Tucker Max

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Tucker Max

Tucker Max (b. 1975 in Atlanta, Georgia) is an author and the creator of www.tuckermax.com, a website which details explicit stories about his heavy drinking and frequent sexual encounters with women. On his site, he also hosts a forum and a "hook-up application" page derived from the date application page that was the genesis of his site. His site led to the creation of his company, FesteringAss, a network of websites with TuckerMax.com as its flagship site. In January 2006, Citadel Press released his paperback, I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell and it was featured on the New York Times Bestseller list. Max has announced plans for a follow-up in fall 2007 called Assholes Finish First.

He also authored The Definitive Book of Pick-Up Lines, and Belligerence and Debauchery: The Tucker Max Stories which were released in 2001 and 2003 respectively. Both of the self-published books are now out of print. The material for his stories, which he insists is non-fiction, comes from his drunken narration into a voice recorder.

Background

My life has been one big exercise in inexcusable behavior and unforgivable sins. The simple reality is that even though I'm brilliant and charismatic, I am also young and immature, and am only just beginning to develop enough maturity to empathize with the emotions of others, a necessary predicate to compassionate behavior and moral action, something I know little about.

Although born in Atlanta, Max grew up in and around Lexington, Kentucky. He is the only child of Dennis Max, a successful restaurateur in Boca Raton, Florida. His mother was a flight attendant for Pan Am.

Max attended public high school in Kentucky before transferring to Blair Academy in Blairtown, New Jersey for two senior years. He then attended the University of Chicago where he graduated with a bachelor's degree in Law, Letters and Society, and was subsequently awarded an academic scholarship to Duke University School of Law where he earned his J.D. Despite his academic background, Max chose not to attempt the bar exam and practice law as a result of his contempt for the profession. Regarding the practice of law, he has written: "I made a (mistake) going to law school, OK, get off my back. There was a time in my life that I thought I wanted to be a lawyer, but I was terribly mistaken. I didn't know that you had to give up your soul to work in that field."

After graduating from Duke, he moved to Boca Raton and later to Chicago, Illinois, where many of his stories were written. He then relocated briefly to Austin, Texas before returning to Chicago. In 2005, he moved to New York City, New York where he took up residence in Manhattan's Flatiron District. There, he claims to have a small stake in Vapor Lounge, though Max admits "were I to start a bar, it would not be anything like Vapor Lounge at all." However, Max focuses almost exclusively on his career as an internet personality.

Max is often accused of being an alcoholic as a result of the over-the-top nature of the drinking chronicled in his stories. In the introduction to his site and books, Max claims to get "excessively drunk at inappropriate times." He is also often referred to as a misogynist, and his stories are called "sexist" by some. Against these allegations, Max claims: "Sexism is treating one sex differently from the other(s). I treat men and women equally: just like shit."

On the Internet

While at Duke University, Max posted a "date application" on the Internet where he eventually began to post stories of his drunken adventures. However, his notoriety on the Internet began with the distribution of an e-mail which he sent several of his friends on June 5, 2000, while working as a summer associate at San Francisco Bay-area law firm Fenwick and West. In the e-mail, he detailed his inappropriate behavior at a charity auction held by the firm. The e-mail was widely circulated among the legal community. His detailed account of the events leading up to the e-mail, and the e-mail itself, can be found in his story entitled "The Now Infamous Tucker Max Charity Auction Debacle."

After graduation from Duke, Max managed his father's restaurant business in Boca Raton, Florida, before being fired. On August 22, 2002, Max registered his eponymous domain name and transferred his date application page there. The site, along with its acerbic, heavily moderated forums would become increasingly popular with a diverse crowd but is especially popular with 14-35 year-old males.

The period from 2003 through 2005 would see a substantial growth of traffic to Max's Internet site during which its Alexa ranking showed it becoming a popular site on the Internet.

In December 2005, a young woman posted nude photos of herself and messages referring to a high-profile trial she was involved in on Max's messageboard under the name "Sunshine." Days later, a Canadian court convicted the 19-year-old and her 18-year-old sister of first-degree murder for drowning their mother in a bathtub three years earlier. The Canadian press became aware of Sunshine's posts on Max's messageboard, and often refers obliquely to them in stories about the young women. However, as a result of the Canadian Youth Criminal Justice Act, they are forbidden from mentioning the site by name as it may expose the true identities of Sunshine and her younger sister.

Max runs FesteringAss, "a company dedicated to finding, editing, publishing, and publicizing new and original content by unknown or under-promoted artists and writers." Billed as, "an alternative publishing outlet for those artists and writers who cannot find a voice within the current homogenized corporate entertainment culture," FesteringAss' charter sites included The Tard Blog, The Bunny Blog, Coloring Book Land, Drunkasaurusrex.com, and most notably, fellow New York Times Best Selling Author Mark Ebner's Hollywood, Interrupted.

In the courtroom

In May 2003, Max's ex-girlfriend Katy Johnson — who had won pageants to become Miss Vermont 1999 and Miss Vermont USA 2001 — sued him for detailing the sordid details of their relationship on his website, claiming it was an invasion of her privacy. As a result, Palm Beach, Florida, Fifteenth Circuit Judge Diana Lewis, issued an injunction ordering Max to immediately remove the story from his site. Subsequently, after substantial legal wrangling that included an amicus curiae brief by the American Civil Liberties Union), the case was dismissed.

