Even if it isn’t porn, someone can make it so.
So you’ve decided to take some photographs of yourself or someone you love in their all together. Being the time, you use the closest image taking device to hand, a device notoriously and continuously connected to the Internet. You likely never intended these photos being seen beyond the privacy of your relationship. (If you are planning to send unsolicited photos of YOUR all together, see here.) Next thing you know: naked on the Internets.
Clearly, the theft of the latest celebrity sex pics is a crime. To be specific, this is a sex crime the same as peeking through windows or cameras beneath bathroom stalls. The only persons wrong in this fiasco are the pathetic individual(s) who broke into personal accounts and stole the photographs. Nothing is inherently wrong with consensual taking, posing in or possession sexual images of yourself or your lovers. (Consensual being the operative word there, kids.)
Still, one needs to consider the incredibly naive act of trusting anything remotely associated with the Internet to preserve your privacy. Best case scenario, everything online is but an illusion of privacy. Someone, somewhere has access to EVERYTHING you post, upload, share, send or store. No amount of security compensates for the simple act of surrendering the information. The most secure information in the world is vulnerable to someone with a grudge, cause or empty bank account.
The Internet is like that friend in Middle School who convinces you tell all your secrets and then blabs EVERYTHING to Sheila Malinowski who you ALWAYS HATED! FUCK YOU PAMMY! I WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU! You want to trust the Internet because you like it, it’s fun, never boring and full of good gossip. But the Internet is this way because it betrays people. Just like Pammy.
I’m not sure when we started trusting Pammy the Internet. I remember a sense of caution in those early days, I didn’t use my real name online for the seven or eight years. (I am also thankful Google wasn’t yet indexing everything done on the Web.) It seems generational, this wild trust. Baby Boomers said trust no one over thirty. Generation X trusted no one. The Millennials don’t trust anyone over thirty, the government, or corporations. Except for the ones really convenient, or cool. It’s not surprising which generation comprises the hacked celebrities. (Of course, most forty-year old’s are not snapping nude selfies, we’ve seen our bodies and time is not kind.)
Our lives are connected to the world via a stream of information, the more we share the more the Internet will eventually betray. The corporations who are the Internet possess a vested interest in you surrendering everything about you. The Illusion of Privacy is a curtain to keep you contributing, sadly the man behind the curtain is busy whacking off. The only way to keep anything private off the Internet is KEEP IT OFF THE INTERNET. This extends to your phones, which are less secure than your computers, if such is even possible. Let me put it another way. Once upon a time when we wanted private nekkid pictures we took them on a Polaroid and put them in a shoe box.
Also, and this perhaps is the most important piece of advice I will dispense today. When it comes to naked pictures of you, trust no one. Seriously, don’t trust ANYONE. The person you love today is only one bad break up away from your bare ass being plastered over creation. If you feel you MUST have naked photographs, at least see a professional photographer with whom you sign contracts and can seek some redress if your boudoir shot appears on Porn Weasel. Better yet, do an oil painting, at least your bare ass might hang in a museum some day.
I guess what I am saying is that taking nude photos is not morally wrong, you still really shouldn’t do it. The ratio of regret to reward is just too great.
Honestly, Polaroid should restart and use this all as a marketing tool. “Keep your personal porn private: Keep it Polaroid”