Sex Scandals, Weiner… time for a new approach.

[thesilversiren]

As everyone’s heard, Anthony Weiner was caught sending lewd images to women that he’d flirted with online. When the first image went up, he made some comment about being hacked, then said something about how it was his picture but his phone had sent it accidentally (which as anyone who has purse dialed, emailed, or tweeted knows… could be possible). But as soon as he changed his story once, it was clear that he really had meant to send the image to the woman.

Do I care? Not really. By all accounts, he’s involved in his constituency and seems to be one of those politicians who is trying to make a difference. Let’s face it- sending pics via the internet isn’t nearly as creepy as paying escorts and meeting them at hotels. As a matter of fact, in this day and age, it’s pretty tame.

I feel bad for the woman who was outed by all this and had to delete her Facebook and Twitter accounts for privacy. But really, this whole thing seems like a waste of our media time. There are plenty of legitimate problems, and there are a lot of people who are glad that the man with the unfortunate last name got wrapped up in a sort of sex scandal. Obviously, I don’t think he should resign.

But the real issue – why do people feel the need to lie about something like this? Whether it’s a celeb who was hacked, or accidentally posted a picture instead of DMing it, or a politician like Weiner… haven’t we learned that it’s futile to lie about it? We live in a day and age where the internet can do amazing things. It can raise funds for art projects like Kickstarter in no time at all, or raise money to help a girl pay her legal fees. But mostly, it’s filled with people who will devote lots of time to getting to the bottom of something.

Blake Lively was hacked, and naked pictures of her were posted. She could have simply said she was hacked, that it was embarrassing and she hopes for some privacy, and have her people get them taken down. Instead, she denied it was her, which caused people to keep searching and find a picture that definitively proved it was her- which made a lot of people doubt she was hacked in the first place (well, except for the fact that these pictures were a couple years old).

Honestly, if Weiner had simply come out and admitted that he’d had a lapse in judgement and had been flirting with women online- yes, it would have been embarrassing, but it wouldn’t have given the media a whole week to keep digging and giving everyone involved 15 minutes of fame.

So publicists and people of notoriety… can we just agree that it’d save everyone a lot of effort and time if people would skip the lying when it comes to matters like this? Citizens of the internet will get to the bottom of it, and sooner rather than later. So let’s spare us all the drama and start having people be honest for once.

Ultimately, this is why I don’t understand sending naked pictures at all. Once you hit send, you don’t know who will wind up with it. Yes, it could just get to your recipient and they’ll do nothing – but they could easily send it on to a bunch of people. It’s also why I try not to put anything on the internet that I wouldn’t be embarrassed to have seen by others.

Your thoughts?

ETA: Okay, given more recent accounts from the women who he contacted – the first unsolicited! – Weiner is a pretty skeezy guy. However, he still didn’t break the law. If skeeze was outlawed, most of our politicians and supreme court justices would probably be in jail.

ETA2: I am intentionally keeping the “politicians being bad” element out of this. Mostly because it isn’t just politicians who cheat on their wives and act like creeps. It’s more of a men in power sort of thing. (I’m sure in fairness, that there are women in power who are just as creepy) But not the point of this blog. Though really, you should never send pictures of your junk to a person if previously you’ve only talked politics. That’s just in bad taste.

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Originally published at American Whitney. You can comment here or there.