Steve Aoki Sent Parody Site Wunderground A Cease and Desist
Wunderground is an occasionally funny parody website made with an EDM focus. Much like The Onion, Wunderground creates satirical articles based upon real news in the industry, poking fun at everyone from festival promoters to A-list headliners without much regard for who might get their feelings hurt along the way.
Now it seems that Steve Aoki is sending Wunderground a cease after their recent crowdfunding experiment where they offered readers of the site a bounty of rewards including the “Ask Me About My Shit DJ Impression” shirt which then had Steve Aoki’s face on the inside of the shirt (as seen below). According to reporting on the incident, the campaign was a small, low-stakes joke — by some accounts only a handful of people, reportedly around 11, had even signed up for the crowdfunding project before Aoki’s team got involved.
While Steve Aoki’s legal team said that Wunderground is “damaging Steve Aoki’s reputation,” Wunderground’s Mikey Maguire had a comedic response to the situation. Rather than backing down or pulling the joke, Maguire reportedly leaned further into the bit, treating the legal threat as fresh material for the site rather than something to panic over. It’s the kind of response you’d expect from a parody outlet whose entire existence depends on not taking itself — or anyone else — too seriously.
Whether or not the cease and desist ever escalates beyond a strongly worded letter remains to be seen, but the exchange has become something of a case study in how differently artists and satirists can read the same joke. For Aoki, an internationally touring headliner with a brand to protect, a shirt with his face inside it reads as reputational risk. For Wunderground, it’s just Tuesday. Either way, the back-and-forth has only given the parody site more attention than the original shirt idea probably would have on its own.
Read Mikey Maguire’s full letter here for the whole comedic response, and decide for yourself whether this beef has legs or fizzles out like most internet drama tends to.
Editor’s note: This post reflects claims and statements attributed to the parties involved at the time of original publication, including figures reported by outside outlets covering the story. Neither Steve Aoki’s camp nor Wunderground has issued a further public update on the dispute that we could independently verify.
