The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
the b-side
Thursday, February 26, 2015 — 3B
Charitable giving is
easier with Welzoo
By MATTHEW BARNAUSKAS
Daily Arts Writer
On the “About Us” section
of Welzoo.com an image of Bill
Gates appears with the corre-
sponding quote: “I choose a lazy
person to do a hard job. Because
a lazy person will find an easy
way to do it.” Underneath lies
the response of University alum
and Welzoo co-founder Jona-
than Kaufman: “I am an incred-
ibly lazy person.”
Finding the easiest, simplest
way to do something is at the
center of Welzoo.com, a fun-
draising website founded by
childhood
friends
Kaufman,
University alum Artur Fruman
and Michigan State University
alum Zach Firestone. The Mich-
igan Daily was able to speak
with Fruman, now in New York,
over Skype, where he described
the website’s concept.
“How it works is once any
organization is listed on the
site, any one of its members
could choose that organization
and sign up and make Welzoo.
com their browser homepage,”
Fruman said. “Then every sin-
gle day they go online from then
on we generate a 3-cent dona-
tion to the organization that
they chose, everyday just for
going on the Internet.”
According to Fruman, the
trio of founders were all drawn
to
charity
work,
especially
through Friendship Circle, a
charity based in West Bloom-
field that helps children with
special needs by incorporating
a prototype indoor city.
“They had a fake bank, a
pharmacy, a theater and pretty
much you’d go there with who-
ever you’re partnered up with
and they get to get this kind of
practice round at life,” Fruman
recalled.
However, as the friends
grew up, they found it more
difficult to donate time and
money to charity. The three
looked for ways to support the
organizations they could no
longer take an active role in
by the finding simplest means
possible.
“We wanted something that
cost zero money and took zero
time and throughout that brain-
storming process we were try-
ing to come up with things that
we do every day that we could
turn into something good,”
Fruman said. “You know, we
breathe everyday, we brush
our teeth everyday and we also
go on the Internet every single
day.”
This idea became the concept
of “PassiveAction”: “The idea of
effortlessly putting our every-
day actions to use,” according
to their website. And in today’s
technology-driven
world,
what’s more everyday than the
Internet? Picking up this con-
cept, the trio began to pursue
the idea of Welzoo in 2012 and
started the company in Ann
Arbor.
“Ann Arbor was awesome;
Ann Arbor was the best,” Fru-
man said. “We had an office in
Ann Arbor. Right on top of Vil-
lage Apothecary we had a little
office there; it was amazing.”
Originally aiming for larg-
er nonprofits, Fruman said a
breakthrough came for the
company when they became
involved with student organi-
zations. He said the Univer-
sity’s South Asian Awareness
Club, a student org., asked to
list themselves on Welzoo to
raise funds.
“We only wanted people to
be able to support a nonprofit
and
student
organizations
were something we never even
thought of targeting,” Fruman
said.
“It was only a few months
down the line where I realized
that we were about to pay out
some charities and I realized
that this student org had raised
a good amount of money,”
Fruman said. “It was at that
moment that I realized, what
are we doing targeting chari-
ties and stuff when the whole
basis for this whole company
was because we as kids in col-
lege weren’t able to support our
favorite organization? It was
our age group that was miss-
ing out, that needed this type of
platform.”
Welzoo pursued the involve-
ment of more student organi-
zations and continued to grow.
Truman said that there are
around 25 organizations that
use Welzoo at the University
alone. These range from frater-
nities and sororities to organi-
zations like More Than Me, a
charity that helps young girls
in Liberia go to school, and Stu-
dents for Diabetes Awareness.
When talking about Welzoo’s
role in helping these organi-
zations, Fruman said the site
exists to complement the efforts
of these students.
“I think it all boils down to
their passion to make a differ-
ence and that’s what all these
student orgs seem to be doing,”
Fruman said. “We’re happy to
be a platform to help them out.”
Realizing the potential for
Welzoo,
Fruman,
Kaufman
and Firestone raised funds and
moved the company to New
York. However, the co-founders
have aimed to keep their own
light-hearted personalities in
the project. Whether it’s pok-
ing fun at the apparent simplic-
ity or self-described “laziness”
of the concept to pulling April
Fool’s Day pranks on each other
involving fake cease and desist
letters, the team at Welzoo aims
to enjoy their time.
