Viral Media Teaching Wrong Lesson
“[On Monday], WGN in Chicago aired a report about students developing an app that will help you expunge your criminal record,” Gawker reports.
“Great idea! Another good idea? Clearing your browsing history of any links to masturbation videos before going on the local news.”
Gawker’s link to the WGN report now redirects to the station’s home page, so it appears the report has been taken down.
But as we all should know by now, nothing can ever truly be removed from the Internet.
“Alas, this was a lesson learned too late for one of the students, who had both PornHub.com’s ‘squirt’ page and a link to this video (NSFW, obviously) saved in her cellphone’s bookmarks,” Gawker notes.
Of course, the “incident” has gone viral.
But maybe the real lesson is one for the shaming Gawkers of the world: Be proud of your browser history. You think no one at Gawker – or WGN – views porn? If it’s part of who you are, so be it. If you were, say, merely doing research, so be it. You don’t owe anyone an explanation.
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Comments welcome.
Posted on February 12, 2014