Gene Geter

New York photographer, author & former entertainment writer. Follow for art, photography, videos, books and more.

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The lines between personal and public life are blurred in this digital age. Without receiving a diagnosis or treatment, in America, millions of people have a mental illness. And where are these people? They’re everywhere, but not in the most conventional places. They’re on your phones, your iPads and your desktops because many of them are streamers or at least many of them seem to be struggling in some way. Although these digital entertainers are seen by many viewers, they are still confined to one location year after year as if they are prisoners in isolation. There aren’t any psych evaluations required to go live, so how do we know why some of them fly off the handle? Some of them do tell you why like Adin Ross has and so had Desmond Amofah aka Etika, but he took his own life. Live streaming encourages performance-based validation, parasocial pressure and constant exposure. It’s very common to feel burnout, dissociation and breakdowns.

A Kick streamer like Layla Jenner will act erratically with sexual exploits to match as well as appear like she’s having a mental breakdown, but at the same time, it’s hard to tell if it’s staged or if she’s playing a role. As a viewer of great and fun channels like PerriKaryal and DJMissile on Twitch, Mhyochi on Kick, and KoalaTea Reacts on YouTube, I am deeply concerned about the mentality of these digital entertainers as a whole on these platforms and I am concerned about herd mentality as well. Streamers like Pokimane and JustaMinx have had streams with chat-amplified toxicity and coordinated rage. I once followed and supported a streamer named Julien Hemmendinger. He had assumed that I already didn’t like him because of his feuding or beef with The Chat Attack, a Twitch channel led by Nick Diaz that I also follow and support, yet I knew nothing about the beef, but I did hear some things about him being irritable. I like to make my own decisions about individuals and not let others plant seeds. Hemmendinger tried to inject me into this beef by telling me when he felt attacked. I just wanted to be neutral and stay out of it.

One day, Hemmendinger was having a conversation with someone in his chat about Jim Carrey and the Ace Ventura movies. The movies or parts of these movies were genius to Hemmendinger. The chatter didn’t agree and I honestly didn’t agree either, and that was it, my opinion, nothing more. Not too long afterward, he messaged me via Facebook that I wanted to get a rise out of him and others in his community felt the same way. I was surprised and I didn’t agree, so I unfollowed his channel and that was that. Sometime later, he messaged me again to confess that he made it all up. In his own words, “I was uncomfortable and was too afraid to tell you directly.” So, I really didn’t want to have anything to do with him after that. This streamer invented social tension and falsely claimed that others were against me. It made me wonder how many others he has done this to. Hemmendinger wouldn’t leave me alone though. He would constantly reach out to me in different ways like when Twitch streamer Chris J. Herman went live. I told him several times to leave me alone. At this time, which was a few years ago, I heard that he had harassed and stalked supporters in the Double Toasted community and others online, and I am aware of an incident that was specifically told to me. Before Herman left, he and The Chat Attack were part of Double Toasted, a podcast on Twitch. Nowadays, I hear that Julien Hemmendinger tells people not to deal with me and some of them have. He is also a co-host on Double Toasted now. The irony.

When I first learned about Kiana Gabriel or Kianarama on Twitch, I thought she was a standout streamer, but I did notice some chinks in her armor. She would often cancel streams, one or two in a row, due to something emotional happening to her or begin a stream crying with her feelings about whatever it was that was bothering her like the most recent presidential election and how she cut off people who voted for Donald Trump. She could become condescending at times to individuals in the chat when it was that time of the month or when the community voted on a game that she didn’t want to play like Marvel Rivals. I felt like she had some bitterness toward me earlier this year and I stepped away from her channel. She messaged me via Discord a few weeks later to see why I wasn’t around and I explained to her that she made me feel like I wasn’t part of her community with an explanation why. She apologized and said to me that I was more than welcome to come back so I did come back, but there was a part of me that felt hesitant. As a form of goodwill, I even sent her a gift in the mail of my latest published works.

