Melissa Jun Rowley is a writer and cause activist living in Los Angeles. She writes for Mashable and WhatGives!?, a blog from Cause Media Group, which focuses on cause marketing for brands and celebrities. But this girl is no goody-goody two shoes. We sat down and interviewed her today about the irreverent approach she takes to social media.

Melissa Jun Rowley: For a long time my beat was entertainment because I was an entertainment journalist for CNN. I got a little jaded by the TMZ-aspect of entertainment journalism and some of the bullshit that people in Hollywood have to deal with on a regular basis. But there’s also really great things about Hollywood – people come to this city completely in pursuit of their dreams, so there’s something really magical about that, too.

I took a little leave of absence for a while, I went up to San Francisco, where I’d lived eight years prior, and I got really immersed in social action. There’s a really tight-knit social enterprise community up there that focuses on non-profits and for-profits that are doing good. There are a lot of companies that are evolving into triple bottom-line companies, that are focused not only on their financial bottom line, but also focused on being socially responsible. It’s people, planet, profit – those are the three bottom lines.

When I got back to Hollywood to take a job with E!, and then that didn’t work out, I started to merge entertainment and social action together. Right around that time I met Chris Noble, who’s the president of Cause Media Group, and he asked me to start blogging for WhatGives!? and from there the intersection of celebrities, brands and non-profits has become my beat.

Sex and the 405: There’s a lot of discussion in social media about how much of yourself you should be – there’s the school of people that believe that when you use social media you should focus on your topic and not deviate. Darren Rowse, Pro-Blogger, talks about about how if you have different subjects you should have different blogs, different Twitter accounts for your blogs because you want to be consistent and not alienate your audience. But you’re of the school of “let them see your human” and this is something something more like what Marsha Collier espouses – be personable, be reachable, be a human being. You’ve met a little friction because you are young, you are single, and you talk a little bit about some of the things you do and overhear, which is very L.A. So on social media, you’re not just talking about doing good for the planet and society, you’re also talking about dating and how this guy or that guy is a douchebag.

MJR: I’ve run into some people expressing that it’s not the best idea for me to tweet certain romantic or sexy thoughts and occurrences. I don’t kiss and tell – I’m not that forthright, but being a single woman in a big city, meeting people in the entertainment industry, the tech industry, I like sharing that because not all of my followers follow me because of the social action I do. I get the most tweets when I say, “I’ve got a red carpet tonight, hot pink stilettos or thigh-high red boots?” If I can get responses out of that and then tweet about the latest non-profit I’m covering, then I think they’re more inclined to pay attention.

SAT405: Because you’re not just broadcasting, you’re engaging the audience. And they don’t have to know about the industry to opine on what you should wear or do.

MJR: I don’t think people should constantly be marketed to. When I see people just marketing to me on social media, I unfollow them. I understand what they’re doing, marketing is important, but the reason why social media has been successful for certain people and certain brands is because they’ve learned how to humanize it. I don’t want to use the streams just for my work – there are other parts of myself I want to share. If people can get something from that, learn something from anything I have to offer, be it causes, relationships, love, self-evolution, then that’s a contribution, too.

SAT405: Human beings have a hard time as brands because we’re not two-dimensional. To be human is a great risk, because you expose yourself to human error, but that human aspect can make people feel a lot closer to you and this is what engagement hinges on, that perception of closeness.

MJR: I don’t want to always be distributing content about what people should do, donate to this, support this, run this marathon, raise this money. I want to get people involved, but I don’t want to be preachy. I try to tweet something every day about a cause that I am covering, but you need variety to keep things interesting and keep people involved.

SAT405: What inspired you to get involved with causes in the first place?

MJR: The first non-profit I was involved with is called Life Rolls On, founded by Jesse Billauer. I connected with them through a women’s network I had joined while I was working at CNN because I needed to do something to contribute to society other than just talk about movie premieres. I love artists, I love creators, I love to hear about the creative process and being a writer and producer myself, it’s inspiring to be around that kind of energy – so I am not criticizing the entertainment industry, that’s why I’m here. But I was in a place where I needed to do something more than my job.

