyone Up, in addition to new material. Perhaps most astoundingly, he told us, the site will now allow contributors to post the address of a target along with the scandalous photos. HunterMoore.TV will then display the nudes on a map, showing exactly where the subjects of the pictures live.
“I know—it’s scary as shit,” Mr. Moore admitted, noting that the site’s new feature will go live in the coming month…
[continues in the New York Observer]
