So, if I’m following the story right, it appears that someone managed to hack into a bunch of cell phones or iCloud accounts or something belonging to celebrities and find a bunch of nude photos, which they then apparently dumped on the internet.
I haven’t looked at any of these photos because (1) I already know how to find all the nude photos on the Internet that I’ll ever want to see, (2) even if I had the hots specifically for one of those actresses, the nude photos were supposed to be private, so I’d feel weird looking at them, and (3) even though I’m blogging about the photos now, I have no news-related reason to take a look at them.
The responses to the nude photo dump have been pretty typical. In particular, some people have pointed out that the surest way to avoid having nude pictures of yourself on the internet is to not take nude pictures of yourself. That drew the usual accusations of blaming the victim instead of and blaming the hacker who stole the pictures. This is pretty much the same set of responses we’ve seen with revenge porn. It’s a weird dynamic that I have trouble following, and I’m not quite sure what to say about it.
What I will say, however, to all my friends, family, acquaintances, blog readers, and Twitter followers, is that if any of you have some nude photos of yourself, and if those photos somehow get posted on the Internet, I won’t respect you any less.
For one thing, my libertarian leanings do not just apply to public policy; I’m also somewhat libertarian in my approach to culture and society. I’m really not going to get all judgmental about whatever you and another consenting adult (or two or three) choose to do in private or for willing viewers.
Also, and this may actually be the more important factor, I’ve been on the Internet a long, long time, and by now I’ve seen rather a lot of pictures of naked people — models, actors and actresses, porn stars — doing all kinds of different things. I mean, I was downloading GIFs of naked ladies in the early 1990s, before the World Wide Web was invented, and way before most of you ever heard of the Internet.
I say this not to highlight the shallowness of my life, but to explain why naked people on the Internet…just don’t seem like a big deal. Also, I’ve recently become interested in the sex worker rights movement, and I follow a bunch of sex work activists — strippers, prostitutes, dominatrixes, porn stars — many of whom post nude or semi-nude pictures all the time.
The point is, if I started seeing pictures of most of you naked…I probably wouldn’t even notice.
This takes a huge weight off my shoulders.
On the other hand, I find your response a bit frightening.