CYBERSPACE—Not only has the profligate humiliation specialist Hunter Moore sold his icon "fuck you" website, IsAnyoneUp.com, to an anti-bullying site—which promptly took it offline and redirected traffic to Bullyville.com—but the 26-year-old visionary of juvenile vengeance says he has seen the light and is starting a new career as an organizer of parties to benefit charities.
"These will be some of the largest and craziest parties you will ever see with a percentage of earnings going to a range of causes," Moore wrote in a farewell post on BullyVille.com. Note the "percentage of earning" qualifier.
Moore said on ABC's Nightline a few weeks ago that he launched IsAnyoneUp.com as a place for "public humiliation." That he was successful in that endeavor beyond his wildest imagination apparently took a toll on him, despite its apparent commercial success. The site reportedly got about 5 million hits a month and made between $20,000-$30,000 a month in advertising revenue.
Today, in another conversation with Nightline on the reason why he sold the site, Moore sang a very different tune, telling the news show that he had 'zero in my bank account from this" before selling the site for an undisclosed amount, and that he "originally wanted his website to be 'underground' but it got 'too much attention' and made him feel 'horrible.'"
In other words, it spiraled out of his control and he was personally victimized by its success. If it is not clear by now, we are in the presence of a classic narcissist who is unable to appreciate anything beyond how it affects him. His profession of disinterest in wanting the site to be successful is especially absurd considering the facility with which he courted and created media attention. His admission to feeling "horrible" is even more pathetically disingenuous in that patently twenty-something kind of way in which ambitious young people grasp onto an outrageous idea culled from a personal experience and then commit themselves to it with a nihilist's zeal while simultaneously engaging in an ever-chaotic lifestyle that helps push away any feelings of responsibility about the damage they are doing to others. One tiny bit of proof of that is his pathological inability to utter a simple "sorry."
Not a good place to be, and not a good person to be, but at least Moore saw some sort of light and decided to pull the plug, even if his reason for doing so is as purely egotistical as everything else about him.
"The site was started for the scene and I tried to keep it that way as long as I could by supporting bands and giving them reasonable prices on ad space," Moore wrote in the farewell post. "The bills were getting too insane and I had to turn to the porn game for extra money but it’s too shady and, in my opinion, it ruined the site. That and my appearance on Anderson Cooper didn’t help. The site was a blessing for me and still is, but I am burned out and I honestly can’t take another underage kid getting submitted and having to go through the process of reporting it and dealing with all the legal drama of that situation."
Yeah, that damn porn and those damn underage kids and their drama. What's a hero to do but take the site down and start a party promotion scheme to help charities...a little.
"I am still Hunter Moore," he told Nightline today. "People didn't see me as a human being before but I got to a position now where I can actually help people without the site."
Thanks for letting us know. You fucking rock, dude.
Photo: A crazy party photo with Hunter Moore, eyes closed, reaching for the bottle, planning his philanthropic future. Courtesy of wepartyforacause.net.
