In grade school, around the turn of the century, I owned a small stuffed lemur which could be flung across the room by its elastic arms. The primate’s voice box lost its electronic scream straight away, and later, one of the arms snapped. I had no real attachment to the toy. Some classmates had superior gadgets: belt buckles with customizable LED displays, ‘elite’ spy gear designed for eavesdropping across a football field. My toy was embarrassing in comparison, not because of its goonish eyes or flimsy quality, but because it signaled a shortcoming. The lemur was Level Three and the spy gear was Level Nine. I’d been outperformed.
 
To receive spy gear, you had to sell 60 rolls of gift wrap. I made my parents and grandparents buy some, but as a shy, nervous child, I didn’t have the guts to phone up my parents’ friends or sling paper door-to-door. That risky behavior was for Level Nine kids. Sure, I felt an unexplainable yearning for that desktop disco ball, but I didn’t have the goods. I still remember the colorful gimmickry of my tantalizing prize catalogue. I have no idea why we were raising money, or where the money went.
 
I heard the spy gear was bunk. That didn’t matter. Its true function in our fledgling hierarchy was to broadcast the possession of entrepreneurialism, industrialism, and resourcefulness—things I’ve always lacked. Its function on a larger scale was to encourage and perhaps generate those capitalist traits in young people for the benefit of adults. And while the school and gift wrap manufacturers benefitted from sales, between 40 and 60 percent of the actual profit went to corporations called CharityMania!, Glimmers, Inc., or Skedaddle Fundraisers. Entities which produced nothing, offering only facilitation between schools, novelty trinket companies, and manufacturers of chintz like popcorn and scented pens, or ‘Smens.’
 
The grift was genius. A package from JustFundraising.com called ‘Snackin’ in the USA’ promised schools 50% profit. Snack mixes with names like ‘Say Cheese!’ and ‘Friendship’ were purchased for seven dollars each. Level Nine children sold 60 mixes, generating $210 each in profit after the school got its cut. Level Nine prizes were worth roughly $50, meaning JustFundraising.com netted something like $160 per student. Losing less than a quarter of their earnings doling out prizes, the practice was too lucrative to ever slow.
 
Calling fundraising companies unethical is relatively futile in a world containing private prisons, deforestation, and actual slavery. About eight in ten people support these fundraisers, after all. And the demand for these companies is borne of a government and culture that neglects education, forcing public schools to find alternate funding sources. Most of the friends and family members buying unnecessary flavored popcorn pay taxes intended to support public schools, so these fundraisers function as an obligation-based secondary tax for those with connections to school-aged kids. This systemic deprioritization and throttling of public education, likely driven by a combination of conservative anti-intellectualism and bourgeoisie meritocracy, is part of a conversation I’m unqualified to host. Instead, I’ll examine and condemn the ethics these school fundraisers instill and encourage in children.
 
Since I failed to sell gift wrap fifteen years ago, the practice has not changed or diminished. More than 1,000 of these companies are operating in the United States, composing a billion-dollar-plus industry of exploitation. They operate in loose networks, frequently merging and acquiring each other without disclosing details. Now, Level Nine children are awarded remote-controlled drones and Level Thirteen children win PlayStation Fours. Meanwhile, corporate culture in the United States has morphed. A generation that first experienced the notion of organized labor in the context of these fundraisers is shaping modern work life.
 
My cousin once brought me to a party at her chic marketing firm. During my tour of the space, employees raved about the virtual reality motorcycle, napping chamber, and fully-stocked bars. Their hours were long, their turnover high, and the sector competitive, but there were perks. Trading tolerable hours and manageable stress levels for a beer fridge is not an isolated occurrence. Twitter offers onsite acupuncture and improv classes, despite expectations of long hours and allegedly toxic management. Tesla offers free food at work while consistently opposing unions for their employees, 70% of whom find their job stressful. Genentech offers free car washes, haircuts, and spa trips while lacking upward mobility or pay sufficient for the Bay Area cost of living. While office perks are typically not performance-based, entrance to the companies offering them is competitive. This trendy environment uses the adult equivalent of tornado lamps and mini drumkits to attract and retain the most enterprising candidates.
 
