Profile for Melissa Gira Grant

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The Soapbox: On SXSW’s “Homeless Hotspots” And Trolling For Charity

Melissa Gira GrantMarch 13, 2012 //
My Mom Got Arrested
And I am proud of it! Read More »
On Kony 2012
The problem with paternalism. Read More »
Support PP!
How you can help protect access to reproductive health care. Read More »

BBH, the same ad agency behind Axe body spray’s noxiously viral campaigns, have hit the streets of massive internet partyapocalypse South by Southwest this week – well, actually, they haven’t hit any such streets. But they have outfitted 10 homeless men with 4G wireless devices and T-shirts stating “I Am a Homeless Hotspot.” Internerds struggling for web connectivity are prompted to tip the men $2 for each 15 minutes of access. That’s just enough time to refresh your own Twitter mentions and stew in your own complicity in what now passes for charity. Keep reading »

When Blogs Cry: How To Breakup Online

Melissa Gira GrantOctober 6, 2008 //

A few weeks into dating him, when it wasn’t even clear that we were doing more than falling into bed and blogging the pillow talk the morning after, he texted me to ask, “We’re not secret right?”

“Secret?” I wrote back. “Aren’t we on Flickr?”

That’s the moment when it got, as the uselessly succinct Facebook menu options put it, both “serious” and “complicated.”

Our relationship wasn’t founded simply on this trendy sort of self-disclosure: we were just reporting on our sex lives before anyone else did. It shouldn’t have shocked me, let alone the audience we gained along the way, that it’d all have to end online, too. So how do you deal with a breakup like that, without breaking up with the Internet? Keep reading »