Cellphone Porn Isn’t A Big Deal

I’M a bit bemused by the ‘Cellphone porn devastates family’ story yesterday.

The technology involved is certainly 2007, but the moral outrage – a maiden’s honour besmirched, a family’s reputation ruined etc – are pure 1807. The nation is agog over the incident, according to the article.All I can say is that the nation is easily gogged.Many commentators are debating the social impact of universal cellphone-camera ownership, especially in the wake of the Saddam execution debacle.In this case, we have a clip of a girl’s private parts.The technological problem is that whereas in the past this activity was performed by consenting adults (or teenagers) in private, now this activity can appear within 15 minutes for the world’s inspection on YouTube.Embarrassing yes, when the participants are identified as locals.But the participants are of legal age, and I have to blow the secret to our more sheltered compatriots that this is the sort of thing teenagers do these days.In other words, a similar operation will have taken place all over the country thousands of times on any given day, filmed or not, and hundreds of similar video clips may have been posted on YouTube (and dozens of other websites).By this time tomorrow, hundreds more clips will have been posted, and the ones from today will be history.Hardly reason, I think for a family to be ‘devastated’, the girl taken out of school (a ‘courageous action’, according to some cretin), and banished to another country; the distraught parties contemplating suicide etc, etc.’The Police are involved’ – don’t they have other things to do, like finding comet murderers etc? No, as I said, this is not 1807.Bring her back, put her back in school (hopefully at 17 she is nearly finished by now, though she may have been neglecting her grades with such extramural activities) with advice to be a bit more discreet in future, and ensure that cameras are switched off.As for the boy, he seems to show a fair degree of computer literacy in successfully processing a digital video clip, networking it and uploading it to the Internet.In time, he should get a good job in IT and be an asset to the country.Not Blown Away Windhoek Note: Real name and address provided – EdThe nation is agog over the incident, according to the article.All I can say is that the nation is easily gogged.Many commentators are debating the social impact of universal cellphone-camera ownership, especially in the wake of the Saddam execution debacle.In this case, we have a clip of a girl’s private parts.The technological problem is that whereas in the past this activity was performed by consenting adults (or teenagers) in private, now this activity can appear within 15 minutes for the world’s inspection on YouTube.Embarrassing yes, when the participants are identified as locals. But the participants are of legal age, and I have to blow the secret to our more sheltered compatriots that this is the sort of thing teenagers do these days.In other words, a similar operation will have taken place all over the country thousands of times on any given day, filmed or not, and hundreds of similar video clips may have been posted on YouTube (and dozens of other websites).By this time tomorrow, hundreds more clips will have been posted, and the ones from today will be history.Hardly reason, I think for a family to be ‘devastated’, the girl taken out of school (a ‘courageous action’, according to some cretin), and banished to another country; the distraught parties contemplating suicide etc, etc.’The Police are involved’ – don’t they have other things to do, like finding comet murderers etc? No, as I said, this is not 1807.Bring her back, put her back in school (hopefully at 17 she is nearly finished by now, though she may have been neglecting her grades with such extramural activities) with advice to be a bit more discreet in future, and ensure that cameras are switched off.As for the boy, he seems to show a fair degree of computer literacy in successfully processing a digital video clip, networking it and uploading it to the Internet.In time, he should get a good job in IT and be an asset to the country.Not Blown Away Windhoek Note: Real name and address provided – Ed