Tales From the DJ Booth: 12 Rules for Stripping
Rule 10: Anonymity Is a Myth
Anonymity is dead. If you're under the age of thirty, you have not lived a single day without the internet—a living, breathing record of everything to ever happen, that somehow gets a huge portion of the record wrong, up to and including claiming that this column (written with bacon grease on my fingers and two days after deadline) is the product of non-human, artificial intelligence.
You Cannot Control the Narrative About You
Not only is your information out there, but the information is probably inaccurate to an extent. According to A.I. search results, I am a black man from the Cleveland area with a YouTube sports channel, while he is a Northwest-based goth-industrial DJ who writes a column for “Exotica.” While this likely makes dating hard for both of us (in addition to surprising venue owners and crowds everywhere), both myself and “other Hazmatt” have set up websites, built up social media pages, and have otherwise done all the required steps to inform the machine that we are two different people...but Google doesn't give a fuck. Here I am, avoiding “alt-0151” on my keyboard, so as not to be accused of being A.I. (hence the ellipses in the prior sentence); meanwhile, Google is confidently reminding you that this issue of Exotic Week is brought to you by our local soccer team, the Portland Donuts.
With this in mind, understand that you will never be able to completely control the search results about you. Yes, I encourage you to buy a domain name, set up a website, and at least attempt to piss into the wind by doing the very basics. But, depending on the day and Google's current mood, the A.I. search results will tell you that I'm everything from a homeless drug dealer to a loving father, simply because I hand out Ivermectin on Halloween from a rented apartment, and I might have kids that I don't know about. In the last five years, I have done a single comedy show, once, one time, on one date, and Google A.I. search results called it a “west coast tour.” Again, I'd like to be an optimist and assume Google is just comparing me to The Smiths, but vegans and racists are usually disappointed after getting to know me, so these lazy search results are benign at best, and harmful to one's reputation at worst.
What does any of this have to do with being a stripper?
Stage Names No Longer Work
Back in the 1900s, the concept of “stage names” served more than one purpose. Beyond a character or alternate identity, when going by “Destiny” (when she knew damn well that “Choice” or “Circumstance” would be a better fit), Amber Amberson kept herself from being “doxxed,” as the kids say. Amber didn't want customers knowing who she was, nor did she want anyone from her day job (besides the janitors and I.T. guy) to know where she worked at night (and these guys kept her secret quiet, because they didn't want to get fired). No one in real life knew about “Destiny,” and no one at the club (besides management and security) knew that “Destiny” was really Amber. This is why there are no photographs allowed in the club, no cell phones at the stage, and very few strippers who go by “Ruth.” Anonymity inside the club is assumed, and customers expect exotic, fake stage names (they know that “Jagerzae Crystale” isn't on a legal document). Unless a dancer in the 1900s opted to pose for Playboy or partake in studio-produced, hard-to-obtain porn, she was basically free to live two separate lives, both of which assumed a great deal of privacy.
Flash forward a few years, two fallen towers and a beloved dead gorilla, and the timeline has shifted to where Flock cameras are being installed inside of toilets, Starlink knows what you think about during sex, and there are A.I. summaries of what your unborn child's favorite food will be, based on your search history and a few dozen Reddit posts by the most confidently misinformed providers of the data upon which our entire civilization rests. And, to top it all off, none of the data being provided to or from mass surveillance is being filtered through any sort of fact-checkers or gatekeepers. We went from “That looks Photoshopped, better check Snopes” to “Your grandfather just loaned Taylor Swift $5,000 on Instagram” quicker than it takes for a Boomer to pull up their bootstraps.
So, in order to dox “Destiny,” all someone has to do is ask A.I., “What does the secretary from my work, Amber, do at night?” or “Where does Destiny from Sticky Kitten II work at during the week?” and they will get an entire Wikipedia page's worth of information. Some real information will out Amber/Destiny accurately (if Amber didn't want her church knowing she's a stripper, well...too late). However, the A.I. will also add whatever is out there, up to and including gossip, rumors, social media slander, photos of mom on a boat with shirtless old millionaires, and a suggestion to review results about “Amber Amberson's schedule at Sticky Kitten II.” Then, A.I. will suggest that some users have also seen Amber dancing at Dirty Octopus and Forgotten Daughter (but it will confuse Portland, ME with Portland, OR, and end up falsely doxxing some other Amber on the other side of the country, likely costing her a day job as well).
