The bane on normal people’s existence that is the Daily Mail ran an article the other day pillorying another private individual for his taste in BDSM.
The article – “University chancellor, 64, exposed as sadomasochistic, suburban sex-dungeon master” (look it up if you like, I’m not linking to the Mail) reported a scoop by The Smoking Gun. It reproduces some pictures from the man’s collarme.com profile, and quotes his and his wife’s personal ad for a submissive female. None of this has any bearing on the man’s job, or anything he does outside his own home.
Seriously, people. Again? “Some people are into BDSM” is not news. It doesn’t belong in a newspaper. It’s about as exciting as “some people are gay”.
For all the rest of us, it’s an exercise in paranoia. If being splashed all over the Daily Fail will do you any harm, don’t show your face on kinky sites. You may think nobody cares – but if the press are even mildly interested in you in relation to something that doesn’t even have anything to do with your sex life, they will find and publish your profile. And you won’t even be able to argue that they’re invading your privacy, because you’ve published the details on the Internet yourself.
P.S. The comments on the article are mostly along the lines of “Why the fuck is this even in the newspaper?”, which gives me some hope for humanity.
Do you think they are even capable of seeing the irony in calling their editor’s picks “six of the best”?
I would have been thrilled to find that out about any of the faculty at my university. 😉 I do hope he’s not forced from his job.
That’s seriously debatable. “You’ve published the details on the Internet yourself.” Which “you” are you talking about? In order for it to be the “you” that is you there would have to be a connection, and there wasn’t before “they” made one.
Who’s responsible for out this university chancellor? Perhaps they need a link made to them.
Seriously, doesn’t anyone know anything about privacy anymore?
The thing that makes me blink about this is that the University in question was the University of Virginia. It wasn’t even a UK university! Why the hell does the DM care?
Btw, http://istyosty.com/ is a service that allows you to link to the text of DM articles without driving traffic to their site.