Photographs in analogy by Geordie Wood and Scott G. Toepfer There's a lot Jessi Smiles can do in a six-second video. Pound Pringles. Pretend she peed her pants. Twerk on a beatnik at a video-game store. She can aswell put every guy on the Internet in his place. "For all those boys adage that I'm hot," she coos in one clip, "just delay until you see my dick."
See Vine superstars Jessi Smiles and Curtis Lepore's "greatest hits"
On a ablaze afternoon in her dispersed Miami Beach apartment, Smiles thumbs through some contempo videos on her iPhone. She's 20, tall, curvy, appealing and blond, dressed in atramentous leggings and a dejected blouse. She just accomplished applying makeup, and accession a stool by a camera, so the ablaze is just right. Her earlier brother Joey is accession money for a beer-and-pizza run afore she shoots a new video, which she'll anon column to her 3 amateur followers. It's one of the three or four she films anniversary week. "When humans say I'm a 'celebrity' or annihilation like that, I abhorrence that," she tells me, in her slight Cuban-American accent. "I just anticipate I'm acclaimed on the Internet."
Smiles is acclaimed on Vine, the latest "It" app in the consistently alteration mural of amusing media. Launched in January 2013 afterwards accepting purchased by Twitter for a appear $30 million, Vine lets humans almanac and allotment microsize video loops, six abnormal or shorter. "Your grandmother's on YouTube – it's not cool," says Marcus Johns, a precocious, attractive 20-year-old with added than 4 amateur followers on the app. "Vine is the activity now. Kids in our ADD bearing wish to accurate an abstraction and move on to the next thing."
While apparent faces – Wiz Khalifa, Kate Upton, Admiral Obama – accept been bustling up on Vine, the medium's bigger stars are these arbitrary nobodies who accept baffled short-attention-span amphitheater bigger than anyone. Vine's adamant architecture is deceptively difficult to get right, but it usually requires some cocktail of charm, amusement and sex address – just the accepting that Smiles has cautiously branded.
Less than a year ago, she was a accountant at a day spa, traveling by her absolute name, Jessica Vazquez. Now she's topping her old anniversary bacon anniversary ages (though she doesn't acknowledge the figure, her abounding sponsors, such as Wendy's, pay about $3,000 for a acknowledgment in a individual clip). "My accomplished activity has done, like, 20 somersaults," she says. "It happened actual fast. If you're on Vine, you become a brand. Everyone is a brand. I'm a brand, and there's annihilation you can do about that."
She sounds blah for a reason, as is bright if her abiding mom and manager, or "momager," as Cristina Ferrero calls herself, shows Smiles a brace of anew acquaint Vines. In one, a woman in an orange capote says, "Did you all apperceive that in bastille humans don't like rapists? They in actuality abduction them. Affectionate of funny how that works, huh?" In another, a beefy man, aswell in an orange jacket, says, "Hey, your aboriginal day in there, exhausted the $.25 out of the bigger guy you can find." Afresh he flashes a photo of a scruffy, boy-band-cute dude and adds, "Just grab your ankles and pray."
The guy in the photo is Curtis Lepore, a top 10 Viner, and Smiles' ex-boyfriend. Endure summer, they became Vine's aboriginal absoluteness stars, allure anniversary added so about it was harder to accept it wasn't staged. As their online activity abundant in circadian updates, it became the bigger adventure Vine had anytime seen, breeding endless hashtags, video tributes and allocution of a absoluteness show. If the brace Vined their affairs to accommodated in New York, some 2,000 agreeable admirers chock-full Washington Square Esplanade to watch their aboriginal kiss. But the absurd activity bound became a nightmare. A few weeks afterwards their high-profile meet-up, Smiles apprenticed accuse adjoin Lepore for allegedly raping her.
Today, he's due in court, which explains the Viners who've donned bastille orange in abutment of Smiles. As she watches the clips on her mom's iPhone, Smiles' commonly brilliant disposition goes dark. "I don't like this," she says, as she puts her arch in her easily and groans. But if I ask her what she thinks she and Lepore had in common, she regains her composure. "Vine," she says. "That's it."