Embrace Your Future Past
Rumors are true to those who believe them, and no amount of content warnings or community notes can convince a sizable amount of the population that the earth is neither hollow nor inhabited by Nazi dinosaurs (I am not making this made-up thing up; go down that rabbit hole on a lazy Sunday). Even if the A.I. is wrong, your potential employer, husband, or creditor doesn't know better (and they really don't care, because there's a million other yous available at the drop of a click).
There is one (and only one) way to actually win the battle against your privacy and the unlimited, mostly inaccurate information being spread about you: embrace it. Treat your profession as a dancer like any other adult activity—hide it from kids and old people, but be unapologetic about it where other adults are concerned. Everyone shits. Everyone has vices. Everyone, especially in this economy, does what they have to do to make ends meet. Hypocrisy is human nature, especially where the moral authoritarians are concerned. Every right-wing pastor has a Grindr account. Every left-wing rainbow cat lady is scared of Muslims. Everyone is cancel-worthy in one way or another. The fact that you get naked for money is only an insult if you allow it to be. Unless we can roll back the timeline, we will never live in an anonymous society again, so you may as well embrace everything about your past (i.e., your current situation, when it comes up again years from now).
If our elected officials can get away with banging secretaries and porn stars, you, the current (or former) stripper, should be able to be honest about fleecing drunk dudes out of money. Yes, there will be the occasional romantic partner or employer who will decide against pursuing a relationship with you due to your vocation, but that's just how the world works. What you don't want is to end up sleeping with or working for someone who doesn't know your story, only for them to end up finding out the night before a wedding or promotion. People are judgmental. I broke up with a girl because I found out she listened to Coldplay (as in, really listened to it and felt whatever it is their music is trying to convey). I've been dumped over a Hatchetman tattoo (I also wouldn't hire a Juggalo stripper, because I don't want to be distracted at work). Find a way to embrace your reality. Stormy Daniels fucked a New York Democrat thirty years ago, and she's living off of book sales and “comedy” tours, attended by normies of all ages, who support girl power or whatever. Joe Biden's son gives interviews about how crack cocaine is cleaner and healthier than regular cocaine, and he might be our next president. Children's author Shel Silverstein wrote for Playboy. The Hawk Tuah girl has her own blockchain. There might not be any more anonymity, but gatekeepers are dying off as well. “Destiny” is a fake name for a reason. You actually have plenty of options and agency.
Explain Your Old Name Without Shame
I've never had to explain my past as a stripper, but I have had to explain “going by” a pun about sexual assault on minors. Take notes.
In the early 2000s, my buddy Dan Stone and I co-hosted a radio show at Portland State. As part of this, we had many audio-only skits and characters that we would make up, ranging from failed comedians to insufferable emo kids (on brand for Portland). Most of these never made it past a few clips or appearances. However, one of these characters was the ultra-misogynistic rapper “Wombstretcha the Magnificent,” played by Dan (a nerdy I.T. dude who listens to Bauhaus and Kraftwerk), and his hype man, “Statutory Ray,” aka myself (an equally nerdy white dude who leans more into KMFDM and Laibach). We wore fake mustaches, “molester glasses,” and jokingly rapped about kidnapping children using a soundproof white van. The entire shtick was a parody and send-up of the mainstream rapper bravado, if seen through sketchy piece-of-shit white guy stereotypes (as opposed to mainstream rap's black or Latino thug/gangster stereotypes). Imagine if GWAR and Weird Al had talentless baby twins who rapped, and were loved by edgy teenagers who hung out at the bus mall. That was our band. It was a joke. Even people who didn't appreciate us knew it was just edgy boy Millennial slop.
The academic answer to the “Why are you guys doing this?” question was simple: we were lampooning the music industry and how it promotes artists who brag about being total scumbags. On the other hand, the actual answer was that we had a ton of fun and people understood the joke. The project blew up about as big as it could have, at least locally. We made albums, pressed merch, and put on shows, and over the course of four years, not a single solitary incident or concern arose regarding us (or anyone we associated with) being “problematic,” let alone actual kidnappers or statutory rapists. Willamette Week even interviewed our girlfriends in an attempted hit piece that ended up backfiring and being a massive promotion (look up the phrase “Courting the Wombstretched” to find the article).
