Has Facebook become full of shit ?

Delete your Facebook account and never look back.

RELATED Facebook's massive psychology experiment likely illegal (Boing Boing) Facebook will treat you like a lab rat, until you close your Facebook account (CNN Money)

THE TROUBLED SOCIAL MEDIA GIANT Facebook was exploiting the News Feeds for hundreds of thousands of its members as part of a sick and twisted psychology experiment to study how emotions travel through social networks. When people joined Facebook, they thought that they would be sharing their vacation photographs and every day thoughts with their friends. But now, Facebook is manipulating its members' News Feeds in order to study the psychologies of their members. Is this what social media was supposed to be about ? “Doing psychological testing on people crosses the line,” Brian Blau, a technology analyst with the research firm Gartner, told The New York Times. Delete your Facebook account and never look back.

Sal Albanese looks at exploitation of LICH closure through political lens of post-Bloomberg New York

LICH Leftovers : Mayor de Blasio has been very quiet about the closure of Long Island College Hospital on his watch, outraging the community allies he exploited to use LICH as a campaign prop to get elected.

RELATED LICH Leftovers (The Huffington Post)

"The powers that be back down from a public fight only to pull the plug in a backroom deal days later," wrote former New York City Councilmember Sal Albanese about the bitter fight to save Long Island College Hospital. Mr. Albanese's essay, published on The Huffington Post, is his second installment on the post-election political realities playing out in New York City. His first essay in this series was published earlier this month. The allusion to backroom deals is a damning indictment of how Mayor Bill de Blasio has abdicated his public health policy responsibility to voters with LICH closing on his watch. "But LICH already served its purpose as de Blasio's campaign prop," Mr. Albanese concluded, informing voters about how duplicitous Mr. de Blasio was in last year's mayoral campaign. Let's hope more voters read Mr. Albanese's writings and follow him on Twitter. Mr. Albanese's political analysis offers voters an unvarnished truth about how politics plays out in New York City -- sadly, often to the detriment of voters' demands for reforms.

GMHC CEO search committee diversity controversy triggers protest

GMHC's search for a new CEO is clouded in secrecy with no input from the agency's clients, activists say

Members of the Consumer Advisory Board, a committee representing clients served by Gay Men's Health Crisis, made an appeal to GMHC's CEO search committee's leader, Paul Weiss partner Roberta Kaplan, "to include black and Latino voices" on the search committee, DNAinfo New York reported, but Ms. Kaplan "brushed them off."

• RELATED : GMHC CEO Search Committee Lacks Racial Diversity, Critics Say (DNAinfo New York)
• RELATED : Homeless Youths File Federal Lawsuit Against New York City (NYC : News & Analysis)

Activists and clients plan to protest outside GMHC offices on Thursday at 1:30 p.m., demanding justice and transparency by GMHC's CEO search committee and by the agency's Board of Directors.

Over a year ago, leaders from New York City's Ballroom community and other activists launched a protest campaign against the agency's former GMHC CEO, Marjorie Hill, for exploiting New York's Ballroom community and for leaving the agency in a financial mess.

Ms. Hill was fired from GMHC the same year that New York City voters rejected former New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn's mayoral campaign. After a recent press article reported that former Speaker Quinn, who never delivered any transformative reform for people with AIDS, much less never established a comprehensive city agenda on HIV/AIDS, was being considered for the CEO position, the report triggered a swift backlash of outrage amongst activists. Some activists alleged that Ms. Kaplan, a leading QUILTBAG civil rights attorney and close political ally of Ms. Quinn, was trying to rescue Ms. Quinn's public career at the expense of the agency's critical mission. In the last year, New York QUILTBAG activists have become emboldened to demand real change everywhere from city government to leading HIV/AIDS service organizations, and activists are not going to take anymore empty rhetoric or false promises for change, not even from fake leaders from within the GUILTBAG community. There's no more patience for that.

Next Magazine validates cultural appropriation of the 2014 Black Party

In an article posted to Next Magazine's Web site last week, an uncredited write-up of the upcoming 2014 Black Party was described as a "mysterious look at the beautiful corners of India."

The article in Next Magazine never seemed to interview people connected with the Black Party promoter, The Saint at Large, which has stirred controversy with the South Asian and Hindu communities in New York over the planned theme for this year's Black Party. Some South Asians and Hindus have expressed concerns that the theme of this year's Black Party "fetishizes several cultural icons, including Hindu deities, which we see as a larger phenomenon of exotification of South Asian symbols and dress in writing, art, henna, yoga, and other art forms and practices."

• RELATED : 2014 Black Party Theme and Trailer Video Spark Outrage (NYC : News & Analysis)

A South Asian group named SALGA NY has organized a Facebook event calling for an open dialogue with The Saint at Large to resolve issues over the Black Party's controversial theme, but people connected with The Saint at Large have thus far turned down entreating requests from SALGA NY members. Furthermore, it's been reported on Facebook that the administrator of The Saint at Large's Facebook page has been deleting comments that question the wisdom of this year's Black Party's theme.

