Benét’s EP, “Game Over,” is so delightfully full of queer crushing. They spend a while just longing longing for one particular person, and by the time the album arrives at “Pls,” the crush has been landed, but now Benét is begging them to open up: “Tell me your secrets, tell me you love me. Tell me your lies and put no one above me.” That open-hearted prying gets some nice counterbalance from a dancefloor-ready dreamscape that lets the narrator (and you) step back from the whole situation and vibe solo for a bit. Love that delicious push and pull. Listen here.
Ok I knew this story was going to be crazy but I could never have foreseen the particular horrors are inside. So, there’s this Natick couple (that’s Suburban Boston, for those of you who can’t pronounce “paahk” correctly), the Steiners, who back in the age of blogs and eBay, started a blog to help people navigate reselling stuff online. “We’d get up early, go through the classified ads, get your Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, and hit as many sales as we could,” said the wife, Ina, of their early days. (Sidenote: Has the Boston Globe sunk to the level of product placement?)
Long story short, the blog got pretty big! And, being all about eBay, it was occasionally critical of the company’s decisions. But eBay didn’t like that, so in 2019, the head of their Global Security and Resiliency unit, James Baugh, took it upon himself to lay seige to the couple through a series of tactics including, but not limited to: tagging their fence with the handle of the biggest hater in their comments section; stalking them in and outside of their home (and dispatching employees to try to put a tracking device on their car); and mailing them a fetal pig. They also received a book called “Grief Diaries: Surviving Loss of a Spouse,” as well as a package of live spiders and fly larvae (um WHAT). Now, of course, they’ve sued the company because, in the words of the headline, ‘It has to be known what was done to us.’ (A passive header for an aggressive situation.)
Boston localisms aside, how is this not bigger news? We should probably all hit up Dunkies today in honor of the Steiners and their heroism.
It’s upsetting enough to know about the faced and named executives literally stalking people, but that’s honestly just the straw that broke the camel’s back in privacy headlines for me this week. What’s in the pile under it? Well, Clubhouse got hacked and every user’s phone number is now for sale. Amazon will now pay you a cool $10 for your handprint (know your worth, they say). Every QR code you’ve ever scanned is tracking you. And Spotify is serving you ads based on your mood (and on what you’re doing— if you’re listening to a cooking playlist, they know, and they can also tell if you’re on a run thanks to their access to your phone’s accelerometer. That could actually help them win the podcast game since Apple podcasts gets basically none of that info). Which of these news items would you say makes you the *most* comfortable?
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