Of course, this was also around 2004-2008, when it took longer than a few seconds to upload a video, and the only real social media was MySpace or Facebook. Because both MySpace and Facebook (as well as this lovely magazine) let people use fake names, like “Wombstretcha” and “Statutory Ray,” those of us who didn't want our family, career, and personal lives made public opted for anonymity. Hence, I've been “going by” Statutory Ray for quite some time in this column (and Wombstretcha is just embracing it; go read his column this and every month). We made the mistake of assuming permanent semi-anonymity, at least where our shitlord “date rap” songs (and dope-ass monthly columns in a porn rag) were concerned.
Then, “Wombstretcha” and I decided to call the curtains on the band. Music disappeared from the store shelves. Store shelves disappeared entirely. MySpace was dragged behind a data center and shot in the head. Facebook became Orwellian. Dan and I both used Photoshop to submit our “real” names to Facebook. This only worked for a while. Data did what data does; context around our joke rap group disappeared, and our family-unfriendly names became semi-permanent records.
Wham, bam, thank you background checks, “...your applicant 'Ray McMillin' has a former alias that is of concern to our organization.” Nightclub owners wondering why the actual fuck their new forty-something-year-old hire just responded to a hip-hop DJ calling him “Statch.” I.T. departments shocked to find out they're dependent on “Wombstretcha the Magnificent” to fix broken servers on the other side of the world. First dates asking why “Shake It (Like A Baby)” came up on their Spotify. Former joke rappers explaining to first dates that making a joke song is different than defending a literal child murderer because she was having a bad day. First dates accusing former joke rappers of being misogynists. Former joke rappers mansplaining to their first dates that misogyny is when men treat women the same way that women treat each other. The cycle continued for both Dan and me, and to this day, people still hit us up asking when we're putting out a new album. Our most recent album just turned 18, so I'm clearly not interested in it anymore. Dan, on the other hand, still sends me random lyrics to this day. The last tight 16 (as in, bars) was about eating out a mermaid or something. Ya know, things we really do and endorse.
The best advice I can give to anyone looking to explain their naked past is to explain the situation, but never defend your choices (unless it's within the pages of an adult magazine that people skip past in order to look at the ads). Johnny Cash never shot a man in Reno. I have never slept with anyone under the age of consent (even in high school—although the same cannot be said for my then-girlfriends from the community college). “Destiny” (Amber) is not every random drunk stranger's “wildest fantasy willing to make (his) dreams come true.” Even if you did full-on, caught-on-tape, hair-and-sweat pornography of the most degenerate variety, if your conservative uncle brings this up at Christmas, just tell him that there was an Israeli flag tattooed on one of the dicks you sucked, and he will suddenly support you (and maybe even vote for you three times). Besides, people rarely put their actual flaws and red flags on blast. You were “Destiny the Stripper,” not “Amber With Bad Credit And A Shitty Taste In Men.” I have never, even in a comedic context, gone by “Unregistered Firearm In The Trunk After Too Many Pints Of Guinness Ray” because smart people don't actually tell on themselves.
Take Some Ownership for Our Dystopian Hellscape
If you, like me, are also over thirty, you gotta understand that we are partially to blame. Anonymity didn't go away by force. It's important to recognize that we, as lazy, fat, anti-intellectuals, have welcomed our loss of privacy through a series of conveniences and trade-offs. Why drive all the way to a restaurant when you can get a lukewarm meal delivered to your home at midnight by somebody so desperate for money that they put extra miles on their car for six bucks an hour? Why bother talking to strangers at a singles event in real life, when you can put your face, name, location, semi-blurred photos of Aiden, recent vacation history, and job information into a slot machine for horny strangers to browse? Why bother with a stage name and security, when you can just show your butthole (and bedroom window, neighbor's address, and piles of cash) on the internet?
If you want to know how we went from “No phones at the stage, please” to “Check out this stripper fight video #worldstar #latinas #versus #beckies,” just look at the glowing tracking device you carry with you at all times (and consider your own need to exchange privacy for dopamine, perhaps logging off the apps for an hour or two every month). Our country is run by “people”—on both sides of any aisle—who actually sleep with kids, sell drugs, and rob rich guys with promises of sex with drugged-out children. If your employer has an issue with your history as a stripper (or joke rapper), and they are actually concerned about fighting degeneracy, tell them to stop paying taxes.
DJHazMatt.com / @RainmanMcMillin on IG / I don't check Facebook.