So I connected with Life Rolls On. Jesse Billauer was one of the top 100 surfers in the world when he was 17, then he had a surfing accident that rendered him quadriplegic. It cost so much money that his family started holding private benefits to keep him healthy. One day he and his brother decided to think bigger than just the family and they founded the Life Rolls On Foundation, to do spine research, and also to help people that may feel blocked, like there are too many obstacles as a result of an accident to continue pursuing their dreams. Jesse is a motivational speaker, he speaks at different companies and at schools to inspire people to keep pursuing their dreams, no matter what obstacles they run into.

He still surfs, he has specially made surfboards for it! They have an event called They Will Surf Again, to get everyone in the community with spinal injuries, recovered and not, in the water on surfboards. It’s not just about raising money for research and building awareness, but it’s about life going on. Let’s keep on living. Seeing that made me more motivated to keep doing what I am doing.

SAT405: How have you pursued your dream?

MJR: The economy went to hell and I started to lose a lot of freelance work. CNN, Associated Press, E! – they were all on hiring freezes and I was losing money. At that time I connected with CauseCast and I was their first writer. While I was in San Francisco, I’d write remotely for them. Because of my connections, I was still getting invited to red carpet events and it so happened a lot of these had causes attached, they were benefits. So I thought to start covering them for CauseCast. Having a celebrity attached doesn’t hurt.

So I started running around with my Flip cam. It wasn’t glamorous. It was all by the seat of my pants. I would find out about, grab the Flip cam and go. I’d be interviewing people on the grass, in the woods, and then I came back to Los Angeles, and was with E! for a bit before the show was canceled and I got laid off. Then I met all these tech nerds.

SAT405: I love that you look at me when you say that.

MJR: We met on Twitter the way everyone should meet. The tech connection helped, there are a lot of start-ups that have some social good attached.

SAT405: You are a nerd now, too, you have a webshow now, Good and Ready.

MJR: Good and Ready focuses on the intersection of celebrities, brands and causes. We’ve done two episodes – we’ve been doing it every month. It’s hard because I have twelve other jobs. We’re looking for a sponsor. Right now we’re focused on getting the production value higher. Eventually we want to sell it to Oprah or to Bravo and be the kind of production where we can travel the world and build wells in Africa with Matt Damon – that kind of hands-on work and coverage.

I try to leverage the celebrity connection and red carpet access as much as possible because that brings eyeballs. If that’s what I have to do, if I have to tweet about my outfit to get people to start engaging, then I am going to do it.

SAT405: Hollywood is your Trojan horse for causes.

MJR: I want to bring more attention to what Hollywood does for non-profits. The one issue with benefits where celebrities come out to support is that because there is so much eye-candy and public figures, the cause gets lost. I want the show to show what they’re doing, not so much their projects, but the social good they’re doing. They do a lot. They get a lot of flack, but they do a lot.

While we were in Manhattan up to absolutely no good, we happened to meet Andrea Grant, creator and writer of the comic MINX. Immediately drawn to the complex plot line and sexy heroine (based on Grant herself), we knew we had to share her with you.

So we asked her to take a time out from her incredibly busy schedule as the editor of TheFashionSpot and fashionista-about-town to tell us a little bit more about the comic.

Sex and the 405: How did MINX come about?

Andrea Grant: Although it started out as a comic strip in the back of my literary arts magazine, Copious, I started seriously publishing MINX in 2006. I’ve always been obsessed with the lines between fantasy, reality, and dreams. The creation of MINX was cathartic; it happened right after I emerged from a very dark period in my life.

MINX began as an alter ego that I felt safe working with creatively as I sought to find my voice as an artist. Minx is an archetype of the empowered, modern woman that challenges tradition while embracing sexuality and femininity. MINX is a very personal project — both a conceptual self-portrait, and a response to the way that the celebrity-obsessed media often corrupts the truth and distorts the boundaries of fantasy and actuality. The world of Minx is real to me, albeit a hyper-reality.

Sex and the 405: You mix Native American folklore and fantasy in the comic seamlessly. How did it occur to you — are you Native American?

