John Halcyon Styn is an American

blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

ger, entrepreneur, motivational speaker,

web designer Web design encompasses many different skills and disciplines in the production and maintenance of websites. The different areas of web design include web graphic design; user interface design (UI design); authoring, including standardised code an ...

author An author is the writer of a book, article, play, mostly written work. A broader definition of the word "author" states: "''An author is "the person who originated or gave existence to anything" and whose authorship determines responsibility f ...

, and web

celebrity Celebrity is a condition of fame and broad public recognition of a person or group as a result of the attention given to them by mass media. An individual may attain a celebrity status from having great wealth, their participation in sports ...

, who "pushed the boundaries of online self-expression" through his various online projects. He is currently the co-founder of 1st Saturdays, a homeless outreach project, and the host of ''Hug Nation''.

Career

Styn worked as the first webmaster for

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

's Station e-commerce mall and for CollegeClub.com Styn has won two Webby Awards, the first, as the designer and star of his personal website, cockybastard.com, and the second for a ''Hug Nation'' video

podcast A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosing ...

. Other projects have included: *''Fears. Regrets. Desires'', an NBC Internet-only, confessional story-sharing show. Host. *FreshRealm, a food shipping company that uses reusable shipping technology. Chief Wisdom Officer. *Anybeat, a

social networking service A social networking service or SNS (sometimes called a social networking site) is an online platform which people use to build social networks or social relationships with other people who share similar personal or career content, interests, act ...

based on pseudonymity. *1st Saturdays, a homeless outreach project based in San Diego. *''Hug Nation'', which won the "people's choice" Webby Award in 2007. *Pinkgasm.com, an "alternative sexuality site" that sponsored the

Masturbate-a-thon The Masturbate-a-thon is an event in which participants masturbate to raise money for charity and increase the public awareness and dispel the shame and taboos that exist about this form of sexual activity. From 1998 to 2003, the Masturbate-a- ...

events. *Pink Aid, a charity originally started to raise money for victims of

Hurricane Katrina Hurricane Katrina was a destructive Category 5 Atlantic hurricane that caused over 1,800 fatalities and $125 billion in damage in late August 2005, especially in the city of New Orleans and the surrounding areas. It was at the time the cost ...

. *"I-Bridge International", an Internet services company. *CitizenX.com, an experimental webcam community. *TheRealHouse, a live webcam-house that ran from 2000–2002 *The book, ''Love more. Fear less.'' (2010)

Blogging career

Styn bought his first

URL A Uniform Resource Locator (URL), colloquially termed as a web address, is a reference to a web resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identifie ...

in 1996 to put his self-published

zine A zine ( ; short for '' magazine'' or '' fanzine'') is a small-circulation self-published Self-publishing is the publication of media by its author at their own cost, without the involvement of a publisher. The term usually refers to writ ...

, Prehensile Tales, on the web. This first autobiographical ezine ran from 1996 to 2000. He first achieved internet notoriety when one of his stories got him into trouble with

Fruit of the Loom Fruit of the Loom is an American company that manufactures clothing, particularly casual wear and underwear. The company's world headquarters is in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Since 2002 it has been a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway. Products manu ...

. When they sent a cease and desist order on March 2, 1998 demanding that he take down a parody of their logo that he made for a blog post. The post is still up. He is also a contributor for the Burning Blog, the official blog of

Burning Man Burning Man is an event focused on community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance held annually in the western United States. The name of the event comes from its culminating ceremony: the symbolic burning of a large wooden effigy, referred ...

Awards and nominations

References

External links

*
Styn's TEDx talkJohn Halcyon Styn's YouTube Channel
{{DEFAULTSORT:Styn, John Living people 1971 births Writers from San Diego American designers Web designers American male writers Webby Award winners