Comedians Louis CK and Ricky Gervais have both weighed in about the recent clothesless celebrity photo hacks. The difference is, that Louis CK spoke out two years ago. As you’ll see in this video of his appearance on Jimmy Kimmel’s show, he was almost prescient. Ricky Gervais faced the fire this week when he made a comment after the photos of approximately 101 celebrities were hacked.
Louis CK has spoken openly about his dislike of dependence on wee tech gadgets. In this interview, he focuses on the Cloud, saying that people are a bit naive about what they’re giving away when they give all of their personal photos and information to the Cloud for safekeeping. In the photo he demonstrates the invisible piece of plastic which will one day be a phone – if we can store all of our bulky information safely away in the Cloud. Likewise, we – a paranoid people, are rather happy to let geo tags track our movements. It’s funny when he explains how we put ourselves in peril, but the warning is clear. Of course, we should be able to trust the security of the Cloud and other places where we send and store our photos, email and personal information, but hackers are a fact of life…Much like bedbugs, no one is immune from them anymore, so precautions must be taken.
This brings us to Ricky Gervais who was pilloried this week for daring to say that it might be our own responsibility to guard against such attacks. After Lena Dunham pleaded not to view the pictures claiming they are violating the women, because it furthers the victimization, Gervais tweeted a reply.
Gervais wrote:
“Celebrities, make it harder for hackers to get clothesless pics of you from your computer by not putting clothesless pics of yourself on the computer.”
A wail of protest was heard across the land. Gervais soon deleted the offensive (and sensible post) and offered an apology.
He wrote: ‘Dear easily offended people, don’t be. Hope that helps. Have a great day :)’Gervais further added: ‘Making a joke about a thing doesn’t mean you condone that thing.
‘Of course the hackers are 100% to blame but you can still makes jokes about it. Jokes don’t portray your true serious feelings on a subject.
‘It’s more important to spend your energy trying to stop actual bad things than to run around trying to stop jokes about bad things.‘I just had to vacuum up a big spider’s web in my office. I made sure leggy wasn’t home. I’m not a murderer. He can rebuild somewhere else.”
The man obviously has a big heart, and wouldn’t kill a spider, though he’s a volatile landlord if you have eight legs. Do you think Gervais was too hard on the victims, or that perhaps he made good sense?
I was once told never to put anything online that I wouldn’t want to see on a billboard. It’s not right that we have to take such precautions – but it may be wise to keep it in mind.