Office food supplier FoodJunky.com claims to save companies $20 per hour in time savings and increased loyalty when they supply high-salary workers with $10 in food per day. If these numbers are true, perks like snacks yield an enormous return on investment, far cheaper than increasing wages and four times more effective than the horseshit prizes offered by school fundraisers. The principle is the same; the groundwork was laid at a young age.
 
Why do novelty belt buckles and cashew stations drive people to work harder? Common sense tells us these small bonuses don’t close the gap between our current wage and the amount we’re earning the company. But the appeal of prizes and perks is in their limited avenues of attainment. Though you can’t purchase a Nesquick Chocolate Fondue Fountain, it can be won; though you can’t hire a private smoothie chef, one can be gained through competitive employment. If these things can only be attained via hard work, possession of them is an implicit signal to peers—I am a skilled capitalist.
 
The first few prize levels of a fundraiser can be equated with minimum wage jobs, in that your share of the profit is incalculably small. If you sell 10 or fewer rolls of gift wrap, you receive a pair of flimsy sunglasses, a felt top hat, or a cheap frisbee. Not until you sell 50 items is your worth notable. Still, the $25 in prizes you receive is less than 15% of what you net the company. As your worth increases, so does your share of the profit, with the highest echelon reaping between 30% and 50%. This tiered compensation structure mirrors the modern workplace. As in adult life, Levels Eleven, Twelve, and Thirteen are almost impossible to achieve.
 
If you’ve participated in or witnessed school fundraisers, take a moment to recall the types of students who ‘earned’ GameCubes and $100 bills. At my school, they were exclusively the ones whose parents helped. I remember a kid flouting a digital camera after his executive-level dad brought the catalogue to work and his underlings, eager to win favor, placed swollen orders of gift wrap and caramels. Like capitalism’s system of inherited wealth dictating upward mobility and enforcing generational poverty, the prize-wealthy children at my school had a leg up, making it further in life, faster.
 
In both fundraisers and the modern economy, those receiving a greater share of their profits are viewed with frustrated respect. They’re grinders, hustlers, and hard workers. Any notion that they received unfair advantage is stamped out by accusations of jealousy. Indeed, we are jealous, because we’ve been taught these people are worth more, and who doesn’t want an increase in their perceived value? A suspicion of actual inferiority will never be fully extinguished. More familiar demonstrations of wealth, like the display of luxury goods or upper-class affectations, communicate affluence that can be attributed to family money or luckiness. These obvious indications of wealth don’t spur the same physiological jealousy because they don’t highlight any personal shortcomings, unlike the prizes and perks that can only be attained through hard work. But, in the same way high-performing kids are usually backed by highly-involved adults, employees in competitive workplaces travel avenues of opportunity paved by well-connected parents. In both circumstances, privilege is disguised by the illusion of industry.
 
Let’s examine the language used by fundraising companies and how it shapes impressionable minds. Their choice to measure productivity in ‘items sold’ and not ‘funds raised’ is an obfuscation of their scam, shrouding how schools are receiving only a portion of the profit. Worse, their reference to compensation as ‘prizes’ that are ‘won’ is intentional, meant to remove the sense of entitlement children should feel to money generated by their labor. Before school fundraisers, children may have received an allowance—almost an early concept of universal basic income—or performed chores. The concept of participating in systematized work, the yield of which goes elsewhere, is foreign. Their introduction is a fundraiser which uses language to teach them fair compensation is not a right; that any income the child receives is a voluntary goodwill gesture. The psychological damage of this education cannot be understated.
 
