The Bullshit Victimhood of the Rich and Famous
I keep reading sanctimonious crap about how celebrities like Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Upton have been so horribly violated by the leaking of their nude pictures and I'm afraid I can only hear so much righteous indignation before my nausea compels me to write.
Now I do believe that it was wrong to hack their accounts and post the pictures, absolutely. It wasn't wrong on the level of what was done to Erin Andrews when she was photographed unknowingly in a hotel room, but it was wrong.
It also showed a stunning lack of common sense. These women took naked photos of themselves and stored them on a server that can be hacked by answering security questions one could solve through a cursory Google search. In what kind of world do they think we're living?
Again, I'm not judging their morality for taking nude pictures of themselves. I'm not judging the morality of whatever sex lives they happen to have. I'm judging their gross lack of practicality.
Celebrities make millions of dollars off of their images and personae. By the very act of becoming successful in this way, they enter into a tacit agreement with the public that they will forfeit the same privacy the rest of us enjoy. Just like the Pope or President, they will be scrutinized. Now you might say that they just wanted to act or make music but please spare me. If all you want to do is act, you'd be in the community playhouse. They wanted the fame and they knew what came with it.
So if they want fame AND privacy, they are going to have to guard their private lives jealously. This isn't cynicism or envy (well maybe a little). It's reality. People are greedy scumbags and our current privacy laws can be pushed to a limit that allows little privacy at all. Paparazzi leverage this leniency to make millions by snapping unsolicited photos from bushes and on secluded beaches.
The analogy I keep hearing is that saying it's OK to steal and leak nude photos of a celebrity is like saying it's OK to steal someone's car or designer clothes because they were impractical or brazen enough to have them. And yet what advice do we give to tourists in most foreign cities and countries around the world? Don't dress fancy, wear too much jewelry or flash cash because you might get robbed. And I'm not saying it's OK. Ethically, if you park an unlocked car on a street in Camden, New Jersey or Detroit or Harlem and it gets stolen, that's wrong. The ease of a theft or the poverty of the thief doesn't excuse the act. Practically, however, if it's your car that gets stolen, people have a right to ask what were you thinking?.
Now for most of us our nudey pics are dented Ford Tauruses from the mid-90's that aren't likely to get stolen anyway. Celebrities, however, have reputations and public images to protect. Nude photos can be used for black mail. They can even be used for legal profit in this day and age when any floppy headed tart with an acoustic guitar can get famous on YouTube. Hell, if a celebrity makes a sex tape and you steal it and then get the consent of the other party, you can legally post that tape, monetize the site and make thousands of dollars in a few hours.
For a celebrity, particularly a young, attractive one at the height of her fame, storing naked pictures of herself on an iPhone and an easily hackable cloud server isn't presenting a common temptation that only the most depraved among us would give in to. It's putting a powerful and valuable piece of media with very little security out into the interconnected networking ether in a world filled with sophisticated troupes of computer hackers that are more like gangsters than the cute little blonde girl from Jurassic Park. It's like parking an unlocked Ferrari in Compton with the windows down.
I don't pity stupidity. If you want to take naked pictures of yourselves, knock yourselves out: but use a fucking Polaroid and don't upload the images. And if your real purpose is to have the images leaked for greater notoriety, then you're a disingenuous fame hog and I don't really care what happens to you. We give millions of dollars and inconceivable devotion to these people for talents that are unremarkable and don't benefit our society in any tangible way. Whether they are either careless or manipulative with that undeserved power and get burned for it, I'm not shedding any tears.
