Rap Genius co-founder resigns after offensive annotations on Elliot Rodger's manifesto
Mahbod Moghadam's own site, Rap Genius, forced him to resign after he used the service to make offensive annotations on Santa Barbara killer Elliot Rodger's manifesto on Sunday.
Rap Genius is a site designed to interpret and annotate lyrics but the site has since been used for various types of content including poetry.
In trying to interpret Rodger's manifesto, Moghadam posted controversial comments about Rodger's sister and praised his writing style.
The comments about his sister were deemed particularly insensitive especially given the misogynistic tone of the manifesto and the videos that Rodger had posted on YouTube.
The insensitive annotations have since been deleted by the site but his comments were captured by Gawkr.
Rap Genius' other co-founder Tom Lehman released a statement on Monday announcing that Moghadam has resigned.
Lehman said: Mahbod Moghadam, one of my co-founders, annotated the piece with annotations that not only didn't attempt to enhance anyone's understanding of the text, but went beyond that into gleeful insensitivity and misogyny. All of which is contrary to everything we're trying to accomplish at Rap Genius.
Moghadam has since tweeted his apology.
Source: Gawkr, Rap Genius, Business Insider
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