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"I am not a rapist," Curtis Lepore tells me over pizza in North Hollywood, two weeks afterwards I visited Smiles. Dressed in jeans and a atramentous hoodie with the words POPULAR DEMAND beyond his chest, and tattoos dabbling out from beneath his sleeves, the 30-year-old almost makes eye acquaintance as he says these words. Compared to the chipper, babyish pop-punk persona he projects online, he seems absinthian and depressed. Even his accurate accessory Buster Beans, the Roomba-riding Boston terrier and a lot of accepted dog on Vine, seems to notice, as he yaps for his master's attention. "OK," Lepore says as he relents and picks Buster up. "I'll authority you in my lap like a baby."
Lepore never accepted this affectionate of notoriety. Growing up in Syracuse, New York, the son of an architect and an optometrist's assistant, he athirst for bigger things. A hyperactive, artistic kid, he won the advance in bounded plays and $3,000 in a apparel claiming for designing a apprentice clothing with aflame lights and a spinning bow tie. "He was a cool kid, but consistently a acceptable kid," his mother, Gayle, says. "When a annoyer would appear to the house, Curtis would consistently airing away." Angry off by the beer-guzzling locals, he went straight-edge as the advance accompanist of a hardcore band, GhostXShip, and he abdicate his job as a banking planner. "He was consistently aggravating to acquisition his niche," recalls his adolescence friend, Michael Ringold.
After a breach with his band, Lepore abashed to L.A. in January 2013 to accompany a career in video-game graphics. But while unemployed and couch-surfing at friends' homes, he stumbled on a added acute diversion: Vine, which had debuted that month. With its quick, easy-to-make videos, Vine drew humans angry off by higher-end productions on YouTube. As Brittany Furlan, a top Viner, puts it, "I was not tech-savvy, which is why I never did YouTube. With Vine you could shoot it and adapt it on your phone."
Lepore had already accumulated 20,000 followers on Instagram, mostly for announcement asinine photos of Buster Beans. But the abrupt video apple of Vine acquainted even added like a accustomed fit. "I could be myself, and I could be funny," he says. With just six seconds, though, there was one big challenge. "Basically," he says with a laugh, "you accept to not suck." He started with his dog, acid a draft of Buster gnawing some chow while Lepore fabricated "nyum nyum" chomping sounds. But it was a bluff of a arena from Jurassic Park – demography off his sunglasses in shock, afresh acid to a tortoise chewing bill – that landed him on Vine's awful aggressive accepted page. "The alive activity on Vine," as Johns puts it, "is the ceaseless admiration to be amount one."
For Lepore, who had already advised himself "addicted" to Apple of Warcraft, scoring on Vine bound became a new obsession. He'd absorb his canicule acute out his new videos, and adorning his comedic bits. Admitting Lepore has affluence of ego, there wasn't just that at stake; there was money. Marketers capital to accomplishment the millions of hard-to-reach millennial eyeballs watching Vines. "Vine is adaptable first, and aswell about absolute time," says Rachel Tipograph, above administrator of agenda and amusing media for the Gap, one of the aboriginal brands to appear on board. "It's a admirable abode to advance account actually fast."
Though there's no commercial in Vines, the average was custom-built for artefact placement. To capitalize on the heat, dot-com business companies formed to angle the sponsors up with ascent stars. The biggest, GrapeStory, was co-founded by wine video blogger Gary Vaynerchuk and abhorrent Vine celeb Jerome Jarre. If they saw Lepore's clips, they knew he had the appropriate stuff. "He ample out the short-attention storytelling that works able-bodied on Vine," Vaynerchuk says. "How to allure you in six seconds, and that takes talent."
As he accrued fans, Lepore was a allotment of the aboriginal to get an endorsement (Virgin Mobile). Companies such as Aquafina and Jolly Rancher followed. Lepore could accomplish anywhere from $1,000 for reVining anyone else's video – the agnate of a retweet – to $16,000 for a brace of six-second clips of his own. Successful Viners can accomplish six abstracts a year. "Once some money started advancing in, afresh you could see that he was in actuality happy," his mother recalls. With added than 4 amateur followers, he was one of the top 10 Viners in the world.
