The cofounder of Rap Genius has resigned due to UCSB shooter comments

The authorities say that before Elliot O. Rodger killed six people near the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara, on Friday night, he left behind a 140-page manifesto. As the Internet picked up the pieces of who this troubled young man had been, the website Rap Genius, which tries to decipher every lyric in hip-hop, posted the manifesto and allowed people to highlight and add notes to Mr. Rodger’s writing. But the experiment turned bad for the company when Mahbod Moghadam, a Rap Genius co-founder, posted controversial comments about the manifesto, writing snide notes about Mr. Rodger’s sister and praising his writing style. As a backlash emerged on social media, Rap Genius, which was founded in 2009 and has raised almost $17 million in funding, said on Monday that Mr. Moghadam had resigned from the company and its board. Pointing to a passage in the manifesto, Mr. Moghadam said it was “beautifully written.” He noted that another sentence was “artful.” And in a passage where Mr. Rodger refers to his own sister, Mr. Moghadam wrote a degrading comment about her.