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Victim Blaming

Ventus

Mad haters lmao
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Why is it when something incredibly dumb happens like The Fappening/the leak of the celebrities nude, that everyone rushes to their sympathy side and shoots all the crap to the people involved in doing the bad things? Why can't we look to what the "victim" did/did not do and critique the situation from that point of view? Anytime someone dares to say something along the lines of "well, if the victim did such and such this might have turned out differently" then everyone hordes and says OMG YOUR VICTIM BLAMING YOU PIECE OF ****.

What's your thought on victim blaming. I hate the term and people who use it need to reevaluate their lives.
 

Azure Sage

March onward forever...
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Victim blaming is a very real thing. Using the example you mentioned about hackers leaking celebrities' nudes, that is entirely the fault of the hackers. It's ridiculous to put the blame on the celebrities. Saying things like "Well, they shouldn't have taken nude pics in the first place" is incredibly ignorant. They are adults and they have the right to have private pictures like that. Should they be careful? Yes, of course. That's a given. But is it their fault at all that iCloud got hacked and their nudes leaked? No. Not at all. To say they should share blame for something other people did is just... mind-bogglingly stupid. It's simple common sense.
 

Clank

Hmm
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In some cases it is invalid, but in others like this, it is perfectly valid.

All technology can be cracked, it's just a matter of how much work someone wants to put into it (or how smart they are, etc...). That's just something that almost everyone takes as fact, because it hasn't been shown otherwise. Knowing this, the "victims" were taking a risk by allowing technology to store these files, a rather big one since said technology is connected to the internet (and can be remotely broken into without special tools).

Now I'm not saying they don't have a right to do what they want in that case, but I am saying that they knowingly took a risk and ended up paying the consequences. I'm not saying it is directly their fault, but being that Apple can't stop the crackers, I mean they obviously tried, but it didn't work. So yeah, actions have consequences, not to mention, this is why you really shouldn't trust the internet with private data.
 

octorok74

TETTAC
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Sep 20, 2008
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Joliet, IL
Just gonna take what I put in your blog here also. Same feelings, nothing changed.

I agree with you. In this day and age you have to be dumb as a box of rocks to take naked pictures of yourself. Everyone seems to want transparency from everyone and they will do what it takes to make you transparent. And especially if you are a high class celebrity, people want to know everything and see everything. I don't want to commend the hackers cause it is sort of wrong to do this, but these celebrities are idiots to take such photos. I don't care how old you are, it is dumb.
 
Joined
Aug 7, 2014
Just gonna take what I put in your blog here also. Same feelings, nothing changed.

I agree with you. In this day and age you have to be dumb as a box of rocks to take naked pictures of yourself. Everyone seems to want transparency from everyone and they will do what it takes to make you transparent. And especially if you are a high class celebrity, people want to know everything and see everything. I don't want to commend the hackers cause it is sort of wrong to do this, but these celebrities are idiots to take such photos. I don't care how old you are, it is dumb.

A society where we should just presume that our private data will be stolen is a society I don't want to live in.
 

Ventus

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A society where we should just presume that our private data will be stolen is a society I don't want to live in.

It's too bad that you already live in it. Why else do we have things like H[sub]2[/sub]CO[sub]3[/sub]? Huh? Because certain things cause our blood pH to rise or lower and we must defend ourselves from that otherwise we face death. It's a similar situation with leaks and other such things.
 
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Azure Sage

March onward forever...
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Just gonna take what I put in your blog here also. Same feelings, nothing changed.

I agree with you. In this day and age you have to be dumb as a box of rocks to take naked pictures of yourself. Everyone seems to want transparency from everyone and they will do what it takes to make you transparent. And especially if you are a high class celebrity, people want to know everything and see everything. I don't want to commend the hackers cause it is sort of wrong to do this, but these celebrities are idiots to take such photos. I don't care how old you are, it is dumb.

You are essentially saying "I think it's dumb so no one should do it!". The fact is, people are going to do it whether you think it's dumb or not. It really doesn't matter what you or I think. People want their personal discretions, and they are in fact entitled to have them.

Should people be careful when they do it? Absolutely. You definitely should be careful if you're going to do something like that. However, it was the hackers' choice to hack their accounts. That does not fall onto the celebrities. Maybe they should be more careful, yes. But to say it's their fault that their nudes were leaked? That is absolutely ridiculous.
 

Garo

Boy Wonder
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Behind you
This ultimately comes down to a conflict between two kinds of solutions: individual solutions and societal solutions.

