Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => The Coffee Corner => Topic started by: Isaac on November 15, 2013, 12:53:15 pm
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"Snapchat - for those of you who are over 25 - is a wildly popular mobile app that lets users communicate by sending each other photos which automatically delete after a few seconds (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24925932)."
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there's an ugly incedent in Halifax I think it is,
uh anyway, the files you send on the internet are always going to be there,
the death of a tennage girl proves it.
This is no toy.
It is like any other file sending/saving technology.
The only privacy comes from staying quiet.
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Snapchat is a pretty interesting phenomenon. It's like those tapes that they guys played at the beginning of Mission Impossible from the 1960s.
Yes, of course one needs to be cautious about distributing revealing pictures of themselves, but I sorely wish the focus would be on stopping the shaming bullies from making life so miserable for a person who is caught victim of a youthful indiscretion with their naked body. Everyone has done foolish things. Everyone would like to take back some risque life-choices. BUT, the real villain here is our society for slut shaming people (generally its girls, and we should be honest about that) into suicide.
Aside from the potential problems with revealing photos being redistributed, the idea of snapchat is kind of cool. It creates this artificial construct that begins to resemble the truly ephemeral nature of life, but in digital photographic form. It's like taking a picture with your camera without a flash card...that's a cool idea....go out and shoot for a day without a flash card. do it just for the fun of it.
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It's like taking a picture with your camera without a flash card...that's a cool idea....go out and shoot for a day without a flash card. do it just for the fun of it.
Why else did you imagine there was a market for film cameras?
And when there's no more film, that market will grow even further.
;-)
Rob C
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... It creates this artificial construct that begins to resemble the truly ephemeral nature of life...
From your Artist Statement?
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"Snapchat - for those of you who are over 25 - is a wildly popular mobile app that lets users communicate by sending each other photos which automatically delete after a few seconds (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24925932)."
Isn't there a service called Snapwife?
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Isn't there a service called Snapwife?
Where can I enroll into Swapwife? ;)
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... focus would be on stopping the shaming bullies from making life so miserable for a person who is caught victim of a youthful indiscretion with their naked body. Everyone has done foolish things. Everyone would like to take back some risque life-choices. BUT, the real villain here is our society for slut shaming people (generally its girls, and we should be honest about that) into suicide...
Ah, the usual leftist BS of blaming everybody else (especially society) but yourself for your own mistakes!
If society is to blame for anything, it would be for rewarding getting obscenely rich at any expense, even if that includes promoting sexting and child pornography (which is the true intention of the Snapchat). They guy (who invented it) was just offered $3 Bln to sell it
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Where can I enroll into Swapwife? ;)
Have you read the fine print, Slobodan? I think Swapwife gives you back your original one "after a few seconds."
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Ah, the usual leftist BS of blaming everybody else (especially society) but yourself for your own mistakes!
I assumed the bullies were to blame.
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Ah, the usual leftist BS of blaming everybody else (especially society) but yourself for your own mistakes!
Ah, the usual BS that a victim's mistakes or childish folly removes blame from anyone who exploits it.
Yet I never hear this "not guilty because the victim made a mistake" plea with common property crime; no pick-pocket gets this defense just because the victim was dumb-stupid enough to put a fat wallet in a back pocket; no burglar gets acquitted because the window entered through was accidentally left unlatched.
Even people less perfect, wise and competent than you deserve some protection, Slobodan!
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Are you really comparing sending naked pictures of yourself around with keeping your wallet in the back pocket or leaving your window open!? What kind of argument is that?
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Although I've not used Snapchat, I think the idea is actually rather good. Pictures and video are just a means of communication and like all other means of communication such as speech, vision, touch, newspapers etc, there is no reason why they have to be physically stored for posterity. Some of the best things in life are best just left to the memory. Snapchat gives one the opportunity to share a moment with somebody else knowing that it is not going to be stored and analysed for evermore.
Life itself is ephemeral - and probably most of the pictures and video shot now has no place being stored anywhere except in our memories where it can be selectively edited, tinted and enjoyed!
Jim
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Why else did you imagine there was a market for film cameras?
And when there's no more film, that market will grow even further.
;-)
Rob C
It reminds me a bit of the movie "Exit Through the Gift Shop," where Thierry Guetta films graffiti artists (Banksy and Fairey) while making the claim that he is making a documentary but in the end he just has thousands of hours of tapes he has never looked at and never had any intention of looking at. The camera was literally his window to the world with no intention of actually capturing the scene.
