LONGREADS

Ultra-Orthodox Jews Take a Hard Line on the Internet at Rally of 40,000 Men (And Me) In which our intrepid reporter sneaks into Citi Field in drag. 

Faith, Hope, and Singularity: Entering the Matrix with New York’s Futurist Set It's the end of the world as we know it, and they feel fine.

The Battle Over Revenge Porn: Can Hunter Moore, the Web’s Vilest Entrepreneur, Be Stopped? Victims and hackers are on the case.

Meet Betabeat's 2012 Tech Insurgents Ambiable agitator Anil Dash, Tumblr's Mad Man Rick Webb, and the merry pranksters of OkFocus.

Jonah Peretti’s Meme Streak Making viral happen inside the factory at BuzzFeed.

THE YEAR IN HEADLINES

Uber Bulldozes Its Way into New York City's Taxi Market Before all the bureaucratic setbacks, CEO Travis Kalanick revealed his grand plan.

Flash Dance! Luxury Flash Sales Sites Regroup After Layoffs Can Gilt Groupe cross the IPO finish line without scuffing the lacquer on its Louboutins?

How to Avoid Being Pushed Out of the Company You Founded Insiders dish on Naveen Selvadurai's defoundering.

Records Point to Credit Card Fraud by Silicon Swindler Shirley Hornstein She used her friend's credit card to buy a plane ticket in her name. Twice. 

Investors Wonder About the Future of TechStars New York Will TechStars New York maintain its prominence?

OP-EDS

We Need to Make Tech Uncool Again A call to arms for the idealistic nerd in us all.

Friends Investing in Friends: When It Comes to Startups, Is the Fix Already In? Is Startupland an insider’s game?

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Why We’re Definitely in a Bubble The social media bubble is real, and it's spectacular.   

Social Media Companies Have Absolutely No Idea How to Handle the Gaza Conflict War in the time of social graphs.

Area Blogger Worried People Will Think Reality Show Is Real A little perspective on Bravo's version of Silicon Valley.

TINY GEMS

Diary of Two Snapchat Addicts We just can't help ourselves.

Google Says ‘Gchat’ Is Not a Word Ubiquitous noun/verb is totally unofficial.

What Y Combinator Startups Actually Do, Based on Their (Unpronounceable) Names Zapier: Birchbox for swords?

Tortoise & Blonde Thought ‘We Want To Sit On Your Face’ Was a Good Idea for a Slogan "This was a family decision."

In Which We Went to Bravo’s Casting Call for the Real Wantrepreneurs of Silicon Alley The first tech party where someone tried to yank up our skirt! 

“We’re protesting the lack of attention given to it or the cover up of it. If they spent half the amount of money that it cost them to pull this off, on preventing child sexual assault or sexual molestation, we probably wouldn’t be here.” he said. "It’s millions of dollars, clearly.”

“Sex with minors is illegal on the Internet, Why is it allowed in our Yeshivos?” read one sign. “The Internet never molested me,” read another, in the lap of a girl sitting on the sidewalk with about ten others. Their interest and dedication had clearly peaked earlier in the evening.

Before I'd even made it over to the protest, one Hasid stopped me on my way out of the stadium and grouped me in with the detractors—on account of my non-conforming haircut he later told me. He thought I was one of the “rabble rousers” there to “stir up trouble,” because he saw me recording audio. In response to my confusion he became embarassed and apologized for the assumption.

Despite my yarmulke and formal attire, the Hasid could tell that I had never set foot in a Yeshiva, “I almost passed you a note that said, ‘What’s up, undercover brother?’” he said.

Meanwhile, our really undercover female reporter got in and out undetected.

Once I identified as a member of the press, this Hasid acknowledged the muddiness of the message and the Orthodox's PR problem. He grappled to explain the importance of regulating the Internet and even how it affects his own life. When he's on Facebook, it's a moment that he's not studying Torah, he explained. "I'd probably get more out of this conversation than I would in there," he said as we exited Citi Field in the middle of a speech. There was no readmittance.

“If you find an Orthodox Jew in Williamsburg or Boro Park and offer him $50 for a ticket, I bet you could get one,” said the wise Rabbi Eliyahu Fink. Another source said that tickets went on sale today at a synagogue near the BQE.

With those two hot tips, Betabeat hopped on the subway and headed straight to Brooklyn. As the synogogue came into view, so did a gaggle of Hasidim crowding around two tables on the sidewalk. Betabeat stood in the crowd just like we would at any other disorganized ticket outlet, wondering if anyone would notice our lack of peyot. They did.

"Are you registered to vote?" one Hasid asked.