Like Lepore, Smiles had spent years disturbing to acquisition her abode afore she latched assimilate Vine. Admitting acceptable singing competitions as a kid in Miami, she acquainted alienated. Her parents had breach if she was young, and while the big continued ancestors got along, she had never begin her abode alfresco of them. "I was consistently assuming to be something that I wasn't, because I just capital to fit in," she says. "I didn't wish to eat cafeteria alone." Instead, she began acting out, cogent off agents and accepting abeyant for cutting sweatpants to top school. With abandoned eight months to go afore graduation, she abandoned out and spent the draft of her chief year accepting homeschooled.
She didn't book abundant bigger at college, and larboard Miami Dade afterwards a semester. Her attempts at civic acclaim floundered if she didn't get accomplished the auditions for The X Factor and The Voice. Like millions of adolescent hopefuls, she accommodated herself to a day job – alive at a laser-removal spa and accomplishing architecture – instead of accomplishing what she loved. "I've consistently admired that it could be a absoluteness but, you know, the apple affectionate of tells you it's not," she says. "And afresh you're just like, 'OK, I'm traveling to go to my nine-to-five job, and I'm not traveling to do what I wish to do.'"
Then, one day aboriginal endure year, Smiles was accomplishing architecture for a archetypal who told her about Vine. Smiles had dabbled in filming YouTube architecture tutorials, but Vine seemed like a quick way to draft off beef while sitting in cartage on the way to work. Smiles' videos were activity goofs: acclimation a "caramel cockiado . . . the bigger one that you have" at a Starbucks drive-thru, singing Ariana Grande or waxing base ("Girls are not fabricated of flowers. We fart, poop. And if we're on a date with you, cerebration of farting, captivation it in, it hurts. Sorry!").
After announcement a Vine alleged "The $.25 Guys Affliction About" (her answer: three abnormal of her twerking in short-shorts), she hit the accepted page, acceleration her followers abrupt – and accepting the absorption of social-media companies like Collab, which helps online stars monetize their videos. "You access your followers," Smiles says, "you access your anticipation of accepting a casting deal." She and her mother accomplished they'd stumbled on a abeyant gold mine. "I said, 'This is a business opportunity,'" Ferrero recalls. "Because she's actual business-savvy. She can advertise ice to an Eskimo."
Two months afterwards her aboriginal Vine, Smiles, who had 100,000 followers, abdicate her day job and anon denticulate her aboriginal casting deals. Business teams accustomed she had the looks and personality of a blemish star. Anon enough, absolute celebrities capital to adhere out with her too. "Guys, stop allurement me if my activity has afflicted aback Vine. It hasn't," she says in one video clip. On cue, Pharrell leans in and says, "Hey, Jess." She after-effects him off. "Pharrell, one second, I'm Vining. So anyway . . ." She still can't accept Pharrell knew her Vines by heart. "He was a fan," she says. "I was like, 'Oh, my God, what's traveling on?'"
By August, she had added than a amateur followers. Admirers were allurement her to twerk in public. Kids were endlessly her in the streets. "I was so in adulation with Vine," she says. "I was like, 'Wow, this is the best activity that's anytime happened to me.'" If Smiles occasionally recoiled over the backbiting detractors and pervy commenters on Vine, her mother apprenticed her to break strong. "I told her, 'You're traveling to allegation to apprentice how to abound thicker skin,'" Ferrero says. "'Because as continued as you're accepting talked about, it's OK. And it's abundant for business.'"
For the stars of Vine, announcement comments on and re-Vining one another's videos wasn't just friendly, it was a all-important allotment of the business, a way to arrangement and glom off one another's followers. So as Smiles and Lepore soared to the top of Vine, they by itself began trading posts. They saw something apparent in anniversary other: their banana timing, their ball faculty of humor, their nerve. "There were a lot of guys on Vine," says Smiles, "but cipher approached it the way that he did."
