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ezra situation, further explained
this is all alleged, i’m just making connections people have been mentioning since 2015
support who you want to support
tw/cw: grooming, sexual assault
tavi gevinson is an american writer, mostly known for creating “rookie mag” - an online and physical zine created by her and other teenage girls at the time.
ezra koenig is the lead singer of indie/alternative band vampire weekend.
the infinity diaries
infinity diaries part one
on april 22nd, 2015, tavi published a personal essay recounting her experience as an 18 year old girl involved with a much older man in 2014. this personal essay was meant to be apart of a series she called “the infinity diaries”. in this series tavi refers to two different people; “The Man” and “Man’s Friend”. for years, people have speculated that “The Man” is ezra koenig, while “Man’s Friend” is rostam batmanjligi, ezra’s longtime friend and ex-bandmate. We’ll get to why people think that she’s referring to them in just a minute, and basically throughout this whole thing.
for some added context, during this “relationship” with “The Man” in 2014, tavi was starring in her first play “this is our youth”. this play was scored by rostam, which you can read about from this article (which includes a photo of rostam and tavi).
now back to the piece. as you can see in the piece, tavi is recounting all of this to her friend taylor in an interview style format.
in part one, tavi says this:
if you looked at the article about the play above, you can see that tavi and rostam were pretty close at this time, so it would make sense why the two were just “hanging out”.
a few lines later, tavi’s friend taylor asks her what she wore to her and “The Man’s” first date/hang out:
this lines up with this now infamous photo of the two of them. I’ve searched far and wide for the origin of this photo but to no avail. the earliest i could find this photo was posted to vampire-ezra (the OG ezra fan source, iykyk) which they posted on april 8th, 2015.
the rest of part one just recounts their first sexual experience.
the second part to this is pretty short, and tavi mostly talks about how she thinks about “The Man” when he was her age at the time. part two was published on september 12, 2016, which means tavi was 20 at the time this was written.
first, tavi mentions this:
if “the man” was ~30 years old when this was published, that means ten years prior he was 20. ezra would have been in college at columbia university.
one last thing, tavi says this:
here she alludes to the fact that “The Man” and “Man’s Friend” have known each other since college, which rostam and ezra did. they both met at columbia.
**skipping part two, three, and four**
infinity diaries part five
in this part, tavi talks about the opening night of her play. she mentions that “The Man” is there to support. they leave together with a friend of “The Man”. tavi writes this:
this lines up with this vine ezra posted around the same time, skip to 0:27 of this video of ezra’s old vines.
infinity diaries part six (final part)
in this part, tavi deals with the aftermath of her and “The Man’s” relationship.
this following excerpt isn’t anything of note persay, but it made me feel...gross. tavi recounts this conversation she has with a friend about their breakup:
this is the strangest way i think i’ve ever heard anyone talk about ezra, and it goes to show how much we don’t know him behind the scenes or what he’s capable of. just thought i’d share because it was unsettling to read.
continuing on.
tavi recalls a moment at a party where she tries to convince “The Man” to dance with her:
this lines up with a story ezra tells in an episode of his radio show time crisis, you can listen to the clip here.
next, tavi recalls a time where “The Man” was sick. i want to thank x-antiheroine-chic-x19971995 on tumblr for pointing this out in this post. tavi writes:
this lines up with these series of tweets and instagram post ezra posted around the same time about being sick.
my thoughts on the infinity diaries
without a doubt tavi and ezra dated at some point. I know a lot of people will say “but she was 18! It was consensual!” - i’m sorry but a 30 year old man dating a young girl had just graduated from high school is fucking disgusting. a 30 year old man should not have anything in common with an 18 year old girl. not to mention - the INSANE power imbalance of their relationship. if you take the time to read the infinity diaries from tavi - you can see with each part she struggles to grapple with the aftermath of the relationship, and how it took a huge emotional toll on her (which makes sense considering what she talks about in the cut article on britney, which i’ll get to).
now, onto a brief interlude to talk about neo yokio.
neo yokio was an anime ezra created with netflix. production started in 2015, and the show made its debut in 2017. the show also starred tavi as a voice actor.
i wanted to mention this because i know some people might say “well clearly ezra and tavi had a good relationship considering they were on a show together!!!” a victim staying close friends or in touch with their abuser is a common thing; before victims even realize what had been done to them.
the cut article
next, we’re going to talk about tavi’s cut article which was the main catalyst for everything.
on february 23rd tavi published an article on the then ongoing conversation about the #freebrittney movement. in this article, tavi talks about her own experience with older men and being exploited as a young teenger during the early days of rookie mag.
if there wasn’t anything wrong about your relationship, why would you worry about looking like a predator?
tavi goes onto talk about her experience with sexual assault with this individual. i will not be going into detail with this because it’s triggering to myself, so i’ll leave it at that.
another detail tavi drops is this:
ezra welcomed a child with his long time girlfriend rashida in 2018.
in conclusion
as a long time vampire weekend fan, this whole thing has been a difficult pill to swallow. it seems crazy to idolize someone so much but i foolishly did so. some of my favorite memories were made with their songs as the soundtrack. i was heavily involved with the fan community and dedicated hours to creating fan content and talking to fellow fans. i feel for all the young female fans of vampire weekend who single handedly made the fanbase what it is. when i was reading through tavi’s infinity diaries series, there was a quote from part six that stuck out to me that reflects what i want to pass along to those who feel a strange feeling of sadness since this has happened:
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whats happened since?
ezra has gone radio silent on social media since the article dropped. ezra is mostly active on instagram and would post almost everyday to his ig stories. he’s only posted once since it happened (correction, 3 times to his stories as of 7/6/21). he has lost a significant amount of followers.
is rashida still with him?
ezra and rashida jones have been together since about 2015 and have a child together. they’re pretty private but have interacted with each other’s posts on social media and have mentioned each other in different interviews (or ezra will mention her on TC). the same day the article dropped, rashida posted this on her story:
although it might be a coincidence, it’s still interesting she decided to post it later that same evening that the article began making the rounds.
i’m not sure if he’s mentioned her on TC (if anyone can correct this lmk), as of right now i’ll assume they’re still together since there’s not a lot to go off of.
what’s the point of all this?
i wanted to write this up since people have the right to know who they’re supporting and the allegations against them. whether you continue to be a fan or don’t is completely your choice. tavi stated that she doesn’t want public call outs towards her abusers which is her choice, but that doesn’t mean that even before the article came out people didn’t know about their “relationship” and people even then would call ezra a creep for what he did. again, this is all alleged, and i’m just informing people about allegations that have been raised since 2015. i’ll delete this post semi-soon.
believe survivors