A Statement About Mahbod’s Annotations on Elliot Rodger’s Manifesto

The entire group of founder already has wallowed into a number of controversial issues, calling attention mostly to their idiotic hijinks than to their business.

A claim like that should carry a source at least. Not all of us follow RapGenius' every move.

minimaxir5• 12 years ago

Take your pick: http://valleywag.gawker.com/search?q=rap+genius

callmeed• 12 years ago

Fired or asked to resigned ... pretty much the same thing, other than trying spin it like he resigned under his own volition.

JumpCrisscross3• 12 years ago

Context: http://gawker.com/rap-genius-co-founders-creepy-comments-on-...

Mahbod compliments several of Rodger's sentences as "artful" and/or "beautifully written". That is okay, if ill-timed. One can make a stylistic statement about Mein Kampf without endorsing its message.

He also, however, speculates that Rodger's "sister is smokin' hot." That is violently inappropriate, particularly given the misogynistic nature of Elliot's crimes.

grlhgr420• 12 years ago

stepping away from the context for a moment, the writing is also fucking terrible and overwrought. it reads like a cross between ignatius reilly and sephiroth

nailer• 12 years ago

Speculating Rodger's sister was attractive might be mildly inappropriate, but, it's also relevant to understanding the nature of his killings, particularly as they seem to be based around sexual frustration.

I think 'violently inappropriate' is being used by the internet echo chamber to draw attention to themselves.

Argorak• 12 years ago

There was, by the way, a german artist (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serdar_Somuncu) who commented that actually reading Mein Kampf exposes it as a very bad and simple book and no one should be surprised of Hitlers actions later after reading. Also, one of his point is that it is terrible in style and mostly rambling.

He also went on a tour and actually read the book on > 1000 occasions and won multiple prices.

Now, imagine Serdar doing that in 1946. He would - for good reasons - be ostracized.

Mahbod, even if he were "only" commenting on stylistic things, shows that he is lacking something very important: tact and empathy. This is not a triviality and as such not "okay". He also didn't frame the comment in any way (e.g. "I am surprised to see such an artfully...").

He should have seen that coming. If he hadn't, he shouldn't be leading any community.

edwardhotchkiss• 12 years ago

violently inappropriate

Really? Violent?

cheetos2• 12 years ago

Who are RapGenius' investors? Who is bankrolling these people?

minimaxir5• 12 years ago

Andreessen Horowitz, to the tune of $15M. Rap Genius was also a part of YC S11.

http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/03/andreessen-horowitz-iinvest...

http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/rap-genius

cheetos2• 12 years ago

Thanks.

Asparagirl2• 12 years ago

The same people who bankroll(ed) GitHub. This is my shocked face.

Mystalic• 12 years ago

And Y Combinator.

tptacek11• 12 years ago

Wasn't Rap Genius already pretty well-known before they were accepted into YC? You could do a site that annotated sheet music for Polka tunes, or annotated cat pictures with more different cat pictures, and YC would still probably accept you if your traction looked like the first few years of RG's.

angersock3• 12 years ago

I wish they had they shown the annotations that caused the firing. The Valleywag link elsewhere has one screenshot, but other than being in poor taste I'm not sure why this rates a firing/step down.

minimaxir5• 12 years ago

It's about context: the annotations were glorifying a manifesto that was the prelude to mass murder.

angersock3• 12 years ago

So, some parts clearly were, right, complimenting the writing style and whatnot (which, honestly, wasn't great, but whatever)?

That comment about his sister I viewed more as teasing/disparaging the author--your mileage may vary.

Reading a bit more about the dude from Rapgenius, though, he seems like kind of a gangsta-wannabe tool.

darkrabbi• 12 years ago

Apparently this guy had a brain tumor and this wasn't the first time he's publicly embarrassed the company. He tweeted from the RapGenius account "WARREN BUFFETT CAN SUCK MY DICK".

http://www.fastcompany.com/3021564/most-creative-people/how-...

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/02/22/rap_genius_wa...

minimaxir5• 12 years ago

The brain tumor was removed...and the public behavior was unchanged.

http://valleywag.gawker.com/rap-genius-frontman-blames-brain...

DoubleMalt• 12 years ago

Sad but the brain tumour could still be the reason for his behaviour.

