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An Enterprising Band Made $20,000 Scamming Spotify

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An Enterprising Band Made $20,000 Scamming Spotify

A Los Angeles band figured out a way to make $20,000 from Spotify by doing absolutely nothing.

The royalties started pouring in after Los Angeles band Vulfpeck wrote Sleepify, a completely silent album, and posted it to Spotify.

The scheme, intended to fund a tour of free shows, called for fans to stream the silent album through the night as they slept.

The band's fanbase is small—about 1,000 or so—and Spotify's royalty rate is only $.007 a stream, but the overnight plays began to add up.

Fans played the album nightly, each generating up to $3 as they slept, according to an interview in Vice. Spotify soon owed Vulfpeck a $20,000 royalty check.

Eventually the streaming service figured out what was going on.

"It's a clever stunt but we prefer Vulfpeck's earlier albums," Spotify spokesman Graham James said. "Sleepify seems derivative of John Cage's work."

Of course Spotify's sense of humor only goes so far—last week they made Vulfpeck remove the album, citing a violation of their terms and conditions.

[h/t Paste, image via Getty]


Another one bites the dust.

Here's One of Oprah's First Audition Tapes

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Once, long ago, Oprah Winfrey was just a normal, regular person who had to shoot audition tapes, just like the rest of us. That time may be long passed, but her stiff audition interview will live on forever.

Oprah first aired this audition clip during a 2005 broadcast, but it recently resurfaced online after the OWN network began posting back episodes. Oprah, who appears to be aging backwards, is hilariously precise in the 1983 AM Chicago audition as she explains the origins of her name.

"Oprah is Harpo spelled backwards. My folks did not particularly like Harpo Marx, we did not even have a television set in our home for a number of years."

Oprah, the original hipster.

[h/t Devour]

In-between prestige drama like The Americans and the perfection that is Nashville–which we'll be tal

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In-between prestige drama like The Americans and the perfection that is Nashville–which we'll be talking about tomorrow–tonight MTV's got the Catfish season premiere and True Life: I'm A Gay Athlete. Join us at over at Morning After as we learn the truth about some things and the lies about some other things.

Olivia Wilde Can't Differentiate Between John Mayer and Pepé Le Pew

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John Mayer gave some questionable interviews in his day, so Olivia Wilde can't really be blamed for being completely unable to tell his words apart from a cartoon skunk's.

Wilde also clears up the persistent rumor that she said she and Jason Sudeikis had sex like Kenyan marathon runners—"No, I said we fuck like Kenyan marathon runners. But let me explain."

But the real joke of the segment, recorded for Billy Eichner's Billy on the Street series, comes after the game ends. Not since Arsenio Hall has someone expressed so much emotion over a member of Danity Kane.

Harsh Winter Hampers School District's Ability to Test Students' Pee

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Harsh Winter Hampers School District's Ability to Test Students' Pee

The constant stream of snowfall this past winter had a deeper impact than just missed classes. Fremont City Schools in Ohio announced this week that the large number of snow days affected their ability to administer random drug tests to hundreds of students who attend the city's high school.

The News-Messenger reported on Fremont City Schools Superintendent Traci McCaudy's presentation to the school board about the cancelled drug tests at Fremont Ross High School.

McCaudy said, as of April 30, the district had tested 156 of its 702 eligible students under the policy's guidelines. The superintendent said while the district doesn't have a set number of students it will test in a given school year, the poor winter weather in January, February and March definitely affected the number of tests that could be administered.

"We had to cancel many, many drug testing sessions," McCaudy said.

According to the drug test policy on the school district's website, a student's consent to random drug testing is mandatory for ninth through twelfth graders who want to participate in athletics, extracurricular activities, or who drive to school and park on campus.

The policy further states that drug tests are "non-disciplinary," meaning they won't result in a suspension or expulsion from school, nor will a positive result show up on a student's academic record.

To a student, however, "non-disciplinary" is a subjective term.

The first positive test ends with a phone call home to mom and dad, a meeting with a drug counselor, a 36-day ban on parking privileges and extracurricular activities, a ban from playing sports for the rest of the season, 20 hours of community service, and 5 more random drug tests over a 6 month period.

Tokers of Fremont Ross High School rejoice — the weather may have saved you.

[Image via Wikimedia Commons]

NRA versus law enforcement officers.

Airbnb Lobbyist Is Charging $800 for Tickets to a "Sharing" Conference

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Airbnb Lobbyist Is Charging $800 for Tickets to a "Sharing" Conference

It's time to draw a line in the (shared) sand. Technocrats can have "disrupt" and "pivot." Bury those words in a PowerPoint pitch deck; they are lost to us now. But startups must not be allowed to co-opt "share." Just look at the twisted things they want to do with it.

Next week Peers, the lobbying group cofounded by Airbnb's head of community, is co-hosting a "two-day cross sector" in San Francisco called Share, where full-price tickets will set you back $804.95. Sponsors for this conference about sharing include Airbnb (a $10 billion company that has raised $766 million) and Lyft (backed by $332 million in venture capital).

There's a reduced price option: $404.95 for "Startups, Makers, & Non-Profits," accessible to "freelancers and startups" with less than $1 million in revenue.

Airbnb Lobbyist Is Charging $800 for Tickets to a "Sharing" Conference

Airbnb Lobbyist Is Charging $800 for Tickets to a "Sharing" Conference

Peers had the PR agency Derris & Company contact Valleywag in response to questions. The PR firm said that conference is being partly funded by the sponsors and that: "Any money from ticket sales will be invested in the conference and for Peers' extensive scholarship program."

Fast Company has previously reported on what lurks beneath Peers faux-grassroots agenda. "Sharing means caring—but for whom?" the magazine asked in December:

But, so far, Peers members are volunteering much of their time fighting local legal battles that benefit the organization's corporate partners: lobbying state lawmakers in New York City to change the hotel laws for Airbnb, gathering petition signatures to get the Seattle city council to permit Lyft, Sidecar, and Uber to operate, turning people out to council meetings in Los Angeles to protect Airbnb's operations there.

The article noted that Peers was backed by the Omidyar Network, which has been "criticized for co-opting and commercializing sharing innovations," such as relaunching CouchSurfing as a for-profit enterprise.

