YACHT

YACHT: How To Fail At Faking A Sex Tape

Howl and Echoes

YACHT and their sex tape, which they claimed was leaked by nefarious sources yesterday, has been proven to be nothing more than an incredibly misguided attempt to generate sales and in their own words “explore the intersection of privacy, media, and celebrity” – which will undoubtedly earn the band the title of shittiest PR stunt of 2016.

Straight off the bat, I just want to say that my anger and disgust are not because two hipsters from Portland pulled a fast one on me with their stunning criticism of today’s media. I tried to find their “leaked” tape yesterday, since reporting the site that did the actual hosting seemed kind of important and in hindsight, the fact that I couldn’t actually find any evidence of YACHT’s tape being leaked anywhere online, should have probably made me question the legitimacy of the entire story.

However, I chose to believe two people that claimed they were victims of a violation of privacy and, like most sites angrily reporting on the fallout from this story, my gripe sits with the way that YACHT handled the issues of revenge porn and privacy hacking. At the end of the day, their entire aim was to get as many people to view this video as possible, one which could have been achieved differently and without resorting to a parody of a violation of the couple’s privacy.


One of the first to break the story about what a bunch of bullshit this is was Jezebel. They confirmed that not only does an actual sex tape not exist, but that this entire story was a carefully orchestrated ruse which YACHT had been planning for some time, contacting numerous sites with their elevator pitch for what in their minds must have seemed like the greatest PR stunt in history! Jezebel reports that a colleague of theirs at Gawker Media received this email on April 6.

“For the upcoming music video for our song, “I Wanna Fuck You Til I’m Dead,” we’re faking a sex tape leak.

In the days leading up to the video’s release, we’re going to pretend we were hacked, share and delete confessional social media posts on the subject of our privacy, then try to “get out in front of it” and sell the sex tape, fake a server crash, etc”

At least one of the members of YACHT is in their mid-30’s and let’s face it, no one from that band are famous enough to be disconnected from reality. So riddle me this, how was everyone involved in this so utterly clueless about what an incredibly fucked up issue revenge porn is, one which has been on the forefront of a lot of discussions regarding social justice and the internet? Even YACHT’s PR team were quick to point out that they had no knowledge of this stunt taking place.

All that YACHT had to do to ensure that their weak-as-fuck joke about them (SPOILERS!) turning into aliens when they fuck landed without making them look like exploitive money hungry pieces of shit, was to just say, “We have a sex tape”, put it online, keep anyone from seeing it for a day through fake server crashes and error messages and then once enough hype had been generated over the course of the day, reveal it to be the arty garbage that it is.

Instead, what this duo achieved instead was sympathy and an outpouring of support from not only their fans but also victims of revenge porn and privacy hacks. Only for YACHT to then say, “LOL got you”, and being shocked that “press outlets could make the incredibly irresponsible leap from ‘celebrity sex tape,’ which is the cultural trope this project explicitly references, to ‘revenge porn.’”

Yes, it’s all on the media and not YACHT’s complete lack of foresight. In their original message to fans in which they announced the tape being leaked, they use a number of absolutely knee slapping sentences which clearly indicate that this is all just a hilarious cultural trope parody!

“…without our previous knowledge nor consent…”

“…humiliating blurring of the public and private…”

“…we still deserve to have a choice about what we share with the world…”

“…This is an exploitation…”

Cultural parody! Forget for a minute that ordinary people have found themselves in the all too real situation of having their private videos or photos leaked and consequently having to face the barrage of social humiliation and backlash which is all too common in our society. Forget that numerous young people have committed suicide after falling victim to revenge porn. Forget that people’s social lives and careers are destroyed after similar incidents befall them. Forget all of it, because, “LOL! I can’t believe YACHT were aliens all along! “

By knowingly exploiting the good-will of their fans and the general public, YACHT have managed to showcase their lack of moral fortitude and have inadvertently turned the lens of social commentary on themselves. Essentially they’ve proved that life imitates art, by becoming the morally bankrupt and greedy aliens from Futurama, instead of the cool ones they thought everyone would think they were.

Image: jedaniels-adventures.blogspot

Image: jedaniels-adventures.blogspot

Image: ohnotheydidnt.livejournal