Beatabeat told them that, yes, we were registered to vote and just wanted tickets.

"Tickets to what?" he asked. What other tickets were they selling, we wondered? “Do you know what it is?” another asked as we handed over our $20. Even another asked, "How did you know we were selling them here?"

Apparently the Citi Field event has garnered so much interest that a second venue had to be added at the National Tennis Center in Queens. As Betabeat walked away with tickets (they came with bus passes!) to the National Tennis Center secure in hand, another Hasid called after us to get “the real reason” we wanted to attend. We responded that we were press.

At that, he became adamant about the fact that they didn’t want to “drop a bomb” on the Internet and that it was simply an issue for their community. "The world is what it is," he said.

So is the Internet. And no amount of filters or blocked pages will stop a motivated kid or Hasid from sinning with the mouse.

Can we come if we promise to, say, stay in a skybox?

Betabeat might be having trouble getting the "Jews Against the Internet" organizers on the phone, but they're apparently returning the New York Times' calls. And it sounds like the campaign against filth and Internet-inspired anomie is going quite well: The paper of record reports they've booked the home of the U.S. open, nearby Arther Ashe stadium, to handle the overflow.

That is a whole lot of dudes. But isn't some fly-by-night event, either. It's being backed by community leaders in Borough Park and the Lakewood, N.J. yeshiva Beth Medrash Govoha. Plus, the Times reports that organizers are papering Williamburg with promotional posters "playing off biblical themes." 

Nor are women entirely excluded, as the rally will reportedly be simulcast to women gathered at community schools and event halls. (Good luck getting in that ball field, though.)

The organizers also clarified their position somewhat. They don't want to ban the Internet, exactly:

but rather to raise awareness about how, unmonitored, it poses a grave risk to the community, said Eytan Kobre, a spokesman for the organizers. The risk, he said, comes not only from pornography, but also from social media and the addictive pull of the Internet, which can limit human interaction, reading and study.

[Betabeat looks up guiltily from checking Twitter.]

“These are the same concerns that people across society — in academia, in psychology, parents, spouses — have about the Internet,” he said. “But here is a community that is actually standing up and coming together and putting our money where our mouth is, to express a unified communal resolve to address the issues.”

This Southern-raised reporter has wondered where the Baptists were on this one. We can't imagine St. Paul being too jazzed about Internet pornography, either.

Shhhh.

Update: Contrary to a previous source, there’s at least one man behind this rally with an email address. The man in charge of the not quite non-existent but ever-elusive press-passes, Eytan Kobre, told Betabeat in an email that “to my knowledge, all available press passes are spoken for.” If only it hadn’t taken three weeks, six phone numbers and a call to another newspaper to find him. Mr. Kobre said he would "check further and try to get back" to us but that's the line we've been getting all along. Ichud HaKehillos may be online but organized, they are not.

Update: It turns out that the Five Towns Jewish Times will be at Citi Field on May 20th, at least. Now on our sixth phone number ("the mailbox is full. Goodbye") Betabeat's attendance looks more promising, if not yet a sure thing.

After three weeks of getting the run-around (“Uh, I don’t know, call this number”) it seems that the rally of “Jews against the Internet” at Citi Field on May 20 is looking to exclude reporters as well as women. We asked, not The Times? The Post? The Daily News? Nope.

In retrospect, we should have purchased tickets. The rally is organized by Ichud HaKehillos, an Orthodox Jewish organization aimed at educating the masses regarding responsible use of technology, and we realized gaining access would probably be a unique experience after the moratorium on vaginas.

But after taking our information down on three separate occasions and promising to get back to us, one of the organizers gave us a flat-out no. The last number we tried led us straight to a voicemail explaining that there are no more tickets available for buses to the event.

When we called asking for an email address, the man who answered said they didn’t have one because “we don’t have the Internet.”

Actually, Ichud HaKehillos does have the Internet, and a website:

Ichud HaKehillos is an organization that was founded with the purpose of educating the masses regarding responsible use of technology. Backed ... by Reb Matisyahu Salomon, shlita, and the Skulener Rebbe, shlita, after many years of trying to keep families disconnected from the rapid advancements of modern-day technology, this organization rose out of a realization that fighting technology is an exercise in futility and is doomed to failure.

Gawker reports that the sold-out event, where tickets were originally $10 dollars (wait, you have to pay to rally against something?) are now appearing marked up on eBay. Citi Field holds 45,000 people, and apparently some original ticket holders aren't against making a couple of bucks on the web, even if the Internet is inherently evil. The top bid for two tickets is $124.50. A single ticket has a top bid of $75, but if you want to lock it down for sure, buy it right now for $1,800.