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If society is to blame for anything, it would be for rewarding getting obscenely rich at any expense, even if that includes promoting sexting and child pornography (which is the true intention of the Snapchat). They guy (who invented it) was just offered $3 Bln to sell it
Wow! That is simultaneously paranoid and perverse. What makes you think most of snapchat images are pornographic images of minors? Do you have any evidence to support that assertion?
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Wow! That is simultaneously paranoid and perverse. What makes you think most of snapchat images are pornographic images of minors? Do you have any evidence to support that assertion?
Pure logic, my friend.
Snapchat was born as an "ingenious" solution for sexting concerns. Given that sexting troubles typically start when someone's nude picture, meant for a partner, ends up circling through school or workplace, the "ingenious" idea was "what if we can make that picture last only a few seconds, enough to achieve its goal, but not long enough to be misused?" Sounds like a godsend idea for all sexters. The primary idea behind Snapchat is to enable "safe" sexting, not some lofty goal to address the philosophical and artistic aspects of ephemeral in life.
But enough of "my" logic. Some relevant excerpts from Wikipedia (emphasis mine):
Research conducted in the UK has shown that, as of June 2013, half of all 18 to 30-year-old respondents (47 percent) have received nude pictures, while 67 percent had received images of "inappropriate poses or gestures"
Another controversy surrounding the rising popularity of Snapchat in the United States relates to a phenomenon known as sexting. This involves the sending and receiving of explicit images that often involve some degree of nudity. Because the application is commonly used by younger generations, often below the age of eighteen, the question has been raised whether or not certain users are technically distributing child pornography.
On November 14, 2013, police in Laval, Quebec, Canada arrested 10 boys aged 13 to 15 on child pornography charges after the boys allegedly captured and shared explicit photos of teenage girls sent through Snapchat as screenshots.
Sexting, when done by underage participants, is legally treated in the US (and apparently Canada) as a possession and distribution of child pornography, even when kids are sending their own pictures.
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Well, you know, the young people these days with their Rock and Roll and their reefer madness and those poodle skirts...it will the destruction of us all. I heard that the Rolling Stones were devil worshipers and that if you play Led Zeppelin backwards it tells kids to murder their parents. And some kids take pictures of their bums and send them to girlfriends. Scandalous!!! Enough to give me the vapors.
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... is legally treated in the US ...
I've heard it said that "The Law is a blunt instrument".
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Well, Marc, once again, you have a point... up to a point ;)
However, historical comparisons aside, the question for here and today is "do we really want our pre-teens and early teens to send around pictures of their boobs, crotches, butts and genitalia?" If we, as a society say it is ok, then all the power to Snapchat. But for the time being, it is actually illegal.
I come from Europe, and I grew up seeing naked and semi-naked bodies on beaches and in public parks, including children and teens. The last encounter of that kind was, surprise, surprise, in the capital of the (still) puritanic nation, your home town (I suppose), Washington DC, around the obelisk, in the middle of the day (she was 18+ though).
I also grew up with David Hamilton's books. So you can hardly call me a prude. And yet I think that sexting among children is highly inappropriate and sends a wrong signal.
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Well, Marc, once again, you have a point... up to a point ;)
However, historical comparisons aside, the question for here and today is "do we really want our pre-teens and early teens to send around pictures of their boobs, crotches, butts and genitalia?" If we, as a society say it is ok, then all the power to Snapchat. But for the time being, it is actually illegal.
I come from Europe, and I grew up seeing naked and semi-naked bodies on beaches and in public parks, including children and teens. The last encounter of that kind was, surprise, surprise, in the capital of the (still) puritanic nation, your home town (I suppose), Washington DC, around the obelisk, in the middle of the day (she was 18+ though).
I also grew up with David Hamilton's books. So you can hardly call me a prude. And yet I think that sexting among children is highly inappropriate and sends a wrong signal.
Americans certainly are overly Puritanical. In states that are more conservative (religiously speaking), the rates of teen pregnancy are higher and the age of first intercourse is lower. Denying sexuality of young people boomerangs (backfires) on conservatives because they aren't equipping children to make good decisions.
As for sexting and the technologies that enable it like texting and snapchat, it isn't the actual act of taking a naked photograph that is the problem. It is the presumption that this behavior leads to riskier activities like sex. You can't draw that connection. It is invalid, and I haven't seen research that says young people who sext have sex earlier or without protection (as we have seen with conservative regions in the US). We shouldn't be focusing on ancillary issues like sexting. We should be focusing on education.
Furthermore, in a Puritanical society like ours, our lack of exposure to de-sexualized nudity serves to over-sexualize the naked body and results in bullying of people because of naked pictures that are distributed among young people's friends and peers. On The Continent, these things are no big deal. We make our own bogeyman.
