ModelMayhem

From everything I can see, the principal activity of the administrators of this site is not promoting modeling or photography, it's finding pretexts to remove users.

There has been a lot of unhappiness about the site's use of vague rules on image content. Users are made to guess what images are acceptable; if they get it wrong, they are permanently removed. The administrators never communicate with the user before doing this.

I joined recently, in part to see if things were as bad as suggested by some of the other reviews of MM on this site. It's actually worse.

I didn't post any images that could have violated any rules, and none of my images were removed. What I did was to post a comment in a thread ("Confused by 18+ Image Rejection") in the "Site Related Forum".

I argued MM should either have clear rules or stop removing people for "violating" rules written so vaguely that people have to guess as to their meaning. The post was written using respectful, diplomatic language.

I knew I was taking a risk by speaking. Three other users who had posted critical comments in this thread had mysteriously disappeared. Sure enough, within 24 hours of posting, I got the email of death informing I was removed from the site. At least I had not paid them any money.

These people have as much respect for their user community as Saddam Hussein or Bashar Al Assad, The site really needs to be taken down.

I am a professional photographer, recruiter and agent. We discover new talent all the time. We started referring our amateur models to use this site to start networking until we started noticing a pattern. We started monitoring the friend requests, messages and job offers they received on a daily basis. They noticed it and closed our account because we can not monitor our models profiles from scammers and pervs. They received friend requests and offers from amateur photographers and some 'professionals' that only focus on male nudes. We also noticed after trying to keep our account active, the moderator himself had a profile and website. We google him and found... guess. Nudes and more nudes. This isnt ART. You are not pleasing or helping anyone other than yourself. How often are these poor victims models going to use these photos to land a job? Only in porn probably.
This site also has nude contests. Seriously? Check it out... it is not about ART and PHOTOGRAPHY. The guy with the biggest $#*! or girl with the biggest boobs will win. Regardless of how crappy the photo is.
This is not your site if you want to be taken seriously. They are not professionals and it is not ran by professionals either. Just a bunch of perverts helping other perverts. Straight and gay...

You get what you pay for, if you want to be noticed then you need to make it happen. Joining a site and putting in a free page in the midst of 100,000 others, it isn't realistic that you will get noticed. Model Mayhem offers lots of good advice for free and provides a place for new and experienced models to grow their careers. As a photographer I found that page to be very helpful and exceptional in what they do. I have been reading a ton of the previous reviews from people that clearly want everything for free and expect instant results. That isn't realistic and will never happen especially in modeling. You need to get out there, buy the premium packages, join more than one site. Get your portfolio to as many agencies as possible. Do several shoots, spend money get a different job so you can afford to keep yourself going while you are modeling. If you don't have the body type or the looks, don't expect someone to give you a shot it isn't gonna happen. Be realistic find someone that will look out for your best interests an agent that is more there for you then for them. Look out for scams, there is no free ride in modeling. Let me say that again NO FREE RIDE IN MODELING and anyone that tells you, you will make it to the top without putting effort in is a hack, get rid of them and hire someone that will work with you.

Dont bother having any sort of expectations of customer appreciation or customer service for that matter when choosing a membership level to sign up for. Whether youre a long time paying member at the VIP membership level or opt for to go the thrifty route and spring for the free basic unpaid membership level, rest assured that you will be completely frustrated and annoyed in any interactions you may be unfortunate enough to have with Model Mayhems site Moderators.
Not only do these moderators show clear favoritism towards friends and colleagues in public site communication in forums and contests, they also manage to tick off about 95% of their paying members by making unfair judgment calls in regards to censorship which greatly impacts the photographs overall exposure possibilities on this platform.
Its a shame too, because of the sites long standing history there is a great potential here if only the creative moderators could approach their positions from a place of wanting to contribute for the art form and its participants greater good. Sadly, and quite predictably they go the way of greed and favoritism like the rest of the corporate sell outs.
As soon as a better option arises I will gladly join it. Be warned, of Model Mayhems Malicious Moderators. They are true bullies and Ive never seen a business treat their customers so horribly, absolutely ridiculous.

After opening a photographer profile on the ModelMayhem site last year, I read several reviews here on on sitejabber that made me think I had made a mistake. Well, guess what? I did.

During several months of being on MM, I kept a low profile and took care not to violate any site rules. I did read the discussion boards and noted a strong undercurrent of user resentment concerning vague image rules, inconsistent enforcement and arbitrary removals from the site. (Removal is like an execution - you can never return.)

I did not participate in a discussion of these matters publicly, because I had noticed that members who had made critical remarks seemed to strangely disappear shortly after doing so. Sort of like the way Russians who criticize Putin always seem to turn up dead.

I did, however send some private messages to a few users warning them to beware of openly posting criticism. I was sh*tcanned within hours of sending these *private* messages.

Others have documented how the MM thought police maintain a database with user's ISP and camera serial number info. What my experience shows is that they also break into private messages in their zeal to purge all dissidents.

No one should go anywhere near this site.

I'm a photographer and have been with Model Mayhem since 2006. It's a great site for finding models, photographers, makeup artists, retouchers, etc. because you can search by city, state, country, etc. Especially good if you're a traveling model or photographer. Here really is no other model/photo site that comes close in scale. And it's possible to check who else someone has worked with which helps models separate the legit photographers from the creepy "GWCs" (Guy With Camera) who just want to see women nekkid. There are a lot of creeps on MM and models need to be selective, and careful who they work with.

