I can’t wash my hands enough, the dirt just won’t come off

Ed. note:  I originally started this post in the immediate wake of the “Erin Andrews incident”.  I’ve been debating whether or not to run it, and ultimately, I decided it was worth it.  I think in terms of what I was trying to accomplish, I got it done.  Please remember when reading that this reflects MY views, not any other authors on this site, and also please bear in mind that I wrote this with only the best intentions in mind.  Thanks.

I am 41 years old.  I will turn 42 in December.  In some walks of life, this fact alternately makes me a fossil or a pup, but in either case, the description is probably apt.  I have gotten to the point that I do look at things like drunken antics posted on the Internet for the world to see and shake my head; I feel old.  I feel like I should be yelling at the youngsters to get off my lawn, and I will say that I keep an eye on people when they do in fact, walk through my front yard.

I do not have children, and thus, I continue to learn things from my friends, the news sources of my life, and the Internet.

While growing up, the rules of life were relatively simple.  The standards that people were expected to live by in this country had been established in two sources: The Ten Commandments, and the Bill of Rights in the Constitution of the United States of America.  The fact that many of these rules were remarkably similar is an argument for another day, but the basic premise was the same.  There were rules such as do not steal from others, do not lie down with another man’s wife, and do not murder another person.  These rules are relatively simple to follow.  Clearly spelled out in black and white, and understood to have consequences if they were broken.

Social rules were both taught and learned without teaching, such as do not interrupt someone when they are speaking, respect others opinions and property, hold the door open for a female, and things along those lines.  These rules are expected of everyone as being a polite part of living in a society.

My adult life has been spent mostly following these rules that were established in my childhood.  Education and life have offered enough experience and learning that I feel functional as an adult. There has been one notable exception.

When usage of the Internet became widespread, people, being what they are, began to use it for both good and bad.  This is the yin and yang of life, without one the other cannot exist.  Good and evil are clearly relative terms to everyone.  What one person sees as good may be seen as evil by another.  Again, the balance of life is coming into focus.  The clear issue with the Internet and its content was that there were no Ten Commandments or Bill of Rights.  This great, vast, monstrous land was just waiting for settlers.  The content of the individual settler’s character was not to be decided or judged, just accepted, because there was not a way to settle the issue of good and bad.

This next bit will be paraphrased and can be found in my 84 volume “A Brief History of the Internet” (the one joke I’ll likely write in this treatise).

The first real test of the Wild West-like nature of the Internet was when record companies were taken aback to find out that their newly-minted compact disc technology could be translated into transferable files.  These song files were being taken and translated and shared amongst thousands of users, who were getting their artists copyrighted material for free, over a vast unknown file-sharing “network”.  The biggest problem for the record companies was that this was such a new and unprecedented development that they did not have a true legal leg to fall back on, nor were they able to grasp how easily this technology fell into place.  There were no established rules, other than “theft of copyright”.  The record companies took quite some time in trying to figure out exactly how to combat the problem, as they had always faced issues with the cassette medium and what it wrought in “mix tapes”.  The idea of “intellectual property” and “artistic integrity” became germane.  Finally, the record companies, unable to find a way via normal means, took to the courts.

The problem with that strategy was not in the execution, it was in the time it took to execute it.  By the time the legal system had its way other mechanisms were in place to get files for free.  It had then also expanded to software and movies.  The tiger had been released and no amount of tranquilizer was going to re-cage it.  The record companies tried to appeal to people regarding “theft”, getting back to the idea of the 10 Commandments and “thou shall not steal”.  Arguments about the “greed” of the record companies surfaced to combat these thoughts of stealing “intellectual property”.  A great noise came and went.  People never stopped downloading, though.  The idea of rationalizing this “theft” was as easy as one, two, three because when a giant money-making machine tells you something is bad, sticking it to them becomes that more enticing.

The idea that children should be protected from harmful or pornographic images is a good one.  Plenty of companies made lots of money from protective software that allowed parents to keep their kids from seeing the advent of online not-hard-to-access pornography.  Most pornography websites forced you to pay for their content at the outset, but that was circumvented by sites that propagated user names and passwords, or just stole the pay sites content and put it out there for free.  Eventually, sites began to show up that required no “proof of age” click.  If one looks for these sites, they can be found easily.  Pornography is as easy to access now as CNN is.  Again, truly, there is no set of laws or rules.  I’ve come to realize this now, and it did not take the Erin Andrews issue to tip it for me.  I have slowly come to realize a home truth.

There are no real rules where the Internet is concerned.

Read that again.

There are not any “Ten Commandment”-like rules that are being taught to young minds regarding the Internet.

Now, that’s generalizing to be sure.  Clearly, things have happened on social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook involving “bullying” that have been prosecuted.  A man who used Craigslist to entice “escorts” to his apartments and then kill them was prosecuted.  It’s not a total lawless wasteland.  Most people, it seems, understand the idea of an IP address being your “Internet fingerprint”, at least.

