As many people know, a trove of nude photos spread like wild forest fire across the internet this past weekend. Several well know female celebrities were victimized because some (presumably male) assholes decided it would be great fun to hack into their cellphones and other private cloud storage to steal their private photos. The photos were stolen, not for personal enjoyment, because what fun is that if only a select few know what they did? No, they also had to leak these private photos to the internet for the rest of the world to see. And not just leaked anywhere, but to add insult to injury, they were leaked to 4Chan where they were guaranteed to be seen. Not even Olivia Pope could out scandal this one.

If you are not familiar with 4Chan, let me just say if Dante Alighieri has a chance to do some modern redesigning, 4Chan — the bastion of so much that is prurient and outright disgusting about the internet, would surely be included as a form of punishment in his new circles of purgatory. And why 4Chan? Because of how it is set up, it is near impossible to track who posted what and when. If you can do something on the internet and think you can get away with it would you? In the land of 4Chan – where lolcats, resides next to mutilated kitties, resides next to very graphic images of another word for felines that also relates to female sexual organs – the answer is almost always “Yes”.

Though there were several actresses victimized in this, some who have denied – some who have confirmed the veracity of the photos, it is Jennifer Lawrence, whose name has now become the spearhead for this, as the Oscar award-winning actress is the most well-known of the victims. And have no doubt about it; these women are most certainly the victims here. Because for as many detractors there is finger pointing and wagging at the malevolent acts, there is even more finger-pointing and wagging, not at the perpetrators, but at the victims. The underlying, and completely wrong message, is not that it is inherently messed up to invade someone’s privacy like this, but that these women brought on themselves. The old well, if they hadn’t taken nude photos… mantra in full swing. Blaming the women for having private and personal nude photos of themselves on their cell phone and/or cloud is akin to blaming a sexual assault victim who happened to be wearing sexy lingerie under her clothes. Understandably, lawyers and spokesmen have been brought into this with Jennifer Lawrence, Victoria Justice, Kate Upton and several others stating they would prosecute anyone who posts the stolen and “leaked” pictures.

The word leak generally implies something accidentally. Except we all know this was no accident. These women were sucker punched.   Instead of a relaxing Labor Day weekend, they instead labored under the pressures of being thrown under the scandal bus. And how the pictures were hacked and then leaked is secondary only to the why someone would do so in the first place.

If the hacker had simply patted himself on the back for a personal job well done, he would still be all kinds of wrong for the hacking in the first place, but we the general public would never know about it. Let us not kid ourselves, if these were dozens of photos were of anonymous women whose cell phones and cloud services he hacked, only those women and their families immediately would have truly cared. It’s not right or fair, but it is the truth. The hackers presumably did not break into male celebrity accounts and post nude photos of them because while it definitely would have sparked a lot of interest, a lot is not good enough.

Most people are not considered an artist or a genius until others recognize/acknowledge them as such, which means they need a witness, they need an audience. It is the same for this type of hacker. As I stated above, a select few friends as witness is not enough of an ego boost to prove the point, the world at large must be in audience to this. The bad part, well one of the so many, is that the hacking and the posting of the photos are not about the women involved. This was something that was going to happen at some point regardless. Ms. Lawrence, Kate Upton et al, just happen to be the echelon of the hot young female stars right now. This was solely about the one-upmanship of the moment.   These young women were nothing, but the means to a specific end, with no consideration of the consequences to them at all. So many are having the vapors that these women dared to have – what I cannot stress enough –  private nude photos of themselves, that it seems few have taken umbrage with the fact that the these women’s lives are now in turmoil for no other reason than bragging hacking fapping rights.

No, the scandal here is not who took the pictures (the victims), but who stole them (the perpetrator/s and/or initial poster/s).