That's the good part. What really SUCKS about Model Mayhem are the Moderators who are supposed to maintain order and resolve problems. There are some good ones but there are more than a few moderators who are rude, petty, arbitrary and downright abusive. There are rules for photo content and behavior, most of which make sense. But the moderators can be very subjective about interpreting the rules and, as others have pointed out in this forum, can "close" your account without warning or recourse--even if you have paid for a premium membership.

So, like most things in life, Model Mayhem is a mixed blessing.

Bruce

I used this site in the past and often found so many creepers on the site, who would push for nudity or other horrible suggestions for modeling. Thankfully I had a good head on my shoulders and did not give into any of the creeps. Later, I turned my focus to working with other models on the site, to ensure we were all given quality work with not creepers. As a model, I really hated this site to find work - so I started finding models to work with me on projects that I found... We Brandi, a worker at Model Mayhem, decided that she did not providing actual quality work to models and shut down my account. I guess her thoughts are to leave the creeps on the site who try to rape or kidnap poor models and aspiring models, than to allow another model to get ACTUAL job and opportunities... after all that - I really hate this site and hope that models find other avenues to promote themselves on. This site is just full of creeps and that is probably because it is ran by creepy people who have no interest in adding value to this industry.

I had a model account and a photography account for many years. I was also a VIP member on my photography account for quite a long time.

2 models who were friends of mine asked me to help them setup a model mayhem account, because they did not know how(along with email, twitter, Instagram etc) so I did. Periodically they would ask me to help them upload photos, due to the archaic upload system(less than 1mb files and pixel amount limitations) so I did.

I then had both my model and photography page removed and told I had breached the rules. I contacted the moderator about this and they said the rules state accounts can only be handled by one person. I said fair enough, honest mistake but rule is the rule. I was also told I would not be allowed to create any new accounts.

However, both models, who were the ones who asked me to help and therefore ALSO broke their apparently unbreakable rules, were allowed to create new accounts with no issue at all.

So I did not give others access to my account, but I broke the rules and was banned but the ones who DID give access to another were not banned.

Completely contradict their own rules and show a complete double standard. It is not a surprise that the site is slowly dying.

The site is built upon making ladies and their pics readily accessible to pervs.

They allow your photos to be collected into lists for creepers to keep in folders to use later. There's no benefit to the posted to have their pics off their profile where it has their contact info, stats, rates, etc. Most of us call lists the spano bank. List for boobs are creatively renamed to hide their intent,. But it's frighteningly transparent.

Hobbyist pervs are indignant if you don't want to pull your convo off of model mayhem where they try to get your contact info under guise of work. These profiles give false legitimacy as there's no review system to show whose actually gotten work by these losers.

Popular opinion is more heavily regarded in the forums than professional advice from those with higher credentials but doesn't use the site for social pandering with friends.

All the professionals dumb enough to think there's enough quality on there to compensate for the poor customer service,. Ancient infrastructure, support of creepers, and created a profile, wuickly regretted it and fled.

The site is only good for fake Pat's on the back and escort exchanges

Aside from Uber, these guys take the cake. I am a paying customer and have been on the site for years. They shut me down without a warning, telling me I was outside my bounds and that i needed to upgrade my account to a monthly paid service beyond what I was already paying. No one reached out to help, they just shut me down. Funny how they figured this out after me being on their site for over 5 years, duh. So i opened another account which i thought was in compliance, I reached out to their customer sevice team and they could not have been any more unprofessional / rude. They shut my account down again saying that i clearly didn't read their term of use otherwise i wouldn't have opened another account. No explanation or assistance to help me get my paid account back on their site, they basically told me to go screw myself.

So they lose, they don't get my money and to the folks at MM, go screw yourselves. The site is awful and full of low class individuals especially those at the top, management and customer service. I hope they all get on a plane one day and wind up floating in the ocean, where they belong. The lowest of the lowest scum of the earth. Modelmayhem.com Stay away

Sites like this get very mixed reviews because of the very nature of social networking sites. You either love them or hate them. Before the advent of the internet and digital photography, most people who were photographers really were only just photographers and models, well that was their sole occupation. The internet and in particular social networking sites like this allow basically anyone with a digital camera to call themselves a photographer (GWC-guys with cameras) and pretty girls can call themselves models. The photographers need willing subjects to photograph and the models want pictures of themselves to help them land jobs. These sites will exist and this one does do a pretty good job of connecting photographers with models. Sometimes the photographer will pay the models and other times models pay the photographer. It just depends on supply and demand. I give this site a full heart for changing the game in the way people can connect and can find jobs online. I will also say that if a photographer has meager skills or a model is not skilled or attractive they will not find any of these types of sites very useful just like IRL.

I have to agree with one of the earlier comments where someone stated the administrators have NO contact with you UNTIL in "their opinion" you have crossed the guidelines of posting images which are either 18+ or not. Although, they have written guidelines, they are subjective on which images they deem as 18+.

I have viewed pictures in their "contest" category which I thought should be 18+ but it wasn't called out as such. And when I re-created a similar image mine was flagged for not being in the 18+ category. And vice versa for 18+ images, when I have added my images in this category it is flagged with an e-mail stating it shouldn't be there. And then I have the conversation with myself asking, "didn't i just see a similar concept in this category a few days ago?" Then all of a sudden you received a 90 day suspension for not following the rules OR you could be removed permanently.

They should have general contest entries and THEY decide if the images are deemed 18+ and enter them as such. It's so frustrating. At this point, I think I am going to close my account because I have been suspended AGAIN for 90 days from entering into the "contest" and I informed them I did not think it was fair because I followed their "reasons" in what category the image should be entered. So, they'll probably close my acccount anyway because I spoke out.

Bye, MM!