Purely ethically, it is absurdly wrong to break into private materials, be they physically or digitally stored. That is never something that is okay. But it is something that happens. It is a very real problem, and there are multiple solutions for it. The societal solution is to make storage more secure and make it harder for people to do it, as well as harshly punishing those who do it. That's how we fight this problem on a societal level. But an individual is not a society. An individual can only do so much to protect themselves. So the individual solution is to not store those sorts of things on "the cloud," or maybe even to not take such photos to begin with. That is what an individual has to do in order to protect their privacy.

The issue at hand is that while individual solutions are steps we should all take to safeguard ourselves, they are also not solutions we should be content with. Everybody should have the right to take such photos and share them with people they trust; that should be something we can do safely. Relying solely on individual solutions and "victim blaming" creates a culture where we don't even try to enact societal solutions, and let this kind of stuff go on and on over and over again.

So really, both sides are right. People should practice these individual solutions to protect themselves, but we shouldn't blame them if they don't, because this is still a problem and we as a society should work to find better ways to stop it.
 

Dio

~ It's me, Dio!~
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If people do dumb things like take naked pictures of themselves and think there is no possibility of them being leaked, then they are just asking for this kind of thing. Celebrities especially, because there are so many people who would be interested in obtaining these kind of pictures.
 

Jamie

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A society where we should just presume that our private data will be stolen is a society I don't want to live in.

Well then go live as a hermit because that is how things are today.
 

Azure Sage

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If people do dumb things like take naked pictures of themselves and think there is no possibility of them being leaked, then they are just asking for this kind of thing. Celebrities especially, because there are so many people who would be interested in obtaining these kind of pictures.

So adults who have every right to have discretions like that are "asking" for their private pictures to be leaked just because there's a possibility of it happening? Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds? That is like saying someone who gets mugged while walking down the street was asking for it because he was outside where it's possible to get mugged. Do you not see the flaw in your logic? People should be careful with these things, yes, but they are in no way responsible for the actions of other people. No one is responsible for the actions of other people. How is that so hard to understand?
 

Jamie

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So adults who have every right to have discretions like that are "asking" for their private pictures to be leaked just because there's a possibility of it happening? Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds? That is like saying someone who gets mugged while walking down the street was asking for it because he was outside where it's possible to get mugged. Do you not see the flaw in your logic? People should be careful with these things, yes, but they are in no way responsible for the actions of other people. No one is responsible for the actions of other people. How is that so hard to understand?

They aren't responsible for the actions, no, you shouldn't blame a victim. But calling a victim stupid for not taking the proper precautions is not blaming them.
 

Azure Sage

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They aren't responsible for the actions, no, you shouldn't blame a victim. But calling a victim stupid for not taking the proper precautions is not blaming them.

I suppose you have a point. However, I do feel that it's unnecessary to go as far as to calm them "stupid". I feel that if something like this happens, people shouldn't be saying things like "Well, they were asking for it!" or "They were dumb enough to put pictures up like that in the first place." That is a form of blaming, I would say. If you didn't take enough precautions, that falls on you. But you are not "asking for it" just because you failed to take precautions. That's rather harsh and short-sighted because, as we established, other people's actions are out of our control. That's how I feel about that particular part of this.
 

Jamie

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I suppose you have a point. However, I do feel that it's unnecessary to go as far as to calm them "stupid". I feel that if something like this happens, people shouldn't be saying things like "Well, they were asking for it!" or "They were dumb enough to put pictures up like that in the first place." That is a form of blaming, I would say. If you didn't take enough precautions, that falls on you. But you are not "asking for it" just because you failed to take precautions. That's rather harsh and short-sighted because, as we established, other people's actions are out of our control. That's how I feel about that particular part of this.

Well I don't understand why we have to be so PC about everything. If someone's house is broken into and I say "they should have locked their door" do I have to back it up with "I'm not saying it's their fault, but..."?
 
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Azure Sage

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Well I don't understand why we have to be so PC about everything. If someone's house is broken into and I say "they should have locked their door" do I have to back it up with "I'm not saying it's their fault, but..."?

That's a good point, but saying "They should have locked their door." is different from "They were so stupid to not lock their door." It's pretty easily to tell which way sounds more blaming, right? A lot of the things I'm seeing said are more along the lines of the latter of those two examples. That's what I feel is too harsh. Hindsight, like what you gave an example of, isn't necessarily a bad thing. Heck, that's similar to stuff I'd said in my earlier posts in this thread, about them having to be careful with their pictures.
 

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