Andrea Grant: I am half-Native, through my Coast Salish father, who is also a Shaman. I would go with him to pow-wows, where I met some tribal elders, who told amazing traditional stories. And I thought that it would be interesting to combine some of these stories with other universal myths in the graphic novel format. What’s great about comics is that the audience accepts the epic and the supernatural.

Sex and the 405: What do you want readers to take away from the comic?

Andrea Grant: The goal is for others to seem themselves in these archetypes, and also to make an impact when it comes to retelling old myths and preserving traditional stories.

There’s an interesting new book by Mike Madrid called Supergirls: Fashion, feminism, fantasy, and the history of comic book heroines which examines how female characters have evolved through the years. They started out as film noir vixens, and then had to battle for equality in the 1950’s, until they finally became empowered again (i.e. She-Hulk and Catwoman, which I grew up reading).

But these characters always seemed 2-dimensional to me: superhero identity vs. true identity. I wanted to create a more emotionally complicated, 3-dimensional character in Minx, who is something of an anti-hero grimly accepting the fact that she has been called to this strange adventure in Dreamtime.

All of my characters are moody and as complicated as any of us, and it’s that streak of humanity that makes Minx unique. She plays with the boys, but she’s definitely a woman.

And here’s a little something-something for you, because we like you that much. A picture of Andrea Grant herself:

You’re welcome.

Special thanks to Colleen Nika for the intro. That girl knows everybody.

In 2007, a start-up rocked the web with its fearless vision to combine the social network with adult photography into a formula that enables models and photographers to profit via a user voting system. The start-up, Zivity, even managed to raise a $1 million round of seed capital from Silicon Valley investors, notorious for steering clear of adult sites.

“We think it’s our unapologetic approach that has nabbed our investors,” founder Cyan Banister commented then. “Women who want to be sexy is not pornography, and us stressing that has helped us a lot. It’s never been about creating a site that’s a dirty little secret, and investors really need to hear that.”

We had an opportunity to speak with Banister last week and asked her to tell us something she hadn’t told anyone before about Zivity’s story.

“The first time I posed nude was very nerve-wrecking,” Banister said. “I called all my photographer friends and I said ‘I’m thinking abut this company again’ — I tried to start this company ten years ago and I was very young and inexperienced and lacked a lot of maturity in person and business — and I told them, ‘I need to pose nude because if I can’t do this, I can’t start this company.’ ”

She set up the appointment and dove in.

“I knew nothing about looking at the camera, or how to pose,” she recalled. “I loved it. It was transformative. I didn’t think much about my body but afterward, I looked at it in the pictures and thought ‘wow, my body is nice.’ I regretted not doing it sooner and appreciating myself sooner. If I could go back, I would tell myself to pose sooner.”

That’s essentially the heart of Zivity right there — it’s about beauty in all its forms, it’s about the discovery of self and the sharing of this self through collaboration with photographers and through interaction with users.

Banister’s first shoot never made it into the site because the images didn’t meet the site’s quality guidelines.

“Has no one seen these?” we asked, our curiosity piqued. “Can we see them? Can we run them?”

Ask and you shall receive.

Presenting the photo shoot that started it all. Un-Photoshopped, and never before seen:

“A camera will show you something about yourself a mirror never can,” Banister told us. “When you see a picture of yourself, you see everything. Have some shots taken. Even if you don’t do it for the website, do it for yourself. Delete it if you have to, but do it.”

And just in case you want to check out this fabled website of epic win, you can get a 30-day trial by sending an e-mail to sexandthe405@zivity.com, no credit card required — until the end of those 30 days, that is. Then you’ll need to pay up. But don’t worry, you’ll find no damn good reason not to, and over 500 reasons worth doing so.

(Be patient, the 30-day trial messages are sorted manually, not by machines, so give it 24 hours before you leave us impatient comments. Not that we don’t love your eagerness, our sweet flytraps of oversharing and voyeuristic delight.)

Oh, yeah: you’re welcome.

Special thanks to Enrique Gutierrez for inadvertently catalyzing this.

Our editor has the same argument with her mother every year about Valentine’s Day. It looks like this:

AV: I want a man to give me presents for no reason, because he simply can’t resist being reminded of me whether he’s in the shower or strolling around town.