(Another strange component of school fundraisers is incentivized data collection. I remember being given an empty spreadsheet with instructions to record the names, phone numbers, and addresses of friends and family members. For each person I listed, I was given one raffle ticket, with the possibility of winning a minute in the ‘cash grab’ booth—the ethics of which are a conversation on their own. At such an early age, I was taught to sell the information of people close to me, presumably for use in marketing and sales campaigns. Though no fundraising companies advertise these information lists online, I recall them clearly, and have seen accounts of the practice continuing today. The extent to which this data mining deteriorates solidarity between workers later in life is unmeasurable but likely.)
 
As children construct their moral identity and learn social organization, they are vulnerable. Exposing them to unscrupulous corporate behavior during this period is irresponsible. Forcing them to participate in and model this behavior is unethical. What you learn in grade school dictates how you conduct business later in life, determining the treatment you deem acceptable for yourself and others. A child who sees personal worth defined by industriousness without learning the systems at play behind their success is prone to skewed ideas of self-worth. Dangerous power dynamics and generational wealth disparities are enforced. A child who learns to accept prizes instead of fair compensation is prone to abuse and manipulation. Corporate cultures incentivizing competition and replacing fair treatment with status-oriented perks are celebrated. And, through all this, seedy corporations continue to exploit children; schools continue to struggle.
 
Would students spend an ounce of energy raising money for hydration stations or security systems without incentivization? Probably not. Should we be relying on students to fund their own education? Also no. Still, I recognize the occasional need for additional funding, and there are plenty of alternatives to businesses that encourage competition and cutthroat capitalism. Collaborative efforts like car washes, community meals, talent shows, and yard sales raise money without exploiting and miseducating children. Newer alternatives like crowdsourcing platforms provide an effective avenue for transparent, unquestioning donations that circumvent all the awkward ceremony. With a profitable and time-tested business model, predatory school fundraising companies are unlikely to change, but they’re at the whim of schools and parents. If their services are not selected, they dry up and disappear.
 
In the same way workers don’t need Taco Tuesdays, free massages, puppy playdates, or beer, children don’t need Dubble Bubble Spiral Gumball Banks, 100” giant electric keyboards, smile emoji inflatable chairs, or Razor electric scooters. They don’t need Believe Kids Fundraising, Pryceless Promotions, Wow! Imports, or eZcontribution. In the same way workers shouldn’t be expected to trade office perks for fair treatment, children shouldn’t be expected to forfeit the fruits of their labor to corporations, or determine their worth based on productivity. We need the profits of our work; we need to end child labor.

It’s the day after Halloween. Social media is crammed with half-assed Bob Belchers, expensive It masks, slutty construction workers. You scroll, finding the unoriginal ceremony bleak. A link hits your inbox. You open.
 
A fluorescent night is captured on cell phone video. Overlaid is a song with sparse hi-hats and vocals distorted as if rapped into a trash can. A figure in a Scooby-Doo mask sneaks into frame, then slides fully into view wearing Scooby-Doo tie-dye over Adidas track pants and shoes, meticulously matched. When I get off of the plane / just give me the Henny I’m sippin’ the drank / Know that you heard of my name / They call me lil’ Benny I’m killin’ the game. The figure flounces through a vacant Sam’s Club gas station, springing to the rhythm, hands flicking to the snare. He pauses and wiggles, rubber cartoon eyes meeting yours, then continues his creeping dance. A simple caption reads: DROP DEAD ..
 
The costume is cheeky and cohesive—better than your coworker and high school friends mustered. Curious, you click the user’s handle, benny_revival. He follows no one. The link in his bio points to a 33-minute SoundCloud track titled ‘CHILD.’ Interest piqued, you scroll.
 
