Is Anyone Up?
03/11/24 • 53 min
Sure, the computer gave us war. But sex gave us the iCloud email alert. Ever since Marilyn Monroe was on the cover of Playboy, men have been profiting off of women’s bodies without their consent. Yet if revenge porn has been around since God was a small child, why did it seem to peak in the 2010s? In this episode, Hannah and Maia go back to a time when Hunter Moore, the Gavin McInnes of cybersex terrorism, reigned supreme on the internet with his wildly popular revenge porn website, Is Anyone Up? A website which changed our understanding of revenge porn forever. Join along on this odyssey of legal loopholes, internet vigilantes, and a man named Gary Jones asking for your nudes - to uncover the rise and fall of “the most hated man on the internet”. Tangent includes: Kyle MacLachlan’s feet.
SOURCES:
Russell Brandom, Apple just added another layer of iCloud security, a day before iPhone 6 event” The Verge (2014).
Danielle Keats Citron and Mary Anne Franks, “Criminalizing Revenge Porn” University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, Vol. 24 (2014).
Samantha Cole, How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex, Workman Publishing Group (2022).
Camille Dodero, ““Gary Jones” Wants Your Nudes” The Village Voice (2012).
Erin Durkin, “Hacker sentenced to prison for role in Jennifer Lawrence nude photo theft” The Guardian (2018).
Kashmir Hill, “Revenge porn (Or: Another reason not to take nude photos)” Forbes (2009).
Kimberly Lawson, One in 25 Americans Say They’ve Been a Victim of Revenge Porn” Vice (2016).
Amanda Marcotte, “‘The Fappening’ and Revenge Porn Culture: Jennifer Lawrence and the Creepshot Epidemic” The Daily best (2014).
“Love, Relationships, and #SextRegret: It’s Time to Take Back the Web” McAfee (2013).
Sam Kashner, “Both Huntress and Prey” Vanity Fair (2014).
Roni Rosenberg and Hadar Dancig-Rosenberg, “Revenge Porn in the Shadow of the First Amendment” (2022).
Sure, the computer gave us war. But sex gave us the iCloud email alert. Ever since Marilyn Monroe was on the cover of Playboy, men have been profiting off of women’s bodies without their consent. Yet if revenge porn has been around since God was a small child, why did it seem to peak in the 2010s? In this episode, Hannah and Maia go back to a time when Hunter Moore, the Gavin McInnes of cybersex terrorism, reigned supreme on the internet with his wildly popular revenge porn website, Is Anyone Up? A website which changed our understanding of revenge porn forever. Join along on this odyssey of legal loopholes, internet vigilantes, and a man named Gary Jones asking for your nudes - to uncover the rise and fall of “the most hated man on the internet”. Tangent includes: Kyle MacLachlan’s feet.
SOURCES:
Russell Brandom, Apple just added another layer of iCloud security, a day before iPhone 6 event” The Verge (2014).
Danielle Keats Citron and Mary Anne Franks, “Criminalizing Revenge Porn” University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, Vol. 24 (2014).
Samantha Cole, How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex, Workman Publishing Group (2022).
Camille Dodero, ““Gary Jones” Wants Your Nudes” The Village Voice (2012).
Erin Durkin, “Hacker sentenced to prison for role in Jennifer Lawrence nude photo theft” The Guardian (2018).
Kashmir Hill, “Revenge porn (Or: Another reason not to take nude photos)” Forbes (2009).
Kimberly Lawson, One in 25 Americans Say They’ve Been a Victim of Revenge Porn” Vice (2016).
Amanda Marcotte, “‘The Fappening’ and Revenge Porn Culture: Jennifer Lawrence and the Creepshot Epidemic” The Daily best (2014).
“Love, Relationships, and #SextRegret: It’s Time to Take Back the Web” McAfee (2013).
Sam Kashner, “Both Huntress and Prey” Vanity Fair (2014).
Roni Rosenberg and Hadar Dancig-Rosenberg, “Revenge Porn in the Shadow of the First Amendment” (2022).
Previous Episode
Cybersex Chatrooms
Before “co-authored, interactive erotica” (otherwise known as sexting), we had chatrooms. Virtual spaces where anyone of any race, gender, class, or creed could come together to fornicate with their words. The MUD and MOO chatrooms of yore belonged to a time when Dungeons and Dragons nerds governed the internet - a utopia of beautiful, unadulterated cybersex. But one fateful day in 1993, this would all change. In this episode, Hannah and Maia discuss the origins of online chatrooms, their dark corners, and eventual evolution into child-oriented platforms (like Habbo Hotel and Club Penguin). Digressions include: beautiful house theory, “meat puppets”, Richard Nixon’s brief stint on IMVU, and Maia repeatedly confusing AOL for AIM.