Peers like to refer to itself as an "advocacy organization." But since the Fast Company article, it's been astroturfing for donations and spreading misinformation.

Speakers at Share include Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, Airbnb investor Ron Conway, Pearl Chan from the Omidyar Network, Brad Burnham from Union Square Ventures, and Uber investor Shervin Pishevar.

Look, it's great that Airbnb's $10 billion valuation has prompted the company to address uncollected taxes and illegal operations. With Uber now embedded in Google Maps, Lyft certainly needs all the help it can get.

But calling this "sharing" is like calling the methodical destruction of the planet climate change. The climate is not changing, we are changing it. These homes and cars aren't being shared, we're paying for it. The sooner everyone admits that, the less they'll feel shafted when Airbnb and Uber go public on the back of all that feel-good sharing.

To contact the author of the post, please email nitasha@gawker.com.

[Images via Share]


Sylvia Mathews Burwell, President Obama's nominee to become secretary of Health and Human Services,

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Sylvia Mathews Burwell, President Obama's nominee to become secretary of Health and Human Services, arrives at the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee for her confirmation hearing on Thursday. Image via J. Scott Applewhite/AP.

Catch Up On Orphan Black (You Should Really Be Watching It)

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Catch Up On Orphan Black (You Should Really Be Watching It)

Surely the old adage "stop and smell the roses" can be extended to "watch every episode of Orphan Black, don't just read catch up posts" but then, I don't know your life, maybe you're one of five kids living in a box car squatting in some bushes watching TV through an old hermit's greasy window and he's been marathoning Gossip Girl re-runs, no judgement. So here's where we're at in the sophomore season of Orphan Black:

Orphan Black continues to cinematically "French braid" the separate lives of its clones, who continue to exist within their own delightfully distinct genres:

1. Helena's queasy horror-movie life has not only continued but gotten somehow even worse. We saw her stagger into a hospital and then later she was snatched by the Prolethean anti-cloning religious cult. She's now recuperating on their fantastically FLDS compound with the help of sneery ginger Gracie.

The Prolethean's creepy/weirdly pro-Science leader shot her previous handler Tomas and in the third episode had her dressed in a white lacy Southern Gothic gown to be eternally bound to him in a suspect handfasting ceremony. (We've seen him with his arm up to his shoulder in a cow's personal regions, this is not a guy you want to casually handfast with.) He then swept Helena down a rusty looking corridor, presumably intent on beginning some DIY clone fertilization experiments. Horrifying! Hopefully someone who's seen footage of her being kidnapped comes and saves her because she may be stabby but no one deserves to be trapped in a Southern Gothic hell with top notes of Warren Jeffs.

2. The unabashed comedy that is Allison's suburbia has taken a Waiting For Guffman-esque turn with her ascendancy to the starring role in community theater musical Blood Ties, a gore-spattered singing and dancing tribute to people who clean up crime scenes. Complicating her moment in the spotlight was inherited from that most basic of bitches, Aynsley, who after getting Isadora Ducan'd by a garbage disposal at the end of season one went on to have a truly Old Navy-level funeral and now is resting under the hilarious gravestone epitaph "The song has ended, but the melody lingers on."

Allison's soccer mom struggle continues to be one of the sharpest comedies of the decade, on the down low. The sinister discovery that her husband is her clone monitor has only ramped up her endearingly high-strung self-centeredness: like, despairing that none of the clone sorority would make it to her play, she mixed some booze and pills and accidentally goose-stepped off the stage mid-song in the last episode. I love her with all my heart.

3. Cosima is holding down the Speculative Fiction Sci-Fi realness at DYAD, installed in a sinister basement lab to make "crazy science" and "unbearable sexual tension" with Delphine, which most recently meant performing an autopsy on a clone that died from the same sort of illness Cosima's currently struggling with. Though Allison warned her that Delphine is not to be trusted, Cosima is like a moth fluttering straight into a flamethrower on that one, and to be fair she's in the best position of any of the clones to materially help them while keeping tabs on high-class corporate hoss Rachel, who's still maintaining a brassy bronze bob like an independent business woman circa Waiting To Exhale.

For real though, seeing Cosima root through the polyp-riddled uterus of her own doppelganger halfway through a coughing fit last episode was trés :((((( !!! I love her so much. I wonder if she and Allison hang on set — oh wait, same actress, sweet Lord she is a genius.

4. Finally the star of TV's tautest thriller, Sara Manning, finally recovered (and then immediately was separated from) darling daughter Kira. It turns out Siobhan and Kira were not kidnapped by the sterile evil geniuses at Dyad, or the filthy fundamentalist nuts over at the Prolethian farm: Mrs. S absconded with Kira to a cozy countryside cell of guerrilla activists, to hang out at a shabby chic manse where Sara herself landed after she and Mr. S left the UK all those years ago.

This reveal elevates Mrs. S from dour guilt-tripping nag to one of the most interesting characters of 2014. In episode 2, we watched her shoot her two fellow activists with cold, ruthless precision when they turned on Sara and Kira, but like whoa, where did that come from? Mrs. S has morphed into this dangerous, morally ambiguous Femme Nikita/Maman Adoptive Nikita who's an utterly delightful subversion of the "Mrs. Potts" manner of maternal figure we're used to. Adding to the intrigue is the fact that when Sara confronted her with the Project Leda photo she flat-out denied any knowledge, although little Kira saw her snooping through Amelia's things, so: what is up your sleeve, Mrs. S? Ninja stars, Mrs.S?

Rather than let Kira depart for London with a character so complicated she has no true television precedent, Sara took Kira, left the cozy safe house and met up with Felix for an extended camping trip that turned into a little B&E of a picturesque summer cabin. When the hunky owner of said cabin arrived, Kira was like "Are you my daddy?" and everybody sobbed "LOOK AT HIS GORGEOUS HAIR, KIRA YES. YES THAT IS YOUR DADDY." A former mark and "moralist with money" Cal is apparently Kira's dad, great at pollinating, and still carries a very sensitive emo torch for Sara even though she grifted him out of $10,000 in the month they were together. Can you blame him?

