Seeing nude celebrities is an exciting thing; I get it. When I was a younger man, I might have partaken in the consumption of the Fappening photos. However, with maturity comes empathy and I cannot enjoy seeing photos that a woman doesn't want seen. In other words, I respect a woman's right to privacy and would feel awful to contribute to her feelings of embarrassment and betrayal.
The Fappening is a tragedy and like all tragedies, learning from them can mitigate the negative aspect. If we can walk away from the photo leak as a more evolved people, we can prevent the hackers from "winning". With that said, here are three things that can be learned from the Fappening.
1.) In the Cloud, nothing is safe -- No, I don't just mean iCloud. Sure, Apple's service was a source of some leaks, but it could have happened to any company. Ultimately, nothing in the cloud can be considered 100 percent safe and secure.
Sadly, the response by many on the Internet is that the women are sluts and whores and it is their fault for taking nude photos in the first place. This thinking is backwards as we should never blame victims, but also, the naked body is not a dirty thing. If a woman decides to take a photo of herself, no one else has the right to decide what is or isn't tasteless. No one is to blame, other than the hackers that leaked the photos.
Going forward, it should always be assumed that what you share in the cloud could possibly be compromised. This is sad, as the cloud makes things easier to access, but privacy is the unfortunate trade-off for convenience.
2.) Sexism is alive and well -- Did you see the nudes of Robert De Niro? What about Bryan Cranston? Surely you saw LeBron James, right? No, you did not see any nude men in the Fappening or Fappening 2. It seems that hackers were only interested in obtaining female photos.
Sure, this can easily be explained by saying that the hackers are heterosexual males that just aren't interested in male celebrities. However, it can also be argued that women are more sexualized than men in modern society. So am I saying that I want to see a nude Will Smith in order to have equality? No. I would prefer that no one had their privacy violated. Still, it seems that sexism is still here.
3.) Not everyone on the Internet sucks -- If you spend five minutes on 4chan or any other online forum, you would probably think that society has broken down and the Apocalypse is near. However, not everyone is an anonymous, deranged, psychopath. Since the Fappening happened, many people, both male and female, have condemned the leaking of the photos. In other words, there are still sensible people on the Internet.
To prove that there are still good people on the web, I ask you to please leave a comment stating that you pledge to abstain from looking at leaked photos. Let's show the world that nobility still exists.
Image Credit: Leszek Glasner / Shutterstock