Website Hall of Infamy
September, 2004 Winner: What the Heathen Statue of Liberty Really Means
Last month the Statue of Liberty was re-opened for the first time since the horrendous terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Most Americans are generally glad to see the statue re-open to the general public because they believe that she stands for freedom and justice. However, there is apparently a tiny minority of Americans who don't share such a fondness for the Statue of Liberty, as the writer of this page makes clear.
August, 2004 Winner: Methods File
This site contains the complete text to the notorious Methods File that was originally posted on the alt.suicide.holiday newsgroup. Basically the Methods File lists all the ways that you can successfully take your own life if, for whatever reason, you feel the need to end it. The file consists of two main sections that represent the two ways that you can kill yourself—Poison (which includes information on substances like cyanide, acetaminophen, bleach, and water) and Other Methods (which don't involve poison). The site goes into details about approximately how long it would take for each method to achieve the desired result of death.
Needless to say, this site creates all kinds of ethical and religious dilemmas (such as is it right to teach a person who's simply suffering from depression how to kill him/herself instead of referring him/her to the nearest mental health clinic).
July, 2004 Winner: Paidia Public Relations
On the surface, it looks like a regular business site that advertises a public relations firm. It's a slickly designed site that's full of information about the services that Paidia Public Relations can provide to a prospective client as as well as the company's expertise in event planning and hosting all-female spa parties. Paidia Public Relations has also a listing of upcoming workshops on how to become an event planner (that costs $399 a person) that will be given by the company's un-named "corporate event planning specialist" and will be held in hotels across the East Coast and Mid-West throughout the summer.
A casual visitor to that site would conclude that Paidia Public Relations is a straightforward business that's slightly off-beat. (After all, how many public relations agencies offer all-female spa parties?) One might even question this site's induction into the Website Hall of Infamy.
But there's a backstory to this company that will never be mentioned on this website—a story that includes unpaid employees, disgruntled members of an all-female social club, massage services, an arrest for prostitution, and a cat named Goobie. Once you learn about this backstory, you'll conclude on how it is very appropriate that Paidia Public Relations was named after the ancient Greek goddess of play and amusement. Of course, if you happened to be an unfortunate vicitm of the company's owner/founder, you probably won't find anything playful or amusing about this story.
Since this story can get convoluted at times, it's best to start at the very beginning, which was just a couple of years ago. It all started with the creation of a Washington, DC-based dotcom called GirlsGoingOut.com, a website that was billed as a place where women can meet each other in social situations and, hopefully, form new friendships. For a $60 membership, a woman can have access to events like Sex and the City viewing parties, ski getaways, sushi eating mixed with self-defense lessons, and getting a spa makeover while sipping merlot.
That site brought media attention to its founder, Farrah Ashline, which included stories in The Washington Post and Entrepreneur's Start-Ups magazine. Ashline was likened to a "young Gloria Steinem" and she claimed that her site had gotten 4,000 subscribers willing to pay the $60 membership fee.
I became familiar with Farrah Ashline myself when she began posting job openings for her company on DC Web Women's all-female web design mailing list, which I subscribe to. (Click here for a sample of one of her posts.) A few sharp-eyed women on the list noticed that even though Ashline referred to herself as the CEO of GirlsGoingOut.com, she posted her job notices under the e-mail address "goobiebabybutt@aol.com." Granted, Ashline made the common mistake of using a cutesy e-mail address as a business contact (okay, I'll admit that it's more common among job seekers than among business owners), but at least she didn't use something like "imaslut", "foxymama", or "hottits". Anyway, this caused a major discussion war between women who assumed that Ashline was a total dummy (or "goobybaby ImaMoron" as this one e-mail called her) and other women who thought that Ashline was a first-time inexperienced business owner who made a simple mistake and who needed gentle advice and not the flame war that the list had generated. (Click here, here, here, here, here, and here for a few samples.) Sometimes things like that happens in an all-women's organization where women will cut each other down instead of offering helpful sisterly advice, which is unfortunate, but that's an entirely different story.
The controversy had gotten so bad that the list administrators had to shut it down completely. A few days later Farrah Ashline posted a follow-up notice to the list saying that she had named one of her AOL e-mail accounts "goobiebabybutt" after the baby talk she speaks to her cat, Goobie, and that she was unsubscribing to the mailing list as a result of all the nasty e-mails that the list had generated.
