Not too long ago, Evan did a Shame Day about 4chan’s semi-joking attempt to wreck a Taylor Swift radio contest by getting some random 39-year-old voted rated as Swifts “biggest fan”. The original post declaring 4Chan’s intentions stated that “Charles Z.” was only in it for a chance to “sniff Swift’s hair” (I can’t speculate on whether or not that’s meant to be a joke) and that it was a chance to crush the dreams of thousands of “whiny teeny boppers.” The campaign was overwhelmingly successful. Charles Z. shot to the first place with a mile-wide margin and the radio station wound up cancelling the whole event.
In spite of Evan’s comments that this was generally a lousy move and a tacit endorsement of sexual harassment, I’m going to have to disagree with him. Firstly, I’m not taking the whole “hair-sniffing” thing as being all that serious, and secondly, I don’t think this really had much of anything to do with Charles Z. or even Taylor Swift for that matter.
It was about sincerity. Continue reading
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