Recently, I was banned from her channel and her Discord group, Cult Of Rama, after I shared the pronunciation of the word omnipotent that she just spoke on her stream. This wasn’t the first time I shared a pronunciation of a word or shared the meaning of a word. Maybe it’s the author side of me, but to get banned for that is absurd especially when she has a follower and former streamer named OmarFromQueens, who is openly gay and who sexually harasses men, including myself, in her chat on a regular weekly basis. She never did anything about him because generally, men’s emotions are ignored. OmarFromQueens’ behavior warranted moderation that never came. And it didn’t stop there; these channels, XaydLove, JelaniHendrix, Sayawada and KJAhavah, have all banned me because of Kiana Gabriel. Not because I did anything personally to them, but just that herd mindset which should be an instant deletion of his or her channel for any streamer practicing it. It’s silent violence. A coordinated quiet ostracism. Streaming should be steezy with style and ease. I’m not here for the kids games like Duck, Duck, Goose. What now? Nothing as far as I can see today. I guess the problem is I don’t have any answers, just left with questions. I lived the consequences nonetheless. Maybe my words can help a new viewer who encounters these streamers or other streamers, or help the future of the streaming world because your online presence is real, your existence has weight and maybe respect should be the true currency of engagement with streamers.

[genegeter]

If you appreciate my work and want to support future projects, Cash App to $GeneGeter and turn dreams real.

I'm also seeking three to five sponsors for K: The Immersive Experience. They will be featured in the film and description. DM me.

[genegeter]

In my Direct Message Series and particularly the third book, The Name Game, Slade West and Roxanne Flowers tried to figure out what was first thought to be a riddle, which was later discovered to be a puzzle. The discovery was that it was an anagram. I had gotten the idea myself from years of writing and remembering Prince doing different creative and stylized things over his career, such as spelling his name backwards, such as Ecnirp, or the backwards part in the song Darling Nikki. I was thinking about this Victoria Mendez name in the D4vd case, knowing that he likes to be creative like that as well, and wondering if Victoria Mendez meant something more. This could simply be a coincidence, but I have come up with that the name may be an anagram that spells out "romanticized," like one of his biggest songs, Romantic Homicide, but there was a V and an E left over, which could mean VE for "very emotional." I could be wrong.

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When I first met Jamie Pippa at the height of the pandemic, she was in a partially homeless situation in New York City. She was also on OnlyFans, but I convinced her to stop making content there. I was lucky enough to help Jamie establish a stable living arrangement with one of my contacts. Jamie had felt years of dark times, experiencing blackmail with revenge porn as well as being targeted for sexual trafficking. Since then, she has been taking acting lessons, sharing her stories with others that used to be like her, and writing stories and scripts. I want to share now that she has a role in my upcoming short film called K: The Immersive Experience, and she plays herself. Jamie’s past life, along with one of Northwestern University’s studies, inspired me to beget K. Jamie was once a sexual fantasy that customers paid for. Unlike paid fantasy sports, she was the prize, visually. These customers couldn’t have her in real life, but they owned her on their screens, and she gave them almost whatever they wanted.

Jamie self-trained herself to be docile, compliant, and obedient. She was so persuasive and stimulating that her presence felt like she was in the same room with them as if she were augmented reality. Some of these customers sought to have Jamie in real life, but usually, they always cowardly backed out when the fantasy became too real. Not much more is known about my short film at this time except for breadcrumb clues and enigmatic teasers, but all things will be revealed in due time. K, however, has a few disturbing scenes, almost crossing the line into NSFW. I can say now that it features two songs written by me, and one of them is called Sex Doll. I have been meticulous about this short film. I hope that after watching my short film, it will stick in the gut of viewers like Ascaris or Helicobacter pylori. This film is about the future or a future that hasn’t arrived yet. I know that this future is coming, or it could be coming sooner than we all think, like a self-fulfilling prophecy. I see all the pieces falling into place, but they still may be slowly falling pieces.

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Long story short. In the early internet era, my name and my work built relationships, got access, and created content that traveled. Then, something interesting happened. Most of that internet I remember disappeared, yet the high level in me never wavered.

