Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Netflix/Getty
Tan Mom. “Tiger Blood.” The Royal Wedding. The early 2010s were a treasure trove of cursed cultural relics. Most odious of all was Is Anyone Up?, a revenge-porn website that prided itself on humiliating mostly young women.
The site published nude images that users—mostly vengeful exes—could send in via an anonymous submission form. Once they did, a message would pop up saying “THANK YOU FOR BEING EVIL!” What separated Is Anyone Up? from other dark corners of the web was not just its focus on scene girls and guys, but the sheer level of cruelty on display. Accompanying the nude images, most published without the subject’s consent, was a screen grab of the person’s Facebook page, directing a wave of harassment against them. The comments section under each post was filled with fans of the site relentlessly mocking those unfortunate enough to appear, branding them “SIF” (secret internet fatty) or “Gnargoyle” (a term denoting ugliness).
Among the victims was a blind paraplegic and a kindergarten teacher who subsequently lost her job the following morning. Lording over the awful proceedings was Hunter Moore, a scene kid and self-described “king of revenge porn” whose fawning followers, in true Manson fashion, referred to themselves as “The Family.”