When the commission of a crime is exacerbated by the Internet, it becomes a matter for everyone to weigh in.  The largest issue that I see with the Internet specifically is the fact that it’s a “Shoot first, ask questions later” type of environment.  Incidents occur, and then we sort it out.  The most recent incident involves a voyeuristic video of Erin Andrews of ESPN being posted and disseminated.  The crime that was committed was the video being taken without her consent.  She’s in a state of privacy and she’s not wearing any clothes.  Recording her in that state without her consent is a crime and is punishable by law.

The video files are posted to the Internet and then become a story.  People do a lot of interacting via the Internet these days, on social networking sites, on blogs, and on forums.  Posting these images should be thought of as “wrong”, regardless of the person’s stature in life.  The content of the video is clear; it’s someone who is in a hotel room who thinks they are private who is taped without their consent.  This is footage of a crime being committed.

Again, the issue here is what rules or standards the Internet’s content should be held to.  There have been a number of cases in the past few years of paparazzi photographs causing great consternation.  These people clearly have very few scruples and are willing to stoop so low as to try to take up-skirt photographs.  Of course, there are more than a few adult females who should always think about wearing underwear, but again, a different argument for a different time.  I don’t know what the legality is of taking someone’s photograph and posting it to the Internet is.  It feels wrong to ME that I can click on a “gossip” website and see any number of starlets’ private parts as they’re exiting limousines, photos clearly taken without their permission.  Certain people have had personal photographs they’ve taken for someone special posted on the Internet.  The “celebrity sex tape” has become commonplace now, and again, the rise of digital media transfer over the Internet has led directly to these becoming somewhat of a badge of honor.

We live in a barbarous era in terms of what gets posted.  Most photo storage sites like Flickr expressly advise that the content you put up can be taken whether you like it or not, so post it at your own risk.  There are torrent downloads of the latest movies available almost as soon as they are in the theaters and the so-called “anti-piracy” campaigns have proven fruitless as the inevitable avalanche of websites finding the new status quo exist.  I give ESPN and their legal team credit.  They know how to threaten properly.  However, these videos of Ms. Andrews will continue to circulate.  Ultimately, their efforts will prove honorable but fruitless.  As long as one person possesses the videos, they can be transmitted.

Erin Andrews has never struck me as someone who has USED her looks to advance in life.  I believe her when she says she’s worked extremely hard to get where she is.  I also believe her when she says that her Father has been an influence on her, as he is still an on-air journalist for a Tampa Bay station.  It sickens me to think of what he must be going through in all this, having a daughter make it through to her position at the pre-eminent sports outlet in this country with his guidance had to be a proud moment.  She has to be devastated.  This violation is potentially ruinous for her.  She prides herself on her access, her ability to talk to a mostly-male set of sports figures, her ability to communicate with college-age students during ESPN’s ubiquitous College Game Day.  I would like to believe that she can overcome this, and I sincerely hope she does.  But I have my doubts.  America is a cruel place these days.  This country and this medium eat celebrities like hors d’ouevres.

There are many permutations to the involvement of parts of Internet sports community in this sordid affair.  Weblogs and forums have long trafficked in objectifying pictures and videos.  The problems run deeper than just sports blogs and forums, of course.  Not all of them spend their time trafficking in this type of “journalism”.  There are plenty of other sources in the mainstream Internet community that pay a lot of attention to these types of scandals and gain a lot of traffic over them.  The problem is that while a site like TMZ exists solely (it would appear) to show these people in the public eye at their worst or at their most exposed, sports-centric sites should not have to stoop to that level.  Whether or not ANYONE thought that video was actually Erin Andrews before the ESPN lawyers came out and said “Yes, it’s her, please cease and desist from showing that video and let us know where you got it from”, it was STILL a woman in a hotel room, in the nude.  What is the point of showing that unless that’s the focus of your site, and even then, if you think that it COULD be footage of a crime, WHY show it?  Consent of the subjects is never at issue, its full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes.  It is easier to publish the photos or video and deal with the fallout than to not take the chance.  Would most rational people realize that whether or not the subject of those videos was Erin Andrews or not that a crime had been committed?  You would like to think so.  Can some of the blame for the culture that we live in now be placed at the foot of the Internet?  Sure.  Can this incident with Erin Andrews be blamed directly on sports weblogs and forums?  I think the case could be made that the obsession-driven culture of anonymous lust that drives some of these sites could easily be taken into account as something that would lead someone to violate her this way.  There have been many other cases of non-consensual suggestive photos making their way onto the more mainstream sites.  People have complained, they’ve written to the editors of these sites, they’ve begged for the photographs to be taken down.  Ultimately, it’s discretionary on the part of the site owners whether or not they choose to take the photos down.  Most site owners do not want to get involved with being sued, so they comply, but once the photos or videos have been posted, isn’t the damage already done?

