Pictures

A picture did the rounds via the online hidden CL community of a little boy cuddling his mum in a hammock in his backyard.

I have no idea where it originally came from.

But it came from SOMEWHERE, and then one person shared it, and then those people shared it, and before you could blink it traveled all over the community across the world.

It got many people on Virped all riled up.

“Who’s sharing that image!?!? Every single one of you who forwarded it is in the wrong!!!”

Nobody knows who started the spread. Or where the picture came from.

And yes, it eventually made its way into one of my messaging accounts too.

But I didn’t think the picture was a big deal. He was just chilling in his hammock with his Mum and baby brother in his backyard. Nothing exploitive going on it’s just a normal family photo that I’m pretty sure his Dad took, because no father figure was in the picture.

Although the family looked Caucasian, I think they’re from a non-english speaking country where nudity isn’t seen as much of a taboo.

I can’t show it to you here though as it would go against WordPress’s guidelines on nudity.

I also can’t have much of an opinion on it either if I don’t know where it came from, who first shared it, and what the intent of sharing it was.

Basically without the full story, I can’t form a real opinion.

Pictures are really interesting things. They’re not material things. They’re made of pixels. Sometimes the picture is printed onto a piece of paper, where the printer converts the pixels to ink. But even then it’s not a material object. The paper is material but not the picture. The paper is the material holding together the non-material thing. Like a card copy flash drive.

Stories are also not material objects. BOOKS are, but the adventure within the book is not an object. The book is the material object necessary for holding and accessing the story within.

But you don’t always even need a book to hold a story. If you know it by heart you can just tell it by memory. Hold it in your brain.

Same with pictures. Sometimes you can just remember what something looks like without the paper backing it up.

It’s always interesting when people say to me ‘that’s me’ when we’re looking at a picture together. Actually, no that’s NOT you, you’re in the room next to me. That’s you right there holding the photo album.

Whereas that, is a picture of you. That’s just what you look like in pixel language captured in a real life moment frozen in time.

I know what they mean though so I don’t correct them, but the correct terminology is;

‘That’s a picture of me.’

Rather than:

‘That’s me.‘

If pictures of people WERE people, then the photographs on my walls of my friends and family would be able to see and hear everything I do behind their glass photoframe, which would be super creepy.

The boy himself did not get passed around like a pass the parcel. It was his PICTURE that got passed around.

An inanimate, array of pixels that looked like him.

I’m not trying to justify people who share other people’s pictures without consent though. Or those horrible guys who leak nudes of their girlfriends. Yes, if someone sends you a picture of themselves privately you should not share it further without their consent.

But the way I see it, if you post any pictures of yourself in a PUBLIC space, that literally anyone in the world can easily access and view, unless you copyright it, you’re then just giving the picture away to the whole world for free to do what they want with it. Public=permission.

And if your picture ends up in other places because you made it so accessible to the whole world, and people have copied and pasted it over to other platforms, and you dislike that, that’s entirely on YOU.

But if you made your setting restricted so that only certain audiences can see it, implying that you don;t want it to go anywhere else, but someone else who either hacked into that place or you allowed into that place shares it further, that’s entirely on THEM. They’d be in the wrong in that case.

So if the original source of the image of the hammock boy was from a public space that then got leaked into other places, then no one is at fault for forwarding it.

But if the person who originally found it and leaked it got if from some families private flickr account for instance, that they somehow managed to access, then yeah, passing that picture around would be an invasion of privacy in that case.

Wrong.

But I’d like to point out also, even if the latter was true, was anyone harmed?

As I’ve said it wasn’t a boy, it was a picture of a boy. And when the picture was taken he wasn’t being abused for the sake of the photo. He was just chilling in a hammock when they decided to take a photo.

And anyone who’s now got the photo and has been enjoying the photo, is using the PHOTO of the child, not the actual child himself, for enjoyment. They’re using his pixel complection. The real boy is not looking at them through the photo when they look at the photo. It’s not alive.

And not too long ago we all got into a brawl over sharing legal photos that we enjoy around, to other people so that they can enjoy them too.

They seemed to all be saying, that it’s ok to share pictures of a random stranger, but it isn’t ok to send pictures of someone you know….

?????

I really don’t understand the logic there. The way I see it you can either show pictures of everyone or of no one.

That’s like saying that it’s ok to disrespect random strangers but it isn’t ok to disrespect people you know.

Common.

I got so confused at one point that I thought my head was going to explode.

I’ll be really honest.

I don’t understand this whole ‘image sharing ethics’ thing at all.

The only reason I participate in viewing legal images shared to me is because I know it’s legal. But I have no idea if it’s ethical.

I’m too confused.

Yesterday I got back from a short stay at my parents house.

I asked them if I could take some pictures from our photo albums. But they said they were still packed away and not easily accessible for the time being.

So I’ll have to get them next time instead.

Blinky wants to see what I looked like as a little girl.

I don’t see how I’ll be harmed in anyway by him enjoying the images of the now-no-longer-existent, younger version of myself. So I consent to having my images shared to him, and anyone else really for all I care.

I’m glad they didn’t ask me what they were for. I don’t know how I’d explain it to them.

They don’t even know about Blinky. Only those who read my journal/blog know about Blinky and I.

I don’t talk about him outside of here much. Just one time on hanson.net