"It didn't assume like she was abashed to be who she was," Lepore recalls. "She's not abashed to accomplish herself look, like, ugly, which is actual anathema for girls, because girls breach anniversary added apart. So I admired that she had that aplomb in her. She would twerk, and agitate her boobs, and allocution about sex all the time. So I knew she wasn't shy."
Before long, they started talking abreast in texts and FaceTimes. Admitting they seemed appropriate out of odd-couple axial casting – the arch Latina pop accompanist and the tattooed straight-edge jailbait – they aggregate not abandoned Vine but their newfound celebrity on it. They were aswell both acutely ambitious. Admitting their videos looked spontaneous, they were anxiously choreographed. The added they batten the added they acquainted an attraction. Neither had had abundant in the way of abiding relationships before, and this acquainted beginning and alluring. "It was affectionate of like, 'Hey, you're funny and I'm funny,'" Smiles recalls. " 'Let's just be together.'"
As their courting agitated over online, Viners watched it like their own clandestine absoluteness show. Lepore would upload videos for her, and Smiles would collapse over them on Twitter. Lepore's six-second lip-sync serenades to Smiles – "I can be your hero, baby . . ." – set the fangirls' hearts aflutter. "NO STOP STOP," one jailbait begged in her comment. "IT'S FOR ME CURTIS." To which accession replied, "uhm, are you just anxious because you can never get a guy like Curtis?" Smiles played it up. "Haven't met anyone like him before," she posted, "but I'm abiding you'll acquisition your Curtis one day."
It was the aboriginal adulation adventure to disentangle like this online, and added top Viners were awed. "I anticipation that it was amazing, like if Justin and Selena started dating," says Christian DelGrosso, a Canadian amateur with 2 amateur followers. Brittany Furlan, the Vine star, accepted the appeal. "There are so abounding adolescent girls on Vine," she says. "They see these two falling in adulation in foreground of everyone's eyes – they feel like they're a allotment of it." But Furlan was a allotment of the skeptics. "I didn't feel like it was real," she says. "I anticipation that they ability just be accomplishing it for publicity."
Mention this approach to Lepore now, and his face sinks. "I was never aggravating to do it for fame," he says. But with anniversary of them accepting as abounding as 30,000 new followers a day, Smiles admits that it wasn't just Lepore she was after. "I was not abandoned bent up in the relationship," she says, "I was bent up in the publicity from Vine. I had never been accepted in top school, and I was accepting my diva moment. I was like, 'Oh, my gosh. I'm superfamous!' I was like, 'Look at me!' And I was accepting recognized."
After abandoned a few weeks flirting online, they absitively to accommodated for the aboriginal time in accepting in New York, which, as Lepore appear in a Vine, would appear August 4th at 3 p.m. in Washington Square Park. The Internet erupted in hashtagging contentment – #jessimeetscurtis – over the news. "Jessi Smiles and Curtis Lepore are boring demography over my activity and I'm not the abandoned one," one fan tweeted. "I'm just able to accept it."
Their admirers weren't the abandoned ones freaking out. So was the socialmedia accouterments Collab, which was now managing both Smiles and Lepore. If Collab heard about the meet-up, it anon capital in (the aggregation beneath to animadversion for this story). "When Collab begin out about it, they were like, 'We're gonna accomplish abiding you guys don't accommodated until the meet-up, and we're traveling to accomplish it this big event,'" Lepore recalls. "They paid for it. Yeah, they saw dollar signs."
There wasn't abundant of a plan for what would appear at the meet-up, however. The aggregation larboard it to fate. Collab accomplished a video aggregation to New York to band the activity with the achievement of accepting a television deal. "We were, in reality, filming a pilot for a TV show," Smiles says. "That's the acumen the activity happened in public, because Collab capital that moment on camera."
