Ever just strip down, catch a glance of yourself in the mirror and say the following:
“This body is awesome.
I should share it with my sexy friend who I trust for some stupid reason.
Via selfie.”
…?
Unless you subsequently put back on at least a towel or strategically covered the bits society would shame you for showing with bubbles, one would hope the thought stopped there and died a horrible death before manifesting into reality. Because while many of us share our nearly naked, poolside, bikini bods without giving it too much thought – nudes are still no-no’s if they end up public. That vestigial Victorian mentality has managed to follow us through the ages and it’ll probably still be there till the end of time. The aliens will come to bloodily battle the robots and mutated lab rats for world domination, and we’ll just be hunkered down in the corner, covering our chesticles with the last can of beans instead of eating them for sustenance (the beans, I mean. Not the boobs). We’re terrified of being exposed because of the guilt and negative attention we might realize in return for it.
Well, most of us, anyway.
Which makes posting sexy snappies from former lovers the perfect revenge against them.
Yes, “revenge porn” is a thing apparently.
Or, as I like to call it, “smut shade”. Smut shade gets thrown by ex lovers who were lucky enough to get a visual on your bobbing bits at some point in the relache. Once shiz goes up in flames and one party calls it quits, the other pulls out the posterity phone photo album to rifle through and takes to the net with it like The Plastics with a Burn Book. Then, you wake up one morning, and all those sexy drunken duck-face face-palm pics you don’t even remember taking because you let your guard down within the privacy of your intimate dynamic… end up on your employer’s FB page. Compliments of an ex with a vengeance (And a shitty alias that gets him caught. And two prior restraining orders following domestic abuse he did on ya after a four year relationship.)
That’s exactly what happened to one chick in L.A.
While she remained nameless in the story that was covered, her dude Noe Iniguez didn’t.
‘cause now he’s in trouuuuuble.
In what’s kinda being debated as a controversial law, Iniguez was among the first to be prosecuted for the newly-illegal revenge porn. In addition to having to do woman-punching counseling, he’ll be serving a year in jail. Ya know, for posting his ex’s nudies on her job’s Facebook page with the supplemental commentary informing them she was a “drunk”, a “slut”, and making the subsequent gentle suggestion that they mayhaps “should fire her”.
See? Smut shade is working out better as a term already.
And its definition essentially extends to any nudesy photos or vids that get non-consensually posted in a way that causes the subject emotional or professional harm. At first I didn’t “get” how that’d be controversial. Why not make it a law, like, yesterday? Worst case scenario is that the paparazzi gets sued for snapping the snatches of LiLo exiting her limo. Or hackers suffer the consequences of invading cellphones for sexy selfies of ScarJo and JLaw level celebs. Right? How’s that so bad? Well, I suppose the idea is that it’s kind of like a domino effect – where taking away the liberties of the assholes might set off a fuse-cascade that culminates in an nuclear explosion of everyone else’s free speech about anything online. Before you know it, you wake up one day and you’re not worried about that last sext you sent. You’re worried that those cop cars are outside because of that “Fccck da police! Ah’ma do wha’ ah want!” post you put up yesterday.
So we’re left with two choices:
The first is that you can stop caring. Let it all hang out.
Or the second is that we can battle this disgusting and untrustworthy world. Together. That’s right. You and I. I just want you to know that – as your friend – you can trust me. Because I have a solution: I’m proud to announce I have created a new app that has been constructed with state of the art technology. The way it functions is such that once I upload the photographs you’ve forwarded to my secure and professional account (ShowmeYourPeenkParts@gmail.whatevz), they immediately get erased from every other phone, photo album, personal computer, and even the memories of the previous recipients. It’s like your poor life decisions never happened at all.
We can do this. You shouldn’t have to live hindered by fear!
Friends! Women! Clothes-less men! Lend me your nudes!
For the sake of our collective long term liberties!