Brandon Spikes is Chatroulette’s first celebrity sex-tape scandal. Is he starting a new trend?
Remember back before the “leaked celebrity sex tape” phenomenon? Neither do I. The flood-pipe opened with the Pamela and Tommy Lee tape, and it hasn’t closed since. Sometimes it almost seems we’ve got more celebrity sex tapes than we’ve got celebrities.
But the Brandon Spikes sex tape, which broke yesterday, is a new animal—the Chatroulette sex tape.
The pitfall that befell Spikes is the opposite of that which usually besets celeb sex-tape victims: The Paris Hiltons of the world ostensibly felt comfortable exposing themselves on camera because of their close relationship to the filmer—they trusted that the camera’s operator wouldn’t expose their indiscretions to the public (or so they said as they cried into their salads in front of an army of paparazzi on the patio of The Ivy).
Spikes, on the other hand, likely viewed the supposed anonymity of the Chatroulette medium as protection in and of itself. What’s the harm in being one nameless person exposing your dick for a second, if it’s just going to get lost in the universe?
The problem, of course, is that celebrities are not nameless. Their names are emblazoned in bold on our cultural scroll. (Coincidentally, Brandon Spikes is a particularly badass name, befitting both a football star and a porn star, of which Spikes is apparently now both.)
Human nature’s unquenchable thirst for new technology seems to be matched only by it’s unquenchable thirst to expose our privates to said technology.
But regardless of the decade or the technological medium at hand, the lesson remains the same—if you want to be an actress, musician, athlete, or politician, do not get naked in front of a camera. If you want to be a generic socialite, well that may be a different story, i.e. Montana Fishburn.
Chatroulette recently announced a software to recognize all lewd images (dicks) and keep them from appearing on the site in real-time. It clearly doesn’t work. So for now, celebs beware: Chatroulette can still see your penis. And so can we.