While the acclaim apparatus took over, Smiles and Lepore almost had time to action their emotions. For Smiles, it acquainted like a fun and flirty, but somewhat superficial, connection. "I was like, 'I apperceive who this guy is. Cool. Let's be friends. Oh, OK, we're talking and FaceTiming. OK, let's accommodated in New York.' It was like a blink." But, over in L.A., Lepore was crushing hard. A self-described above nerd, he acquainted like this knockout funny babe could be the one. "I actually was falling for her," he says. "Absolutely."
Smiles hesitated if Lepore said he capital to ask her to be his adherent in foreground of all their fans. "I consistently had a activity in my gut, like, 'Oh, no!' Like, 'What's traveling on? This is affective too fast. Everything's traveling too fast.' " Lepore, she says, insisted on about allurement her to be his girlfriend, admitting her admiration to play it added low-key. "I acquainted like we should get to apperceive anniversary other," she says. But Curtis was committed. "I'm like, 'You're the one that wants to appear actuality to acknowledge yourself in foreground of me,'" he recalls. "'I'm traveling to ask you out in foreground of everybody.' She was affectionate of aloof about that point. That was apparently my aboriginal admonishing that she didn't like me as much."
Collab didn't accept to recruit humans to appearance up. The account of the meet-up went viral on its own, and Lepore and Smiles accustomed abandoned to Washington Square Esplanade to acquisition a mob scene. Bags of agreeable admirers stormed the esplanade with JESSI HEARTS CURTIS signs, flowers and cameraphones at the ready. Nev Schulman, host of Catfish, MTV's hit appearance about online dating, couldn't abide advancing to the esplanade to see what all the fuss was about. "What was nice about this," Schulman says, "was that a adolescent online admirers could see that you could become accompany online, and afresh about-face it into something real."
But for Smiles and Lepore, absoluteness became chaos. As Lepore awkward his way through the throngs searching for Smiles, agitated admirers disconnected his boutonniere of roses and jostled his dog. "I started agreeable at the people, because I was so afraid that Buster was traveling to get trampled," he says. Beyond the park, Smiles acquainted "terrified," as she shoved her way accomplished the accumulation of ample easily and iPhones. "This is a bogie tale," she told herself. "Even if it doesn't plan out for the best, you'll still be friends." Afresh they saw anniversary other, and, as the army cheered, they spontaneously embraced. In the Vines that bound went online, they are spinning in anniversary other's arms, looping endlessly.
The meet-up paid off, in followers, at least. Within a day, Smiles and Lepore had anniversary acquired 100,000 new admirers online. But the burden to accumulate the bogie account traveling was relentless. "We knew it would be a huge bazaar and we accept to get moving," recalls Rob Fishman, co-founder of Niche, a socialmedia arrangement that helps affix brands with online stars, who has formed with Lepore and Smiles. "When two Viners command bags to appearance up in New York, that was acutely a arresting that if anyone was aggravating to ability an audience, this would be an alarming way to get chat out. It was like it was fabricated for TV, except it was for real."
In accession to the absoluteness show, there was allocution of a Web series, T-shirts and merchandise. If the casual agnostic questioned the artlessness of their relationship, the brace were quick to avert it. "Is what you and Curtis accept absolute or just for Vine?" anyone asked Smiles on Twitter. "Okay, seriously, is this even a catechism anymore?" Smiles replied.
But abaft the scenes, she was accepting reservations. Afterwards the meet-up, they eventually snuck abroad for dinner, and that's if the agitation began. A meat-eater, Smiles aghast at accepting to go to a vegan restaurant. And admitting her alleged medium, she anticipation he spent way too abundant time on his phone. "We were, like, sitting beyond from anniversary other, and he was on his phone, like, searching at Twitter, saying, like, 'Oh, my God, did you see how abounding followers we went up today?' And my apperception was like, 'Uh.' I was just like, 'What? What?'" But she fought off her emotions. "I didn't acquiesce myself to feel that," she says. "I was like, 'This is great.' Like, 'Hey, this aliment is great. Aggregate is great.'"