The appearance of a father figure other than Uncle Felix sent our beloved Fi back to the city rather than suffer the indignity of being a third wheel, which was sort of heartbreaking. He needn't've bovered, Sara's brief stint of calm was almost immediately interrupted by the Super Shady Dyad Dude in a daylight kidnapping scene that separated her from Cal and Kira. Our last episode ended with a truck crashing into Shady Dude's car as he forced Sara to drive them back to Dyad. Cliffhanger! Also, calling all classicists: how much of a spoiler is the project name, Leda, when compared to the myth of Leda and the Swan?

The masterful way direction and editing fuses all of these disparate genres together into one incredibly three-dimensional show is only eclipsed by the surreal perfection that is Tatiana Maslany's performance(s). Every episode I find myself pondering if the show runners already knew Maslany existed and wrote this universe to make the most of her, or if, perhaps, there have been actresses as talented as Maslany in every TV era but because they were as beautiful as Maslany is, they didn't get the chance to play deep, textured characters. It's rare for a female part to be as layered as any one of our many lovely clones, and Maslany continues to give each a soul and reality in a way that I hope inspires future screenwriters to push the boundaries of their female protagonists' character development as far as they possibly can.

Or like, at least make them do a bunch of cool stuff.

[Image via BBC America]

Morning After is a new home for television discussion online, brought to you by Gawker. Read more here.

Cabbie Accused of Drugging Female Passengers Just to Watch Them Pee

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Cabbie Accused of Drugging Female Passengers Just to Watch Them Pee

A Tokyo cab driver has been arrested for allegedly feeding his female passengers snacks laced with diuretics so he could satisfy his fetish for seeing them lose control and urinate on his back seat.

"I got excited by watching women trying to withstand the urge to urinate," 41-year-old Toshihiko Nishi told investigators.

Police searched Nishi's computer and found a collection of security videos showing 50 different women peeing themselves in his cab. He allegedly lured the women into long trips by offering half-price fares, and then offered them crackers laced with diuretics.

One woman said that when she told him she needed a toilet, he refused to let her out, instead passing her an absorbent sheet and telling her to urinate on that.

Nishi admitted to police that he "bought diuretics through the Internet, and crushed them to mix with crackers."

He's being investigated for "committing a violent act."

[Photo: Getty Images]

Startups Are Trying to Bribe Tech Reporters With Equity

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Startups Are Trying to Bribe Tech Reporters With Equity

The dotcom bubble wasn't all piano-jumping and socket puppets. It also involved bribing tech journalists with startup equity. Fortune's Adam Lashinsky reports that it's happening again. In fact, he just got an offer himself, straight from the CEO of a startup he covered.

I was surprised but not completely flabbergasted by the phone call I received a few weeks ago. A representative of Arista Networks, a networking company I've written about recently, phoned to inform me that the company's chief executive wanted to offer me "friends and family" shares in Arista's upcoming initial public offering. The offer was explicit, down to the number of shares I'd have the opportunity to purchase at the IPO price. The caller specifically wanted me to understand this offer came directly from CEO Jayshree Ullal.

I declined. I briefly explained that it was impossible for me to accept the gift that was being offered. I also told the (clearly uncomfortable) Arista rep, with whom I've dealt for stories for Fortune, that it is a horrible idea to be making these shares available to me. That's because the company must be similarly propositioning other business partners who, like me, are neither a friend of the company nor family members of its employees.

It's not just corrupt equity exchanges, Lashinsky argues. For signs for the bubble, one need only look at the proliferation of tech media:

Silicon Valley is the hottest story going these days, and not just because The New Yorker, New York magazine, and the New York Times Magazine have discovered it. New digital publications devoted exclusively to covering technology have sprung up, including PandoDaily, The Information, Re/code, and Mashable. That, in turn, has provoked a frenzy of tech-coverage hiring at the likes of the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News. All of these reporters are now competing for what a wise editor at one of these publications calls "micro scoops," stories that are fresh, exclusive, newsy — and most likely irrelevant to all but a group of people you could count on your hands and feet.

I believe TechCrunch editor Alexia Tsotsis said it best in 2011:

The number of lines under a Techmeme story indicate the echo chamber has only gotten louder since then.

Startups Are Trying to Bribe Tech Reporters With Equity

But as we've said before, this booming, round-shaped thing we're in is different from the last. For instance, this time around Henry Blodget is the one pointing out the ethical pitfalls.

To contact the author of this post, please email nitasha@gawker.com.

[Image via Shutterstock]

Why Facebook Kept Up Photos of a Marine's Bloody Suicide

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Why Facebook Kept Up Photos of a Marine's Bloody Suicide

When Marine veteran Daniel Rey Wolfe signed on to Facebook on Monday night and announced he was taking his own life, documenting the process in a graphic timeline of final self-portraits, his former comrades worked quickly and purposefully to save their brother-in-arms.

Their best efforts came too late. Wolfe had killed himself—a fact that Facebook reminded them of over the next two days, as the social-media site refused to remove the grisly series of photographs he'd taken of his suicide, despite the requests of his friends and veterans' organizations.

Wolfe was an amphibious assault vehicle crewman in the Marine Corps, a father, and a lifelong artist with a passion for loud music and graphic design. He also appeared to struggle with money and politics and purpose—struggles that culminated in Wolfe taking his own life with a blade in a squat outside Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Monday night.

Why Facebook Kept Up Photos of a Marine's Bloody Suicide

Wolfe's passing is the kind of postwar tragedy that illustrates how American veterans still need more resources and counseling than they're getting, as the wars wind down and the Department of Veteran Affairs wrestles with corruption and increased workloads.

But his suicide also throws into relief the difficulties that social networks face in creating a one-size-fits-all policy to moderate photographs and status updates. And, critically, it reveals a macabre blind spot in Facebook's "community standards," behind which a suicide victim's final moments can appear on the site indefinitely, despite the protestations of people who loved him.

"His friends and family were exposed to images they should never had to [have] seen," Douglas Tripp, one of Wolfe's former Marine comrades told me in an email. "Who needs to see their son, brother, cousin or friend like that? They will remove a picture of a bare ass or exposed breast with the quickness. How are those more dangerous than a young man mutilating himself before he commits suicide?"

