The Dating App/Cazwell Crossover

Way back in the Victorian era, Jules Verne captured the public imagination with his foundational works of futurist fiction, predicting astounding cultural and technological innovations yet-to-come.

And though the author of "From the Earth to the Moon" might never have predicted a centuries-spanning link between his work and the undulating male moons in a distinctly non-Victorian new video from gay rapper Cazwell, so winds one unlikely path of history and technology.

After Jules Verne's success with the earlier books in his "Extraordinary Voyages" series, Verne was aggressively courted by shipping and transit companies who lobbied to have their companies incorporated in his 1873 opus, "Around the World in 80 Days." In addition to his prescient perspectives on travel and technology, Verne was also a pioneer in commercial product placement.

"The Biscuit," Cazwell's typically outlandish �- and ridiculously earwormy - recent release features the 37-year-old auteur of "Ice Cream Truck," "I Saw Beyonce at Burger King," and "All Over Your Face," singing the praises of boy booty alongside go-go guys with thick beards, oiled glutes, gun belts, and Pharaonic headgear, who wiggle it in front of animated figures of pyramids, camels, bullets, and Arabic calligraphy.

Amidst it all are recurring images of two giant geometric hornets.

"Travel enables us to enrich our lives with new experiences, to learn respect for foreign cultures, to establish friendships, and above all contribute to international cooperation and peace throughout the world." - "Around the World in 80 Days"

Sean Howell, a polymathic Phileas Fogg of the internet age, travels the world from his San Francisco base, zipping from Korea to Croatia and beyond, advocating for LGBT rights and net neutrality while promoting his business, the gay social app, Hornet.

Howell, a one-time tech stock analyst and longtime social activist who has worked at an NGO in Tanzania and served as a city arts commissioner in Seattle, originally attempted to enter the gay app business by putting together a consortium to pursue a buy out of Grindr in 2011.

"I was very involved in campaigning for Hillary Clinton at the time and saw how many gay men were spending so much time on Grindr," recalls Howell. "I thought it could be a powerful tool for activating them politically."

Ultimately, Howell and his business partners rejected Grindr's asking price, opting to bootstrap Hornet on their own. And while Howell now recognizes a bit of naivete in his original dream of redirecting gay app users' bloodflow to their brains, he continues to play with with Hornet's potential to do more than the obvious.

Like other social apps, Hornet has GPS capabilities that can be used to arrange nearby hook-ups, but Howell takes pride in the fact that Hornet's six million users across six continents are also able to chat globally.

This international communication among gay men can turn each of them into digital simulacrum of the jetsetting Howell, using armchair travel to build community and understanding about the tremendous variance in gay life -and rights- around the world.

In some of the countries where being LGBT is most perilous, including Egypt and Turkey, Hornet is the most heavily used gay social app.

Over the four years since Hornet's inception, Howell has also created communication opportunities around the globe for HIV awareness programs, testing services, and academic research projects.

"I feel we should always put a little art into what we do. It's better that way." -"From the Earth to the Moon"

Among his eclectic interests, Sean Howell is a serious music afficionado.

A close listener and regular concertgoer, he was a co-owner of the now defunct Rawspace, an idealism-fueled caf�, and performance venue in Ellensburg, Washington. On his current heavy playlist is innovative San Francisco orchestral rock band The Family Crest, whose core members crowdsource auxiliary players to participate in recordings and live performances.

Along with HIV-positive genderfluid Mykki Blanco, Howell considers Cazwell as one of his favorite gay hip-hop artists.

"I don't know him that well personally, but I've been tuned into his music for years and been to parties that he's deejayed in New York. If you go into a gay bar anywhere around the world, there's a good chance a Cazwell video is going to come on. He's really stuck to his guns about being an openly gay rapper and has shown he's had staying power."

For Howell, it was admiration more than profit motive that led to the integration of Hornet in "The Biscuit."

"I've always been interested in figuring out ways to get our brand out there," he says, "But I wasn't interested in doing anything that looked too commercial. I want to be a supporter of gay artists."

Howell struck an impossible to refuse deal with Cazwell and his management. To have Hornet incorporated in the video, he'd underwrite production and promote and link to it on the Hornet app, with its audience of nearly seven million worldwide.

"They didn't give me any specific direction at all," reports Cazwell, who - in addition to those hieroglyphic hornets and some subtle inclusion of smartphone images - mentions the app in brief credits at the opening and close of the video. "They paid for the production, but I pretty much had free reign."

"Before long, sir, you too will have passed through my Arabian tunnel!" - "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea"

When Cazwell and his team first showed him the rough cut of "The Biscuit," Howell considered the irony - and potential pitfalls - of sponsoring it and featuring it on an app that was helping gay men find each other in conservative Middle Eastern countries.

"I felt a little uncomfortable at first," Howell recalls. "I thought, 'Wow, could this turn into a Charlie Hebdo?' On the other hand, I liked how it included types of men who aren't often seen at the center of gay culture. And in the end, censorship is pretty much the opposite of what I believe in and what I'm trying to do with Hornet."

In its first three weeks of release, "The Biscuit" has drawing widely varied online comments, from the expected: "Dayumm! All dat ass" to the disapproving: "offensive racial costumes," "insulting Islamophobic crap" to the appreciative -"props for featuring men of color," "beards, buns, bulges...Hot stuff!"

As Jules Verne once said, "Man is never perfect or contented."