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Two weeks ago a friend of mine rang me in a panic. Had he left his mobile phone in my house, when he and his girlfriend visited, he wanted to know? I checked. He hadn't. He was distraught. So was she.
It wasn't simply the loss of numbers etc - I know all about that having lost my own phone in December. Their problem was simple: one night, in a drunken state, they had saved clips of themselves having sex on the phone. It was only for their eyes, they thought. But they were now terrified - what if someone else found that phone and saw those clips. They didn't tell me what the clips were of, just that they were very explicit - lets say they would get past any censor if included in a film.
Last weekend, their worst nightmare happened. One of them got a phone call from a friend. They had seen on of those clips on a website. Whoever had found the phone (or stolen it) had got into it, found the clips and uploaded them to some sex sites.
The couple managed to get the clip taken down from that site, but they have no idea what other clips are around, on what websites, and how many people have been using the clips to . . . em . . . aid their own excitement, so to speak. They are terrified their school friends, work colleagues, cousins, siblings, maybe the boss will see them. Or worse still has already seen them but hasn't told them, but are sharing the clips around, and discussing the couple behind their backs.
It is freaking them out.
Large numbers of people now upload clips of themselves to sites like you tube and more explicit sites. How many of those who do that consider the implications. For those clips aren't there for a day or two, but potentially indefinitely. They could damage their job prospects, their relationships, embarrass their kids in the future, or be used by the media if they ever got a prominent job, whether in business, politics, the media, the arts, or whatever. Tabloids just love running with stories of a sex tape doing the rounds when they involve someone high profile, even where the tape is years, even decades old. One woman running for the local council the last time around was humiliated by a simple picture on her facebook of her drunkenly groping a female friend. At the time it was put up, it seemed like innocent enough. But give it to a tabloid in the middle of a campaign when years later she was running for election, and it is dynamite, and it blew her political career out of the water.
I often wonder if people when they are 18 or 19 or in their twenties, and for the craic upload explicit pictures of themselves, or embarrassing pictures of themselves, ever think of whether that picture will help or hinder their job prospects or relationships later on? What may seem like innocent craic at the time can embarass the hell out of you years later, as that couple have realised to their cost. They have no idea how many of their clips are doing the rounds, who is watching them, and whether their parents will suddenly get a call telling them of the sex tape on a porno site involving their son or daughter.
So do people pay enough heed to the implications of putting up personal information, personal names, photos, videos etc on the internet? Will we see a lot of people in the future, when they get older, desparately trying to find and delete all the old videos they put up of themselves on websites, and worrying in years to come whether the information they put up in their teens and twenties will come back to haunt them in their careers and private life in the future?
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Originally Posted by toxic avenger