Wolfe served in the Corps from 2004 to 2008, including a trip to Iraq. An imposing guy at 6'3" and anywhere from 260 to 300 pounds, he "had a good personality and could burn pretty much anyone," one shipmate said of him in a Facebook tribute. His social media postings depict a man with a soft spot for his drawings, his daughter, and guns, not unlike many of his comrades.

But he'd had a rough time of it lately. In recent years, he collected a string of speeding tickets and two arrests for undisclosed charges in Southern California. He was taken in for public intoxication in Texas. And he was known by the police—not as a troublemaker, but as a troubled man—in his latest haunt, the Tulsa suburb of Broken Arrow. "We had run into Daniel one time or two," says Maj. Mark Irwin, the spokesman for Broken Arrow's police department, "going from place to place." He was known as a guy who was "down on his luck," and several officers in the department with prior military service had offered him help in the past: "One of the officers, she gave him a little bit of money."

Perhaps it was the transition to civilian life, which had bothered so many of the fellow Marines who had served in Wolfe's unit. "You get home and it feels like you have been stuck in time, you feel isolated, you do the things that you did in the Corps—wake up, PT, make your bed," Tripp says. "The way you talk the way you interact with other Marines isn't social acceptable. Friends don't understand what you went through. You have no job, nothing to do. If you do have a job, it feels unimportant."

Whatever troubled Wolfe, by Sunday night he'd had enough. His Facebook updates began to take a morose turn.

Why Facebook Kept Up Photos of a Marine's Bloody Suicide

Why Facebook Kept Up Photos of a Marine's Bloody Suicide

Why Facebook Kept Up Photos of a Marine's Bloody Suicide

Why Facebook Kept Up Photos of a Marine's Bloody Suicide

After that, Wolfe posted four photographs. The first one is of half-empty bottles of vodka and Jack Daniel's on a house floor. The corner of a handwritten note pokes into the frame on one side, with two words visible: "ROT IN".

The caption Wolfe gave the photo was "Byeee bitches."

The final three photographs show a left leg and arm with numerous cuts and scratches grooved into them. Deep punctures are visible on the leg.

"Is it real yet fuckers," Wolfe asks in the first caption (all quotes sic). One commenter responds at 8:45 p.m.: "what do you mean is it real yet fuckers? Some of us tried to help you." A second adds, half an hour later: "And still currently trying to help."

On the second of the grim series, a flurry of friends begins to comment, urging Wolfe to tell them where he is and to reach out to someone, anyone.

Why Facebook Kept Up Photos of a Marine's Bloody Suicide

On the final photo, Wolfe comments: "Im leakinging good now."

The graphic photos began to pop up in friends' news feeds, unbidden, as other people commented them, Tripp says. "That's how most of us saw them."

By Tuesday morning, Wolfe's Facebook friends were marshaling their resources on his Facebook page to try and locate him. "I will continue doing what I can but this is a group effort I will keep all informed and have not and will not rest until he is found," one wrote.

"Apparently he was seen recently in Broken Arrow, OK," another responded. "They found his phone in a bush I guess."

Another: "When I talked to the VA Crisis Line, they are familiar with his name (I think from many of us calling last night) and they are working with the local authorities to do what they can."

Another: "battles in distress have contacted local police hospitals and firedeparts men looking for him."

The concerned men and women cast wide nets, contacting everyone they could, placing alerts on their military group pages.

Irwin told me that Broken Arrow police officers found Wolfe's body in "an unoccupied dwelling" late Tuesday night after a call from neighbors. "As a matter of fact, it was right by City Hall," he said.

Irwin, disappointment in his voice, estimated Wolfe had been gone less than a day: "He had used a knife and had cut himself up pretty bad."

Immediately after news of Wolfe's death reached his Marine friends, they set out reporting his grim photos to Facebook, so the site could remove the images from his profile. They had a good case, too: "Facebook takes threats of self-harm very seriously," the site's community standards state. "We remove any promotion or encouragement of self-mutilation, eating disorders or hard drug abuse." Elsewhere, the guidelines state: "[G]raphic images shared for sadistic effect or to celebrate or glorify violence have no place on our site."

Yet when dozens of people reportedly contacted Facebook about the photos, they got a startling response. Gawker was first made aware of the issue when one of Wolfe's friends emailed us the screenshot below. "We reviewed the photo you reported for containing graphic violence and found it doesn't violate our community standards," the response reads, directly below a copy of each unsettling photograph.

Why Facebook Kept Up Photos of a Marine's Bloody Suicide

Despite the intervention of so many individuals—and other advocacy groups like the VA's crisis hotline and Battles in Distress, according to Wolfe's online friends—the photos remained up.

"It hurt and outraged me," Tripp says. "When we would report the pictures they would tell us thank you for trying to make Facebook a safer place, but the images didn't violate their terms and conditions. When it clearly says images of self harm and mutilation are against their policy. How does leaving those pictures up make Facebook safer?"

His comrades began to stew inwardly, and to vent on Facebook. "I wish we could have done something," one wrote to a fellow member of their old unit. "I just hope you weren't on his other profile..."

His friend replied: "I didn't want to link that profile because I didn't want people to see that. It pisses me off that facebook won't remove those pics I've asked numerous times as have many other people."

"I hear ya," came the response. "I was hoping you didnt see it... if you need me man, I'm here."

I contacted Facebook by email, and after a few hours of go-around, one team member sent me the link to the site's "community standards." There seemed to be a disconnect, I responded: How was it possible that the bloody photos of a suicide didn't violate the community standards?

No one at Facebook would speak to me on the record. Reached on the phone, one company representative finally told me that the standards forbid "promotion or encouragement" of harm, but that they distinguish between those cases and someone who is documenting their own self-harm. "We have been advised by experts in that space that removing content could be detrimental" to efforts to rescue a person making a public cry for help, however grisly, he said. The photos, in effect, become a forum for loved ones to intervene in the troubled poster's life.

That certainly bore out in Wolfe's case, where his friends rallied to his aid on the social media site—both on his macabre photo posts, and elsewhere. But what about after intervention was moot? I asked. Surely some allowance must be made for a Facebook member who has passed on.