HER: good luck with that. Men are goal-oriented creatures. They need execution dates and a general template to follow or defy, hence the importance of holidays, anniversaries and birthdays — and nudges from us.

AV: that’s bleak, Mom.

Then, without fail, a few days before said holiday, AV will receive an e-mail from her father requesting approval of his latest gift. Everything from bizarre orchids (which her mother loves even though she invariably kills them) to a dinner in a tiny island only big enough for a table under a gazebo, with an ensemble of musicians in boats around them to serenade them.

AV got roses — once. From her ex-husband before he was her husband. Moral? UR DOIN IT RONG, AV.

So we here at Sex and the 405 have decided to do everyone a favor and put some options on the table for you, the first of which is a personal favorite of ours: art by Hugh MacLeod.

Somehow, our shameless editrix-in-command got the Wall Street Journal bestselling author to take a few seconds from his incredible creation schedule to give us some answers. We present these to you for your nomage:

AV Flox: Tell me about the Love Series — how did it come about?

Hugh MacLeod: The Love Series came about in 2007, when I was asked to design some Valentine’s Day promotion material for one of my clients. They went down a treat, and then when Valentine’s Day came around this year I decided to resurrect them.

AV: One of my favorite pieces by you “Commitment” isn’t on there — it should be. That’s love in a nutshell for me.

Your description you included with that piece goes like this:

Within 1 week of meeting this person you realize that not only have you found your soulmate, but you’ve found your soulmate who likes to have sex 4 times a day in the bed, on the dining table, on the kitchen floor, in the changing rooms at Bloomingdale’s etc.

Within 2 weeks you’re already talking about moving in together.

Within 3 weeks you’re talking about having babies together.

Within 4 weeks you realize this person is a complete psychopath.

Within 5 weeks this person also thinks you’re a complete psychopath.

Within 6 weeks you’re sitting at a restaurant with an old friend who is giving you the “How come you only call me when you’re single” speech.

Which is a really long way of asking: have you really had sex in a changing room at Bloomingdale’s? How was it?

HM: I never had sex in Bloomingdale’s. My parents gave me a double bed for my 17th birthday (“Hey, we’d rather have you doing it on that than in the back of a car…”), so from an early age I never had to scout out exotic locations, unlike some of my hapless single-bed school chums. That informed me as I got older.

AV: I have a queen-sized bed but I still love changing-room sex.

HM: The trouble with changing rooms, it’s impossible to spoon afterwards.

AV: But you can grab high tea at Neiman’s! [Laughs] Anyway, since we’re on the subject of the delectable: have you ever done a drawing on human flesh? If not, can I reserve the rights? Thanks.

HM: I once had a wonderful girlfriend who loved getting naked and getting me to draw on her. I was happy to oblige, but never really understood why it turned her on so much. I guess we all have our kinks, so whatever…

The lovely and charming Hermione Way asked me draw on her neck with a Sharpie last SXSW. But we were just having a laugh, nothing kinky happening there. She had already had a ton to drink that night (as did I), so when she woke up the next morning and looked in the mirror…

As for yourself, by all means! The next time you see me, bring a Sharpie!

AV: We all have our kinks, you say. What’s yours?

HM: It takes at least four cocktails to get the kinks outta me.

AV: Duly noted. So Valentine’s Day — because I have to ask — sweet or stupid holiday?

HM: I think Valentine’s day started off well, back in 17th Century Europe, where the idea was to send somebody a secret, anonymous letter that said, “I fancy you”. That’s pretty hot, to get one of those in the mail. But now we send Valentine’s cards to our grannies and vice versa. It kinda defeats the original purpose.

+++

There you have it, our sweet orchids of desire and destruction, the inimitable Hugh MacLeod. If you have an art junkie in your life, check out his gallery. If you’re a Twitter junkie, add him: @gapingvoid.

Closing words?

“Ladies, please always remember The Golden Rule: Men Are Stupid,” says Hugh MacLeod. “So if you want your man to get you one of these beauties for Valentine’s Day, do not assume he and his walnut-sized brain will be smart enough to figure it out on their own. Best to drop him a hint. Maybe kick him in the shins. Or something.”