We don't know nearly enough about the brain to argue that the removal must restore the previous personality.

nightpool5• 12 years ago

Personally, I think this is a long time coming. Like, Tom, I have nothing but respect for Maboo, but I think many, many people have raised the point that his, for lack of a better word, "antics" are holding the site back. I know a lot of people in the HN community have been sharply critical of him, and for good reason. Maybe that's the main driver here, and Maboo's absolutely inappropriate response is the catalyst.

billmalarky2• 12 years ago

I don't know much about RG's history, but I wonder if his antics are partly why the site was so successful initially? From the little I've seen of RG over the years it seems like they rely heavily on gimmicks and antics as a promotional tool (I guess that's sort of the MO for the music industry though).

nightpool5• 12 years ago

I absolutely believe the site couldn't have gotten where it was today without Mahbod at its head. But I think that the way forward is, regrettably, without him for a while. I fully believe he can come back from this more mature and focused. But I think its going to require a bit of soul-searching.

onewaystreet2• 12 years ago

If it was just the annotations I'd be surprised, but this is just another incident by Mahbod that has caused RapGenius bad press. It was the last straw.

tptacek11• 12 years ago

I can appreciate RG's leadership having the self-awareness to see the need to make an Adult Decision in this case, but I think it's probably a mistake for them to continue hosting the Rodgers diary.

Contrary to Moghadam's comments, the diary is not particularly well-written. It's long, repetitive, weirdly detailed (the author recounts meals eaten years ago), and studded with evidence of psychopathy.

RG's style of annotation works extremely well for some kinds of writing --- song lyrics, The Great Gatsby, TS Eliot poems. What I think those things have in common is that they're hospitable to "riffing" and cross-linking; for instance, the lyrics to the ICP song where they come out of the closet as religious are totally incongruous until RG annotations inform you that they're reprised lyrics from previous ICP songs.

But riffing on Rodgers diary doesn't serve the same purpose, at least so close to the event. It is instead a minefield; almost anything you can say risks diminishing the tragedy, or misapprehending how the mind of a deeply mentally ill person functions, or, god help us, using the output of that mind as a platform on which to build suggestions on changing our culture.

There may be some point at which RG annotations will add value to this terribly sad artifact of Elliot Rodgers, but it probably won't be in 2014.

brador• 12 years ago

"It's long, repetitive, weirdly detailed (the author recounts meals eaten years ago), and studded with evidence of psychopathy."

That's exactly why it should be studied.

tptacek11• 12 years ago

I'm not suggesting it not be studied.

nightpool5• 12 years ago

As someone who was on the forums when the decision was made, I can give you some of the background. Last February, News Genius transcribed and annotated the Dorner manifesto, and got a lot of positive press. You can see the page at http://news.rapgenius.com/Christopher-dorner-manifesto-annot... and the press from Forbes at http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/02/13/christoph...

The thought was very similar in this case, in that News Genius could help annotate and pull out important sections, things that could help people understand the text. In retrospect, I believe we didn't consider fully how hard it would be to annotate, or how much more of a minefield it would be with the additional dimensions of misogyny and mental illness to consider. (Well, personally, I voted against its inclusion. But that's neither here nor there.)

I'm not sure what the right response is in this case. But that's the context.

tptacek11• 12 years ago

There was a lot of confused attention surrounding the Dorner incident, in which a disgruntled former LAPD officer rationalized his carefully-planned stalking and murder of the daughter of an LAPD captain who had been partially responsible for his termination.

Part of that attention was due to a Rambo narrative that accompanied Dorner due to his military experience and the fashion in which he was (briefly) believed to be engaging Southern California police officers (no doubt this narrative was abetted by the 24/7 news cycle). Part of it was due to the style in which he wrote his manifesto. And certainly part of it was the fact that his grievances confirmed a lot of the (probably accurate) biases people have about the LAPD.

All that is a prelude to the argument that the annotations on the Dorner "manifesto" do not in fact show RG at its best. Like the Rodgers incident, the Dorner incident is tremendously sad. It was not an armed struggled between a wronged former officer and the police establishment; it was a manhunt that followed the cold-blooded murder of an innocent woman and her fiance. But you might not get that impression from clicking through the animated GIFs, lyrical references, and amplified exposition of Dorner's complaints in the annotations on the site.