In March 2006, Max was sued by Anthony DiMeo III for causing him "both emotional and commercial harm" after a Tucker Max messageboard thread mocked DiMeo's disastrous New Year's Eve party. The case was notable in that DiMeo sued Max not only for defamation, but for allowing the anonymous publication of annoying or threatening posts on his messageboard, allegedly in violation of the 2005 Violence Against Women Act. The case had wide-ranging implications on the future of Internet discourse, especially on the Tucker Max Message Board, where arguments and disagreements in which offenders who are thought to be acting unfairly or unethically are sometimes met with tactics such as Wahooing. On May 26, 2006, Judge Stewart Dalzell granted Max's motion to dismiss DiMeo's case. In a ruling which soundly reaffirmed the court's protection of speech on the Internet, Dalzell wrote in conclusion:

As we noted the last time we discussed the CDA, some of the dialog on the Internet surely tests the limits of conventional discourse. Speech on the Internet can be unfiltered, unpolished, and uncoventional, even emotionally charged, sexually explicit, and vulgar -- in a word, "indecent" in many communities. But we should expect such speech to occur in a medium in which citizens from all walks of life have a voice.

There is no question that tuckermax.com could be a poster child for the vulgarity we had in mind in 1996. But as we added then, "[w]e should also protect the autonomy that such a medium confers to ordinary people as well as media magnates." Here we do so by protecting the coarse conversation that, it appears, never ends on tuckermax.com.

On June 23, 2006, it was reported on Tucker Max's message board that DiMeo had filed an appeal. This was later confirmed by Tucker Max.

In the mainstream

In June 2003, Max appeared in MTV's "Sex2K" episode on Internet dating. During the approximately 10-minute segment, Max tells of his website, its successes and failures, and goes on dates with several women.

Max was featured in many college and daily papers across the eastern United States while on a 23-stop, 32-day book tour during the spring of 2006 promoting I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell. During the tour, he claims to have sold over 1,600 books, signed over 2,200, and "hooked up" (slang for having sexual intercourse) with no fewer than 31 women while consuming an average of upwards of 10 alcoholic drinks per day.

Max made a prominent appearance in the mainstream media when he was featured on the front page of the New York Times Sunday Style section on April 16, 2006, in an article entitled "Dude, Here's My Book" by Warren St. John. The article hailed Max, Robert Hamburger (author of Real Ultimate Power), Maddox, and Frank Kelly Rich as the vanguards of a new genre of literature known as "fratire," which, according to St. John, "combine[s] a fraternity house-style celebration of masculinity with a mocking attitude toward social convention, traditional male roles and aspirations of power and authority." Ironically, none of the listed authors were ever in a fraternity, and Max instead suggested "Dick Lit" — a term mentioned in a 2004 Amazon.com book review — but the term was unusable in the Times.

On May 9, 2006, Max, Maddox and blogger DrunkasaurusRex premiered a two hour test show live on Maxim Radio on Sirius Satellite Radio. The show consisted of the three telling stories and discussing topics commonly found in their work (such as women, sex, alcohol, and pop culture) as well as taking questions from listeners. It is unclear whether there will be future episodes, although it seems unlikely due to the pursuit of a solitary radio announcing career by Maddox.

On June 27, 2006, Tucker appeared on the Opie and Anthony show on XM Satellite Radio. After telling his "Tucker Tries Butt-Sex" story, the interview quickly went sour. Upon further questioning, Max was unable to validate his story with the inability to be able to produce the tape in question claiming that the cameraman vomited on it, thus destoying the tape. Max was also unable to produce a police report involving another woman's car and a parking mishap that resulted in a supposed collision with a donut shop. Opie and Anthony then led an unsuspecting Max into believing that his headphones had broken. While Max's headphones were off Anthony told his audience that Tucker Max was a full of it and called bravo sierra. The interview ended with allegations of Tucker being called a "liar" and comparisons to author James Frey. When leaving the studio, Opie allegedly threw his book at a window and tore it up. Max left the building giving poor Erock (show gopher) the middle finger. Tucker has since removed all mentions of this appearance on his website.

Max's Bibliography

• Assholes Finish First (2007) ISBN
• I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell (2006) ISBN 0806527285
• Belligerence and Debauchery: The Tucker Max Stories (2003) ISBN 1411600622
• The Definitive Book of Pick-Up Lines (2001) ISBN 0595176712

External links

• TuckerMax.com
• FesteringAss.com
• "College graduate Tucker Max sued for Web site content", from Chicago Maroon online edition, May 16, 2003
• "Tucker Max responds to former Miss Vermont dropping charges", PRWeb press release, July 24, 2003.
• "Someone Talked" Annoy.com account of Johnson's lawsuit vs. Max.
• "'The Tyranny of the Rat Race is Not Yet Final': The Genius of Tucker Max" — RyanClarkHoliday.com
• A trip into the weird netherworld of Tucker Max from February 9, 2006, News & Observer.
• "Convicted girls sought sex online" from the December 24, 2005, Toronto Star.