It dawns on you—this is no Halloween costume. Each of his near-daily posts feature a figure, presumably Benny, wearing a mask and athleisure clothes, dancing to funk or house-inspired rap. He slinks through various public scenes with unimpeachable grace and fits, flaunting, haunting. Each video has its own lonely symmetry. They are perfectly consistent and there more than a thousand. All have captions like:
OBEDIENCE BEFORE UNDERSTANDING IS CRITICAL .. SIN IS MY BIGGEST PROBLEM .. NOT THE DEVIL .. GOOD WORKS ARE NOT THE REMEDY FOR IT .. REPENTANCE IS THE FRUIT OF A RIPE RELIGION .. CAN NEVER ASK FOR FORGIVENESS .. WISDOM IS JUSTIFIED OF HER CHILDREN .. OH ..
 
The moment I was directed to Benny Revival’s page this summer, I was swallowed into gross, voyeuristic obsession. My brain and body hungered; I had to know more about him. What reason did Benny have to record these videos? What does he want? Where does he buy those masks? With hundreds of SoundCloud tracks and hundreds of thousands of words in Instagram captions, there was no shortage of content. There was, however, a shortage of information.
 
Each video Benny uploads is a piece of data. Only the first video of its kind—Benny dancing in a Jason Voorhees mask, dated midsummer 2014—contains real information. Without providing new data other than a variation in mask, track, or location, the informational value of each post is minimal. Early in my ravenous consumption of Benny Revival, I found I was encountering not information but repetition. My stomach was left growling.
 
There are more than 40 million articles on Wikipedia. There are functionally infinite news outlets, research papers, and historical records; metric tons of banal information are available to anyone with internet and interest. Like any resident of the ‘Information Age,’ I’m accustomed to the availability of answers. I don’t know a world without YouTube tutorials for replacing the windshield wipers of every possible car. This dilemma is not about the existence of information, it’s about information being withheld. A child is more likely to claim the right to eat a pizza if that pizza exists; more so if they can see the pizza and maybe most if they can only smell its sizzling pepperoni. Likewise, entitlement is not about information being out of reach—even children know there is always a pizza baking somewhere. No, information entitlement is about power, and being on the sharp end of it while thinking of yourself at the hilt.
 
This is a uniquely modern delusion—that with enough effort, we might uncover any information not imperative to national security. We consider it not a currency or commodity, but a right. When celebrity no longer allows reclusively, Benny Revival is an outlier. All details of his life are literally masked. With the acceleration of my obsession came a slow-breaking realization that my brain, and perhaps a larger collective brain, expects the unrestricted voluntary presentation of information.
 
If you’ve matched with someone on Tinder who lacks a social media presence, you maybe felt, in some way, cheated. Controversial tweets deleted without screenshot invoke remarkable public ire. Restaurant websites that don’t list their happy hours summon, for meat least, wrath. The availability of information is a choice made by the originators of facts, and when they’re held beyond reach, the million-mile arms in our pockets itch. Answers are obligatory; we are owed.
 
Consider ‘Shitty Media Men,’ a recent Google Doc bearing the names of men in publishing and media combined with anonymous allegations of their sexual misconduct and assault. First circulated among publishing professionals, the list leaked days after its existence was reported. Information entitlement can take the form of rabid demand for information only some possess. That interesting, urgent facts exist outside your reach, referred to only in abstract, is maddening. You are accustomed to the privileged position of receiving information at the same time as everyone else, and the stripping of this privilege is bitter. With a presidential administration leakier than wicker shoes, this sensation is exaggerated. Information must be presented, and God help the press if it isn’t done with speed.
 
The aftermath of Shitty Media Men unearthed a reaction common to anonymous accusations of rape and harassment—the flustered cry that information must be verified to count. Some, presumably men worried about the exposure of their own crimes, weren’t satisfied with incomplete, amateur, or uncertified information. There seems to be a common assumption that omission is an implication of guilt or inaccuracy; that if information didn’t contain something sinister, it would lay itself bare.
 
When the facts of Benny Revival’s identity proved obscure, my first conclusions were dramatic. I suspected he was Denzel Curry dodging contract obligations, or that he had a white-collar job. In a world where fame is coveted and identity is cheap, that he would obscure himself because of personal preference—or worse, without reason—felt impossible.
 