"If someone dies on Facebook," the representative said, "you basically have two options. One is to memorialize the account. The other option is for family members to chose to have the account removed."

In this case, the employee said, they would "temporarily" remove Wolfe's entire account, pending a ruling from his next of kin. But I got a sense that if the media hadn't gotten involved, nothing would have changed. Based on what the employee was telling me, the photos by themselves did not violate their standards and would not have otherwise come down. "The person has chosen to show those photos," the representative said. "That's why we provide families the option."

That's a common and laudable assumption: Families come first. But Wolfe's case seemed to stretch that assumption to the breaking point. First, what family wouldn't want Facebook to take the initiative and remove those pictures before getting in touch? Second, what about a vet's military family?

For further inquiries, Facebook referred me to one of their expert consultants, Dr. Dan Reidenberg, a sought-after public speaker and director of "SAVE: Suicide Awareness Voices of Education" who has established a set of suicide-prevention best practices for online companies. Reidenberg returned my call after he'd finished up a press conference on social media guidelines with TV self-help guru Dr. Drew and "edutainment" mogul Brian Dyak."These are all new boundaries, relatively speaking, with social media," he said, adding that he had worked with Facebook for "six or seven" years.

"The research tells us that there is an increased risk of 'contagion' with suicide where graphic images are posted," he said. But where to draw the line between acceptable and taboo content is difficult, all the more so for a company with hundreds of millions of users posting content: "Just the photo itself, as graphic as it is, just the image, we can see lots of that online."

Nevertheless, Reidenberg reassured me, Facebook "has been at the lead of that effort" to deal with cases in the most sensitive way possible. "They take it very seriously."

Dr. Craig Bryan, a psychology professor who runs the National Center for Veterans Studies at the University of Utah, told me in an email that the images "could trigger other vulnerable peers"—but an even bigger concern to him is that they could stall the grief recovery process, especially among those who attempted to reach out and intervene. Wolfe's friends may be naturally tempted to experience survivors' guilt, a sense that they didn't do enough, Bryan says, and the photos could be a visual representation of their perceived failures:

But the reality is that his friends didn't just stand by and let it happen. They did what was reasonable and what is expected of them: they intervened and tried to save his life. The tragedy of this case, and with suicide in general, is that sometimes we don't get the desired outcome even when we do things right.

PTSD and the romance of the troubled vet get bandied about a lot in the post-Iraq, almost post-Afghanistan era. But this was no academic question. Wolfe's comrades clearly were shaken by the images, and the manner of their posting. Perhaps it deepened their sense of helplessness, or it offended their basic compassion, or it reeked of pencil-necked Silicon Valley civilians dishonoring the Dan they knew with an unfeeling bureaucratic code. Perhaps it was all of those prospects and more. God knows I felt that way, looking at the photos, not knowing Dan or his shipmates. Whatever their reasons, Facebook's policy put these men—who used the site to proudly display their toughness, their love of sports and guns and lifting and the Corps—at risk of serious, debilitating trauma and stress.

They kept themselves busy, perhaps to help them cope. Marines don't give up, but they do prioritize. As the news of Wolfe's passing hardened into reality and Facebook seemed to give them the brush-off, his shipmates began to focus on other missions. Two of them asked their shipmates for advice on how to arrange a fundraiser for Wolfe's daughter. (One of Wolfe's cousins reportedly was setting up a site for donations.)

Tributes and reminiscences began to pop up on their pages. There were questions about funeral arrangements. Perhaps most important, they began to look to each other, to really ask how each other felt, to make sure everyone knew they had help available if it was needed:

In light of Daniel Wolfe losing the fight with his demons the other night.

Warfighters, how are you doing?

We are the tightest community in the Marines, maybe the whole US Military. If you need help, sound off. I don't know any of us that wouldn't take somebody in, to help get them back in the chute. If you need a hand, a talk, a meal, or hell even a hug, you need to say something. If you are in the Houston area, contact me. I'll drop everything if need be. I know I'm not the only one.

The responses came in from all over the country.

I'm here as well an willing to drop everything. Whether I know you or not. Brothers...

If anyone needs help and is in the Massachusetts area, come see me.

Ditto. Charleston, SC

Ditto Buffalo, NY

same here in muskegn ,mi

Greater Pittsburgh, PA area

Semper Fi. Katy, texas

And on, from Las Vegas to Lexington to points between.

Finally, after my phone conversation with Facebook's representative, late in the afternoon on Wednesday—nearly two days since Wolfe had begun his very public exit—his social media profile vanished from the site.

In its place, the company substituted an image:

Why Facebook Kept Up Photos of a Marine's Bloody Suicide

[Top image by Jim Cooke]

Working at Amazon Is "a Soul-Crushing Experience"

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Working at Amazon Is "a Soul-Crushing Experience"

In the past week, we've heard from a parade of Amazon insiders—both warehouse workers and white collar employees—speaking about the serious flaws in the company's intense, sometimes inhuman work environment. Today: two more employees speak about high turnover, panic attacks, and the Amazon's military lifestyle.

"The worst employer"

I worked at Amazon for almost 4 years. It was the single-worst working experience in my 20 year career.

I have worked at other big tech companies like Microsoft and thought that would prepare me for a job at Amazon corporate - but that wasn't the case.

I started out in a team that supported third party sellers on Amazon. I was supposed to work as an account manager but ended up with a completely different job on the quality team (Amazon is so big on lean management and I worked as a Kaizen specialist). As other past employees have pointed out, job description switcheroos are very common at Amazon. I worked for a manager that slept in his car on Sunday's so he could be in the office bright and early for the weekly business review with top management. This was after running data reports every Sunday beginning in the morning and not finishing until very late at night. This happened weekly. And during business planning (Operational 1 and 2) twice a year, it was common for us to sleep in the office so we could get the giant data pulls done that management asked for.

