Afshin Behnia leaves his post after debatable articles about the Black Lives Matter motion and for buyers of his media company.
Afshin Behnia leaves his post after debatable articles about the Black Lives Matter motion and for buyers of his media company.
Car enthusiasts near Afshin Behnia have long known that the founder and CEO of the online page of old car enthusiasts Petrolicious posted messages on his non-public Facebook account with the hashtag MAGA2020, describing the “left-handed” as “monsters” and advocating for bullets for the “liberals”. “»
But over the next month, Behnia’s thinking has become more competitive as the Black Lives Matter motion has grown nationally, and what was once noted as provocative but innocent commentary between friends and experts has begun to take a darker turn.
As these similar publications and publications were shared among larger circles, they began to annoy a wider audience. Following the resulting controversy, Behnia said he resigned as CEO and put the company up for sale. “We’ve been in talks with a number of potential buyers and investors for 12 months,” Behnia told Bloomberg on July 1. “But it actually took him to the extreme.”
On July 10, he formalized the move with an advertisement on Petrolicious’s Instagram account. “Today, for the benefit of Petrolicious, our long-term enthusiasts and consumers, he resigned and allowed the new owners to advance at Petrolicious,” Behnia wrote.
“Are unborn black lives important?” a June 13 article read on Behnia’s personal Facebook page, which then circulated widely on social media. Another called the Black Lives Matter motion “domestic terrorism.” Articles about Muhammad Ali and Rosa Parks have been tagged with Facebook’s “False Information” box, suggesting readers take a look at other places for accurate reports.
On June 30, Behnia posted on Petrolicous’ Instagram page the protection of his “nature and values” and noted that his Iranian heritage had made him “a stranger to racism.” But he claimed the messages damaged his company’s image.
“I probably realize that my misspelled message was also divisive and did not recognize the other intelligents of the motion [BLM] and their positive contributions,” he wrote. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I let our enthusiasts down and hope to regain their trust.”
The fall-out has cost Petrolicious sponsors and supporters, financial and otherwise. Turtle Wax, a longtime sponsor, has announced it will sever all ties with the brand and told its social-media influencer pool to avoid cross-contamination of the brands. Ditto eBay Motors. A spokesman for Hagerty, which sponsored drives and purchased advertising, said the company will no longer be working with Petrolicious. A spokesperson for Chopard, a regular advertiser, declined to comment.
A Porsche spokesman, though noted in an emailed comment that the automaker has lately had no advertising with Petrolicious in the US, said: “We have read the comments attributed to Afshin Behnia and are convinced that there is no charge in our company. For racial discrimination In 2017 and 2018, Porsche funded several marketing campaigns filmed and produced through Petrolicious employees.
More than a dozen former enthusiasts and logo members who joined through Bloomberg canceled their Petrolicious subscriptions or officially disassociated the logo, which has 746,000 followers on Instagram and 831,000 subscribers on YouTube. Hundreds of additional comments on the Instagram post pronouncing his departure underscore his disapproval and sadness with the logo, and some say they will no longer “follow Petrolicious.” There are also many commentators on the same thread who express their support for Behnia and denounce the “culture of cancellation” of the Internet today.
“I wrote to cancel my subscription,” said Noah Goldman, one of the first on social media to make Behnia’s Facebook posts public. “I’m a fan, but I don’t want that.” Niki Byrne, a photography collaborator at Petrolicious who says Behnia once courted her for the role of editor-in-chief of the site, posted a message on Instagram saying she would no longer paint for the brand. But many other commentators presented their help and disbelief to Behnia in the face of her untimely resignation.
On July 7, Petrolicious sent an email to its suppliers informing them that Petrolicious “will not settle for any bills after anyone’s 5 p.m. PST, even if he claims the paintings have been made.”
“The store is put on hold as Petrolicious moves to a new owner,” the letter states. She also announced that Molly Tapp, Petrolicious’s director of e-commerce, had also resigned. After discussions with other Petrolicious staff, it is not transparent which other existing Petrolicious permanent staff members would remain in the company or leave.
Several parties are making an offer to buy the company he founded in 2013, Behnia said, refused to call which ones. He had been considering promoting his hobby assignment for a year, but last week’s occasions “pushed him to the limit,” he said. Bloomberg spoke to the founder of a similar luxury lifestyle logo that, at one point, had been in talks to buy Petrolicious, but which has since reconsidered due to the consequences of Behnia’s publications. This founder asked for anonymity because of the negative attention around the problem that, according to the founder, has particularly devalued Petrolicious.
“There was definitely a negative blow,” Behnia told Bloomberg when asked about the effect of her publications on the brand.