Representatives with The Saint and Large and The Task Force have not yet responded to e-mails requesting their comments to the controversy.

In the interim, members of SALGA NY have announced plans to host a rival party with their own authentic South Asian theme on the same evening as the Black Party.

Black Party Theme and Trailer Video Spark Outrage

Exotification, Fetishization, and Misappropriation of South Asian and Hindu Cultures

This year's Black Party on March 22 in New York City promises to be a scandal.

In a bid to give the annual gay circuit party some oomph, Black Party organizers have adopted a theme of "Passage to India or Holika Dahan with performances and aesthetics inspired by the ancient Hindu religious festival of Holi," according to Time Out magazine. The chosen theme has created a backlash amongst some South Asian communities, who say they see the Black Party's theme as offensive.

Invoking what could be described as controversial South Asian and Hindu images, the Black Party 2014 trailer posted to YouTube is titled, "A Ruined Paradise." The video, by Leo Herrara, features several images that seem to cross the line : It features a skull being blessed with a sacred ash across its forehead, what appears to be a funeral pyre along a body of water, a man smoking a pipe with an apparent subversive connotation, the colorful celebration of Holi, and, superimposed against a backdrop of a large crowd of people, who appear to be South Asians, the bold phrase "A Ruined Paradise" appears. Black Party organizers have been asked by e-mail to comment about how the South Asian culture is a "ruined paradise," along with a few other questions. Once Black Party organizers have provided a response, this post will be updated.

On Facebook, a group called SALGA NYC has created a call-to-action event against the Black Party organizer, The Saint at Large. Members of SALGA NYC have reached out to The Saint at Large to express their concerns, but the circuit party organizers refuse to back down, justifying their use of South Asian and Hindu imagery as "necessary for fetishization," according to an e-mail newsletter from SALGA NYC.

• RELATED : Black Party - Offensive Marketing and Theme (Facebook Event)

"The annual dance/performance/kink party this year has a South Asian/Hindu theme, and fetishizes several cultural icons, including Hindu deities, which we see as a larger phenomenon of exotification of South Asian symbols and dress in writing, art, henna, yoga, and other art forms and practices. While the views in our community are as diverse as our members and as such there is no singular position that reflects even the members of our board, many of us are offended at the appropriation of South Asian symbols by largely non-South Asian event-planners," members of SALGA NYC wrote on the Facebook event page.

The Black Party is an important part of the gay social calendar in New York. It's an annual celebration that takes place during an all-night binge of music, dancing, and other hedonistic activities, appealing to party-goers, who are free-thinking and uninhibited, and the atmosphere can be described as a cross between an underground disco party and the backroom of a gay club. But subculture aspects that make the Black Party so exciting is no excuse for organizers to appropriate South Asian and Hindu cultures, according to members of SALGA NYC. As a group, SALGA NYC "fully support the idea behind fetish parties, queer parties, and other forms of kink," but the group "are troubled when other queer groups marginalize, exotify and offend our community in pursuit of queering spaces."

SALGA NYC members urged The Saint at Large to "engage in active dialogue" with the South Asian community, to resolve these issues, but thus far the Black Party organizers have refused to acknowledge the cultural incompetencies of this year's theme.

The offending 2014 trailer video is currently "unlisted" on YouTube, meaning, one must have a link to it, in order to view it. But the video has been being passed around amongst activists and other concerned members of the South Asian community. A tamer, much more generic promotional video for the Black Party, this one made by BunnyZ of last year's event, is also "unlisted," but it is embedded on the Web site of The Saint at Large.

Last year, Katy Perry sparked controversy and accusations of cultural appropriation when she sang one of her songs in a geisha-inspired performance on the American Music Awards. After the discussion that followed that scandal, it's not known why Black Party organizers would move forward with a Black Party theme that obviously appropriates aspects of South Asian cultures and Hindu religious rites. And the fact that there's been prior controversy in the New York gay scene about appropriation of Asian culture that some observed bordered on racism. In 2011, gay planners were organizing a theme party called "Mr. Wong's Dong Emporium," but after the New York gay Asian community expressed their concerns, "promoters apologized and changed the name and theme of the party."

If you care to contact The Saint at Large to express your opinions about the cultural misappropriation in this year's Black Party, please send an e-mail to : thesaintatlarge@gmail.com

Following below are some screen shots of the scandalous 2014 trailer video. A still of the funeral pyre was rejected by Photo Bucket.

Here is a screen capture showing a skull being blessed with sacred ashes across its forehead.

In this still, the colorful powder of Holi celebrations are thrown in the air.

Here, a man wearing dark sunglasses smokes a pipe in a segment that may have subversive suggestions.

It remains unexplained or unqualified why "A Ruined Paradise" would be the title of this video, or why it would be superimposed against a backdrop of a crowd of people assumed to be South Asians.

The Black Party is using a controversial video to promote its South Asian/Hindu-themed event on March 22.