Adrian Chen

Adrian Chen
Adrian Chen at the IRL Club, February 2016
Born	(1984-11-23) November 23, 1984 (age 32)
Nationality	American
Occupation	Journalist

Adrian Chen (born November 23, 1984) is an American journalist, and staff writer at The New Yorker. Chen joined Gawker in November 2009 as a night shift editor, graduating from an internship position at Slate, and has written extensively on Internet culture, especially virtual communities such as 4chan and Reddit. Chen is the creator of The Pamphlette, a "humor publication" for Reed College students on a piece of letter-size paper. He has written for the New York Times, New York Magazine, Wired, and other publications.

In October 2012, Chen exposed the real name and details of Violentacrez (a moderator of several Reddit Jailbait communities), a Texas Internet developer, who was subsequently fired from his job. This led to all links to Gawker being temporarily banned from Reddit. In September 2012, Chen acquiesced to demands from Anonymous and posted images of himself dressed in a tutu with a shoe perched on his head. The images had been demanded in exchange for interviews regarding an alleged leak of Apple iPhone and iPad user data from an FBI laptop.

In 2016, he became a staff writer for The New Yorker.

In June 2011, Chen wrote an exposé of Silk Road, a Darknet market which facilitated online drug purchases. Following publication of the article, Chen was interviewed about Silk Road on NPR's All Things Considered. As a result of Chen's investigation, United States Senators Charles Schumer and Joe Manchin publicly called on U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to shut the site down.