I have been thinking about "nudes" (which I will use as a shorthand to describe digital images of a person sans clothing, almost always taken by that person) in terms of cultural evolution. A couple of years ago I mentioned, on HN, that I knew Jenni, of JenniCam, before the "cam," back when she was just experimenting with this new digital camera device. And then they became more and more available.
For a brief time there was a kind of explosion of said nudes. I could be on Yahoo Chat and women would just send them, unsolicited, and I think that was the era of people not realizing that nudes can get around, like any other secret, once you let go of them. My guess is that probably came to an end roughly ten years ago or so, and people now hold onto them tightly, which is probably much more reasonable.
People still take nudes, and pass them on, but I think there is a level of discretion that has increased, although I know some women who mention being pestered for such by men they know. Still, these images are on cameras and cloud storage and such, and for the life of me I do not get the hunger that drives such a risky behavior as getting into hacked iCloud accounts versus, I don't know, average sources of free nudes? Poor judgment of course abounds in so many reported crimes but ... how does one even trawl more than half a million photos for nudes? Was he planning on going through them individually? Was he going to make a neural net to scan for skin?
I just find the whole thing a little baffling in this day and this age.
>and for the life of me I do not get the hunger that drives such a risky behavior as getting into hacked iCloud accounts versus, I don't know, average sources of free nudes?
I presume the hunger is more about having access to something you are not supposed to have access to, or were not given access to.
"Everything in human life is really about sex, except sex. Sex is about power.”
I get the impression this trend has peaked. For a while, young people stopped going topless on the beach, for example, for fear of photos appearing online. In the last years, it's been making a comeback. I believe it's both a sense that there's so much out there, chances are rather low someone you know will come across any photo. And that it just doesn't matter. I am absolutely certain you wouldn't be able to hurt someone with sending their work colleagues a topless photo you found, but rather risk your own job if you're found.
For a brief time there was a kind of explosion of said nudes. I could be on Yahoo Chat and women would just send them, unsolicited, and I think that was the era of people not realizing that nudes can get around, like any other secret, once you let go of them. My guess is that probably came to an end roughly ten years ago or so, and people now hold onto them tightly, which is probably much more reasonable.
People still take nudes, and pass them on, but I think there is a level of discretion that has increased, although I know some women who mention being pestered for such by men they know. Still, these images are on cameras and cloud storage and such, and for the life of me I do not get the hunger that drives such a risky behavior as getting into hacked iCloud accounts versus, I don't know, average sources of free nudes? Poor judgment of course abounds in so many reported crimes but ... how does one even trawl more than half a million photos for nudes? Was he planning on going through them individually? Was he going to make a neural net to scan for skin?
I just find the whole thing a little baffling in this day and this age.