Again, I think this isn't so much a problem with reading and studying the output of the mentally ill, but instead with the idea of doing that on a site that encourages random anonymous people to riff off of and respond to that output. It has the effect of turning an artifact of illness and tragedy into popular culture, which to me demeans the site almost as much as the victims.

riggins• 12 years ago

the diary is not particularly well-written

depends on your standards. He's not a professional author but I think he's probably better than your average college grad.

studded with evidence of psychopathy

genuinely interested. could you point to some of these. I've been skimming it and haven't really seen that.

in fact, this struck me as empathetic

James’s mother, Kim Ellis, had just passed away from breast cancer. I cried for a bit. Kim was a very kind-hearted person, and the mother of my best friend. She had been suffering from breast cancer for several years, but I never thought she would die from it. I immediately thought of how James must be feeling. He just lost his own mother!Annotate It made me think of how horrible I would feel if the same thing happened to my own mother, just the thought alone filled me with pain.

ewoodrich• 12 years ago

At various points, the author describes in detail how he wanted to torture and murder any loving couple because it offended him so much. Along with his bizarre descriptions of a sexless utopia where all women are enslaved and forced to be artificially inseminated to procreate.

tptacek11• 12 years ago

Even if we stipulate that every paragraph in the diary should be taken at face value, psychopathy is not defined simply as the absence of empathy.

tod222• 12 years ago

in fact, this struck me as empathetic

This really isn't empathy. Roger is not feeling his friend's pain—he's transferring his friend's situation to himself and feeling his own pain. He's crying in imagined self-pity.

Roger describes crying in self-pity or frustration many times in the document, even into adulthood. A quick word count:

     34 cried
     10 cry
     19 crying
      9 tears

I read (mostly) the first two thirds of the document and this is the closest Roger gets to empathy.

Otherwise Roger's depiction of himself comes off as completely self-absorbed and often unaware or unconcerned with the feelings of others. The narcissism is overwhelming.

JumpCrisscross3• 12 years ago

studded with evidence of psychopathy

Very curious - what are the stylistic signatures of psycopathy?

tptacek11• 12 years ago

Do another skim read through the diary and notice all the times he unabashedly confirms his belief that other human beings in his life exist to serve his interests. It's practically a motif. He doesn't merely seem upset that women won't acknowledge him, but rather that anyone he interacts with has any agency at all --- his father, his mother, his friends, his roommates.

betterunix2• 12 years ago

It is a mixture of psychopathy and megalomania. He expresses a belief that women exist to provide men with sex, and his anger stems from a belief that women have been given the power to choose who to have sex with yet failed to choose him. He believes that he is better than everyone else and is angry that women are having sex with "inferior" men. He does not think killing other people is a problem; he thinks that his own death is the worst outcome of his plot, made necessary only because the alternative is to live in a jail cell. He also describes killing his roommates as necessary, lest they get in the way of his plot (which included torturing people in his apartment).

In his ideal world, there would be a benevolent dictator -- "benevolent" in this context includes exterminating women by starvation, save for a few that are kept locked up in labs where they exist only for reproduction -- and he suggests himself as this dictator. According to his theory if there are no women there will be no sex, and men can rise to higher levels of achievement (notice how he blames his shortcomings on others). He also believes that there would be no love in such a world, though he seems to have a poorly developed notion of love as an emotion (he speaks of love in terms of sex, and never associates love with any specific person other than himself).

Xcelerate• 12 years ago

You should read "Without Conscience" by Dr. Robert D. Hare. He has been studying psychopaths for decades, and gives a detailed overview of what they are like. Everyone is falsely claiming that Elliot Rodger was a psychopath. He was not. Psychopathy consists of a collection of particular traits together, and while he has a few of them, he does not have the correct combination.

asveikau• 12 years ago

Kind of off-topic to your point, but I found it interesting that he got so detailed about things he is unlikely to remember (his birth, meals on very young birthdays) but there are a lot of verifiable things he got wrong in the timeline (he claimed Finding Memo was being played on TV in 2001, or that Xbox 360 was brand new in 2007). All of this is written very confidently.

firstOrder• 12 years ago

god help us, using the output of that mind as a platform on which to build suggestions on changing our culture

Why not? There's what to do lessons and what not to do lessons.

From what I read in the essay he talks continually about how he lives in a beautiful, wealthy suburb, has an apartment and BMW, nice clothes and so forth. I don't watch teenage television shows like the OC, The Hills or whatever, but from this material perspective he had the perfect life. Yet his parents split up, he didn't get along with his movie premiere attending father's new wife, and he was isolated and cut off from human contact. He is miserable. He even says repeatedly he goes crazy watching guys with much less money have so much "social success".

Something can be learned from him. That buying into the idea that money alone buys happiness is something close to insanity. That growing up in a wealthy community where image and status are everything, even among kids, might not be healthy. That close friendships and lovers are more important than the BMW he continually refers to.