Vanity Fair’s Claire Howorth talks with Joshua Ferris, lit darling and author of the acclaimed Then We Came to the End and the new The Unnamed.

VF: Do you think your generation of writers is conflicted about sex? Or feels awkward writing about it? The Unnamed contains two pretty notable sex scenes and they’re… relatively tame… I mean, they’re not Roth-ian…

JF: But they’re also not deciding to masturbate in two corners [laughs]. If I had gone on, it would’ve taken the wrong tone. I think if a book is going to take on sex, it should take on sex, and do so boldly.

I’m not sure that there’s a categorical mistake that’s being made somewhere by saying that this generation of writers is too tame compared to the earlier generation, or that somehow this generation doesn’t take it as seriously, or is even less preoccupied by it. A lot of those Roth and Updike books almost have sex as the only object.

I don’t know where a writer can be faulted… Michael Chabon, let’s say. Michael Chabon can’t be faulted for having a far more ambiguous ending spot or approach towards sex simply because he might be the heir to Bellow or Roth.

I think you could talk similarly about a departure of prose style, and wonder, well, why isn’t Jonathan Safran Foer writing as effervescently as Bellow? It seems slightly misguided.

At the same time, we don’t really have anybody writing boldly about sex. So maybe there is something in the water, I’m not sure. But I suspect that it’s not over. I don’t think the sex game is over.

Information from Vanity Fair.

It was a typical day on Twitter. That is, I was e-stalking my object of absolute desire, responding to my friends, and being a good little monkey and checking my new followers to report and block any spam accounts. Then I saw it: @celebfantasies.

Long gone are the days that I check everyone following me to see if they’re cool enough to follow back — now I just reserve follow-backs for people who engage me. The truth? I like to surf blogs and tweets and I know how much time I can end up spending if I give in to even a single person.

But I run a blog now and people depend on me to be a little more attentive, so what the hell, right? Someone’s gotta read Twitter so you don’t have to.

.

“A homage to the famous, beautiful and sexy women we love, not hiding the truth of masturbation.”

That was the bio. Hell yes. The blog linked immediately revealed a veritable dish of beauties — from the absolute fantasy girls to the girls next door — as well as articles and fantasies, written by the author and pulled up from the depths of the web.

I shot the author, Brad Hamilton, a direct message and a few hours later, had him before me over Gtalk. What follows is the interview:

AV: First off–what possessed you to do this?

BH: The primary reason is that the society we live in treats sex as a taboo, especially masturbation. A friend, actually a phone sex girl, suggested that I write a blog about my fantasies about all my celebrity girls. It’s something of a therapeutic way of talking about my fantasies in a safe way. This is, actually, the third incarnation of the blog. The first two I had on Blogger a few years ago. With some of the video and slide shows I had on there, it was slowing up the page and the load times. Tumblr has a cleaner interface that has good features for photos and video.

AV: What’s the response you’ve gotten?

BH: Most of the visitors to my blog are guys who also masturbate to celebrities. Only one woman who has been the subject of my writings (that I know of) has seen and read my blog and she actually contacted me a couple times via IM and we’ve chatted about it. The guys like the blog of course.

AV: In the blog do you offer a daily hottie for readers to check out or is that less frequent?

BH: Something like that. If I write a fantasy about a woman or post photos or videos of her, she’s the woman that I’m currently getting my rocks off to. For example, I was masturbating to Fox 11 reporters Maria Quiban, Lisa Breckinridge and Suzanne Marques last week so my morning writings were about them, along with my Twitter entries. Can I tell you something? You fall in the category of newsladies/reporters. You’re adorable.

AV: Oh, I’m flattered! Thank you.

So, there you have it. A daily dish of fantasies, sexy articles, pictures and video, complete with a Twitter stream to let you know what’s new.

Bosses — prepare yourselves for a complete drop in productivity.

Oh, and you’re welcome.

Image from Jamie Edmondson, via Celebrity Dish.

Pam Mandel, a freelance tech and travel journo, has a fantastic post at BlogHer about what she lugs around with her all day.