Will Leitch, founder of Deadspin, (which is the blog that essentially broke the story in terms of mainstream sites) recently penned an article about it that included this passage:

“Did I contribute to this awful thing that happened? Did all of us? I don’t think so. I really don’t.  But, I have never met Erin Andrews. If I ran into her on the street today … I’m not sure I could look her in the eye. I’m not sure anybody could.”

Comments on his article included the following:

• Was this a gross violation of her privacy? Obviously. But it’s not like she was physically harmed, had Bernie Madoff lose her life savings, or committed some major crime. She was just…naked. Worse things happen to people literally every second, including recently. Steve McNair and Arturo Gatti were recently murdered. Ben Roethlisberger was just accused of sexual assault.
• May I propose some kind of moratorium on all of the Erin Andrews peephole talk?  Alright, we all agree it was a terrible invasion of EA’s privacy, and it seems we all agree that an online blog has nothing to do with a pervert getting his chuckles by taping women through a peephole.  This is getting so carried away that it’s incredible.
• I don’t get why there’s this sense of responsibility for what happened.
  Was the blogosphere responsible for EA’s meteoric rise to fame? Partially. But I’d also think (and I’m sure EA would too) that it had something to do with her work ethic. Sure, the good looks helped, but she definitely proved she knew what she was talking about. Her rise to fame made her a target, just like any celebrity is a target for the sheer fact that they’re recognizable.  Regardless, the blogosphere should not feel responsible for this at all.
• Will, I always agree with like 99.9% of what you write but for the life of me I cannot figure out the blogoshpere’s guilt complex over this thing. Just because some douche in a hotel takes the liberty of doing this despicable act and posting it on the Internet (perhaps not even knowing who she was at the time) now suddenly the entire sports Internet/blogoshpere is somehow complicit in the act?
• Why does this now all feel like a psychological hoop we have to jump through in the blogosphere to make ourselves feel better in order to move on? Why don’t we just avoid being a blog apologist, chalk this up to some perv, and then move on?
• Blogs made this perv do this as much as Black Sabbath made teenagers commit suicide.

This attitude of “it’s not the sites/forums/internet’s/blogs fault” seems to be prevalent among the many comments I’ve read on this subject.  Everyone seems to be willing to absolve the Internet, or at the very least the sports blogs that have spent HOURS talking about her, for blame, and yet, that seems specious to me.   There is always a certain badge of honor in breaking a story, or in this case, committing the act that sets the Internet on fire.  If that video was of Miley Cyrus or Ellen Page, and it was sent to Perez Hilton and he chose to run it on his site, I would feel exactly the same as I do now.  I am not having a go at sports blogs specifically, I’m truly not.

I cannot absolve the involvement of the Internet in this sordid horrible tale.  I simply cannot.  If this woman’s career is ruined over this, and it very well may be, we ARE complicit, those of us who have indulged in the fantasy of her looks and her body and her smile.  But what is the level of complicity?  I have no earthly idea, because again, there are no real rules that I can point to and say “Yes, we stepped over the line RIGHT HERE.”

Maybe I’m reading too much into this, and it will not be a huge mainstream story.  Let’s face facts though.  Whether or not Erin Andrews is a household name, she was and is in the public eye for the largest sports-centric network in the country.  She has made her bones at one of the toughest places to do so, she’s hustled, she’s taken what appears to be every assignment thrown her way, she’s worked in places like College Station, Texas, Williamsport, Pennsylvania and Omaha, Nebraska.  We have all been witness to her career.  She seems like a decent sort.  Now, she joins the list of victims.  Call it what you want, absolve it any way you see fit, and expect it to continue unabated because no one seems to know how to stop it or assign any responsibility.

This crime was exacerbated by the nihilistic nature of the Internet, and no one will EVER convince me otherwise.  It’s too easy to want to absolve your favorite sports blog or forum or gossip site anonymously behind a keyboard.  Too easy.  The biggest problem with that is that I have no earthly idea what the consequences of this should be.  No one does.  No one likely ever will.  The only consequences that will likely ever be felt are by Erin Andrews, unless through some miracle the awful perpetrator of this crime is caught.  Her reputation and livelihood are more than likely destroyed.  You may think that is overstating it, but think about if you went to work and had to deal with a video of yourself in the nude that everyone you work with had access to.  That’s what she now has to deal with.  Imagine it was you, and then tell me that there is no one to blame.

Go on, I’ll wait.

Tags: erin andrews, Two Yellows, whose fault is it?
Categories: Daily Specials, Domestics, Non-Alcoholic

This entry was posted on Monday, August 3rd, 2009 at 10:00 am and is filed under Daily Specials, Domestics, Non-Alcoholic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.