Hunter Moore. If you don’t recognise that name, you soon will. The 26-year-old founded Is Anyone Up, a site which started off as a platform for jilted lovers to post intimate pictures of their exes as a form of revenge but has since grown into something even darker.
The basic premise of the site, from which Moore claims he earns $13,000 a month, is enough to cause obvious controversy, but the unrepentant some-time DJ has escalated the issue by linking directly to every subject’s Facebook and Twitter page so the entire world can not only ogle private images meant only to be seen by the individual’s partner but also access their online profile with potentially catastrophic consequences.
Not all submissions are made in the name of ‘revenge porn’ either, some claim their images have been hacked and uploaded without their consent and others willingly offer up their intimate pictures to Moore desperate for his approval, and that of the 200,000-odd daily users of the site.
The sad truth is this was inevitably where the obsession with sexting was going to end up. It’s all fun and games to the general public when celebrities get caught out, but for the young adults stung by Moore’s site the decision to send that one-off suggestive message will haunt them forever.
Last week, teenagers in Britain were told sending sexually explicit images of themselves to friends could result in them facing criminal charges after a 14-year-old boy was warned by police for posting a video on Facebook of him and his girlfriend, also aged 14, performing a sex act.
The sad truth is this was inevitably where the obsession with sexting was going to end up
While it’s obvious people will never stop taking intimate pictures of themselves, an improved effort at educating the young on the dangers of their actions and the existence of the vultures constantly circling would clearly be no bad thing.
With pornography seeping out of every pore of the internet and in a world where the celebrity sex tape rules, a worrying desire to post intimate images online at the first available opportunity has developed and needs to be addressed.
Moore dismisses the comments left on his site by girls under the age of 18 (some as young as 14), frustrated at having to wait until they can regularly submit pictures, as an indication of the now unquenchable desire for online recognition, suggesting users’ willingness to be exploited for his own personal gain stems simply for a need to attract a greater social media following.
The 26-year-old’s attempts at justifying his online existence speak for themselves and do not to require any further words here (he describes the messages he receives from underage girls as ‘f****** awesome’ and regularly publishes private messages from subjects begging him to remove images not meant for private viewing).
However, what is worth pondering is where the phenomenon goes next. With our ever-increasing social world, the desire to share more and more and the ease at which content can now be submitted online, a step beyond Is Anyone Up looms large and warnings must clearly be made.
UPDATE: On Thursday April 19, Moore announced he was closing down Is Anyone Up after becoming ‘burned out’, adding: ‘I honestly can’t take another under-age kid getting submitted and having to go through the process of reporting it and dealing with all the legal drama of that situation.’
The site’s domain name has now been sold to anti-bullying group Bullyville.com, which declared: ‘IsAnyoneUp.com served no public good. That is why it is offline.’
