Welcome to the world of Creepshots. Imagine something like this.
So there is this series of internet websites that are downright disgusting. Men secretly take photos of the boobs and butts of unsuspecting women – at the shops, at school or in their workplace – and upload them to websites. They (quite aptly) call them ‘creep shots’.
The kink appeal supposedly lies in the fact that the women in the photos don’t know that their bodies are being discussed by hundreds of strangers online.
According to a creep shot discussion page on the website Reddit (which has a following of almost 14,000 people) a creep shot “captures the natural, raw sexiness of the subject without their vain attempts at putting on a show for the camera”.
Can we hand you a bucket yet?
Creep shot pages have been making headlines this week after a teacher in the US was found to be posting pictures of his unaware (and underage) female students.
This from the Huffington Post:
A substitute teacher at a Georgia high school has been fired after he allegedly took photos of a female student in class and posted them to the Internet, authorities said. He is now being investigated by the local Sheriff’s office, Fox Atlanta reports.
The teacher, whose identity has not been released, allegedly posted covert photos of an East Coweta High School student to the “CreepShots” forum on Reddit. The subsection, which carries an “18 and over” disclaimer, is devoted to photos of women taken without their knowledge.
But another user on the site recognised the girl and vowed to turn the man in.
Creeped out yet?
If you’re wearing short shorts — or a miniskirt, or leggings, or a bathing suit — you just might find your photos on r/creepshots.
Even if it were easier to sue for creep shots, Reddit wouldn’t take responsibility; they don’t host the photos. (That’s how they’ve gotten around child pornography allegations in the past.)
So despite complaints from sub groups like r/feminism, r/feminisms, and r/girlsinyogapants (yep, even a subreddit specifically devoted to sexy photos of girls in yoga pants is creeped out by r/creepshots, which is really saying something), there’s no reason why the creeps can’t go on merrily creeping along.
Since the teacher mentioned above was fired from his job and made headlines around the world, there have been calls for the Reddit pages to be shut down.
One user posted this message: “What’s particularly disturbing about the voyeur subreddits is that individuals are having their perverse, invasive, and illegal behavior validated and encouraged by many others. Students should be able to attend class without having their privacy violated by fellow students and trusted authority figures like teachers…Girls should be able to go to school without worrying that sexually suggestive images of them are being uploaded to popular websites like Reddit for thousands to view and ogle.”
But others have likened ‘creep shots’ to the paparazzi taking photos of celebrities, saying: “When you are outside and in public space, you do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy.”
Maybe not. But you have at least have the expectation of human decency.
As yet, there have been no high-profile cases of creep shots in Australia. But it’s the internet, Australians have access to Reddit, and these days almost everyone owns a camera phone…
Comments
17 Comments so far
I think this happened to me today. I’ve been googling around trying to find out what my experience meant, and until I stumbled across this site didn’t know what “creeping” was. On the train this morning I noticed a guy checking me out, then when I glanced up a few moments later he had his phone camera pointed at me. I looked down and tried to keep acting normal, I kind of freaked out internally. I started to realise something yukky had just happened. Now what? I’m 34, confident and well educated, why did I shrug it off at first? Now I feel violated.
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Oh. My. God. As a teacher I’m appalled that people are snapping photos of TEENAGERS. How repungant.
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“When you are outside and in public space, you do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy.” – Excuse me, what?? So is it best to stay inside all the time or just not leave my backyard to avoid creep shots?!
Just like someone said before, if I would catch someone taking a creep shot from me, they would get a slap….
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This happened to a friend just last week in Sydney.
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/smartphone/article.aspx?id=8537398
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When you take a photo, you immortalise the image forever. Girls in porn have (hopefully) chosen to have their bodies sexualised in a permanent format that way. If a girl on the street is sexualised without her consent and put on a porn website it’s like an indecent assault. What specifically can these creeps be charged with?
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Just a heads up that there are also women doing this. There are quite a few sites and groups that most pictures of men taken without their permission. Some of the pictures are clearly of teenagers.
There was also that ‘movement’ where women were taking pictures of men with their legs spread out on public transport. That very quickly deteriorated into women just posting totally random, sneaky pictures of guys crotches.
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I’m not sure that just because the subjects were men, that the creeps taking their photos were all women…
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If I ever catch some disgusting person doing this they are going to get a knuckle sandwich. If it’s a public place as far as I’m concerned ‘creepers’ are fair game.
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Warning. There are laws against assault.
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I’m 30 and I’ve always said ‘butt’ lol
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There is a case before the courts in the ACT.
It is offensive to by the use of the word “men” to tar all men as the same.
If I had used the word “women” in a piece about another subject the feminists would have had me tarred and feathered by now. Mamia Mamia should issue an change to make it clear only a very small segment of the male population do this.
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I think it’s pretty clear from the article that not all men take ‘creep shots’ and upload them on the internet. I don’t think the article implies that all men do this.
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Can I just point out that we have “bums” in Australia, not “butts” !!!!!!!!!!!
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I live in Australia and always refer to my butt.
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Agreed, Anyone saying otherwise has been Americanized.
(Z used on purpose)
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You’ve got to be kidding me. School, workplace – these are not ‘public’ spaces.
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This is awful – so yucky, and in many cases, stalking and pedophilia. It’s a little different but last month my blog stats showed me that my picture was featured on a yucky forum – the forum was dedicated to weird pictures and discussions. Perhaps you’d call it a fetish site? I was scared of wha they were saying about me, but I had to know. I signed up to the forum, and saw the thread. Fortunately what they said about me was quite nice, but it was the context my picture and the discussion was used in that made me uncomfortable. I wrote a response hot the post, and while it wasn’t published in the forum, my picture was removed. You can see my response and reaction here:
http://carlyfindlay.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/the-use-and-discussion-of-my-picture-on.html
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