Journalistic Integrity gets thrown aside as Rolling Stone aims at the Tiger Beat scene with their latest issue. I was contacted about two weeks ago about having pictures of myself used in a magazine article. The request came from a guy, (I won't mention his name) that claimed to be Straight Edge, to print photos I had in my flickr.com account. The photos were of me getting tattooed by "Old School" Alex and one of me posing with an X on my hand. This guy claimed that the article was to be about Straight Edge and Hardcore. Well after sending him and his editor (I won't mention her name either) high-res versions of the photos I was pretty excited. This was to be the second time I was to be in Rolling Stone, I was involved with the IVAW as their first web master when they first started as an anti-war group, but that article never got published as Rolling Stone didn't want to deal with the anti-war movement at the time; So I didn't put a blog posting here about it at the time I was contacted as I just assumed this article wouldn't get published either knowing my luck.
I received two free copies of the magazine via courier on Friday, the cover looked like a sad attempt to target fifteen year old girls, and I flipped through to find my photo. The article centralized on FSU and gang violence, and a fight involving Alex that ended in the death of guy at a show that both attended. I was pretty upset to say the least that I was lied to by Rolling Stone just so that they could get a picture of Alex putting an X on someone; So that they could say that many FSU members get X tattoos. First of all I'm not part of FSU and I don't condone violence, Straight Edge to me is about keeping my self poison free. Second the article made it seem that the photo came from bmeink.com which as I mentioned is not the case. Third, I am very annoyed that they would go through all that trouble just for a photo that really had nothing to do with the article. I contacted the editor about the article and all she had to say was that the article was "fair and balanced."
Alex is a friend of mine and I'm very happy to have gotten my tattoo from him especially at a tattoo shop in my neighborhood in Brooklyn. No one beyond those at the fight knows what happened, and Alex has not even been charged with a crime yet. So I hope everything works out well for Alex, I am saddened that a death occurred at a hardcore show, and I hope Rolling Stone learns how to act more like a rock mag and less like Fox News for tweens.
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