As for adults preying on adolescents or children with technology, I have no tolerance for these crimes. Extreme efforts need to be undertaken by our society to keep children away from these things. But then again, as far as I am concerned, no kid under 13 should be unsupervised with internet access, but that is just me. I'd rather send a ten-year old into the woods alone than on the web alone.
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Well, Marc, once again, you have a point... up to a point ;)
However, historical comparisons aside, the question for here and today is "do we really want our pre-teens and early teens to send around pictures of their boobs, crotches, butts and genitalia?" If we, as a society say it is ok, then all the power to Snapchat. But for the time being, it is actually illegal.
I come from Europe, and I grew up seeing naked and semi-naked bodies on beaches and in public parks, including children and teens. The last encounter of that kind was, surprise, surprise, in the capital of the (still) puritanic nation, your home town (I suppose), Washington DC, around the obelisk, in the middle of the day (she was 18+ though).
I also grew up with David Hamilton's books. So you can hardly call me a prude. And yet I think that sexting among children is highly inappropriate and sends a wrong signal.
I sympathise with your view Slobodan, but think Marc is being more pragmatic about this. And anyhow, with the supposed onslaught of porn and young people being given a false idea of what a real bodies and sex are like, perhaps sending pictures of themselves 'warts and all' to their friends is a counterbalance! The important thing is giving kids the education and confidence to understand and control what they are doing. For years people have been able to photograph themselves and give those private pictures to others - now it is just easier and quicker. A long time ago if we wanted to communicate with another person miles away we would sit down, write a letter and post it - giving time to think and reflect on what we were saying. Now we can bang off an e-mail or text in seconds without chance to think, which sometimes leads to misunderstandings. It is up to all of us to learn how to cope with new technology - it is almost inconceivable that we will go backwards unless there is a consensus. Certainly the law, as Isaac alluded, is not going to do it.
Jim
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But you don't need sex for bullies to find outlets.
They have always found outlets for the need and it appears they are like hyenas: they work only in packs.
But indiscretion isn't found only in teenagers - seems most folks have the ability to tumble into their own version of honey trap, be it sex, money, booze or anything else.
Rob C
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"I also grew up with David Hamilton's books. So you can hardly call me a prude. And yet I think that sexting among children is highly inappropriate and sends a wrong signal."
Now that's interesting; I managed to get Dreams of Young Girls from the local library when it was new, (60s or 70s?) and years later on a trip back to Scotland I bought his book, Twenty Five Years of an Artist, and I ended up bowdlerizing the damned thing just so I wouldn't have to dump it. Why?
I think the answer to that is age, the times and too much information.
I saw no exploitation at all in Dreams when I saw it; none in his postcards, and then years later, when Twenty Five was mine, I read his commentary and he mentioned something to the effect of finding himself very partial to very young girls and their metamorphosis into older girls. It struck a very unpleasant note for me, and I saw the work with a new eye that I don't enjoy. I knew the models looked quite thin, but I hadn't realised they were also too young. Maybe it was being a parent and grandparent of girls that ruined it for me, but I don't think it needed that; I think it was probably that the later book included stuff that might not have passed into print years before. We may have been permissive at the time - openly instead of in secret as before - but that didn't mean licence for other things.
Yes, American popular mores can be odd to European eyes. We were in Florida many years ago and the two models and my wife were on the beach, lying topless, the two girls to get a better tan and my wife because she had no work to do until we got shooting again. She already had a good tan. Anyway, a group of American ladies walked past and were loudly and vocally insulting of the three girls, throwing out hurtful (and inaccurate) references to whores and fried eggs etc; we were amazed. America, the world capital of pornography. Wow, hypocricy, anyone?
Rob C
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Oh no, young people are doing things that older folk disapprove of. Quick send for the moral police. Isn't the teenager's primary role to do something that upsets the previous generations? ;D
Besides seeing as you can easily screengrab anything on a phone, just like a computer, snapchat's ephemeral nature was always a bit suspect (though I think you do get informed if that happens).
And that was before the Snapchat app got hacked.
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Oh no, young people are doing things that older folk disapprove of. Quick send for the moral police. Isn't the teenager's primary role to do something that upsets the previous generations? ;D
Besides seeing as you can easily screengrab anything on a phone, just like a computer, snapchat's ephemeral nature was always a bit suspect (though I think you do get informed if that happens).
And that was before the Snapchat app got hacked.
Good heavens no! It's to have the time of one's life, and for free!
The previous generation almost never enters the scene: it's only visible when it's time to collect the pocket money. Or the dole. Or both. And in some countries, to borrow the car and ask if the tank's full.
Rob C