Behnia emigrated to the United States from Iran in 1979 and began his career as a generation entrepreneur, despite everything that promoted his start of legal software in 2011 and joined resources with his wife, former Disney executive Kika Vigo-Behnia, to create a new logo aimed at his true love: old Alfa Romeo cars.
He first created Petrolicious as an online page to show off and celebrate beloved old cars, especially his beloved Alphas. It has temporarily become a global media logo with a related Youtube channel and social media accounts, Petrolicious-sponsored readers and an online marketplace for used car sales. He also commanded an orderly company making videos for corporate accounts and wealthy personal collectors.
The unique content included videos recorded with pleasure, detailed articles and brilliant photographs, all exposing the pleasure of old cars and the desire to “drive with taste”, its well-known slogan. At one peak in 2015, Petrolicious had more than 400,000 visitors a month and 250,000 subscribers in total, at that time it had not yet made a profit. Behnia did not respond to a request for comment on whether the business has become profitable; Bloomberg was unable to download an existing subscriber number.
“It was a kind of kings-maker business,” Byrne said, noting that car restorers, photographers and drivers appearing on its pages were temporarily applauded, generating more followers on social media; Increased business in its workshops; buyers for their BMWs, Mercedes-Benz, Jaguars, Lancias and Porsche to pick up. “They were creating content,” she says.
“Afshin, on the network of enthusiasts, seemed to me a king-maker,” says Goldman, owner of a corporate fraud detection software and working in a real state. “It was like the Holy Grail. Being a component of his [car racing], everything he started and built around him, was amazing.
“I can’t think of any automotive media platforms that have been more inspiring and influential in my life,” Said Dorian Valenzuela, an Alfa Romeo collector and mechanic, at a long Instagram post on July 1. “To be honest, I took [Afshin] as a great inclusive user because of the platform I had created. That’s why I was surprised when, after becoming friends on Facebook, I knew what their opinion was».
Valenzuela said he believed Black Lives Matter’s messages were “a kind of black humor or sarcasm,” but soon learned that Behnia wasn’t joking. The highest recent events of 2020 seemed to radicalize him further, said Valenzuela: “I feel that its flow has gone from ‘unpleasant’ to what I horrible.”
Recent Personal Facebook posts became better known in early June, when Goldman and Valenzuela began posting them on social media and in the organization’s text messages because they were heavily offended. On June 29, a blog called Tiremeetsroad.com reported it; on June 30, Jalopnik.com did the same.
Paul Zuckerman, a lawyer, smart car collector and popular automotive podcast co-host, described the effect on messages as they grew in the public sphere.
“It’s a form of suicide,” he said. “Today, can someone who owns a corporate corporate Instagram internet say what he said? No one needs the other people who take the positions they’ve taken.”
At a company-wide emergency assembly on June 29, Behnia said she had the right to post her own reviews on her own Facebook pages, and told workers that her non-public ideals were not the company’s operations. (In a June 30 Instagram post, a former Petrolicious employee, Ted Gushue, noted that Behnia was actively tracking and blocking comments on the online page that questioned or criticized some of his own reviews. Behnia did not respond to a request for comment on the statement)
During the July 1 call with Bloomberg, Behnia said she had posted messages reporting the violence she believed BLM leaders had perpetrated or encouraged: “When a BLM LEADER says that if we don’t get everything we want, we’re going to burn Array … that’s what I’m talking about, ” said Behnia, who identifies as “a very small libertarian government in the background.”
The Instagram post containing his apologies got more than 13,300 likes and 3,000 comments on the last audit. Behnia followed them closely.
“I was very fortunate to see a lot of support,” he said. “I think there are essentially 30 to 40% very negative feelings. And then there’s a lot of other people calling and saying, “Hey, I don’t see anything with what he said. “
Certainly, Behnia has friends and followers; In addition to many comments on social media, he said he had won many direct messages from other people who agreed with him.
Gushue, who now publishes Porsche’s internal Magazine Tipo 7, told Bloomberg that while he does not approve of Behnia’s views, he supports Behnia’s right to express his ideals and thoughts. “But he chose an intimate way to explain them at a very sensitive time for our network and our country,” Gushue said.
Under a new owner, the logo will have to paint to succeed on the negative impression created through Behnia’s public publications, existing and former employees say.
Behnia says it’s imperative that she retires. “I think it’s vital that the logo doesn’t get involved,” he said on July 1. “That way, they know that all the wonderful people who have worked with Petrolicious can continue to do so.”
“I love a lot of other people who paint for Petrolicious, they painted so hard to build,” said Byrne, the former collaborator. “If more had to leave the business blank, then yes, she could recover. We want a new direction, a new style, a transparent apology, a logo, a new project statement.”