Fruman
described
the
dynamic between the three
founders with Kaufman being
the crazy, creative end; Fires-
tone being more calm and prop-
er; and Fruman himself lying
somewhere in the middle, able
to work with both of them.
When asked to think about a
time when the three have com-
bined their talents to accom-
plish goals for the company,
Fruman pointed to Welzoo’s
most recent YouTube video,
“Student Org Meeting — Wel-
zoo Discussion.” In the video,
the three take a comic approach
to a club leader discussing Wel-
zoo for the first time with his
members.
“I was the one who kind of
came up (with the idea) and
made it happen,” Fruman said.
“Zach was the one who came up
with potentially what the lines
would be. Jonathan comes in
with the camera and his cre-
ative ideas saying, ‘That’s not
cool enough, let’s go just true
and raw and make it happen,
we’ll make it creative.’ It all
worked out.”
Welzoo’s interest in videos
and social media has helped the
company spread its message.
Their first video, “The Mil-
lennial Rebuttal,” countered
accusations about how today’s
generation is out of touch and
shows how young people have
connected and advanced society
using the Internet. The video
has nearly 150,000 views. Wel-
zoo wishes to use social media
in much the same way: to use
social media as a means to raise
charity. This includes their first
fundraiser
“#CutOutBreast-
Cancer,” which used Instagram
to raise money, and raised $700
dollars for the Breast Cancer
Research Foundation.
Fruman
remains
humble
when describing what he and
his friends have achieved, but
their ambitions remain high.
“We’re a pretty young com-
pany so I don’t want to say
we’ve
accomplished
enough
yet, but I’m definitely really
happy with the route that it’s
going right now,” Fruman said.
“We’ve raised almost $50,000
for various student organiza-
tions and nonprofits through-
out America. It’s not a crazy
number at all, we want that to
be tenfold that number within a
year from now.”
But it’s still not the money
Fruman says he, Kaufman and
Firestone are proud of; it’s
the e-mails they receive from
thankful students and recipi-
ents. Fruman smiles as he reads
one of the e-mails from a girl
whose Instagram post Welzoo
liked. At the end of the e-mail
reads, “You’ve made my whole
day.”
“That type of e-mail where
she sees what our mission is,
to allow people our age to give
back in a very small way. You
know, give back in a way that
they’re not doing anything;
they’re literally just changing
their homepage. And she said at
the end, ‘You’ve made my whole
day,’ which obviously, that made
my month, that was amazing.
Those are the little things.”
Unexpected feminism
on new ‘I Don’t Mind’
Juicy J-Usher track
has a sex-positive
message
By DANIELLE
RAYKHINSTHEYN
Daily Arts Writer
When I first heard Usher’s
“I Don’t Mind,” I was slightly
appalled by the lyrical con-
tent: “Shawty, I don’t mind if
you dance on a pole. That don’t
make you a hoe.” Yet, the radio
kept playing it (albeit without
the word “hoe”), and I kept lis-
tening to it because it’s so damn
catchy. After hearing it about
a gazillion times, I quickly
realized that my original mis-
givings came about because
apparently my brain is still liv-
ing in 1998.
I don’t think anyone would
deny that rap and hip-hop cul-
ture has long revolved around
the demeaning of women — of
“bitches,” “hoes” and “sluts” —
and that was what originally
upset me about this song. In
Juicy J’s portion of the song, he
says to the stripper, “If you fuck
me like you love me, shawty,
you might get rich.”
Juicy, strippers and prosti-
tutes are not the same thing.
It was the understanding
that any stripper could be con-
vinced at a high enough price to
go from a completely legal pro-
fessional to a completely illegal
one. It was the idea presented to
us by the media that strippers
have no self-confidence and are
just objects, so Juicy J can “take
somebody’s bitch, turn her to a
slut.”
But, upon listening to the
song several more times, I
started to see this song as a
feminist anthem. While Juicy
J’s part of “I Don’t Mind” is
belittling, the rest of the song,
which Usher sings, is actually
quite empowering.
In the first verse, Usher
intones, “I make enough for the
both of us, but you dance any-
way,” and “you want your own
and need your own (money),
baby. Who am I to judge?” While
I doubt any little girl grows up
wishing to be an exotic dancer,
this is where the woman in the
song has ended up, and Usher is
OK with that. She is a woman
who has made her own choices,
and even though she now has
a man to take care of her, she
continues to work in her chosen
profession.