I didn't get any training other than in how to resolve customer issues. I was supposed to ask other people within Amazon how to do things. My manager even stated that it wasn't his job to help develop my career - it was mine. I was in the office 60 hours a week. I worked on Christmas almost every year I was there. I was on call for any customer issues. And during the evenings, I had conference calls with India 3-4 times a week beginning at 8 PM and lasting until 11. I missed anything my children had during the day or in the evenings because I was working. No one on my team had children except me (some managers did but their spouses stayed at home). During a snow storm when the entire city shut down I called my manager and told him that I couldn't come into work because my children were off school and my husband was out of town and he told me that he had snow tires on his car and would pick me up (as he had done with other people on the team that has called in).

I knew that I hated my job within one week of taking it. But I thought that if I moved teams it might be a different experience - but it wasn't. I ended up working even more. My new manager was a former Army Captain and West Point grad. (It was pretty common to have former military officers in management positions). He was the only person on my entire team that had children. The team was made up of recent college grads and 30 somethings. I thought it was strange that I was the only person that had a family. But it became apparent that it wasn't really looked upon as a good thing. I had to miss a conference call with India for my daughter's school play and was told that I was expected to work around their schedule because they weren't authorized for overtime.

I worked in the office just as much as my past job, but I worked at home on conference calls, training, and weekly business reporting even more as we had a huge team in India that did all of our testing. I was so exhausted and burnt out all the time. But I was told that there were always people around to replace me. I was also constantly being compared to other level 6s that worked on my team (Amazon's corporate levels go from 1-12. 1's and 2's are interns and level 12 belongs to Bezos) and told that I wasn't doing as much as some of the other level 6s. But when I asked what else I could be doing I was told to just do more.

I started having panic attacks and had to lock myself in one of the quiet rooms at work because I couldn't get myself together. Finally, when one of my stock grants had vested I told my boss that I would be leaving Amazon. I gave him two week's notice. He told me that I needed to train someone to take over my position in India and that really needed me to stay 4. I only agreed because I knew that if I left then one of my incredibly over-worked team members would have to take over for me.

I am a tough cookie - I have never cried at work, even when a friend died of cancer. I don't believe that anyone owed me anything. But working at Amazon was a soul-crushing experience.

As others have stated, Amazon is a fantastic company for the customer. The leadership principle that everyone exemplified was to start at the customer and work your way backwards. But they are the worst employer and steward for the community.

And this, from a current Amazon corporate employee in a major east coast city (bolding ours):

It's very strange to see your feelings corroborated in the words of several strangers, but what's been previously documented is exactly my experience during my years at Amazon. The average Amazon employee stays with Amazon for 14 months. 14. Months. I have been with the company for less than 5 years, and have been there longer than nearly 80% of the employees. For a company that prides itself on efficiency, a turnover rate like that seems painfully inefficient—and painful it is if you're the one left while your co-worker exits. The work will definitely fall on you, and if you manage to hold things together, even just barely, you'll see that headcount vanish, and suddenly you're doing the work of two people.

Let's talk about leave of absences and people who quit—never in my professional career have I worked somewhere were so many people either walk out or simply disappear. I've encountered more than one employee who has gone out on a mysterious leave of absence only to never return and severe all social ties with other co workers never to be heard from again. We're talking block on linkedin kind of severing.

I've read the comments some people have posted, and I'd like to set the record straight on a few things. The "pay to quit" program is nothing but a PR hoax. That option is only offered to fulltime warehouse employees, of which there are few. It's well documented that the vast majority of warehouse employees are temp workers. Of the very few people who qualify for the program—it's offered during review season, which is when raises, promotions, and stock grants are given. Anyone with a brain knows that $5,000 to quit your job is a terrible deal. It's mostly intended for the poor performers—a way for Amazon to avoid firing an employee and paying unemployment.

Also—many comments reference that if you don't like your job then just quit. You know what, you're right. You can just quit, and if you're that unhappy with your job I would argue that you should. However, I think the larger point here is that this is all a terrible way to run a successful corporation. Amazon needs its employees just as much as it needs its customers, and the fact it doesn't understand that is what hinders its overall success. Other players in the space offer lots of perks to keep employees happy—decent health insurance (Amazon's is terrible), snacks in the office, discounted gym memberships—Amazon does none of these things. Are employees entitled to it? No, we're not, but when it keeps the company from getting and retaining the best talent—the very talent that is necessary to keep the company going and innovating, then it's probably a good idea to offer a few things. I'm not an organizational psychologist, but I'm confident that there are studies out there that say that happy employees work harder, longer hours, and stick around for more than 14 months. If you're an average person reading this you probably aren't outraged, but if you're an Amazon executive or shareholder you absolutely should be.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that Amazon is evil, but it is certainly a contentious work environment where people will literally step on each other to climb to the next level (Amazon's level structure has also been documented), and are even encouraged to do so. If you want a raise—you better figure out a way to eliminate the job of someone below you. It's not the most sinister and I'm definitely not being abused, but I think that the culture is such that it's very difficult to be successful, and ultimately not worth the rewards. Because of this Amazon will remain a stepping stone for most; not a place to settle into a career.

Oh, and I completely agree that the review process is absolute garbage. If you ever had a bad day and said something to someone that was even slightly snarky it will come up, completely out of context, on your review. I know several people who have had "becomes visibly frustrated at times" called out on their review. I get visibly frustrated when people try to come onto the subway car before letting me out, let alone when I'm at work and multiple people have given me conflicting deadlines on projects. The bottom line is that you should never have an emotion. Ever. Of it will be seen as a weakness. Your manager can complain and gossip to you endlessly about people on your team or on other teams, but never do the same. It will come up on your review that you're a complainer.

The PIP thing is also completely real, and I've known a few people who have gotten one completely out of nowhere. While nothing this terrible has ever happen to me I have seen it happen around me. I have known people who have been screamed at by their managers, cursed at, and even had comments made to them that were blatantly racist. While my personal experience hasn't been completely tragic, I definitely tell anyone who will listen that it's a terrible company to company to work for and they should seek employment elsewhere. Despite hefty monetary incentives for getting someone hired, I don't refer people.

[Photo: Getty. You can email the author at Hamilton@Gawker.com]

Goodbye to Katie Cotton, the Queen of Evil Tech PR

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Goodbye to Katie Cotton, the Queen of Evil Tech PR

After 18 years of spin, Katie Cotton, Apple's magnetically ruthless vice president of worldwide corporate communications, has left her job, and tributes from the tech press are pouring in. What no one will admit is that we were all afraid of her.