Short story long. In the 1990s and early 2000s, when America Online was popping like Orville Redenbacher'spopcorn, my entertainment writing work was on the internet, and it looked like it would be online forever. That is not the case in 2026. These websites have sadly gone. I am still here, however, with memories of interviewing the dentist to the stars, Dr. Catrise Austin; attending a live broadcast of Playboy TV’s Night Calls; and interviewing screenwriter Tina Andrews, who I remember found writing inspiration in a cemetery when I was an entertainment writer. Most people I met right in New York City, such as MTV’s veejay Ananda Lewis, who died recently; Datari Turner; Keith Sweat; Lisaraye; Drea; and Nicole (for her debut album, Make It Hot), went to Ohio to interview Mari Morrow. I interviewed Gabriela Anders at New York’s Nadine's and Garcelle Beauvais (whom I also photographed at Soul Comes To Soho, an AIDS fundraiser at New York's Puck Ballroom) at a Manhattan studio, and my name digitally appeared all over the place: New York Post, BET Weekend, Honey, Vibe, Rolling Stone, Black Men, etc. And that included my photos of DMX, Tupac Shakur, Halle Berry, and many more published celebrities.

I was one of the first people to interview Jada Pinkett before she was a Smith, when I was still in college at Long Island University. Pinkett was also my very first interview. I helped Amel Larrieux, formerly of Groove Theory, go independent as an artist after I interviewed Blisslife Records (her co-founder label) as it expressed stereotypical expectations of an “urban” solo artist to make hit records. This interview was never officially published to any outlet that I was working with at that time. I did publish it in one of my books. I made a friendship with the mother of Justin Pierre Edmund from The Preacher’s Wife (who I did a story on as well), which landed me as the first photographer of Bianca Golden, who was America’s Next Top Model. Edmund’s mother was working with her. I met Ja Rule at Rihga Royal Hotel when he was promoting his debut album. There were interviews with T-Boz of TLC, Mya, Chante Moore, Roshumba Williams, and even Heather Hunter. And there was my infamous interview with Farrah Franklin (formerly of Destiny’s Child) as she gave the tea on her former group. I was fortunate to acquire that interview because Datari Turner used to date her. Reporters and journalists got my phone number and email and started harassing me for Franklin's contact information. 

As I met Prince, Aaliyah, Spike Lee, Erykah Badu, Omar Epps, Montell Jordan, Mario Van Peebles, Christina Milian, Snoop Dogg, Alicia Keys, Kristin Kreuk, and others, I was accused of fabricating my career, and my polaroids with the likes of Halle Berry were not real. I had polaroids with Alicia Keys and Aaliyah. I was somehow faking all of this online. It was too good to be true, and that’s the thing; it was all true. Some of the staff members at some of these entertainment outlets were jealous that I was accomplishing all of this. I was in New York City and they weren’t. I kept on as I interviewed Brandy, Monica, Nicole Ricca, Leonor Varela, Lina, and RL from Next. It was a great time. One day I was photographing Tyson Beckford on his motorcycle, and another day, I was photographing Kelis in front of a record store. I was getting behind-the-scenes photos of Beenie Man and Mya together for their music video, and another day I was with Amel Larrieux and her husband in their home. I saw Ice Cube live, Eric Benet live, Reverend Al Green live, and B.B. King. 

I have fond memories with Virginia Hamilton, Bill Bellamy, Suzanne Douglas, and Kai Soremekun. They gave me different insights about life, writing, acting, and the entertainment business. In fact, all of it as a whole gave me valuable knowledge. After 2003 or so, like Amel Larrieux, I went independent and published books instead, which eventually evolved into audiobooks as well as side digital projects. Now I feel that many brands and companies these days need something that actually works and performs. I believe that I can turn something into clear, engaging, and publish-ready pieces with end-to-end production and packaging. I had visibility without even trying, and I have visibility when I do. I am open to remote work and freelance collaborations. I am ready to produce consistent output without losing quality. And if that’s what you are building, I am here to build on the story. Let's build together something that lasts longer than the algorithm.

[genegeter]

It wasn’t a pink slip, yet it felt like one. This one is for the future authors and mainly for anyone who creates. This one is for the future Jake Marcionettes, Liadan Ni Chuinns, Kiley Reids, Emma Prempehs, and Sophia Bounous. Your work online and its history are no longer decided by humans like they once were, but machines with behaviors like Anthropic’s Claude make decisions now. You can be nuked at any moment like Claude constantly recommending nuclear strikes in military simulations. I wonder what Blaise Pascal would say about these machine learning times. His powerful French quote translated, "The most important thing in all of life is the choice of a profession: chance disposes of it.” What happens when the choice is in artificial hands?

I don’t know Samuel Matos (author) or Charles Carlini (publisher), but we are all the same now. On January 29th of this year, I received an email from Kindle Content Review entitled "Alert from Amazon about your account" that stated, “We are terminating your account effective immediately because we have found activities in your account trying to manipulate our services. In addition to closing your account: You'll no longer be eligible to receive outstanding royalties. You no longer have access to your account. This includes editing titles, viewing reports, and accessing other account information. Published titles will be removed from Amazon. As per our Terms and Conditions, you aren't allowed to open any new KDP accounts.” I initially thought the January 29th email was vicious, malicious spam crafted specifically for me. It took me a few seconds to believe it was real. I was affected deeply by this, like I was a victim involved in a pig butchering fraud.

I formally disputed this action. I received another reply, after a brief back and forth, that, “Due to Content Guideline violations relating to your account, we are removing all of the titles you have uploaded through this account from sale on Amazon and we will not be reinstating your account. You're no longer eligible to receive any outstanding royalties. Additionally, as per our Terms and Conditions, you are not permitted to open new accounts and will not receive future royalty payments from additional accounts created. Please be advised that this is our final decision and we won't be offering further insight or action on this matter.” Authors in multiple countries have reported the same pattern: accounts terminated without specific titles identified and without evidence provided. Whether in the United States, Europe, or elsewhere, the language is nearly identical. Manipulation. Content violations. No details. This is not a system built for creators. This is a system creators are vulnerable to. Author Vania Rheault has described a growing number of cases where KDP accounts are closed without clear explanations, even when authors believe they have complied with the platform’s rules.

First, I was told that I was trying to manipulate their services, but later, it was content guideline violations. Over fifteen years of KDP titles were gone just like that as if this was Hurricane Alice, but there was never a Wonderland. I never had any real issues with my account, nothing more than fixing book trimming or very minor fixes like checking a box. A few years ago, my account was temporarily suspended when I was accused of having one of my books free online. Flagged obviously by a nonhuman. It was actually a LinkedIn article with the same title as my book, and it had nothing to do with me at all. On February 1st of this year, I received an email from ACX entitled "Regarding Your ACX Account" that stated, “It has come to our attention that the KDP account associated with your Amazon account has been terminated. To provide the best experience for ACX Creators and Audible listeners, Audible requires that the Amazon account ACX Creators use to log in to ACX is in good standing. Please refer to our ACX User Conduct and Content Acceptance Guidelines for further information, which can be found at: https://help.acx.com/s/article/acx-user-conduct-and-content-acceptance-guidelines. We will provide you ten (10) days to contact KDP Customer Support and resolve the termination. If your KDP account is not restored to good standing within the next ten (10) days, Audible will need to terminate your ACX account and titles. If you successfully restore your KDP account to good standing, please reach out to Audible at [email protected].” 

And then on February 13th of this year, in another email, it was stated, “We are reaching out to let you know that your account has been found to be in violation of our ACX User Conduct and Content Acceptance Guidelines. As a result, your ACX account has been closed. All titles on your account have been removed from sale on Audible, Amazon, and iTunes, purchases of these titles have been cancelled, accrued royalties will be deposited in the next payment cycle. Please be advised that you will not be permitted to open any new ACX accounts or receive any future royalty payments.” To think that all my audiobooks were recorded for nothing feels disgusting, and all those great collaborations with Roger Buehler, Sheila Marie Nicholas, Jenifer Witcher, Robert M. Clark, Nicole Blessing, and others were all for nothing. I guess respecting the platform for many years and the unfair cuts were not enough, which is why we see cases in the news such as plaintiff Christine Reiss suing Audible, and Amazon tried to get it dismissed. She is displaying that Amazon and Audible are, like the catchphrase, not like us. Nowadays, companies allow machines to make nuclear mistakes and decide the fates of humans, like Angela Lipps, who was mistaken for a criminal in Tennessee.

I have not decided what I am going to do next. I have a short film to finish named K: The Immersive Experience. It seems like the bad guys are rewarded these days and have support like their rockstars. I have dealt with a lot in general, such as with my photography, my content creator stuff, and more. Do I want to start all over on another platform like Shopify and publish books again? I was getting ready to write Akeneta 3, but I am not motivated at this time. And an Akeneta 2 audiobook was in the works at one point. Do I make a press release and go with Wiley Rein or Greenberg Traurig? Do I go the lawsuit route and put a Gabriella Zuniga-level spin on it? Do I find the heads and the staff of these companies and solve things like John Wick, Kill Bill, and The Count Of Monte Cristo all wrapped up in one? I’m joking. Or do I move on and let the powers that be keep on being the powers that be? Until then, I am demanding the resignations (of the humans on top) of Kindle VP David Naggar as well as Audible CEO Bob Carrigan. These platforms were supposed to work for us, and they did in the 2000s and 2010s. After that, something changed, and what was once an opportunity became a system where authors can be erased without warning and without explanation.

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I recently saw people online reviewing songs from John Mayer’s Continuum album when it dawned on me that it will be twenty years since its release this September. Time flies when you’re having life. Continuum was my go-to album when I was down in the dumps back in early 2007. I was seeing this woman named Hyesuk Oh since late 2006. She’s a licensed associate counselor now. I adored Hyesuk then. She was cute, polite and generally soft-spoken. We had plans to meet another one of my friends and his now wife for his birthday at a restaurant in February. I met Hyesuk at one of these New York University labs in Manhattan to walk over to the restaurant. It was a cold evening that day and we were now on the street. I wasn’t sure if I was going in the right direction, so I told Hyesuk that I would go to the corner to see which way we should walk and come back to her. When I came back over to her, she somehow didn’t hear me and thought I just left her alone as if I wasn’t coming back. I told her I just went to the corner to get my bearings. 

She started yelling at me about the cold weather and leaving her by herself which wasn’t true at all. I felt so embarrassed by her yelling and when people were laughing at me as they walked by the both of us, that didn’t help things either. She had never yelled at me ever before and became her own version of Gaeddong-nyeo or the dog poop girl in Korea. I wasn’t going to yell back, so I just walked away, feeling pissed and disrespected. I found the restaurant and went there to meet my friend. I wasn’t in a good mood and tried my best not to dampen his birthday dinner. A day or two later, I spoke to Hyesuk on the phone. She apologized for how she treated me that night, but I felt that the apology over the phone was a cop-out and that it should be done face-to-face. That somehow enraged her even more, and she started ranting about bringing a woman or someone with her so that when she met me, she wouldn’t be alone around me. She was sounding insane, and that was it for me and her. I was mad and sad at the same time, but the songs on Continuum made those weeks ahead easy to digest, and eventually it was a blessing in disguise to get away from Hyesuk. I was on the cusp of meeting a beautiful soul that May of the same year. And Continuum revived and revitalized my broken heart and my broken soul nineteen years ago.

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Dear Sarah. Dear Leah. The Talabi Twins. Do one of you or both of you want a role in my art film, K? It is expected to drop this summer. Fortunately for me, I have actual receipts of working with some super awesome people like Yosmi Harvey, Emily Bennett, Coby Persin, Ri Raymundo, Ulysses Heyward, Jazmin Luperena, Laura Cabrera and many others. So ladies, you can actually be part of something legitimate for once since your entertainment career reputation appears to be in the shitter for a slew of allegedly made-up things. Why not be part of something substantial and get IMDb credits that go to something real?

[genegeter]

RIP Author Gene Geter | KDP Termination - Movie Trailer

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Gene Geter TV has reached 5,000,000 views. Yes, I know that there are countless YouTube channels that have reached this milestone faster than me. I'm feeling the celebratory power of this YouTube-ness with a dash of 김프로KIMPRO, a little Cocomelon, and a dab of Sony SAB. Since the beginning of this channel, I have worked with some amazing people like Lamar Cheston, Christine Diaz, Lola Declet, Viktoria Vinyarska, Agustina Miranda, PeiJu Chien-Pott, Shasta Wonder, Raiza Ali, Alexandra Berti, Minsoo Go, Yuli Genes, Coby Persin, Lamonte Lans, Ava Marie, Foresight, Vaughn Braun, Nelsis Chavez, Ri Raymundo, and many, many others with reactions from The Reel Rejects, Tyrone Magnus, and Scar-Lo's Beauty and Gaming. I have plans to do much more. And thanks for watching, all of you!

http://youtube.com/@GeneGeterTV

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Since Avatar dropped in 2009, it has been said to be The Smurfs in space, FernGully: The Last Rainforest in space, or Dances With Wolves in space or all of them combined. It was also said to have no pop culture imprint or cultural impact. You can also find people asking, "Why is James Cameron spending so much time on these Na'vi movies?" Couldn't that have been said about sagas or trilogies like Dune, Star Wars, The Lord Of The Rings or The Hobbit? There are reviews online that say Avatar: Fire And Ash is just more of the same or part two of The Way Of Water because they were filmed concurrently. Like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, that talk is an oversimplification of this series and I think it is created as a big propaganda lie among the haters as well as the reviewers who don't understand. We need to take another look at our world that acts like a movie itself. It has the same unfortunate redundancies relived time and time again, and yet the same unresolved world conflicts with the same countries persist. Fire And Ash is pretty much Return Of The Jedi or The Battle Of The Five Armies if you will. Fire And Ash is the third act in this big story, with the two previous Avatar movies serving as the first act and the second act.

I agree with Coy Jandreau's non-spoiler review that this movie was better than you might have heard. It's like what Eric Clapton said about Prince once, "You either hate him or you love him," and that is the overall thesis of James Cameron and his Avatar movies. With beautiful attention to detail once again, visiting Pandora again was an unprecedented visual spectacle with the stakes raised higher for all the characters as well as Ewya itself. The new character, Varang, added a new flavor and she was a sight to see every time that she was on screen. I had personally seen her epic personality as a twisted and shadowed version of Neytiri. Whenever she appeared with her red headdress on, she never felt friendly and she oozed villainy, wearing it like a second skin. She had a burlesque kind of energy, and of course, when she shared the screen with Colonel Miles Quaritch, it was like The Penguin and Catwoman teaming up in Batman Returns, but without the goofiness. I remember when The Way Of Water was in production, and I actually contemplated where the franchise would go, and if Avatar 4 and 5 happen, I believe I know something Cameron will most likely do. Another thing that I always admired about the Avatar movies was the respect Jake Sully and Neytiri have for each other. It is the kind of respect we wish we could see on this planet between men and women so somebody tell Jasleen Singh to pay attention to that and take notes. In fine, these Cameron movies are a continuous campaign for mankind to see the real world around us and the true value in humanity.

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Here is my published New York Post feature on Erykah Badu. It was printed in their newspaper and online at that time. I might start posting more stuff like this in the months to come.

#ErykahBadu #MamasGun #NewYorkPost

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K. Upcoming Gene Geter project. Visions. Concepts.

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Nice red ass for September. The color of ketchup. Experience Akeneta and Akeneta 2 today. Mike Hunt loves them.

Learn about Lux today. More diabolical than Carnage, Atrocitus, Mephisto, HIM, Lord Zedd, Diablo and even Cacodemon combined. Discover why in the Akeneta series.

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Ri Raymundo pulls back the glamorous curtain on the modeling world, revealing ten raw and unsettling truths about an industry that demands perfection, exploits youth and silences the struggles behind every flawless photo.