The Naked Picture Scandal of 2014

It's time to get serious here at the Nugget Blog and talk about the true travesty behind the leaked nude pictures of a handful of female celebrities this past week. Society is being flipped upside down, and the only people who can change it is us. 

I never thought a scandal that would come to be known as The Fappening would actually be a thing outside of an eighth grade classroom. Well, apparently today's world has the maturity, the morality and the mental capacity of a fourteen year-old boy going through puberty and it was on grand stage with the hacking scandal that devastated such prized celebrities as Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, Ariana Grande and several other females. The group of Redditors and 4chan and whatever other lowlife social media site hobbyists that uploaded the stolen (and I bold the word "stolen" because the pictures were indeed stolen, meaning we can not blame the celebrities for this massive tragedy. I hope anyone reading this understands that) pictures nearly broke the Internet, causing a masturbation frenzy throughout the world amongst men who are obviously lonely, broken and sick. 

The porn industry makes billions of dollars every year and is one of the wealthiest industries in the world. That is a fact and a sad fact at every angle. However, the porn industry includes people who make choices to go on screen and perform sexual acts to complete strangers or porn acquaintances. That is also a fact. The real perversion behind this particular hijacking scandal is the subject of non consent. For whatever reason, people have a sick obsession with celebrities. Scratch that. For the reason being that we, society as a whole, glorify the living hell out of all celebrities, regardless of whether or not they are actually talented enough to garnish said fame, people have a sick obsession with celebrities. Its the reason US Weekly, Globe and People magazines sell so many issues of their publications. Its the reason shows like TMZ, Entertainment Tonight, and even The Soup are so wildly successful. The Internet thrives on gossip and celebrity stories to the point of massive consumption leading to society idolizing these people. That is truly what we are doing, we are making idols out of these people with big names and big personalities.

I am sure I am guilty of it too. I am a big Elton John fan and if I were to walk by him on the street for some reason, I don't think I would pass up the chance at talking to him, taking my picture with him and maybe even asking him for his autograph. But I have to ask myself, why? Why? Because he is a great singer? My fiancé has the voice of a beautiful angel, yet, I have never asked her for her autograph. Elton John seems like a really nice guy, but so are a lot of my friends. I would stop to say hello to them on the street, but would I really stop for a picture? Is it convenience? Is it fame? Its a mixture of both. The story we can share about that one time we ran into Johnny Depp or took our picture with Angeline Jolie is tantalizing. The convenience of constantly seeing our spouse or our group of friends takes away from the excitement we should feel when we see them. Celebrity is idolization at its finest, and regardless of how innocent of it we think we are, we are all guilty. And that is rampantly obvious with this recent scandal.

Going back to the point I hinted at earlier of non consent being present in this heinous crime, there is a particular aura to these leaked pictures for the people who looked at them surrounding the fact that these celebrities didn't post them themselves. They had no control over them being released. What sickens me most about that, to try and put this in words that I can post on this blog, these celebrities are real people with real feelings and real hearts. They aren't characters, they aren't fake. Jennifer Lawrence truly has to deal with this, through no control or choice of her own. For some reason, to a select group of pathetic people, that is appealing. Hopefully, to the rest of mankind, that is a real shame and a humiliation that we can only help by praying for that poor, young woman. She is barely twenty years old and now she has to deal with the sick release of her naked body in the entire internet for what? For pleasure? For the money these hackers supposedly made off these pictures through bit coin? Through the glory they got for releasing these images? All I can say I am sick that this event actually took place.

I read an article on Yahoo about how the whole occurrence went down and I included the link in this sentence. It is a good read but one that I wish didn't need to be written. This underground hacking debacle is something that needs to be controlled. These hackers have completely lost their human perspective on morality, there conscience has been clouded by URLs and HTTPs. I feel sorry for these people knowing that they don't see the injustice done to these poor, innocent women and that they were somehow frustrated that this nude female picture ring would be coming to an end from this leak. There just aren't words to describe the inhumanity in this entire situation. 

As a believer and follower of Christ, I can see the immorality here. I am not saying I am anything better than non-believers or anyone else on this earth, my sin is massive. But, I am saying that as a human being, I would hope people could see the selfishness, hideous sexual immorality, abuse and overall pitiful nature of looking at those pictures and especially pleasuring oneself to those vulnerable, naked female women. Unfortunately, by what I saw from Facebook updates and tweets, the majority of humankind didn't mind taking the second road to self pleasure. Its damn shame and above all else, it is not the celebrities' fault.

Which is a whole separate ball game, really. People have made countless accusations against Jennifer Lawrence and the rest of the women pictured in these nude images claiming that they should have never been so moronic to take and post those pictures in the first place. Well, I can understand that point. With big companies like Target being victims recently to huge hacking scandals, the last thing anyone should be doing is posting things they want to be kept private on their webpages or even in the iCloud, no matter how secure it was supposed to be. Titanic was the unsinkable ship and we know how that panned out. But still, where do we as humans draw the line between accusing the victims of their small aid in what is really a disturbing crime. For example, ESPN analyst Stephen A. Smith made some comments a few weeks ago about running back Ray Rice and the domestic abuse case he was in with his then fiancé, now wife. Their was a video of Ray Rice pulling his unconscious fiancé out of an elevator that eventually became evidence of said domestic abuse case. Stephen A. Smith had the audacity to hint at Rice's fiancé "asking for it", claiming that women need to stop finding themselves in these situations with men who will hurt them. If I need to explain why that is so horrendous, than I've lost you from the start.

In the end, this kind of stuff won't go away. The underground hackers might think they have lost their edge with this historic photo security leak, but they are wrong. The media, the underground hackers and everything in between will still get their hands on celebrity juice, regardless of vulgar and sexual and intimate and private it might be and they will still post it in order to up their page views or secure some couple hundred bucks in return for the destruction of an innocent person's reputation, image and security. To the women involved in this catastrophe, I am praying for you to find solace and comfort in this situation. To anyone on the flip side of that emotion, I ask you this question. When will this society stop glorying nudity and sexuality and start waking up to the filth they are sitting in?