Thoughts on "The Fappening"

Hey.

If you still don't know by now, about a week ago somebody managed to "hack" into many celebrities' iCloud accounts and steal their private pictures. This person released a lot of them onto the internet. I ended up having more to say about this topic than I originally thought. Ok, first let's talk about the actual situation.

Actresses are people. They're not goddesses. They are people. Nobody is "perfectly pure". This notion that the ideal girl is irresistibly sexy, wears beautiful, pretty, cute clothing and makeup for you, yet is somehow sexually innocent, well, that's not only naive, it can backfire on you. What type of idiot girl has no idea about sex at all as an adult? In a child it might be cute, but not in adults. In adults it's ignorance about something that is (to many people at least) an important part of life. It's a fantasy. Fantasies have their place, but you don't want that stuff in reality.

Back on topic. Why is taking nude pictures of yourself somehow immoral? It makes no sense to me. Now, I don't get why people do that. Somebody tried to defend the actresses by saying "Well, everybody takes nude pictures of themselves..." to which I reply... No, lol. I don't? It's like making a sex tape. Just because you like doing that stuff doesn't mean everybody does. It's weird to me, but not immoral. Like, seriously. What sort of suffering is that going to cause? In the end, no matter what you say, you do eventually have to acknowledge that the fault is on the guy who illegally hacked into other people's accounts to steal their private photos. The photos can be any type of photos, even photos of their favorite cat. But it's private. You shouldn't touch that. Ok? Can we get this out of the way? The fault is really on the guy who did all this. (Well, assuming it's a guy. Could be a girl, you never know.) This is more than a scandal, it's also involving a criminal act.

Apple's value dropped a lot because of this incident. What I heard was that the accounts weren't "hacked" per se. The guy just managed to guess the recovery question answers or their passwords. Many people will say that people shouldn't post anything to the internet if they don't want it to be exposed. Do you say this kind of stuff for your bank account password? Your Paypal password? Your Paypal account balance? I don't think so. So don't tell me that we all should be super-duper careful. Yes, actresses tend to get more attention, so they are a prime target for these kinds of attacks, so they should be more careful. This is true. But they are also just people. Not everybody is super electronics-security-conscious. We all have gaps in our knowledge, things we probably should know but don't. It's not totally ridiculous that an actress would stick to this level of security, because this level of security has worked well in the past and for many other people. You can't even "victim blame" by accusing the girls of doing stupid shit. They stored photos under password key and lock.

Here's a tip if you are worried about security: For your security questions, don't answer them honestly. Make up a fake answer you'll remember. Even better, make all of your passwords or answers off-topic password phrases. It beats adding weird symbols to your password and it's easier to remember. If you're an actress, many small details of your life have already been leaked without knowing. This makes them even more vulnerable.

Speaking of "victim blaming". I've been discussing this whole Fappening situation with some people and it's really annoying me. The first person I talked to basically verbally rained down hell on me for not going out there and exclaiming in all caps about just how outraged I am. Like, great. Whoever did this was wrong to do what they did. No fucking shit. What else is there to talk about in this case besides rattling on about how angry you are? Shit happens, what do you want ME to do? He also annoyed me greatly because 1) It was a complete circlejerk because that's what you get when you post on other people's Facebook posts, their friends already have similar ideologies and can't hold their boner for attacking the odd duck out and 2) Somehow, because I am young, my opinions are discounted and it's acceptable to use language particularly suited for attacking young people. Which I find hilarious because I'm positive this guy would be the first to get super insulted when any sort of racist or god-forbid, sexist comment get used at anybody. It's as if, being more angry about something happening makes you more moral. Funny. I am not "victim blaming" because I trivialize the celebrities' anger over this entire incidence. Shit just fucking happens. Out of all the things that could happen to you, having nudes released is a pretty benign tragedy. Last July, some asshole smashed a window on my car. I was angry, but not even for that long. It happened to ME, so I was angry, yes. But I see no reason for other people to get as angry or more angry than I am. It's as if they should be more offended than I am, which I find awkward and foolish. Around the world, tons of people have their entire cars wrecked, their entire lives wrecked (either by damages or being accused of being the person who inflicted such damage to others). Other people are being enslaved and brainwashed. Many are starving. Actresses are still privileged people, by worldwide standards and even American standards. They don't have to be actresses if they don't want to be. It's not like somebody thrust upon them, all the fame and money and they just want out. They will be alright next month, despite whatever nudes were released. I'm serious. They'll get over it. It's not really that bad.

There's child porn and all sorts of black-market info everywhere. Countries are committing cybercrimes against each other, stealing company and country secrets. And we are chiefly offended by what nudes were released? Give me a break. Even among the mundane things in our lives which annoy us, I don't feel having nudes released even ranks near the top in terms of frustration. Having a shitty, abusive girlfriend or boyfriend, getting fire and struggling to make ends meet, hell having to work 40 hours a week, all of these things in my opinion totally outweigh whatever suffering I might get if some nudes somehow appeared from thin air and got released all over the internet. I might even joke about it and ask, "You like what you see? ;)"

On the other hand, somebody on Youtube comments made a comment basically attacking the girls for putting pictures online that they didn't want to get leaked, talking about the NSA (riiiight, because the NSA is totally going to leak your nude photos to the public!). And then he went on to attack the news media for focusing more on The Fappening than other more important items, like war, famine, etc. This has some merit, in that the people who write for news networks ought to focus on what is more important to the entire world instead of focusing on stuff we'll all forget the next day. Famine isn't something that just disappears because you don't think about it. But my question is this:

If the priorities of a news station (in terms of what they investigate and care about) is totally off, causing the Youtuber to be mad, doesn't that mean people who have priorities totally wrong would also get him all riled up? Then that's the problem: We all have our own interests. It's very easy to attack people who care about celebrities. It's really a cheapshot when in reality, we're preoccupied by many other things which don't contribute to the well-being of the world, and we think about those things more than say, famine. In some ways, we're all no better. We have no high-horse to speak of. Comments that are short (typically one-liners), sensationalist, simple, and attacks something that seems easy to attack all tend to get a lot of "likes" on social media and on Youtube. They obviously cannot contain serious content because of its brevity, but they are often flat out wrong as well. In this case, for the people who took the like-bait and liked the comment victim-shaming the celebrities and attacking news media for covering the topic, they are ironically liking a comment that leads to a train of though which actually insults them. (Yeah, takes a while to figure that long sentence out. Sorry.)

It is true, at least in my eyes, that spreading this "The Fappening" photos all over the internet is actually an immoral thing to do. It should stop. But we have to think about the difference between what would happen ideally versus what should be done. If you cover it up, you are risking a major backfire. You ever heard of the Streissand Effect? When you try to suppress a scandal, it can just make things worse by bringing more attention to the situation. You will not significantly impact the spread of the pictures on the internet now it's out there. I think the best course of action is to let the whole thing blow by. Sure, do some FBI investigations behind the scenes if you wish to see if you can catch the guy who committed this crime. But trying to stop the internet from spreading stuff just demonstrates a person's ignorance about how the internet works. The internet never truly forgets, but it has the attention span of a 5 year old kid.

Somebody brought up an interesting point. Naked girls are everywhere on the internet. What is so special about the boobs of a girl who happened to be in some movies? Absent of all their makeup and fancy Hollywood crap, they're not even THAT good looking anyways. From a consumer standpoint, it's probably best to head straight for some normal porn material instead.