This reminds me of a seminar way back in the day by John Gray, the guy who wrote Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus (and I just totally dated myself didn’t I? I was, like, five when I attended this thing, mmmkay). Gray made the attendees look into their bags. Apparently: the more stuff you have, the more issues you have.

This is amusing because nowadays, we carry a ton of stuff with us. I don’t think we’re necessarily getting more neurotic, though the contents of a bag do say something about the person holding it. Like what they do or what they like.

Jessica Janson, who blogged for us this week has a huge bag. When I met with her for drinks in Las Vegas, I couldn’t help but wonder what she carried around in there. Her stripper shoes? A laptop? A condo?

How many of you have wondered what the editrix-in-command of Sex and the 405 carried in her bag?

I’m sure the first thing you notice is the lack of condoms. Do not take this to mean I don’t advocate safe sex. In general, I prefer unprotected sex with a partner who has been tested for sexually transmitted diseases.

Now–Details and Playboy, for fodder, though it’s usually Details and Wired, with Psychology Today, Cosmopolitan and Playboy making occasional appearances, but I already polished January’s Wired and haven’t gotten February’s yet, so there we go.

A Flip cam for video interviews; a Canon Powershot for stills; an iPhone for everything from Twitter to GoogleMaps because I am always lost; conspicuously missing is my digital recorder on loan to another journo, an iPhone charger (which is vital, given how much I use mine), and an extra phone for the more expose-ish stuff we naughty sex bloggers sometimes have to do; that wire thing is for recording phone interviews; extra AAA batteries, which reminds me I’m out of AAs; lipgloss; lipstick in pink; sunglasses, because you never know how late you’ll be out; a wallet with cash; a Poken because business cards are lame; and a pen and pad for love notes and lists.

Yes, I have a huge thing for zebra print.

(And no, none of these things were given to me by sponsors. Though Marlboro is totes welcome to send me cartons and cartons of Reds ANY DAY in payment for the mad promotion I inadvertently give them every time I leave my apartment–and even when I don’t. Ahem.)

What about you? What do you carry around with you all day?

“I grew up in Palo Alto and when I discovered this L.A. tech world I couldn’t believe how different it was than the area where I grew up,” Julia Angwin, author of Stealing MySpace, told the LA Weekly at South by Southwest: Interactive in March of this year.

“In Palo Alto everyone is smart; they all went to Harvard and had some brilliant idea,” Angwin said. “In Hollywood, in L.A., these guys were totally scrappy–they would do anything to make money and they were marketing geniuses so it’s a totally different world filled with clubbing and hanging out in Santa Monica and pornstars.”

It’s true, L.A. tech has something of a reputation. After a few years of wrestling with it, trying to build our cred, I think it’s time we stopped apologizing. A lot of interesting tech offerings are coming out of Los Angeles, not to mention incredible content. So we like to look pretty and we like chic clubs and pornstars and rockstars and bubbly and fun as much as gossip about Google’s latest acquisition. So we’ll put a red carpet at a BBQ truck. Deal with it.

Nothing illustrates this attitude more clearly than @LaLaWhat, a Twitter user that reports on the unprofessional aspect of some of Los Angeles’ most active tech scenesters. Not to be confused with lalawag, Los Angeles’ favorite tech blog, @LaLaWhat is simply a Twitter account that reports in the refreshing and eternally juvenile style of Gossip Girl.

I fired off a set of questions to the anonymous tweeps last night for your reading pleasure.

How did you come up with the idea?

We were enjoying just enjoying ourselves when we noticed L.A. all a’twitter with some interesting news. We thought–what a shame it was to have that lovely gossip to broken up, hidden in subtext, and forgotten, and since the lovely Lalawag was taking a decidedly more journalistic approach, we decided to have a little fun!

How do you get your information?

It’s quite simple. We have our “agents” who can post directly and anonymously, and then we have all of you whom we follow who lovingly DM us about all the debauchery. We only post details from those we trust and from those we can verify.

Are there tips you get DMd that you just can’t share because they’re so scandalous?

We like to think there are unspoken rules among us. Let’s just say that the truly damaging secrets we keep to ourselves. We’re not here to hurt anyone, we just like to keep things interesting. After all, its the private things that bind us.