I can see shades of this when I walk into a post Series A startup on Saturday at 8 PM and see that 95% of the office is there working, many of the people in their 20's. They all think they are going to be the Mark Zuckerberg. It seems like insanity to me. It reminds me of all the people I know who were having trouble in their marriages, so they would work until 6, 7, 8 doing busy work so they wouldn't have to go home. Usually in a few months time I hear from them they are separating from their spouse. Some people see work as an escape from their other problems. Our society being run as it is, by those who it is run by, this is not much frowned upon as a real problem.

I can easily imagine this kid growing up the son of some guy who was in early on some hot startup, with the kid now living in Palo Alto, Altadena or somewhere...

briandh• 12 years ago

Why not?

Because it's just one kid. The sample size is too small.

yepyepyep• 12 years ago

I think you're underestimating the usefulness of simply showing this document in a clean UI. I could care less about the annotation of this but found myself captivated by the contents of the diary on rapgenius, the same way as we get captivated by television footage of surreal events.

selmnoo• 12 years ago

I can appreciate RG's leadership having the self-awareness to see the need to make an Adult Decision in this case, but I think it's probably a mistake for them to continue hosting the Rodgers diary.

Rap Genius is in still somewhat in that growth phase of its life where it wants to attain and secure as many users as it can. The Rogers story is something a lot of young people are curious to see, and if RG can be a place where they can see it, that means they're doing well. Purely as a business decision, they should and probably will keep hosting it.

You won't believe the amount of essays I had to read (whenever we would peer-review essays in middle and high school) that had to do with serial killers, massacres, etc. This is simply a subject a lot of people are fascinated by -- most importantly, people in the right age group that Rap Genius is interested in.

I should note that if you disagree, you should be voicing your outrage at the mass media, Scribd (for continuing to host the unabridged Rogers documents), WashPo, etc. etc., not just Rap Genius.

gojomo3• 12 years ago

RG's mission is to annotate. The size, content-matter, and closeness to a violent event make Rodger's 'Twisted Life' a very challenging document for their system... which is exactly why I think they must host it.

It's widely available, and people are interested. Either RG-style annotation helps people come to terms with it, or not. But they have to try, to find out – and possibly improve their practices if they're found wanting.

arfliw• 12 years ago

Sounds like somebody wanted to get rid of a co-founder and found a great opportunity to do it.

rl3• 12 years ago

Obviously Mahbod's latest annotations were inappropriate. Based on his past behavior, these recent antics should not come as much of a surprise.

As an aside, it has always amazed me how many people over the years have failed to realize Rap Genius' gimmick is just that, a gimmick. It's their attempt at using an admittedly off-color flavor of comedy to build their brand. Said brand is heavily rooted in rap, which is one of the most politically incorrect and offensive mediums of pop culture in existence today.

It stands to reason that when the Rap Genius founders are in character, their behavior should not be taken literally as a reflection of who they really are.

A good example of this is when they were featured on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2013:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5773556

Most people simply took them literally, became offended, and jumped on the revulsion bandwagon. Others understood that the RG guys were essentially mocking the startup scene and the rap scene at the same time, in effect making fun of themselves.

---

In Mahbod's case specifically, it seemed like he was aiming for humor that went right up to the line but didn't cross it. Unfortunately, comedy is a hit-or-miss endeavor and some of the misses were bound to cross that line. Add to that his medical issues potentially adversely affecting his judgement, and it's no wonder.

Was what he said inappropriate? Absolutely.

Should he have been fired for it? Debatable.

Should we assume he's a terrible human being (as some other comments have implied)? Certainly not.

coldtea4• 12 years ago

but went beyond that into gleeful insensitivity and misogyny. All of which is contrary to everything we’re trying to accomplish at Rap Genius.

Yeah, because otherwise most rap is all about sensitivity and feminism. I mean, they'd never embrace Ice Cube's records there, right?

I just see corporate drones fearing for their dollars because of the backslash against this guy's annotations.

The noble thing to do would have been to stand behind their colleague. I'd take a "misogynist" over backstabbing people throwing their friends to the lions. At least a misogynist could either be joking or made to change his mind about women. But their actions are all for personal interests and their bottom line.

adventured3• 12 years ago

You're not going to find very many people in tech that are going to get within a million miles of seriously discussing that Rap Genius is filled with bigoted, racist, misogynist content.

The political correct world today is strictly about inflicting damage upon populist targets, while not targeting other bigots that don't qualify for the agenda. It's a deranged movement of convenient targets.

A Statement About Mahbod’s Annotations on Elliot Rodger’s Manifesto

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