Posts tagged: online culture
Artist and photographer Henry Hargeaves, a Brooklyn-based New Zealander, recently shocked audiences with his photos of deep-fried gadgets like the iPod, MacBook, Game Boy and iPad. But all is not quite as it seems.
Web sites devoted to collecting mug shots are popping up everywhere. At first glance, the online culture of mug-shot voyeurism would seem to be the logical extension of our eternal quest for celebrity cellulite.
…Mug-shot sites brand themselves as a public service, and offer the requisite disclaimers that everyone pictured on them is innocent until proven guilty. But, of course, mug shots are the very image of guilt, and seem almost proof of it, which is why some states caution judges and prosecutors against submitting them to juries. And it’s for this precise reason—instant lurid appeal—that mug-shot blogs can be profitable.
I love what I do, but after so many years spent writing/editing/managing blogs, certain parts of me have become jaded. It happens to all of us, men or women, who write online; our skins thicken. It’s a survival mechanism. But I’ve become particularly jaded in regards to this specific sort of story — anonymous haters attacking a woman because she dares to do something online — because I’ve seen it so many times. I’ve even been on the receiving end of it. Disgusting emails, awful phone calls, pricks harassing my parents. It was a long time ago, but to keep on working and not be intimidated, I guess I just became numb. For years. And that was what worked for me, because I never stopped seeing stories of women who were harassed online. Didn’t even matter what they were writing about; women are just punished for existing on the internet. Shrug. Can’t let it get to you. Par for the course, I thought. Numb.