When Lepore recalls that time now, he does so with acrimony – as if absent to prove that Smiles was added into him than she ability imply. He says that she buried her age from him, cogent him she was axis 21 if in actuality she was 19. "I didn't wish to be associated with a babe that was bubbler underage, because it looked bad," he says, not to acknowledgment the actuality that he was straight-edge. "So she told me this lie about her age to advance my interest, to basically use our accord as some array of gain." Afresh again, he admits, he was application her too. "We both benefited off the relationship," he adds. "I'd be lying if I said I didn't account off of it, because I did."
He aswell says, bitterly, they slept calm that aboriginal night, "within the aboriginal two hours of activity anniversary other. We went aback to my auberge allowance and we banged." For Smiles, however, whatever did or didn't appear that night is beside the point. "That's something I don't affliction to share," she says, "and I feel like even if we had sex, I don't anticipate it has annihilation to do with what happened."
After New York, the two batten frequently, but Smiles was activity added besieged and beneath enthusiastic. Some Viners were contemptuous about the big, audacious romance, and began trolling the adulation story. "I was sad if I larboard New York," Smiles says. "There were a lot of humans authoritative fun of the meet-up." But there was, it seemed, a lot of money at stake. Two weeks later, Smiles flew to L.A. to appointment Lepore and accommodated with their management, who were alive lining up casting deals.
To accumulate the fizz and their followers growing, the two aerated out collaborative Vines anon afterwards Smiles accustomed in L.A. There's the one of Buster breaking up their kiss, the added of them dancing with the dog to his activity song, "Do the Buster Beans." They attempt accession at a accessibility store. One, they did in bed. "Babe, I'm pregnant," Smiles says, as she sits up with a ample bank beneath her Miami Dolphins T-shirt. "No, you're not," Lepore replies, afresh slaps her abdomen and (cue the bite line) ancestor the airship underneath.
But for Smiles, acid the Vines with Lepore and cautiously administration them with her admirers abandoned larboard her activity added afraid about the relationship. She'd had abundant of his food, his music, his phone, and she capital to be her own accepting again. "Vine to me has consistently been me alone, in my room, Vining because I admired it," she says. "And all of a abrupt I didn't adulation it anymore, because it was a game." Four canicule into what was declared to be a two-and-a-half-week trip, she bankrupt up with him. "When I was in actuality in his presence, I didn't feel it," she says. "And I couldn't affected it anymore."
Lepore told her he admired her, and became "distraught," she says. But the reason, he says, was he acquainted he had been used. "I was like, 'So you acclimated me for my following,' he says. "And that's if she was like, 'No, no, no. . . .' " According to Smiles, Lepore approved to accommodate a friendship, admitting she says she acquainted he wasn't accessible for that because he capital something more. For the next few days, she backward at the home of a acquaintance who was out of town.
The burden of aggregate acquainted like too abundant – the relationship, the business – her apperception raced, she couldn't sleep. So she did what she consistently did if she bare an escape: She Vined. On August 31st, Smiles attempt a video of herself flipping upside down on a bed if she klutzily hit her arch on a board chair. While she approved to beam off the accident, announcement a cheep about what had happened, the addled activity wasn't traveling away.
Seeing the tweet, Lepore rang her up, alms to help. "He said, 'Let me aces you up,'" Smiles recalls, "and I told him, 'Don't do that, I'm fine.'" But Lepore was worried, he says, that she had a concussion. She bare anyone to watch over her. If he accustomed anon afterward, they went to get some dinner, and she agreed to go aback with him to his place. Activity bird-brained and nauseous, she got into his bed and fell asleep. And that's when, she says, she woke up to Lepore raping her.
She pushed him off and ran into the bathroom. "I was very, very, actual upset," she says. "And he was freaking out. He looked at me and said, 'I'm scared.'" Afterwards authoritative him drive her aback to area she was staying, she alleged her friend, who insisted she go to the hospital and address it to the police. So did Smiles' mother, afterwards Smiles alleged her arrant on the phone. Smiles acquainted overwhelmed, abashed and scared. "I would not accept appear forward," she says. "So I understand, and I chronicle a lot to women who don't." If she went to the hospital and was asked what happened, she told them Lepore had raped her. "Be accurate of who you trust," she tweeted cryptically the next day. "Always be alert for your safety. Be able and don't let your bouncer down . . ."
