Before I start this article, I want to tell you something: Going around and asking people if they’re familiar with “revenge porn” does not make you popular.
No, it does not make you popular, at all. There is a repellent effect equal to going around and asking people if they’d like to be in a porn with you, which for them is just your way of asking indirectly, “Like porn? Let’s make one.”
But I digress.
When I approached different men and women on campus about revenge porn, their reactions were more or less what I expected.
Sophie Kim, a UF senior, looked first for an escape route before she turned back to me and answered, “Um . . . are you serious?”
Kati Zagurski, a junior, asked me, “What is revenge porn? Is that, like, porn where people take revenge on people?”
Then, sophomore Lauren Holsinger just shouted, “Revenge porn?!” She otherwise had no opinion about the matter.
The men’s reactions were markedly different from the women’s but identical to each other’s.
The first male I asked just laughed and said, “Revenge porn, yea!” The second succinctly said, “Revenge porn? Yea, dude.” When I asked if he thought revenge porn was OK, he told me, “Go for it, so long as you can’t see anybody’s face.”
When I asked if I could include their names in the article, they both told me no for the same reason: “I don’t think my girlfriend would like that.”
For those of you who don’t know, revenge porn is basically the result of a bad breakup.
The jilted ex digs up an old naked picture or a sex tape and then posts it online. (If you’re in a relationship and things have become stale, don’t make a sex tape. Instead, take a trip. Or, better yet, just break up.)
In the past, thanks to certain Internet protection laws like the Communications Decency Act of 1996 and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, there was little anybody could do.
Basically, they stated the content provider isn’t responsible for the images because they’re not the people who put them there.
But Florida — Yes, our noble, phallic-shaped state — is trying to pass a bill to fix that.
Although the bill does not state explicitly that it will, or can, do anything about content providers, it is taking steps to hold responsible the individuals who post revenge porn.
So, to sum up, it’s like getting revenge for their having gotten revenge. Get it?
Any violator of, let’s call it, the “Anti-Revenge Porn Act,” would be sentenced to five years in prison and required to pay a $5,000 fine.
This, of course, brings up the question of what counts as pornographic images and whether a buttcrack is equal in offense to a 30-minute video of “that one time we got bored in a cabin.”
In any case, my advice to any would-be violators of this could-be bill is simple: If you’re angry at your ex, and you feel like uploading something on the Internet, make it an eHarmony account.
