by Dan Tabor
If you thought break-ups were complicated when you were still among the dating, you have absolutely nothing on our digital lovebirds of today. Where once if you got really adventurous you might have some naked-time videotapes and Polaroids to worry about once the relationship ran its course, now with the picture perfect replication of digital technology it’s a much more complicated matter altogether.
Not even a month goes by without another scandal hitting the net, featuring some girl’s privates spread all over the World Wide Web by some vindictive ex-boyfriend or someone just trying to ruin some poor girl’s life. But the big difference now is where once these pictures would eventually fade over time, or the videotape would wear out, with the Internet now it’s forever. That, coupled with the desensitized, total lack of transparency of our culture today, some people have no problem with sharing their dirty photos with their entire GMail address book just for shits and giggles.
I would like to say this phenomenon is just kept to the sexting schoolyard, but that would be way too optimistic of me. Nowadays entire websites are dedicated to sharing pictures of your wife and or girlfriend, usually without her knowledge. Where this gets really scary are instances where people have downloaded images and video from these sites and were able to track down the women thanks to meta-data left in a picture or by using a service like Tineye that can reverse image search.
[Lanei Suicide in Farewell Polaroid]
One thing to keep in mind with services like these is algorithms only improve over time, to the point where you will be able to use facial recognition to find every picture and geo-tagged location of said picture on the Internet. So not only will your kid be able to find Mommy’s pictures of her college trip to Italy, but she will also see what happened in the hotel afterwards.
These pictures are much different than those you see on Suicide Girls that empower women who take charge and present their sexuality as they see fit. These are photos taken for “private use only” if you will, and when brought out into the public are only used to victimize, exploit and render the subject powerless. So girls, next time your boyfriend breaks out his new DSLR when you’re over at his place talking some “record our love” bullshit, tell him he is only shooting solo.