On September 18th, the badge arrested Lepore in North Hollywood and took him to jail. If I altercate this with him now, he's acutely balked that he can't acquaint his ancillary of the adventure because the case is still active. "Believe me," he says, "there is so abundant I wish to acquaint you appropriate now. I wish to just acquaint you everything. I wish to acquaint the apple everything." There are some things, however, he will say. "We had sex every day if she got to L.A.," he says. "So, we had sex that aforementioned week. I would accept never done annihilation that I didn't anticipate a babe was insinuating, anyway. I'm 30 years old. I've been with girls aback I was 16. I've been with my fair allotment of girls. I anticipate that banishment yourself assimilate a woman, humans that do that, is disgusting, and is unforgivable."
"Her affirmation was that she fell comatose and woke up and he was accepting sex with her," Lepore's lawyer, Michael Levin, adds. "She said stop and he stopped." But while absolute definitions alter by state, the law in California is clear: Accepting sex with anyone who is benumbed or sleeping is rape. And above-mentioned accord doesn't change this. "Every day we apprehend from humans who say, 'I woke up and anyone was accepting sex with me,'" says Jen Marsh, carnality admiral of victims casework for RAINN, the Rape, Abuse and Incest Civic Network. "It actually is animal advance because there was no accord accustomed to that animal act, and antecedent accord does not authorize as consent."
Whether or not Lepore anticipation Smiles wouldn't apperception accepting woken up this way is irrelevant. While in jail, he acquainted "shock, disappointment, anger," he says. "I was terrified." If he alleged his mother, she took his side. "I apperceive all the details, and what he told me is what happens in every bedchamber in America," his mother says. "He was acquiescently alive her up. He did not abduction her." The day afterwards his arrest, Lepore was appear on $100,000 bail.
He and his ancestors weren't the abandoned ones reeling. Admitting filing the charges, Smiles too acquainted distraught. "The day he was arrested, I cried," she says. "I was thinking, 'What is he traveling to do in jail?'" With the allegations not fabricated public, Lepore and Smiles struggled to accumulate up appearances online. They anniversary acquaint a abrupt agenda about their breakup, abandoned to yield it down anon after. For the a lot of part, their admirers were larboard apprehensive what happened to the brace who already seemed so happy. Smiles couldn't advice absolution her ache bleed online. "Hey, I'm sad," she tweeted afterwards in October. "And that's okay." And then, anon after, "People are so crazy in this world. Please be safe."
Her followers would anon apprentice what was accepting Smiles down. On January 15th, Smiles got a alarm from TMZ, the account site, about the case. She had continued aback chock-full talking with Lepore. But he had pleaded not accusable the day before, and TMZ was traveling to run a adventure on their case about 3 a.m. her time. "I was devastated," she says. "I backward up until it came out." What she ultimately saw, she says, was "terrifying."
The abject annihilation of their activity instantly advance beyond Vine, Twitter and into the tabloids, as admirers and pundits bidding shock and awe over the news. How could the stars of this asinine video apple al of a sudden get casting into such a austere abhorrence story? As one eyewitness posted, forth with a afraid emoticon, "oh my god."
Lepore acquainted blindsided by the TMZ piece, and by Smiles accordant to let them broadcast her name. "They could accept run the adventure and just had there be, like, an bearding victim," he says. "So, I mean, you can draw your own abstracts as to why she would accept accustomed that." The accusation, the charges, and now, this story, meant one activity to him: She had just been application him for publicity all along. And no amount how aloof and aloof it ability sound, he took to the Web to acquaint the world. "Wow. TMZ?" he tweeted. "It all makes faculty now. Let the additional publicity achievement begin!"
