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Your predilections, revealed!
September 12, 2006
All right, let’s mix up the privacy and exposure discussion a little bit more. There’s been a lot of interesting stuff kicking around about the Craigslist Experiment (site often down due to massive traffic) in Seattle. Violet Blue blogged about it, and its brought up lots of interesting stuff about online privacy and to what extent people can expect it, specifically when responding to anonymous ads for casual sex on Craigslist. Just because you can get and publish someone’s private information doesn’t mean that you should. But is sending filthy missives and photos into the CL ether a trust thing? Or is the assumption that someone won’t post your intimate details the same as the assumption that someone isn’t going to yell “Fire!” in a crowded movie theater just for the fuck of it?
To complicate this a little bit more, while I was doing book research I found this really interesting site, Perverted-Justice.com, that links together a network of people who sniff out “wannabe pedophiles” on the web through chats. People who want to get all vigilante style go through training engineered by the website and then pose in chats as underage girls, chat with older guys and when/if the older guys make sexual advances or suggest a meeting, they verify his identity and turn the transcripts over to the police.
Ah, the democracy of the internet, turning morally outraged, merely bored or slightly vicious citizens into the deliverers of “justice.” There is definitely a difference between consensual (if not necessarily safe and sane) BDSM and potential pedophilia, but I find it intriguing that in both cases, the announcement of intentions is the damning evidence. For both types of folks – the line between fantasy and intention to carry out the act is completely eroded, and once words are typed, destiny is written. This is one of the things so fascinating about media of all kinds, but perhaps especially the internet, with its instantaneous publishing, linking and archives – once a thing is said, it is for all intents and purposes a real true thing, even if it isn’t.
Posted by Dacia at September 12, 2006 09:26 AM
Comments
You have a wonderful blog - very professionally done.
I agree that the Internet, with its nearly immediate ability to “publish”, probably makes it a lightningrod for this type of thing.
Posted by: Camilla at September 12, 2006 10:20 AM
