After a way-too-long summer hiatus, I'm happy to announce that The Daily Wit is back and ready to impart its infinite font of wisdom on the eager masses (you). And what better time to return to the blogging scene than now? What, with unrest in Ferguson, unrest in Ukraine, and, well, unrest in Iraq, it's almost too easy to be a blogger. I have so many outlets available for my educated (read: cursory) opinions. That said, I'm not going to talk about those issues today. This isn't because they aren't important or timely, or interesting. Mainly, it's just a lot of work that I don't want to do because other, more informed people than I have done it better. (see: above links)
No, instead I'm going to focus on something a little closer to home but no less worthy of discussion. I imagine, if you have a working internet connection, you've been made privy to the most recent celebrity nude leak. Naked pictures of our favorite tabloid sweethearts isn't exactly an unprecedented occurrence and typically these sorts of ordeals can be handled in an awkward thirty second CNN sound bite in which the hosts mispronounce some names and show a heavily blurred picture for God knows what reason. But this time was different. Set aside the fact that the leak contained some very high profile names (Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, Kirsten Dunst). This leak exposed a complicated system of hackers who evidently run an underground nude picture trading ring and have done so for years.
While you're busy washing the ick off and plastering post-it notes on your webcam, allow me to get to heart of this issue. What makes this recent invasion of privacy so relevant is that it is exactly that: an invasion of privacy. This isn't a fucking scandal. (Looking at you, TMZ) It was a scandal when Anthony Weiner dangled his namesake in front of the camera for a woman who wasn't his wife. It was a scandal when we found out that the NSA was spying on us while we scrolled through pictures of our friend's hot sister on Facebook. It was a fucking scandal when Nixon sent his cronies to go snoop around Watergate. Those are scandals because all of the parties involved in them shouldn't have been doing what they were doing. Taking naked pictures of yourself for either a friend, significant other, or yourself (why) is not a goddamn scandal.
Look, I'm not going to tell you that baring your all for the camera connected to a fucking satellite is an intelligent move. Because, frankly, it's not. But I'm not going to tell you that doing so is disgusting and unbecoming of someone of your stature. We've been sending naked pictures for years. I'm sure Cleopatra was carving her lady bits into a stone for Mark Antony back in the day. Point being, instead of clutching our collective pearls and fanning ourselves over a couple pictures of boobs, maybe we should be focusing on the fact that there is a complicated system of hackers rifling through our shit and showing it to everyone. This was a violation of privacy for many people and boo-hooing the state of America and "oh lawdy the CHILDREN" is not helping anyone but the hackers.
I'm cynical enough to accept that there's no way we're going to stop this sort of behavior completely. I'm not expecting people to riot in the streets and call for these creepy guys to get strung up by their ankles. I do, however, expect a society that purports to be progressive to have a little more savoir faire in these instances and back off the victim blaming just a bit. We have a common enemy here and it is not boobs. Just something to think on.
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