About 20-odd years ago, a local arsehole decided to put an ad in our local paper. He wrote a classified, advertising the services of a “masseuse”, adding my early teen daughter’s mobile number.
When she got the first call, she was shocked. It didn’t take me more than half an hour to realise who’d done it. I was not my best self that afternoon nor was the boy after I’d done with him. I felt sorry for his parents.
Taylor Swift fans and I have more than a love of TayTay in common. Credit: AP
I was reminded of that episode this week when news of Taylor Swift being deepfaked in pornographic material did the rounds. Life was simpler 25 years ago. It was not possible for fakery to go viral (unless you count Helen Demidenko’s The Hand That Signed the Paper). There was no need to get courts involved. The fury of a suburban mother was enough to make it go away.
But Swift’s fans and I have more than a love of Taytay in common. We wanted revenge. And we weren’t willing to wait to serve it cold. That faked video of Swift is not exactly revenge porn, but it is image-based abuse. We’ve got laws for that here but it still happens. Poor losers who can’t get what they want will always look to avenge their lack of success. That’s a given. When all else fails, ask yourself this: what would Swifties do?
This. First, they called it out. When those explicit images began appearing, they started organising. Swifties flooded X with real images of Swift, tagged with “Protect Taylor Swift”. That drowned out the deepfakes, an iteration of which had already been viewed 45 million times.
Then the Biden White House called in with its take. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the spread of those images was very alarming. She called for legislation and regulation. Which was supposed to happen years ago. Imagine if we actually had social media companies refusing to spread misinformation.
“Too often we know that lax enforcement disproportionately impacts women, and they also impact girls,” she said. “We’re going to continue to do what we can from here.”
Finally, X limited searches for Swift.
What do Swifties and I have in common? Lust for revenge
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30.01.2024
About 20-odd years ago, a local arsehole decided to put an ad in our local paper. He wrote a classified, advertising the services of a “masseuse”, adding my early teen daughter’s mobile number.
When she got the first call, she was shocked. It didn’t take me more than half an hour to realise who’d done it. I was not my best self that afternoon nor was the boy after I’d done with him. I felt sorry for his parents.
Taylor Swift fans and I have more than a love of TayTay in common. Credit: AP
I was reminded of that episode this week........
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