(Click through and read the credits)

- Albert S, Customer Reviews, My New Pink Button (temporary labia dye)

(From time to time, I dig into my extensive archives of comments saved from forums, message-boards, YouTube and news sites, and post the best ones. In my travels around the internet, I’ve often been surprised by the wisdom, kindness and poetry of some comments. When you consider how many comments sections are cesspits of unpleasantness, I feel like it’s important to highlight the exceptions to the rule.)

Over at the Herald Sun, “jorge of brisbane” has handily summed up my feelings on the matter:

”Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation,” French theorist Guy Debord said in 1967, in his The Society of the Spectacle. ”Being a star means specialising in the seemingly lived.”

That work of philosophy and critical theory remains as current as ever in this era of TMZ and the Kardashians; we watch celebrities ”seemingly live” lives of non-stop glamour and intrigue, when the reality is likely something far more mundane.

I wonder what Debord, who died in 1994, would have thought of one of the celebrity news media’s more sinister obsessions – the interest in ”leaked” photos, in which we see the stars engaging in what he called the ”actually lived”; in other words, their private, normal lives. The latest victim of this trend is Scarlett Johansson.

Now the subject of an FBI investigation, the photos appeared online last week and spread like wildfire. They weren’t particularly racy, because private photos rarely are; in one, she’d taken a photo of her naked bum in a mirror, in the other she was topless in bed.

The bulk of the commentary, across blogs and news networks, was from men who couldn’t believe their luck. In their eyes, they had been granted an intimate glimpse at a woman who, despite her standing as sexiest woman alive (Esquire, 2007), had kept a level of personal privacy unusual in Hollywood. There was copious use of phrases such as ”at last” and ”my prayers have been answered”.

So far so gross, but there was a more sinister tone to the response. In a comment on the Los Angeles Times website, an anonymous wit typified the attitude to these sorts of leaks: ”If you don’t want your naked photos seen, don’t take naked photos!”

It’s not just armchair commentators who subscribe to that view, with the editors of celebrity gossip sites expressing similar sentiments. ”I usually never remove images I get from hackers or third parties,” Nik Richie, founder of TheDirty.com, told E! Online. ”When you’re a public figure, you’re looking for attention as far as press and media.”

That ”they’re asking for it” approach to celebrity is the nastiest aspect of the leaked photo market. There’s a huge difference between a celebrity seeking attention at a press call or on the red carpet, and having their private photos distributed against their will.

It’s an issue of consent: Johansson’s standing as a celebrity is not a free pass to invade her private life.

People ask, ”Why does she have nude photos of herself on her phone?” The answer to that is simple: because Johansson, like everybody else who has ever snapped a photo of themselves to send to their partner, is human.

A common response on the part of the celebrity is, in a sad irony, to apologise for having taken the photos in the first place. Dallas Cowboys player Martellus Bennett said, after his private photos were leaked last year, ”These pictures were taken four years ago and placed on the internet recently without my knowledge or consent. I understand that they are totally inappropriate. And for that I am sorry.”

He shouldn’t have to apologise for someone else’s bad behaviour in leaking the photos, nor should the photos themselves be seen as ”inappropriate”. The photos were taken as an expression of attraction between two consenting adults; what’s inappropriate about that?

It’s important not to be whipped up in puritanical pearl-clutching about nude images: many people have taken or received a nude or semi-clothed photo.

We need to be realistic about the changing nature of relationships; MMS messages and JPEGs may have replaced hand-written letters and photo booth strips, but it doesn’t mean we have become mired in sexual depravity as a society. Indeed, some Victorian-era ”naughty postcards” make most leaked celebrity photos look tame.

Likewise, we must lessen our sense of entitlement when it comes to celebrities; we might buy the movie tickets and DVDs that pay their salaries, but that doesn’t give us the right to invade their privacy. You don’t expect to see your local fruiterer’s private photos simply because ”he puts himself out there” and it’s your money that keeps his business ticking.

In the meantime, there’s a simple way to subvert this machine: the next time someone’s private photos hit the net, don’t look at them.

Read a book instead; there’s this great one called The Society of the Spectacle that you might enjoy.

- Rachel, Orlando Bloom can’t hide his joy as he’s reunited with baby Flynn | The Daily Mail

(From time to time, I dig into my extensive archives of comments saved from forums, message-boards, YouTube and news sites, and post the best ones. In my travels around the internet, I’ve often been surprised by the wisdom, kindness and poetry of some comments. When you consider how many comments sections are cesspits of unpleasantness, I feel like it’s important to highlight the exceptions to the rule.)

Drive trailer set to shitty music.