SOURCES
Rachel Seifert, “Striptease and cyber sex: my stay at Habbo Hotel” Channel 4 News, (2012)
https://www.channel4.com/news/striptease-and-cyber-sex-my-stay-at-habbo-hotel
Paraic O’Brien, “Should you let your child play in Habbo Hotel?” Channel 4 News, (2012)https://www.channel4.com/news/should-you-let-your-child-play-in-habbo-hotel
William J. Shefski, Interactive Internet: the insider’s guide to MUDs, MOOs and IRC, (1995)
https://archive.org/details/isbn_9781559587488/page/n16/mode/1up
Habbo, Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habbo
Sara Morais dos Santo Bruss, “CHAPTER 1: The Internet Imaginary and Digital Modernity” Feminist Solidarities after Modulation (2023)
https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.10782316.4
Steve Downey, “History of the (Virtual) Worlds”, The Journal of Technology Studies, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Fall 2014) https://www.jstor.org/stable/43604309
Sherry Turkle, “Tinysex and Gender Trouble” Sex/Machine: Readings in Culture, Gender, and Technology (1998)
Dennis Waskul, Mark Douglass, Charles Edgley, “Cybersex: Outercourse and the Enselfment of the Body” Symbolic Interactions, Vol. 23, No. 4 (2000)
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/si.2000.23.4.375
Samantha Cole, How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex, Workman Publishing (2022)
Julian Dibbell, “A Rape in Cyberspace (or TINYSOCIETY and How to Make One)” My tiny life: crime and passion in a virtual world, Henry Holt (1998)
Next Episode
The Demise of Backpage
Why is it that whenever someone “thinks of the children”, a sex worker is harmed in the process? In this episode, Hannah and Maia tell the story of Backpage - the classifieds website that came crashing down when instances of child sex trafficking was discovered in its seedy underbelly. But while the crusade against the site and its free-wheeling founders seemed well intentioned, the act that was used to take them down (FOSTA-SESTA) has had massive consequences for the freedom of the web, and most importantly, for sex workers. You can never be too altruistic if John McCain is in your corner. Listen for targets such as: Timothée Chalamet’s galaxy print leggings and Hannah being a wittle baby, and Taken (2008)'s continued gorilla grip on our culture.
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Intro and outro song by our talented friend Ian Mills:
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SOURCES
Sofia Barrett-Ibarria, “Sex Workers Pioneered The Early Internet - Now It’s Screwing Them Over” (03/10/2018), Vice. https://www.vice.com/en/article/qvazy7/sex-workers-pioneered-the-early-internet
Samantha Cole, “Trump Just Signed SESTA/FOSTA, a Law Sex Workers Say Will Literally Kill Them” (11/04/2018), Vice https://www.vice.com/en/article/qvxeyq/trump-signed-fosta-sesta-into-law-sex-work
Daniel Oberhaus, “The FBI Just Seized Backage.com” (06/05/2018), Motherboard. https://www.vice.com/en/article/j5avp3/fbi-seized-backpage-sex-trafficking
Samantha Cole, “‘Sex Trafficking’ Bill Will take Away Online Spaces Sex Workers Need to Survive” Vice (2018)
https://www.vice.com/en/article/neqxaw/sex-trafficking-bill-sesta-fosta-vote
Margaret Renkl, “The Alt-Weekly Crisis Hits Nashville. And Democracy.” The New York Times (2018). https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/05/opinion/nashville-scene-weekly-democracy.html
Ryan Singel, “‘Adult Services’ Shutdown Is Permanent, Craigslist Tells Congress” Wired (2010)
https://www.wired.com/2010/09/adult-services-shutdown-is-permanent-craigslist-tells-congress/
Christine Biederman, “Inside Backpage.com’s Vicious Battle With The Feds” Wired (2019) https://web.archive.org/web/20190618114540/https://www.wired.com/story/inside-backpage-vicious-battle-feds/
Megan McKnelly, “Untangling SESTA/FOSTA: How The Internet’s ‘Knowledge’ Threatens Anti-sex Traffivking Law” Berkeley Technology Law Journal, Vol. 34, No. 4 (2019) https://www.jstor.org/stable/26954413
Maia Hibbett, “Who Keeps Us Safe?: Mainstream feminism’s long alliance with the punitive state” The Baffler, No. 53 (SEPT-OCT 2020) https://www.jstor.org/stable/26975643
Andrew O'Hehir “The Backpage.com sex-trafficking scandal, the death of the ‘alt-weekly’ and me” Salon (2018) https://www.salon.com/2018/04/14/the-backpage-com-sex-trafficking-scandal-the-death-of-the-alt-weekly-and-me/
Sara Morrison, “Section 230, the internet law that’s under threat, explained” Vox (2023) https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/5/28/21273241/section-230-explained-supreme-court-social-media
Danielle Blunt and Ariel Wolk, “Erased: The impact of FOSTA-SESTA and the removal of Backpage on sex workers”, Anti Trafficking Review (2020)
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