Everything evolves. I’ve watched Internet hoaxes and pranks evolve over the years as the World Wide Web has evolved. Pornography itself has experienced a technological evolution (or devolution, perhaps) as well.
In Newark, New Jersey, a computer specialist was charged with operating a sex show website on a high-speed line that he managed to get the Army to pay for. He explained that it was needed to back up Fort Monmouth’s communications with our armed forces overseas. A 68-count indictment charged him with mail and wire fraud and submitting false claims with the intention of defrauding the government. The indictment said that he had charged the Army more than $100,000 to run the Internet line, which he had used to operate an adult entertainment site whose paid subscribers could participate in two-way video hook-ups with live shows.
In Great Britain, a satirical website, Think of the Children, claimed victory in a battle against the Obscene Publications Unit of the Metropolitan police, which had previously forced the site’s closure, despite the lack of a court order. The site, run by a “concerned parent” was a take-off on the large mobs that had previously attacked known pedophiles, those who had a passing resemblance to known pedophiles, and even pediatricians, after the News of the World printed the names and photos of child sex molesters. The site advises, “If you think you may have identified a child killer, pedophile, or liberal do-gooder living in your area, your first course of action should be to notify your local vigilante group who will arrange a mob to deal with the perceived threat.”
The police believed that the site “could be interpreted as inciting violence.” As if that were so, this August in Bellingham, Washington, a man knocked on the door of a house where three registered sex offenders lived. Claiming to be an FBI agent warning of an Internet hit list, he shot two of them to death. The third man was away at work.
Cyrus Farivar – a writer for the online magazine, Slate – tried to expose an Internet hoax about a new fad called “greenlighting” where an “emerging underground [group] of sexually promiscuous teenagers” had started wearing green shirts with the collar popped up. When a greenlighter spotted a fellow coded traveler, he yanked his or her collar down, which triggered anonymous sexual escapades. Farivar proceeded to post his doubts that these “jolly green hornballs” really existed.
He discovered that a site called WookieFetish was the planning ground for the massive prank, jump-started with a phony forum that laid out greenlighting etiquette such as, “What do I do after I get collared? Simply go into a secluded place and begin the act you wish to engage in?” There were backdated blog entries and hot accounts of green-shirt sex believed by gullible reporters: “A well-known soap star was seen greenlighting for ladies. ...”
He outed WookieFetish, revealing their ultimate goal: “to spread the rumor until it reaches some national attention—the Oprah Winfrey Show, Good Morning America or some crappy national news channel.” As an act of revenge in cyberspace, Farivar’s biographical entry in the Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia was altered to declare that his sexual fantasy involved Chewbacca, a Wookie from Star Wars.
Meanwhile, in Hollywood, there was a great uproar when companies based in Utah and Colorado began marketing edited videotapes, DVDs, and software that would allow users to play any DVD with the offensive passages automatically blocked. The film industry complained that these high-tech sanitizers were illegally interfering with their artistic products and were guilty of copyright violation. And so – in California’s San Fernando Valley, the epicenter of porn – Rod Cummings, the president of Filthy Flicks, announced that he was offering a new film editing service that would insert porn images into classic movies.
But in reality, Salon online magazine staffer Cary Tennis had invented Cummings, said to be an ordained minister in the First Church of They Showed It But Only For a Second, where leaving out the good parts is considered “a sin of omission. ...We love movies, but we prefer to watch them with extra sex, nudity, profanity. ...” This special service, Tennis wrote, was accomplished by digitally cloning “puppets” of real actors, then controlling them with virtual reality technology. “For instance, you know you wanted to see Kirsten Dunst and Tobey Maguire do it in Spider Man, and it was a real letdown when they didn’t. It’s all about choice.”
Personally, I’m waiting for their edited version of King Kong so that I can finally see the gigantic ape come all over that blonde cradled in his paw.
