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Color us surprised (not really).The supposed leaked sex tape of L.A. band YACHT turned out to be one big attention-grabbing hoax that outlets, including ourselves, all fell for. I feel dirtier having actually not been more skeptical of it in the first place than if I actually watched it in the first place.
Just to catch you up to speed, the tech-savvy indie rock band YACHT, who are basically musical and romantic partners Jona Bechtolt and Claire L. Evans, announced yesterday that they were victims of "one morally abject person" and had their private sex tape leaked. In order to take control of the supposed situation, the duo announced they would be selling the tape instead, for a cool $5 over at a site they set up for its distribution.
Of course this all turned out to be totally bunk. After you punched in your credit card info (which this writer did), you were led to an error page and otherwise got no confirmation of a purchase. Does YACHT now have my credit card info stored on a server somewhere? Thanks, guys.
I was willing to give people claiming to be the victims of sexual exploitation the benefit of a doubt. After all, revenge porn is a real and malicious act that can and has destroyed lives. Two young-ish hipsters in a semi-notable indie band (spare your "never heard of them" comments) should know better than to exploit our compassion for victims of a sex crime. Right?
"We have always operated under the principle of doing our best to maintain dignity and a commitment to openness and truth, both on stage and off," they wrote in their original Facebook post. Hah!
Jezebel had the scoop without realizing it, as Evans wanted to get the Gawkerverse in on the stunt in the first place. In an email from over a month ago, she wrote:
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.
Look, I did search for it, but to a certain extent. Have you ever done a deep Google search when you're looking for a specific sex tape? That can take you to some dark places that might actually infect your computer.
Speaking of which, they did ultimately release a "sex tape"—to PornHub, naturally. The video comes with all the NSFW caveats that come with a PornHub link, but the video itself is not sexually graphic. Though it is pretty gross. I'm not going to say anything else other than you've been warned.
Anyway, this is all just just awful and I hate myself for having been a pawn in all of this. So let's end this with the words of a real life victim of revenge porn who wanted to throw some mad shade:
Super random but I hate when people put out fake stories to sell their products.
— Kim Kardashian (@KimKardashian) May 10, 2016