Recode described Cotton, one of Apple founder Steve Jobs' closest confidantes, as an "impresario" who "helped shape Apple's story." The Verge noted Cotton had "played a big role in shaping the tone of product launches and Apple's persona, from its struggles in the 90s through its huge hits through the 2000s." To the Wall Street Journal she was a "powerful gatekeeper." TechCrunch called her product launches "epic." CNNMoney quoted A-list Apple flack John Gruber's fond memories of Cotton.

But the real tribute to Cotton isn't merely that tech writers are praising her. It's that they're praising her despite despising her. Even at the end of Cotton's reign, journalists are still in such a state of terror and awe they don't dare speak openly about her reign of silence and smokescreen.

CNNMoney's Gruber-quoting article was actually the site's second goodbye post to dear Katie—the first, by Philip Elmer-DeWitt, was pulled down quickly after appearing last night, and included a rare moment of frankness:

Cotton was the iconic Apple public relations professional. Fortune's Miguel Helft, who worked with her as the Apple beat reporter for the New York Times, describes her as "polite but rarely helpful."

"She was always cold and distant. And she complained to my editors that I didn't seem to love Apple's products as much as she hoped I would. We tried to explain that loving Apple products wasn't part of my job description, but that never registered."

That Cotton survived so long working for a client as difficult as Steve Jobs is something of a miracle. The official line is that she's leaving to spend more time with her family. And in her case — as the mother of twins — there might be some truth to that.

But it's also true that her job description changed when Steve Jobs died.

I haven't heard back from CNNMoney about the post's disappearance. But if you ask around, tech writers are more than happy to tell you about Cotton's brilliance. Anonymously, of course.

One writer I spoke with described her as "pure evil," a "ruthless enforcer for a cruel if brilliant autocrat. The ugly side of Steve Jobs personified." To another, she was "kind of wicked witchy." Another editor summed up his interactions with Cotton as only being brushed off and directed to an underling, if there was any response at all.

My former Gizmodo colleague Jesus Diaz, who weathered the worst of the storm over the blog's early purchase of an iPhone 4, recalls a rare returned phone call from Cotton, the "Darth Vader to Steve Jobs' emperor," after inquiring about Steve Jobs' health: "She was angry...fuming...so angry it was hard to understand her. And then she hung up on me."

It's easy to take these impressions as evidence that Cotton was terrible at her job—as at least one writer does:

I find it insane that she's held up as some kind of PR genius. Steve Jobs did everything at that company when it came to getting attention for their products. Apple's PR team does the least of any PR team in the world and could be replaced by a voicemail that says, "No comment" and "the suicides at the factory are down this month." She was a gate keeper to Jobs and had power in that role, but the idea that she's especially talented at PR and marketing is laughable.

But it's hard to argue with the evidence: Nearly two decades as the chief of communications for the most talked-about company on the planet. Sometimes imperious silence says a lot more than eager, deferential begging.

Like the Staatssicherheit before it, Apple PR operated on two main principles: silence and fear. Whereas some companies employ publicists or communications departments that will provide lengthy, whitewashed answers to questions, Apple went the other direction. Ask a tech reporter about covering Apple, and you'll get a sad, brief tale something like a Craigslist Missed Connection. Apple refuses to answer questions almost every single time a question is asked, and negging the media helped create the aura of Man-God worship that floated the Cult of Jobs and still buoys Apple's share price today. After all, if they refuse to talk, there must be something good they aren't talking about.

It also makes you wonder what the hell Katie Cotton actually did. How does a communications executive at a company that largely refuses to communicate spend her days? This was where Cotton's real skill came, in the second principle: fear. When Apple's mouthpiece wasn't copying and pasting non-responses (Google this sometime: "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans"), it was demoralizing, abusing, and confusing the people whose job it is to write about Apple. That meant: ending interviews when they didn't go how Apple wanted.

That meant: outright lying about Steve Jobs' health when he was actually dying of cancer.

Goodbye to Katie Cotton, the Queen of Evil Tech PR

Even Gruber, in his farewell post to the adopted mother at Apple, mentions a superbly creepy Cotton moment as he waves a hanky goodbye:

As I took my seat, Katie Cotton, sitting in the second row, smiled and greeted me. "Hi John, glad you could make it. How's the cold?"

I was feeling fine, the cold not much more than a memory at that point, and told her so. But I had to ask, laughing, "How did you even know I had a cold?"

Before she could answer, Greg Joswiak, sitting directly in front of me, turned around. "John, Katie knows everything."

Charming!

Most of all, Katie Cotton's tenure consisted of this cold distance from the tech press, presenting herself (and Apple) as an unfriendly, hermetically sealed monolith. She ignored calls, ignored emails, and even offered the vague promise of cordiality, only to yank away a possible meeting at the last moment. It was a commanding, charismatic meanness that helped cultivate Apple's self-image of frigid supremacy.

Cotton's departure is sudden and a bit mysterious, explained with a canned non-starter of an excuse: She wants "to spend time with her children." (Hmmm.) As the last few days have made clear, few reporters will ever badmouth her, lest they irk the wrathful corporate counterintelligence apparatus she spent 18 years building at Apple. (Or lest they receive an infuriated phone call from the VP emerita.)

But her legacy is secure. The Cotton School of Public Non-Relations has spread throughout Silicon Valley. Silence, punctuated only by occasional favoritism and browbeating—she really was Steve Jobs' number two—pervades the new giants of Facebook, Twitter, and Google, companies that know they don't need to pitch the press, because the press wakes up every day enraptured by that silence.

Apple did not respond to a request for comment.

Photo: Getty


Watch Bill Nye "Bully" a Climate Skeptic With Facts on Crossfire

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Bill Nye the Science Guy brought a gun to a knife fight by trying to employ actual facts in a debate about climate change on CNN's Crossfire earlier this week.

Nye was there to discuss the White House's terrifying new National Climate Assessment, which found that climate change "has moved firmly into the present," and it's going to cost a lot of lives and a lot of money over the next century. He agrees with the findings of the report.

