Dude is the word Hunter Moore says most in a bro-riffic tone during our 40-minute phone conversation regarding his revenge porn website Is Anyone Up? Over the past year, this smutty portal to revealing nude photographs — most originating from private mobile phone "sexting" — has become staggeringly popular. An estimated 1.6 million unique monthly site visitors, including a tighter core of fans who follow the accompanying Twitter and Tumblr accounts, are part of his online community.
Understandably, this new generation of Girls (and Guys) Gone Wild enjoys partying, and the 25-year-old Moore has hosted and DJed at about a dozen gatherings around North America in recent months. Depending on your level of moral outrage, it's either a sign of the apocalypse or a divination that he'll be in South Florida for a New Year's Eve Celebration at Speakeasy Lounge in Lake Worth.
Moore recently reported being stabbed with a pen outside his home by someone angered that their private photograph was exposed on his site, but that hasn't prompted him to hire bodyguards just yet.
"People are like, 'Where's your security?' " he says with mock awe. "It's an Is Anyone Up? party, dude. Originally, I was going to hire some gangsters with guns. But slowly I realized that if you're coming to a party with 500-700 of my fans, the last thing you want to do is try and beat me up. I've had huge crowds of people chanting my name, and then some dude's going to start drama with you? They would tear him apart. My fans are scary as fuck. And they're creepy as fuck."
And some might argue that Moore is running an undeniably creepy enterprise himself — Facebook, especially.
"They have the KKK support group, they have child pornography groups, they have all kinds of stuff," he says with audible annoyance. "But you can't mention IsAnyoneUp.com on their website."
Moore has had several of his own profiles deleted, and the original Facebook invite for the Speakeasy Lounge's New Year's Celebration was removed from the service. Even without reliance on Mark Zuckerberg for promotion, too many mainstream entities have found Is Anyone Up? to contain its growth. Even Anderson Cooper couldn't pass up an opportunity to interview Moore and put him face-to-face with women who have appeared on the site. Here is a portion of our chat with someone who has encountered more human genitalia than a joint proctology-gynecology practice.
New Times: What does an Is Anyone Up? party actually amount to?
Hunter Moore: Sometimes it's a superawkward event. Depends on the venue and the crowd. I just have to get really drunk, and then I can get people to dance. Other times, it's just a bunch of people already naked, and it's insane. It just really depends. New York's insane, but then New Jersey's all uptight. Long Island — they do all kinds of drugs out there — so it's ten times crazier than the city. If you party in L.A., then it's a bunch of people who are too cool to even move. I really want to do parties in Ohio or Texas or Middle America because they don't have shit to do, and they'll probably go ten times more hard than the other places.
Your website often features naked lead singers of punk and emo bands, but is that the type of music you play?
I'm changing the site. The Anderson Cooper thing got me lots of weird, normal college students on the site. I play dubstep, house, just fun music. Bunch of top 40 dubstep remixes with metal remixes. I don't play death metal or grind or anything that you can't stand. Really aggressive dancing, sexual music.
What do people say when they meet you?
Girls hug me. My most hardcore Is Anyone Up? fans are big girls. There's no medium hot chicks. There's no "fives." "Twos" and "threes," and those superbabes. Like the "eights" and "tens" that are insecure and love judging everybody else. Those are basically my fans.
So these so-called "twos" and "threes" are grateful that you'll put them on the site?
Yeah. They're the gnarliest ones! I don't know if you looked at any of the photos from the Village Voice in New York, but the girls getting crazy are the fat ones. Even weirder, the girls that are getting naked and don't give a fuck are the raddest people because they're the ones that are comfortable with themselves.
Is it true that you have a bunch of naked pictures of famous people?
Yeah. Really famous people. I have stuff that would make headline news. Crazy shit. I can't post that stuff. I can't use their real name, because it's trademarked. Somebody makes $12 million on a movie, opposed to me, who can hardly pay his bills. I can't really afford to go up against those people... They can make a lot of problems go away. I have photos proving that [a platinum-selling rapper] is gay. The dude's openly gay in the industry, but nobody talks about it.
It pisses me off, because the world would be a million times better if all of these gay people just came out. Then we could just end this. It's like how they treated black people, except for gays. We're all going to be ashamed of it in like ten years. Like, "Oh my God, how did we do that? How did we not let them get married and have rights?" If everyone just came out, the world would be ten times easier.
What's your outlook for 2012?
Dude, the Is Anyone Up? app's coming. It's going to change the game as far as social networking, hooking up with people, and finding people with similar interests — like what the internet used to be about. I'm gonna kick it old school so that — say you're flying back home for Christmas, or whatever — and you're like, I wanna look for some cute girls, or guys. I don't know what you're into. You can put in your zip code or an area code. Anybody who has that area code or zip code, you can browse them. There's going to be a way to see if they're actually real or not. It's going to be Foursquare meets Instagram meets Facebook meets Is Anyone Up? or whatever. You're going to be rewarded for actually hooking up with people, basically. I guarantee you I'm going to get jacked so hard by Google or Facebook for one of the features I have. It's so old, but nobody's ever thought about it. You're gonna say, Oh my God, why didn't anybody think of that?
Read more from our interview with Hunter Moore at blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/countygrind/.