And just like that, Smiles and Lepore went viral afresh – but for all the amiss reasons. The brace who had risen to celebrity so fast now begin themselves at the affection of their own scandal. And they were as ill-equipped to handle their abatement as they had been to handle their rise. "I chock-full active my activity 6 months ago and that is NOT traveling to appear again," Smiles tweeted. Lepore tweeted back, insisting that "There are 2 abandon to every story. If the time is appropriate I'll accept something to say. For now, don't blitz to judge."
Of course, they took to Vine. But while they had already acclimated the average so deftly, this absoluteness was too circuitous to be explained abroad in six seconds. The 6 amateur humans who had affiliated abaft them breach into two clashing camps, #teamjessi and #teamcurtis. If Lepore filmed himself advancement humans to assets judgment, they begin him accusable anyway. "Curtis is a defacer scumbag!" one posted. Smiles even got afterlife threats: "so jessi smiles told humans Curtis raped her while they were dating. NO FUCK YOU JESSI I WILL HUNT YOU DOWN YOU LITTLE BITCH."
With Lepore adverse a felony-sex-crime charge, amiss by up to eight years in prison, his advocate abiding him to appeal no claiming to abomination assault, which Lepore did on February 21st. As allotment of the deal, Lepore agreed to access counseling and accomplish 24 canicule of association service. Afterwards a year, the confidence should end up as a abomination assault. Levin calls it a "huge victory."
For Lepore, who maintains his innocence, it hardly feels like a win. "I didn't wish to yield the plea. Actually not," he says. "But I don't accept to go to jail, and I can move on with my life." Afterwards demography his plea, Lepore uploaded a Vine to acknowledge his supporters. "The abduction allegation adjoin me has been dismissed," he said. Smiles, it seemed, was blessed to assuredly accept an catastrophe too. "Curtis appeal accusable to a abomination advance today in court," she tweeted. "It is no best traveling to trial. I am accept with this and beholden for it to be over."
In their atrocious blitz for acclaim and their alertness to share, date and accomplish acquaintance online, Lepore and Smiles' adventure is a cautionary account of the agenda age. But admitting all the accident and aching spirits, a capital affair is their advantageous Vine identities. "It's traveling to be difficult to rebrand myself," Lepore says. "But I abashed beyond the country if everybody anticipation I was traveling to fail, and I angry it into something bigger than I could've imagined. So if I can do that, afresh I can appear aback from this, you know?"
In backward April, they faced off for the aboriginal time aback the incident, if Smiles flew to L.A. to allege at Lepore's progressreport hearing. Admitting she wasn't appropriate to go, she capital the cease of cogent Lepore how she felt. Smiles bankrupt down if she saw his face. Lepore hadn't accepted she was coming, and was afraid to see her. "It was just amusing to me," he says. "I didn't do annihilation to this girl, and she's still traveling on with it."
With her mother and a few accompany beside her, Smiles addressed Lepore, who kept his aback to her. "You've aching me added than I knew I could be aching as a person," she said. "Insecurities and self-blame were all I knew afterwards August 31st. Just like that, my activity changed. No choice. No say. But actuality I am, and actuality you are. Breathing the aforementioned air. . . .You've assertive yourself that I wish annihilation but animus and to ruin your life. That's OK. I apperceive what affectionate of a accepting I absolutely am and I apperceive you do too."
As Smiles spoke, Lepore didn't accommodated her eyes. "I didn't accord a shit, I did not care," he recalls. "I acquainted her out." But Smiles had one endure activity to say afore she left. "I achievement you apperceive that even admitting I accept every acumen on this Earth to abhorrence you, I don't," she said. "I absolve you, Curtis. And with that absolution I can assuredly let you go."
As they both try to put this abaft them, they still accept one activity in accepted – Vine – and are authoritative videos again, accepting bags of new admirers every day. Lepore afresh attempt one in the Playboy Mansion, while he was visiting Hugh Hefner's wife, Crystal, whom he describes as a friend. Smiles has launched a new approach adherent to her music, Jessi Sings. Their followers are up, and they're demography on the approaching the way they apperceive best, six abnormal at a time.
This adventure is from the June 5th, 2014 affair of Rolling Stone.
From The Archives Affair 1210: June 5, 2014
