LOS ANGELES — IsAnyoneUp.com founder Hunter Moore may be the most hated man on the web, but his infamy is paying off.
The Internet entrepreneur whose "Pure Evil" site posts a host of anonymous nudes, revenge sex photos and just about any other type of sexual amateur sex shot submitted usually alongside a Facebook or Twitter profile, has become a media darling of sorts with interviews in The Village Voice and even Forbes.
The photos are usually accompanied by some personal info and ends with an animated GIF either ripping the person or lampooning some possible sex act. There are also “reader” comments that can be downright brutal.
Some describe Moore’s site, or blog, as “identity porn,” that include photos of hungry social networking traffic seekers like porn stars, celebrities (a recent American Idol finalist), wannabe stars, as well as unsuspecting everyday folk who just want some notoriety or simply took nude pictures that landed on the web.
Moore told the Village Voice, ““People will do anything for the extra couple followers on Twitter.”
According to Forbes, Moore is earning nearly $13,000 a month from his site — not a huge amount by porn site standards — but an increase from $8,000 only last summer, and on target to be a monster because of a slew of media attention.
He’s also become a sought after DJ and making party appearances around the country, despite the fact that he’s a marked man by many who have lost jobs or have had ruined relationships because of the photos posted on his site.
Moore himself reportedly has 35,000 Twitter followers and his website more than 91,000. The site ranges from about 150,000 to 240,000 unique visitors a day according to Moore. Traffic watcher Compete.com logged it about 188,000 last January.
But he doesn’t apologize for the controversy and is personally untouched by a lot of the angst he causes pointing to his own tough times growing up and having been picked on, and “jumped all of the time.”
He’s been stabbed with a pen, his site has been banned by Facebook, hackers, including Anonymous, have him in their sites, and his life is regularly threatened.
Moore told the Voice, “I’m gonna sound like the most evil motherfucker — let’s be real for a second: If somebody killed themselves over [being on the site]? Do you know how much money I’d make? At the end of the day, I do not want anybody to hurt themselves. But if they do? Thank you for the money.
“The more traffic I’d have that day, I’m going to get paid for. So if someone fucking killed themselves? Do you know how much hate I’d get? All the Googling, all the redirects, all, like, the press”—here he sounds like he’s stifling a yawn; it is morning—”I’d get paid for, for that day. And whatever.”
IsAnyoneUp got noticed early in 2011 when Moore posted nude shots of some mid-level rock and punk stars when the site had only 7,000 Twitter followers. But he admitted he was scared when some record companies threatened lawsuits.
Now, after realizing he’s for the most part shielded by laws protecting him because he isn’t legally responsible for user-submitted content, nor copyright violations, except for having to honor Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) take-down notices, he’s going full throttle.
But Moore is careful about photos of underage content. He said he compares an image's embedded EXIF data that includes a file-creation date, and cross-references that timeline with the person’s dates of birth. He also told the Voice, "We Google everything about everybody before we put them up. My uncle is a cop, so I can check how old everybody is and their records and shit."
If Moore’s rising celebrity and meteoric website are any indication, the “dark side” of the Internet is alive and well. As one of his fangirls recently tweeted, "One day I'm going to have Hunter Moore tattooed on my stomach with an arrow pointing down that says 'God.'"