On the anti-science side of the table, Heritage Foundation economist Nick Loris attempted to make the case that devastating storms and drought conditions aren't that bad, because they may be getting worse at a slightly slower rate than they were before. But he's "not a denier!" (although he can surely see how someone might get that confused).

Watch Nye's forceful response (and host S.E. Cupp's confusing reaction), and remember that only two out of the more than 10,000 peer-reviewed climate articles last year rejected man-made global warming.

But sure, Bill Nye the Science Guy is a bully. Let's go with that.

[H/T Daily Dot]

The Heritage Foundation Admits It's Afraid of Capitalism

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The Heritage Foundation Admits It's Afraid of Capitalism

Bloomberg Businessweek reported today that the Heritage Foundation plans to launch a "new digital news site" called the Daily Signal next month, as an answer to Vox and FiveThirtyEight. I almost wrote that Heritage planned to "get into the news business," but that would have been inaccurate:

Another way the Daily Signal plans to distinguish itself from its brethren on the right is through the quality of the reading experience. Conservative sites tend to be plagued by annoying pop-under ads and poor design. Heritage hired Atlantic Media Strategies, the digital consultancy behind the elegant financial site Quartz, to design the Daily Signal for phones and tablets.... Because the Daily Signal is fully underwritten by Heritage, ads won't clutter the experience.

In other words, the Heritage Foundation—which puts "free enterprise" first on its list of mission principles—is unwilling to entrust the Daily Signal's fate to the vicissitudes of capitalism. It says it wants to compete with Vox, a well-funded media company, and FiveThirtyEight, an arm of the Disney/ABC/ESPN commercial empire, but it doesn't have the courage to compete-compete with them, in the marketplace of advertising that surrounds the marketplace of ideas.

(Heritage also intends for the Daily Signal to publish "true, straight-down-the-middle journalism," according to its publisher, Geoffrey Lysaught, who will continue to also work as "vice president of strategic communications" for the ideological advocacy group. OK!)

But so Heritage envisions a high-class reading experience, serving a "younger audience" of "smart conservatives," yet it doubts its ability to match high-class advertisers to its desired readership. The Invisible Hand, for some perverse reason, usually tries to connect readers of conservative media with garbage ads for scammy products targeted at gullible (and senescent) idiots.

What to do? Forsake business altogether, and make the new publication a charity case, supported by Heritage's donors. The important thing is to spread the ideas, not to practice them.

[Image via Getty]

Gawker Is Hiring

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Gawker Is Hiring

Gawker needs more bloggers.

Not essayists (though you should be able to turn a beautiful phrase). Not reporters (though you should know how, and when, to get up from your desk or pick up the phone and ask questions). Not columnists (though you should have a sheaf of ideas for regular features and rubrics). Bloggers.

We're looking for fast writers who can turn around original, engaging stories on a variety of topics; follow and advance breaking news; identify and cover emerging trends; and otherwise initiate, develop, and generally own ideas, stories, and conversations on the internet. You know, bloggers.

We're not looking for aggregators, or not just aggregators. You should follow news across a number of categories, and be able and willing to write up news reports quickly and clearly, yes, but you should also be seeking out stories, ideas, crazes, fads, conversations, arguments, and gossip that you can put together into sharp, appealing packages that start and drive conversations.

And you should be interested in taking part in those conversations—in using Gawker's Kinja platform to find and engage subjects, sources, experts, and opponents, all in service of furthering and strengthening your stories.

All over the internet, in and out of traditional media, talented writers are overlooked and underused. If you're trapped by the bureaucracy, inertia, or institutional fear of your current employer, we can help you break free (and accelerate). If you've got the kind of talent and skill that deserves a wider audience, we can provide you with that platform. If you're a quick study who wants to learn how to write for the internet—and what else is there to write for?—we can give you the smartest, sharpest set of coworkers on the planet. If you don't have access to traditional hiring networks and pathways, we don't care. Consider this your invitation.

For a lengthier explanation of why you should work at Gawker, and what you can expect, see here:

These are a full-time staff writer positions with salary and benefits. It's best if you're based out of New York City, though we won't hold it against you if you're not. To apply, please send clips and a resume to jobs@gawker.com. Or, even better: Start a Kinja account. Debate. Discuss. Blog. Let me know who you are. I'll be in touch.


...we also need more recruits.

In addition to hiring staff writers for full-time salaried positions, we're looking to bring on more bloggers to launch and maintain subject-specific blogs under our recruits program, through which our weather blog, The Vane, operates. What kind of subjects make for good recruit blogs? We're open to pitches—the weirder, newer, and little-covered the better!—but some ideas we've been kicking around here include:

  • A well-researched and reported blog focusing on examining, contextualizing (and often debunking) fringe internet communities and viral conspiracy theories: Who's being accused of Illuminati activity? What is Alex Jones babbling about today? Which militia is threatening to secede?
  • A thoughtful, critical blog dedicated to examining the weird art and artifacts that only exist thanks to the internet—everything from Twitter bots to Amazon algorithms to Russian Livejournal memes to teenage Vine stars.
  • A blog that serves as rapid-response desk for internet bullshit—a responsive version of Adrienne LaFrance's Antiviral column. If you can spot a Jimmy Kimmel hoax from a 100 yards away and are able to pick up the phone and find out if that tech startup really has invented a perpetual motion machine, you can come be the world's biggest spoilsport, and save the internet while you're doing it.
  • A warblog—or maybe, more accurately, a conflict blog—dedicated to providing sharp, nuanced, up-to-the-minute accounting, explanation, and elucidation of global conflicts both inter- and intra-national.

Recruits are hired as freelancers starting at $1,500 a month, with a significant bonus for page views past a certain level. It's a steady gig with a commitment level determined by the writer; it's the perfect opportunity for a young, hungry writer working as a freelancer and looking to carve out a beat for herself. For more on the program, read here:

If you're interested in launching a recruits blog, email jobs@gawker.com with a pitch, a resume, and some clips.

Following the botched execution of Clayton Lockett last week, Oklahoma's attorney general has agreed

"I get more hate, honestly, about dressing androgynously than about being gay.

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"I get more hate, honestly, about dressing androgynously than about being gay. It blows my mind." - Ellen Page

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