Betabeat continues to call the two three four phone numbers that Ichud HaKehillos representatives gave us. They won't admit they have the Internet, but they seem pretty proud of all their phones.

No women allowed.

As it turns out, Betabeat was too hasty in declaring our attendance at the upcoming ''Jews Against the Internet" rally scheduled for City Field next month. As Rabbi Eliyahu Fink points out at Vos Iz Neias? (Yiddish for "What is news?"), women are not allowed to participate. Tickets are currently on sale for $10. "There’s just one catch. 50% of orthodox Jews cannot attend. The entire Asifa is for men only," writes the Rabbi, who also blogs at Fink or Swim.

In addition to the general sexism, this dictum is particularly notable because the Israeli rabbis backing the event have blamed the Internet (and the insidious gadgetry that makes it omnipresent) for “family-related problems.” In fact, despite roundly decrying "the scourge of technology," few other specifics are given.

Says Rabbi Fink:

"If the threat of the Internet is so great, as the Ichud HaKehilos claims, how in the world can they make the marquee event for awareness and education about the Internet exclusively for men?! Are women not susceptible to the harms of the Internet? Should mothers of our children not be educated about the dangers of the Internet?

I honestly cannot fathom how the Ichud HaKehilos can say on the one hand that the Internet is so dangerous and then on the other hand exclude the mothers who are home with their children more than their fathers and the teenage girls who are just as present online as teenage boys. If anything, the girls have more access to computers and Internet than boys in yeshiva!"

Prohibiting women also severely undercuts the event goal of gathering "all the Jews living in the U.S." for "a mass rally never before seen in the history of Orthodox Jewry," as one organizer described it.

Rabbi Fink points to an op-ed about the rally earlier this month from Dovid Teitelbaum, director of Camp Sdei Chemed International. Mr. Teitelbaum agrees that a solution besides banning the Internet needs to be addressed in the Orthodox Jewish community. But according to pamphlets promoting the event, the only alternative suggested by the organizers, who have raised $1.5 million to produce the rally, is "filtering."

"This huge problem certainly needs a huge solution, but I’m terribly afraid we are heading for a huge disappointment. If what I read in the pamphlets is true and our huge solution is filtering, then we have learned nothing from the past.

Filters sound good and make us feel good, but they are completely ineffective. A filter is only as effective as much as the person using it wants to be filtered. And while it’s a great way to stop pop-ups and inappropriate web-pages, it is irrelevant to the issue we are facing."

You know who might have a better idea about how to deal with technology's intrusion into the domestic sphere? That half of the population you're banning from the event.

(Hat tip, @JeffLeb)

Like this, except everyone is Jewish and there is no baseball.

Update: No women are permitted to attend the rally, so it looks like Ladybeat will be invading the bleachers in drag. 

By definition, the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish community cleaves to the old ways over modern societal norms. Thus it finds itself even more at odds with the technological wave of apps and gadgets transforming American culture.

And the time has come, apparently, to make that opposition known.

The Jewish Press reports that a massive rally is being planned for Sunday, May 20th at Citi Field in Queens "to combat the evils of the Internet and the damages caused by advanced electronic devices."

The rabbis behind the rally don't specify which "evils" and "damages," in particular, they are railing against. Merely noting that they want to save a generation from "the ravages of advanced technology."

However, a message signed by a number of Israeli rabbis in the Haredi press offers some clarification under the following headline, "A Letter from our Masters the Great Men of Israel Shlita In Preparation for the International Conference in the U.S. Against the Scourge of Technology,"

"It is well known that in recent times that through the Internet many serious family-related problems have been created, and it all happens because of it, and something must be done so they won’t be hurt. And since this touches almost everyone, we must assemble together to protect and be protected, and we hope that through this gathering in search of ideas we will be helped from Heaven to save the many, and may it be that we will be successful in encouraging the public not to stumble over this obstacle, and the Lord will guide us in a truthful path.

We'll definitely be showing up at the rally, if only to hear more about these "family-related problems." Probably something more insidious than just Angry Birds at the dinner table, right? But, why Citi Field? Well, the event organizers are expecting quite a show:

"This will be a mass rally never before seen in the history of Orthodox Jewry in the U.S. It will be a gathering of  unity of all the Jews living in the U.S., a gathering to disseminate information and a prayer rally for the success of Klal-Israel’s war on the Technology which threatens the sanctity of the homes of Israel."

"All the Jews" in America sounds a tad ambitious for a turnout goal, but JDN reports that the organizers have managed to raise $1.5 million from "private philanthropists" to produce the event. Just imagine how many iPads that could buy you!