This actually seems to be the
epitome of a healthy relation-
ship: Usher trusts his partner
to go to the strip club to “work
until three” as long as she goes
back home to him. It’s just her
job to take off her clothes, and
he respects that. It “doesn’t
make (her) a hoe.”
Usher also seems to know the
difference between a stripper
and a prostitute, singing, “They
be looking but they can’t touch
you, shawty. I’m the only one to
get it, so just go ahead and keep
doing what you do” in the second
verse. In fact, these lines serve
as the counter to Juicy J’s verse;
Juicy is the guy trying to touch
Usher’s girl, but that’s not her
job, and Usher is the one saying
so. She has the right to choose,
and she chooses to go home to
Usher. She says no to Juicy mak-
ing her rich, because she already
has her own money.
Now, don’t get me wrong.
I’m not saying being a strip-
per is a great thing to aspire to
be, that it isn’t also submitting
yourself to be objectified by
whoever may be watching, be
they men or women, or that the
hip-hop industry doesn’t still
have a ways to go in regard to
its treatment of women. What I
am saying is that the woman in
this song is independent, makes
choices for herself and is in a
healthy relationship with a man
who respects her right to have
both independence and agency
for herself.
More and more women are
choosing to pole dance for fit-
ness, and while it’s very different
to “dance on a pole” in an exer-
cise classroom, fully clothed,
and to do the same in front of
an audience while taking your
clothes off, the fact remains that
the choice is empowering. The
choice of whether to pole dance
or not; the choice of whether to
pole dance naked or clothed; the
choice to pole dance alone or for
your partner or for an audience
for money.
And although we don’t need
a man to tell us that that’s OK,
it’s kind of nice that Usher is on
our side.
WELZOO
Artur Fruman and Zach Firestone, co-founders of Welzoo .
MUSIC VIDEO REVIEW
When summer starts to slip
into fall, at the close of August
or right at the beginning of
September,
the worn-out
neighbor-
hood
pools
begin
to
close. As one
of the uni-
versal
signs
that summer
is closing, the
closing pools
are
made
even
more
depressing
by their changing appearance.
Leaves and dirt begin to collect
in them as they start to become
unused, and then unclean.
One of these grimy, gross
pools is the landscape for
Buffalo
native
and
well-
known music producer Emile
Haynie’s first music video
from his solo effort, We Fall.
The video explains the plot of
his first single off the record,
“Falling Apart,” which fea-
tures the vocals of Miike Snow
(aka Andrew Wyatt) and the
living legend of Brian Wilson.
Cool right? So is the video.
Starring a skinny highlight-
er blonde with dark eyebrows
and eyes, the premise of the
video should be somewhat
boring. Floating and rolling
around in a dirty pool filled
with dead leaves and what
appears to be sludge shouldn’t
be this appealing. But the
warm pinks and purples start
to fill the pool and the story is
transformed. “Tattoos on your
face covered up your skin”
sings Wyatt as the dark drag-
on eyes and muddy face of the
deranged blonde gaze up from
the pool. This song is so soni-
cally multifaceted that it had
the room and right to descend
into the weird.
Nothing about this video
is visually displeasing. It’s a
gritty video that follows the
patterns of an imploding girl
as she starts to fall apart off
the coast of California. The
image of the damsel in distress
following a series of bad deci-
sions in the name of love is a
bit overused in our popular art
today. But as the chorus corre-
lates with the images, singing
“How’d you get so cold, how’d
you get so cold?” it isn’t so
annoying. Maybe it’s the pierc-
ing set of eyes this poor little
lady holds. Or maybe it’s the
feeling that you’re sitting in on
someone’s recent acid-induced
experience. But the trippy
nature of the video doesn’t feel
excessive; instead, it accentu-
ates the emotion inspiring the
lyrics and music. And so you
leave pitying the poor little
rich blonde girl. G’damnit,
just stick around to hear Brian
Wilson sing.
-AMELIA ZAK
INTERSCOPE
Jonathan
Kaufman: “I am
an incredibly
lazy person.”
“...something
that cost zero
money and took
zero time.”
COLU MBIA
We’ve come a long way from “Slob on My Knob.”
B+
Falling
Apart
Emile Haynie
feat. Andrew
Wyatt and
Brian Wilson
Interscope
Social media to
raise charity
MUSIC NOTEBOOK