A distinction must be made between the withholding of information and the cultivation of mystery as a marketing tool. Who will appear after the credits of the latest Marvel movie? What’s the name of Kanye’s forthcoming album? Who’ll be the special guest at tonight’s show? Mystery relies on a promise of revelation. The function is to build suspense, therefore interest, therefore sales. When there is no prospect of an unveiling, or in the case of Benny Revival, an implicit promise of obscurity, entitlement blooms.
 
Not a willing prisoner to Benny Revival’s labyrinth, I yearned to find the source of my fascination. Beyond the kinked information hose, his aesthetic draws from obscene familiarity. Benny’s music is reminiscent of neon Florida rappers like Spaceghostpurpp or Robb Banks, his fashion recalls a department store Travis Scott, and his masks are identifiable pop figures, ranging between Pinhead and Kermit the Frog. When examined in fragments, Benny is not that strange. As an amalgamation, he’s bizarre and troubling. Take his video locations, for example—they’re places we’ve seen and visited, from hotel halls to high deserts to county fair carnivals, made obscene through transformation, sucked dry as if by rapture. His language contains references to pop culture, mentioning No Nut November, political correctness, and Trader Joes, but his bizarre typography and doomsday Biblical references to Nephilim and repentance make his words obscene. Benny contains elements of familiarity, twisted and made strange.
 
Maybe Benny Revival’s magnetism originates in his occupancy of this uncanny valley, a Frankenstein’s monster of culture. Maybe I’m giving too much clout to a gimmick; maybe his draw originates, as I implied before, in his exertion of power through negligence and deprival. There’s no indication Benny will ever reveal more, aspire to fame, or change creatively. All I know is that the direct message I sent him on Twitter, tinged with depravity, offering to mail him a Dennis Rodman, was left unread.
 
Other public entities have faces as shrouded as Benny Revival’s. Thomas Pynchon, Death Grips, and even the trite phenom Banksy occupy similar time zones. Still, their obfuscation is public, and I doubt their enigmas would persist without fame and fandom. In the eyes of an audience, these celebrities have earned the right to hide their faces. Benny Revival, however, is a nobody. He could not be considered a recluse because he has no spotlight from which to excuse himself. Why is he doing this to us? What is his motivation?
 
Twitter user @skrongmeat_ has done some legwork. In a Medium piece titled ‘Everything I know about BENNY REVIVAL,’ he lists a few mushy facts: Benny is probably black, may reside in North Florida, runs several eponymous SoundCloud accounts, and has written three books, titled ‘GENERATIONAL_OUTBREAK,’ ‘ASMODEOUS_PRESENCE,’ and ‘INFIRMITY_GRIP.’ Everything beyond these tenuous shards is observation or speculation.
 
Skrongmeat’s article, and the title of this one, lampoons a news format popular in the wake of tragedy, scandal, and rumor. Readers are drawn to titles like ‘Everything we know about the Niger attack that left 4 U.S. soldiers dead,’ and ‘Everything we know about Stranger Things' second season.’ While not varying substantially in content from a regular news article, these pieces differ in claim. ‘Everything we know’ articles purport to hold nothing back, placating information-entitled readers with an offer of full disclosure.
 
Some information should obviously be freely available in its entirety, especially the workings of government and military bodies. Education should be universal and free. Though presenting news necessitates triage and prioritization, full stories should always be available for those who seek them. Corporate transparency and accountability requires disclosure, and we have the right to information that impacts our wellbeing. We are entitled to these forms of information, and cases of its denial are cases of injustice.
 
