The part that caught me was not the censored shots of Ashley (probably not real name) which are true to the segment flying all over the internet and easily accessible in all their nipple-pierced dookie-braided un-censored glory, but the announcers preface that "[w]hen you get your picture taken, it's intended for only certain eyes to see."
In addition to being a jarringly clumsy sentence, it's offensively stupid.
I try to keep it PG-13 around here - also, Ashley is a meme now
Where have these people been for the last 20 years? The internet is so prolific and so accessible that the old joke "I'm from the Internet" is now self-evident, and no longer a joke: we are all constantly on (and by proxy, from) the internet, and (by extension) so are your booby pictures. Got a cell phone? You're on the Internet. Watching TV? You're on the Internet. Reading this? Unless someone printed it out and walked it over to you, you're on the Internet.
As a caveat, yes, you can probably find a spot somewhere deep in the Canadian wilderness wherein you are so far off the grid and away from any electronic devices that you could arguably be considered "off the internet." Then again, if you're that far gone into the wilderness, A) what are you doing taking pictures of your ta-tas instead of foraging for food and water? and B) Google Maps caught you masturbating on in the middle of a flowery clearing in the woods, and you can't email support to get them to blur it out like Dick Cheney's house.
Privacy is for terrorists
So for all my previous rallying in support of improved privacy laws and protections (something I'll pick up again on Friday), I am here to say that the best defense is a good offense. That means that to defend your privacy, you should be as offensive as possible.
You can take "offensive" to mean whatever you like here - on one hand, you can just live very publicly and keep few or no secrets, telling people so much about yourself that they literally don't care if they know any more about you, or by being the kind of person or keeping the kind of secrets that nobody wants to know about, like Dick Cheney covered in olive oil eating a bucket of fried chicken while sitting naked on the toilet, and only reaching sexual climax when he kills a dog - nobody wants to see that, nobody wants to hear that, and your daily misery is now increased tenfold for me even writing it.
It's just stupid to think that you own your image, and this applies to reproductions thereof. I can't control the electrons that bounce off of my head, and ergo when I do anything except sit in a windowless room with a bag over my head, my likeness is fair game **
Coincidentally, I have a similar apparatus for sex
But then the question becomes "Holy crap, what if someone takes a picture of me doing the Silence of the Lambs dance in a kiddie pool full of cottage cheese and I want to run for office one day?" Well, do you think that's something to be ashamed of? Own your image! Live up to your potential, and embrace your indulgences. Don't shun what you do, lest you turn out like George Rekers, hooking up with a British Funboy after spending your entire life trying to keep people from hooking up with British Funboys.
Together forever and never to part, together forever we two
Obviously, this is all meant to lead into a discussion of privacy and politics, reproduction and rights, but I've gone on for quite a bit and most of you are probably turned on to the point of no return by that picture of "Ashley" with Tronguy boobs, and you're fervently masturbating under your desk, so it hardly matters what I write here. My closing point for today is:
If you don't want anyone seeing your ta-tas or hoo-ha or ding-dong or whatever you've got, don't take a goddamned picture of it!
If you MUST take a picture of your ta-tas, hoo-ha, or ding-dong, don't send it to anybody! Take one polaroid picture, and destroy it when you're done doing whatever you're going to do with it. No, I don't care what you're going to do with it - see paragraphs 6 and 7 above).
Finally, remember that there are about 6,600,000,000 people on this planet, and 6,599,999,999 of them are out to screw you. If someone offers you something like "total privacy" or "absolute security," notice that it usually comes with a price tag attached. Money talks and bullshit walks, so which do you think people are more concerned with: protecting your privacy, or taking your money?
Fail app is full of fail
***
Footnotes:
*Link to MSNBC Piece
**I think that this could rightly be used to inform a conversation regarding intellectual property and unlicensed reproduction - I'll elaborate on Friday.
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