A story that’s affecting hundreds of thousands of people tonight, and possibly you, the Snappening. That’s what they’re calling a new hack of 200,000 Snapchat users. If you don’t know it, it’s the popular instant-message picture app all the kids are using.
Those pictures are supposed to disappear after the chat is over, which leads to a lot of very intimate pictures. But now, they’re being posted to sites like 4-Chan.
It sounds familiar, it’s almost exactly what happened to Hollywood celebrities a couple of weeks ago. The only difference is where the pictures came from. But the very pact that so many celebrities have taken naked pictures with their phones is kind of a cultural measure of what’s normal.
And it’s not even reserved to the Internet. Shows like Naked and Afraid and MTV’s Dating Naked certainly rely on titillation. But is it possible they’re desensitizing viewers into thinking that it’s no big deal for everyone to see you in the nude?
It might not change the minds of you or me; we’ve already developed our social expectations. But what about the children? When they think it’s matter of course that everybody has a nude picture online?
Our Man on the Edge, Robert Wilder, hit the streets to get your take…