In my estimation, the forms of information over which we have no ownership include: Personal information that is not voluntarily shared, including but not limited to preferences, opinions, motivations, backgrounds, and physical characteristics; explanations of art or entertainment from their creators; or any mundane information that contains no real consequence. What is the benefit of releasing this information from your network of expectations? Though attention and energy are regenerative, only a certain amount can exist at once, and freedom from unnecessary information may allow greater personal capacity. Imagine living without containing the personal details of others that were not shared directly with you; imagine going life free of inconsequential fact. But can this abstract feeling of entitlement ever be reversed or diverted? The gathering and retention of information is usually done without conscious effort, but I’m not proposing a change in behavior, I’m suggesting shift in attitude. Try believing you neither deserve nor desire useless information. The relationship status of a former classmate does not belong to you, the filmmaker’s inspiration is not yours, and the minutia of life, from the Pantone number of your walls to the currency of a country you’ll never visit is wholly, finally unnecessary.
 
Granted, this attitude is impossible to achieve. I haven’t quit browsing the Facebook pages of my coworker’s husband, nor have I quit digging into Benny Revival like a hungry woodpecker. We are a conditioned people, which, ultimately, is fine.
 
Whether or not you swallow the horror-baited hook and get pulled in the strange, intoxicating microcosm of Benny Revival, you have to at least acknowledge his singular purity. Here is a man who does not fake the funk. At minimum, Benny is committed. He has presented regular content with a fixed style for years without warble. We should all aspire to Benny’s dedication, cohesion, and freedom, and we should all try to consume his content without entanglement in the modern concept that we deserve more information. Frightened, turned on, or infected with groove, we should simply watch him dance.
 
To quote Benny Revival:
INFORMATION IS USELESS WITHOUT EXPERIENCE .. SOME PEOPLE ARE PAID TO IMPEDE TRAFFIC .. OH .. FIGHT WHAT SYSTEM .?. HONEY YOU DO DRUGS & COULD NOT RUN A MILE .. BUY GUNS .?. SWEEETHEART THEY OWN GUNS OLDER THAN YOU .. GO PROTEST .?. CHILD IF THEY CUT OFF THE ELECTRICITY FOR A WEEK YOU WOULD CRY .. OH .. SHAVING PUBES LIKE TAKING OFF YOUR CLOTHES WAS NOT NAKED ENOUGH ..

Estimated word count: 2,000 words

The knockoff game has changed. Gone are the days of being locked in a Chinatown back room to pay $150 for a Dior saddlebag with glue stains and a formaldehyde stench; you can now purchase virtually anything for pennies on the dollar, even those niche Japanese Americana overalls, and have it shipped discreetly to your door in a few days. And don’t worry about being called out — it’s so high-quality, it’s fooling professional authenticators.
 
Which begs the question: When some guy with a work bench in Guangzhou can perfectly recreate an $800 necklace and ship it to your door for $40, why would anyone buy retail?
 
This fall, I did wardrobe for a film about a fictional boy band. To dress the characters in hype-y streetwear on a shoestring budget, I purchased replicas on the Chinese website Taobao — a complex multi-step process using a shipping agent as a middleman. In an effort to recoup the cost, I offered a few pieces from the film to the swiftly-growing online consignment company, The RealReal, claiming I was uncertain of their authenticity. The RealReal not only authenticated the items but listed them for more than twenty times what I paid and sold them within days.
 
In this piece, I plan to follow the journey of a replica FW19 cashmere Louis Vuitton sweater from production to its $26.85 purchase to authentication to its $425.00 resale.
 
My sources will include the man who made the sweater via WeChat (I already have production photos), the shipping agent who did quality control via email and members of the rabid fashion replica community on Reddit. I also plan to reach out to The RealReal and Louis Vuitton for comment, and can get in touch with the consignor who first took the item (no longer with the company). If I run into any issues contacting the seller in China, I have a couple other items from different sellers I can follow through this entire process — a necklace from NYC streetwear brand 1017 Alyx 9SM x Nike and a hoodie from Japanese streetwear brand Ambush.
 
This piece will, of course, dive into the implications of these readily available, high-quality replicas, the existence of which pokes holes in the bloated visage of high fashion. Who benefits and who suffers? How will this change the streetwear landscape?