Who would ever want to be Valleywag? We don’t have any “clear cut rules” though, with the exception being not to tweet anything that is truly damaging. Like @TheMan [Editor's note: Francisco Dao, organizer of the Los Angeles tech conference Twiistup] once said, the scene can be “a whole lot like high school” but high school isn’t real life.

We know a few of you have gotten a bit upset about a certain tweet or two. Most of those times, it was because of a slight misinterpretation or assumption based on our tweets. Each time, we tweeted a clarification.

We want you to enjoy the gossip and continue to send us tips, and we know you won’t do that if you didn’t enjoy it. We are your guilty pleasure. We want to know all the little things you couldn’t tweet, but you know you really wanted to. We have our own ways of hearing about your thrilling little secrets. For example AV, we hear you’ve been having quite the passionate ride, and this time we don’t just mean in bed.

I have no idea what you’re talking about. Anyway… how do you classify who’s fodder-worthy to the community?

You should only gossip about those you know. No one is just fodder, we love each and every one of you we gossip about. After all it’s all in good fun. Choosing really depends on the juicy details, sometimes even the cute little quiet ones, lingering in the background, are the most interesting.

“So there AV, for your infinite perusal, are our answers to your intimate questions,” they wrote in closing. “So until the next time you sneak out for a cross-country midnight rendezvous…”

I still have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about.

Deny, deny, deny.

But can you deny this kind of fun? Didn’t think so.

(Not involved but curious? Hit up lalawag’s event page to see what tech-related events are happening in Los Angeles this week. There’s always something going on somewhere. But be warned… no matter who you are, there will be tweeting.)

Image from @LaLaWhat’s Twitter page.

We all know social media can be a double-sided sword. As more people get on Twitter and Facebook, including employers and family members, it becomes harder to overshare as freely as we did three or so years ago when it was just a handful of us on there.

Facebook can’t roll out security features fast enough–many people I know have cracked under the pressure of prying eyes, trading self-expression and fun digital socializing for peace and security. Well, not all is lost. A new network is on the scene and they’re committed to letting us overshare our shenanigans as publicly or privately as we deem fit.

Introducing: Blackbox Republic, a site where “It’s complicated” gets simple.

Lowdown

Blackbox Republic takes quality seriously. They’re more interested in fostering a sex-positive environment for people to be themselves and connect than in exploding in users within hours of launching. To fight against creeps and spam, they’ve put in several safeguards in place: for starters, it’s five bucks a month to be a member. Not only that, but you need to get vouched by at least one other member of the community (who gets a limited number of vouches).

The site has launched with privacy settings in place, so you won’t be rushing around after an embarrassing incident trying to make everything private (ahem, Facebook). There are also two types of connections on the site, which work a little like Twitter: followers and friends. Your friends get to see and do a whole lot more than your followers–and just following someone who follows you does not automatically make them a friend. The choice of how to categorize them is entirely up to you.

Also, the founders are aware that people and relationships change, so crushes (called “wishbones”) on other people expire after a certain period of time, completely eliminating the awkwardness of un-wishing someone.

Background

Last week, I sat down for a phone chat with founders Sam Lawrence (@SamLawrence) and April Donato (@aprilblackbox) to talk about how the idea for this ingenious new social network came about.

“It started with 17 hour ride home from Burning Man,” Lawrence told me, chuckling. “April and I were in RV filled with dust and dirt and garbage. Burning is about self-expression, creativity. On the drive back we talked about how the most kick ass thing was people didn’t talk about work or houses or kids. It was a much more intimate conversation. We started asking ourselves why there wasn’t a walled-off place like that, where people don’t judge you and you can really be you.”

So they went online to see if something like this existed.

“We found two things,” Lawrence explained. “There were dating sites, which have a short-term value proposition, and which are splintered by a lot of labels, race, sexual orientation, age–all these classifications. Relationships are messy, the social web is messy and people don’t want the labels. They want to self-organize without the labels.”

The other thing they found were the social networks with which we’re familiar, like Facebook and MySpace.

“Facebook and networks like that don’t guarantee you connect with like-minded people,” Lawrence added. “Everyday in the news we see people dropped from jobs because they were drinking a beer.”