I had written to Ashline after the fact telling her how sorry I was that she had to face such a negative reaction over a simple mistake of using a cutesy e-mail address. At that time I had no idea that there was a dark side to that woman. She wrote back thanking me for the e-mail and inviting me to join GirlsGoingOut.com. Well, I procrastinated mainly because of the $60 fee but I figured that I would eventually get around to joining it because I would've loved to meet more women in a social setting. Looking back on this, I am now glad that I procrastinated on joining the organization and I am now $60 richer for it. I'm also very glad that I never answered any of her help wanted ads, even though the idea of working on a social website for women would've been interesting work had it been operated by an honest entrepreneur.
On the surface it looked like GirlsGoingOut.com was doing well. It had received media attention and, if Ashline's claim of 4,000 subcribers paying $60 is true, the site should have raised at least $240,000. In the meantime, Farrah Ashline had even started work on a second site called WOMagazine.com, which, judging from the lack of pages at the Internet Web Archive, never got off the ground. (A test version of the site remains on the server of an unpaid ex-employee.)
But there were a couple of warning signals of things to come. Farrah Ashline made an unsuccessful attempt to sell both GirlsGoingOut.com and WOMagazine.com on eBay for a minimum bid of $250,000. Then GirlsGoingOut.com abruptly went offline with the excuse that the site was undergoing reconstruction as part of a shift from a DC area-only site to a nationwide site with franchises located in other cities across the United States. This new national version was scheduled to relaunch on May 7, 2004 (which never made its deadline).
The shit literally hit the public fan when The Washington Post printed a story about former disgruntled employees of GirlsGoingOut.com who claimed that Ashline had never paid them for the work that they did for the site. In addition, one former GirlsGoingOut.com member even came forward saying that she had never received anything for the $60 membership that she paid. When she attempted to speak on the phone to Ashline about it, Ashline screamed and cursed her out.
That story also mentioned an arrest warrant that's currently out for Ashline in Albany, New York for failing to appear in court after being arrested on prostitution charges.
What's more, the Wonkette site had exposed this allegation that some of the writing on GirlsGoingOut.com were plagiarized material from other sites.
Then there were the interesting Help Wanted ads that Farrah Ashline posted on various websites that seeked entertainers, lingerie models, actors, and dancers for a massage business. Some of the ex-GirlsGoingOut.com employees had dug up some interesting stuff about a few sites that contained photos of a woman named Saraphina, who looks like Farrah Ashline, including BabyDollMassage.com and DC-Exotics.com.
There are also a couple of unsubstantiated rumors about Farrah Ashline having offered free massages to a couple of her male employees in lieu of cash.
The ex-GirlsGoingOut.com employees filed suits in various small claims courts in Farifax County, Virginia (where Ashline lived at the time) and they won but they weren't able to collect on those judgements. So they decided to use the World Wide Web to get Farrah Ashline. When the domain registry on WOmagazine.com expired, one digruntled employee grabbed it and used it to redirect to a page on AtomicApril.com that details her days as one of Ashline's employees along with some interesting graphics slamming Ashline. Another disgruntled employee started a site using links to the Internet Web Archive to document all the employees who have worked on GirlsGoingOut.com in order to refute Ashline's frequent claims that those unpaid employees had never worked for her company. A third disgruntled employee registered FarrahAshline.com as a domain name and started a site providing links to stories from other unpaid employees and contractors about their dealings with Ms. Ashline.
The disgruntled employees and members who got nothing for their $60 fee also managed to convince the Better Business Bureau to give an unsatisfactory rating to GirlsGoingOut.com.
In the meantime, the ex-employees had turned the comments section of a blog page on SpeicalAgency.net's site into a gathering place for the unpaid workers to write about their unpleasant dealings with Ms. Ashline and report on any further developments on Ashline, who had gone into hiding at that point.
The attempts to get payment and justice by the ex-employees resulted in a follow-up story in The Washington Post but Farrah Ashline was nowhere to be seen.
There was one rumored sighting on the SpecialAgency.net page that Ashline had briefly worked in a mall kiosk selling jewlery in Wheaton, Maryland.
