ModelMayhem.com Internet Brands Inc ,owner, Modeling website has dark underside El Segundo California

"Mayhem" means a life-diminishing injury like putting out an eye or severing a hand.

Despite the dark connotation of its name, Model Mayhem presents on the surface as a lighthearted, informal place for models and photographers. Scratch that surface and you find North Korea in microcosm. I know someone on the inside. With the aid of a few free drinks, I have learned many disturbing truths about this site.

Users are the subject of FBI-style dossiers written by self-appointed "moderators" and killer "admins". None of this is disclosed to those users. The gruppenfuherer Admin is Dean Johnson, a man with a history of rudeness and disrespect for his peers. He hides in Minneapolis. Johnson and other admins remain anonymous and communicate their messages of death using a black logo that has a curious resemblance to the ISIS terror banner.

The "mods" often rely on outside gossip taken from Internet scandal sites to target photographers. Photos that displease the mods are noted like prior arrests under a three strikes law. Some of the site "rules" are unknown - one user was canned because he uploaded 4 public domain photos of animals and the mods treated that as equivalent to stealing someone’s copyrighted pictures.

The list never expires. When someone accumulates enough demerits, they are summarily canned without warning. Portfolios that took years of work and thousands of dollars to build are erased with a single mouse click. There is no appeal from the death sentence; any complaint is met by an insulting rebuke.

Continuing with the "secret police" approach to users, a skilled technical staff searches through ISP data, metadata from pictures and private messages to sniff out and eliminate persons on their significantly-sized enemies list. All in all, it’s just no fun at all.

This site needs to be taken down and restarted from scratch. Until it is, I would avoid it like the plague.