The founders of Blackbox Republic understand that for many of us, life is cleaved in two. We have a public persona, which goes to work and is involved in the community, and a private self, which is vibrant and expressive and rarely fits the mold.

“The problem is this culture, which cannot accept investment in our personal lives,” Lawrence said.

Although not advertised right on the site, Blackbox knows a lot of this divide has to deal with sexuality.

“We tried to communicate the sex-positive part of the message,” Lawrence explained. “Blackbox Republic is about getting people together and once you’re in a safe environment is that things like sex and dates and relationships will happen.”

As far as these relationships go, Blackbox Republic is pretty lax. As any poly friend will tell you, it’s a pain that Facebook doesn’t allow for the listing of more than one partner. The language is pretty standard, too: In A Relationship, Married To, It’s Complicated, etc.

“We allow people to add their own language,” Lawrence told me. Not only can you input whatever label you want on your entanglements, but the other person can pick something totally different. Lawrence’s relationship with Donato is “in love.” Her relationship with him? “Cuddling.”

Also in the spirit of self-expression, instead of favorite movies and songs, users get virtual corkboards, which enables you to upload pictures of things they like. This is mine:

“There are a lot of things that don’t have a home,” says Lawrence. “Stuff like YouTube videos that are funny but inappropriate, for example. This is what we’re working for. That’s why it’s five bucks a month.”

Blackbox Republic also features a well developed events section that allows non-members access, while keeping the more expressive content associated with these events members-only. Currently, they’re working on creating groups. An iPhone app is due out at the beginning of the year.

I’m already there. Are you?

Images from Blackbox Republic. For more information about this exciting new space, visit their FAQ Section.

Twenty-two year-old Kari Ferrell, better known as the Hipster Grifter, seduced horny skinny jean-wearing hipsters in Brooklyn to steal their money. Later, she forged checks and tried to pull a fast one on Vice. Now serving time in Utah, she talked with the Daily Beast about what cell life is all about.

Some juicy tidbits for your fast and furious consumption:

The Daily Beast: What has been the most surprising part of prison?

Kari Ferrell: The most surprising part of jail (contrary to popular belief, I am in jail, not prison. Big difference) has to be the wide variety of people that come in. As with most of society, I assumed that the only people incarcerated were individuals who R Kelly’d little boys, and those who like freebasing crack cocaine out of human skulls. There have been girls in here for such things as unpaid parking tickets, driving without insurance, jay walking (seriously! And it was her only charge—spent four days in here) and giving a blowjob to her partner (by marriage) at a park. (Hello, who hasn’t done that?) Obviously there are those in here for more serious crimes, and that is unsurprising, but jay walking? Come on. Maybe it’s a Utah thing?

The Daily Beast: What is just like you imagined it to be? The food? The beds?

Ferrell: On the opposite side of the spectrum; the most unsurprising thing is that it’s exactly how I thought it would be: It’s the Orwellian nature of jail itself. We are housed in cells that resemble fish bowls, [with] large plexiglass windows, so that the guards are able to look in at any time; no privacy whatsoever. I also expected boredom to be exactly how it is: mind-numbingly unproductive. You can only work out, read, attempt to educate a cellmate on metaphysics, masturbate, and draw so much y’know?

The Daily Beast: Do you have a cellmate? Tell us about them.

Ferrell: My former cellmate, Jerzy Mitchell, was phenomenal. We had the same interests (I highly doubt any other female in this jail listens to Felt and Chris Garneau), similar tastes and an affinity for men with facial hair. She was with me for three months, and when she left I felt like I lost a significant body part. Jerzy Mitchell is my runaway spleen. Shut up. That’s significant enough. My new cellmate is, uh, different. It’s hard to relate to a heroin-addicted prostitute who is offended when you ask, “So how much did you charge to gum their meat?” (In case you’re curious, the answer is $40.) When you’re locked down for 24 hours a day with someone (the pod I am in is a minimum/medium custody pod. Even though I am minimum, we are only out for three hours a day—alternating mornings and evenings) you have to get along.

Good luck with that, girlfriend.

Image from Driven By Boredom. Information from The Daily Beast.