But then some dedicated researcher uncovered a few Craig's List postings from a woman named Paidia Linefar, whose writing style and activities seem similar to Farrah Ashline's. One posting advertises psychotherapy sessions mixed with massage and yoga. Another one is a job listing that is seeking to hire massage therapists, nail technicians, facial experts, spray tan experts, and makeup artists for all-female spa parties. One eagle-eyed person who posted on the SpecialAgency.net page noticed that Paidia Linefar's surname combines the last four letters of the name "Ashline" with the first three letters of the name "Farrah."
Then someone discovered the Paidia Public Relations site and the disgruntled ex-employees felt that they had hit the jackpot. While the writing style suggests that Paidia and Farrah Ashline is the same person, the evidence seemed circumstantial at first. But then the ex-employees gathered more evidence suggesting a stronger link.
The Paidia Public Relations site was designed by a company called Juice Box Design. There is a blog by one of Juice Box Design's employees that provides a revealing story about the company's dealings with Paidia Public Relations. It also provides the strongest evidence that Farrah Ashline and Paidia Linefar is the same person. Like I wrote at the beginning, Farrah Ashline had used the e-mail address goobiebabybutt@aol.com when she posted available jobs at GirlsGoingOut.com to the DC Web Women mailing list and she said she named that e-mail account after the baby talk she speaks to her cat Goobie. Well, here is what this employee has to say:
one of our clients... oh boy. carve out an afternoon (i did). we made a web site for a public relations entrepreneur (paidiapr.com) and she was just bizarre from the beginning. her e-mail address is goobiebabybutt which, as she explained in a voice mail, is because her cat's name is goobie and she has "a cute little baby butt".
But then this employee goes on to explain what happened next:
hmm, ok. but anyway we made a layout, it was good, and then all of a sudden she changed her mind and said she would rather have a dog care web site instead. we said ok, and made a layout for that. then she said she wasn't going to have a dog care company after all. so we inisisted that she pay us for our time, and refused to do any more work until we got paid for the rest of the public relations work up front. she disappeared for a month, reappeared, told us she had just changed her name to paidia, and that she would send the money overnight. we got it, put her online, there she is.
then max was checking web stats and discovered that a ridiculous amount of people were visiting this web site, and all from one blog archive. so we checked it out.
so max and i are in shock all day, half worried but mostly fascinated, and just as we decided that as independent contractors there is no real way this could hurt us (all publicity is good publicity, right?) we get a phone call from farrah/paidia asking if we could change the street address listed on her web site to a p.o. box. i guess people figured out how to reach her.
At least Juice Box Design got paid for its work, which is more than what other people who have dealt with Farrah Ashline/Paidia Linefar can say.
The ex-employees attempted to warn the hotels that are slated to host the $399 event planning workshops for Paidia Public Relations about Farrah/Paidia. One person found out that one of the hotels listed on the Paidia Public Relations site as hosting the workshop did not even have anything booked under the name "Paidia" or "Paidia Public Relations". Another person called the Paidia Public Relations phone number that's posted on the site and recognized Farrah's voice on the other end.
Amazingly the news media has yet to seize on this story. So far, SpecialAgency.net's blog page is the best source for the latest news on the Farrah Ashline/Paidia Linefar saga, which seems to get updated on a daily basis.
UPDATE (July 13, 2004): The Paidia Public Relations site has gone off-line just a mere nine days after this site was inducted into the Website Hall of Infamy (which is definitely a record for the Website Hall of Infamy). Will Farrah/Paidia decide to go straight and focus on paying back her unpaid ex-employees what she owes them so everyone can move on with their lives? Will she move to another city, start a new site that advertises for services that aren't provided after the customer pays, and hire new employees who end up not being paid even a single penny for their toil? Will Farrah Ashline/Paidia Linefar change her name to something else? Will the past and law enforcement officials catch up with her and she ends up in deep trouble? Stay tuned to the SpecialAgency.net's blog page for the latest news on the Farrah Ashline/Paidia Linefar saga. In the meantime, here's a screenshot of Paidia Public Relations during its brief time online.
UPDATE (November 21, 2004): The entire SpecialAgency.net site went off-line for a while but then it returned in a read-only format so people weren't able to exchange gossip, facts, and rumors about the latest antics of Farrah Ashline/Paidia Linefar. The site Farrah Ashline.com (which was started by a disgruntled unpaid ex-employee) has started a special newsfeed that other sites can place online that will automatically provide updates about the notorious Farrah/Paidia. Here's the latest newsfeed below: