2010/04/14 UPDATE: I’ve decided to remove the links from this post, as these people have had more than enough traffic from us already, and they never linked to us so people could read the other side of the story anyway.

It is with some trepidation that I write this post, as I suspect it is exactly what the people who inspired this article want me to do. But I thought this episode raised a few interesting issues that would make for good discussion as a “Dr. Lee’s Talking Point” article, so I’ve decided to post it anyway.

Recently (as I’m sure some of you will remember), CEC featured Winnipeg blogger/vlogger and import model Keo Necra. As per his usual approach, he sent her a friendly message to let her know that her article had been posted. She responded that she wasn’t happy with being featured on a “pornographic site”, and asked us to post her response to the article in the comments, which we did. Then, when she wasn’t happy with the response to her comments, she decided to post an article on her blog trashing Asian Sirens. By this point, it was starting to become clear that she was using her supposed indignation at being featured on Asian Sirens as a publicity stunt. Then CEC nuked her post and the comments on it. So as there now wasn’t anything for her to complain about, she removed the stuff on Asian Sirens from her blog as well. Incredibly though, that wasn’t the end of the matter.No doubt smelling an opportunity for loads of hits, Keo’s associate Van Kunder decided to do a hit piece on Asian Sirens on her blog. Amusingly, despite the obvious intent of the article, she denies that they need any hits from Asian Sirens, reinforcing the point with faux laughter. Well, let’s just say that the traffic they get and the traffic we get are not even in the same ballpark: for example, the video CEC featured in his article for only a few days has received four times as many hits as Keo’s other recent videos. And while I can’t get traffic stats on Keo’s blog, given that virtually none of her posts have any responses, it is hard to imagine that it is very popular. Furthermore, Keo has converted the text of her original post on Asian Sirens to “*CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK!!* LOOKING for something to read? YOU HAVE TO READ THIS!” and re-titled it “I Annihilate Enemies”. Hmmm…

Van Kunder repeats Keo’s assertion that Asian Sirens is a porn site, using a reference from Wikipedia to “prove” her case. Well, while it is technically true that Asian Sirens would have been classified as “softcore” under the traditional definition of porn, as I’m sure Van Kunder knows, not many people use that definition today. It is now largely interchangeable with what used to be called “hardcore”: in other words, sexually explicit material, rather than just nudity as is featured here (we specifically do not allow the placing of sexually explicit material, although we do allow linking to it). What Keo and Van are calling “porn” is now more commonly called “adult”.

Van Kunder’s article is also riddled with clear-cut factual errors, including:

*She cites examples of supposed material from Asian Sirens to “prove” that it’s a porn site, but she cites our ads, rather than actual material from this site.

*She claims that all the women we feature are “duplicates”, and that none of them is under a C-cup.

*She claims that CEC is “the voice behind Asian Sirens”.

As for Keo herself, I think I can sum up her outrageous hypocrisy with the following two consecutive tweats from her Twitter stream:

Import season is around the corner! Who wants to capture me in some photos??

I’m so glad I don’t have to deal with anymore easily angered middle-aged perves <3Life's a beaut! 8)

Uh huh. So it’s okay for “middle-aged perves” to come and take her photo, and yet… I should also point out that this info came to me courtesy of Christine (I avoid Twitter like the plague), who is an Asian female even younger than Keo herself – and I know from my mailbox that she is far from alone amongst Asian Sirens’ readership.

Clearly Keo’s supposed indignation at being featured on a so-called “porn site” is a total crock: I think that in reality she was just pissed off that I referred to her blog – and other blogs like it chronicling people’s mundane, everyday lives – as boring, vapid and pointless. And about the only thing I found remotely entertaining about her videos was her impersonations of her mother, which get old pretty quickly anyway.

So what do our readers think? Is Asian Sirens a porn site? Does it matter anyway? And what do you think of these hypocritical, self-proclaimed internet “celebrities” who think they’re too good to be featured here? Or more accurately, whose seriously over-inflated egos are too delicate to accept any criticism of what they do?

UPDATE: Keo has now posted her email exchange with CEC on her blog – it clearly demonstrates that this whole drama really is about my comments that her blog and vlog were boring, vapid, pointless and of little value, even just as light entertainment. So in other words, all of this drama is simply because Keo can’t take genuine criticism, exactly as I suspected all along. And by her own admission, she has decided to turn it into a publicity stunt.

Oh, and it is amusing that Keo has used the fact that we have re-posted her original article to claim that CEC is a liar, when in fact she knows very well that it was taken down as promised on the 25th (as her second tweet above clearly demonstrates). We only decided to put it back up today for reference purposes in relation to this article. And the reason we posted this article is that she decided to continue trashing Asian Sirens after we took her post down, and I felt this raised some interesting issues for discussion.

2010/04/08 UPDATE: Keo’s hypocrisy knows no bounds, it seems. She complains about being featured on a “porn site” without her permission, but now she has published private emails from three AS feature models without their permission! And she uses them to claim that they didn’t know they’ve been featured here, when in fact they’ve actually approved their features here. They didn’t know they’d been featured on a “porn site”, because from their point of view, AS isn’t one! And Keo claims the emails were forwarded to her by someone named “JaneQ”, who is very obviously just Keo herself.

I also know that they’ve asked Keo to remove their emails from her site, but she’s refused to do so (and none of them have asked us to take down their features either). Once again, when Keo asked us to take down her feature, we did, even though we had no legal or ethical responsibility to do so. She on the other hand has published people’s private emails without their permission, and refused to take them down when requested to do so.