Music
YACHT sell their private sex tape after it was leaked
by Jesse Locke
May 10, 2016
To control the privacy invasion, YACHT are selling their sex tape for $5 on their website.
UPDATE #2: YACHT have now confirmed the hoax in a statement on their https://fuck.teamyacht.com website. The duo have provided links to download their “sex tape” on PornHub and The Pirate Bay, which they describe as “a slowly-unveiling conspiracy, inspired in equal part by The X-Files, Nathan for You, and The KLF“. They note that no one who tried to purchase it previously was charged, and that that never intended to “make light of victims of any form of sexual abuse.” However, critics continue to argue that this project is an exploitative publicity ploy.
UPDATE: Jezebel have definitively concluded that YACHT’s ‘stolen sex tape’ was a hoax to promote their music video for the song “I Wanna F*ck You Till I’m Dead”, mentioned in our original post below. While it was smartly executed (and succeeded in its attempt to prey on our sympathies to report it at face value), this stunt has raised questions about undermining the traumas of sexual violence and real life privacy invasions.
Electronic pop duo YACHT (a.k.a. Claire L. Evans and Jona Bechtolt) have always maintained a complicated relationship with love and technology. That’s evident in her work as the Futures Editor of Motherboard, Vice‘s technology and science website, and in songs like 2014’s “Where Does This Disco?”
Cleverly mixing metaphors with CDs, computer screens, and romantic partners, they offered the following statement with the song: “They’re both on the edge of becoming obsolete, and they both get scratched if you play them too hard. They’re both mirrors, but one is still the best medium we have for connecting with each other.”
One of those mediums has now caused a 1995-style scandal (and a new kind of connection), as YACHT explained in a series of Facebook posts. On May 9th, a private sex tape made by the self-described “romantic and artistic partners” was leaked online “due to a series of technological missteps and one morally abject person.” While they take legal action against this unnamed individual, Evans and Bechtolt have now decided to “take some kind of ownership over what has happened” and offer it up “Louis C.K.-style” as a $5 download on their newly launched website https://fuck.teamyacht.com.
Per the title of their 2015 album (which also features songs titled “I Wanna F*ck You Till I’m Dead” and the Infinite Jest-nodding “The Entertainment”), maybe the future can be cooler. YACHT shared the following statements in their initial Facebook post:
“Our tastes in the bedroom might seem uncommon to some, and possibly off-putting. But considering the variables that go into any sexual experience, wouldn’t anything seem uncommon, and possibly off-putting? This is our private life. And no one should have governance over what people do consensually in their private lives.”
“Just because we are public figures does not mean we asked for this. Like anyone, we still deserve to have a choice about what we share with the world. Today we no longer have that choice. But our hope is that you fundamentally understand that choice and you choose not to view a private act that was inadvertently made public. We hope you understand that this is not a delicious scandal. This is an exploitation.”
Read YACHT’s full statements below:
This all said, there has now been some informed speculation by fans and members of the press such as Vice‘s close-to-the-source Thump website that this entire story may be “an elaborate hoax—manufactured by the band themselves as an attempt to sell more records, get tons of free press, or make a statement about celebrity culture, viral marketing, and how hard it is to make money off your music… or something.” In conclusion: TRUST NO ONE.
[h/t Exclaim!]
