Is it allowed to pry? Why do we watch someone else's sex
alexander savina
Last week it became knownthat Amazon owner Jeff Bezos is divorcing his wife, writer Mackenzie Bezos. The couple, who have been married for twenty-five years, released a joint Twitter message. "We want to talk about the changes in our lives. As our family and friends already know, after long attempts to change the situation amicably and trying to leave, we decided to divorce and remain friends,” says the message. “If we knew that we would break up after twenty-five years , we would still go for it again. "
The day after the announcement, the tabloid National Enquirer reported that a few months before the official separation, Bezos allegedly cheated on his wife with former TV host Lauren Sanchez. The Enquirer also posted messages with intimate details and confessions ("I love you, live girl"). The publication reports that Bezos allegedly sent Sanchez selfies and nude photos - in general, like many other people, was engaged in sexting.
The veracity of this information and the cited messages raises questions: National Enquirer is known as a very unreliable publication. Lawyer Jeff Bezos gave a comment, but said nothing about whether the messages were real. Anonymous sources claim that the head of Amazon didn’t really cheat on his wife, and his relationship with a TV presenter began when the couple had already broken up. Be that as it may, the rumors, true or not, have already changed the course of conversations about the divorce of a couple - it is now perceived not as a conscious parting “in its pure form”, but as a less “beautiful” story with possible betrayal.
Rumors have already changed the course of conversations about the divorce of a couple - it is now perceived not as a conscious separation “in its pure form”, but as a less “beautiful” story with possible betrayal.
In addition, the focus has shifted to the discussion of the messages themselves, which Jeff Bezos allegedly sent - the British Metro, for example, even issued the instruction "How to Sexts Better Than Jeff Bezos". Interest in this case is not surprising: it's not just that we are talking about celebrities. Sexting, that is, sexual correspondence or the exchange of intimate photographs by mutual consent, has long become an ordinary part of communication with partners - permanent or potential. According to last year's large-scale study, which examined the conclusions of 39 works about adolescents, 15% of respondents admit that they sent intimate photos or messages, and 27% of respondents say they received such messages, and the popularity of sexting increases with age. According to McAfee, which develops antivirus software, almost 50% of the people they surveyed send or receive intimate photos, messages, or emails from their phones. The survey is not only about sexting (16% of respondents send photos to strangers, that is, they send unsolicited intimate pictures, such as di-pics), but the figure is already impressive. Even if you yourself are far from such practices, there is always someone who uses them.
The owner of Amazon is not the first public person, whose intimate details of communication became public knowledge and were discussed in great detail. This happened, for example, with Prince Charles: in 1993, just a month after the formal separation from Princess Diana, his conversation with Camilla Parker Bowles was secretly recorded by phone and transferred to The Daily Mail. The recording caused a wave of indignation, and the quotation of a prince about a tampon was ridiculed for many more years.
With the ubiquity of social networks, instant messengers and, accordingly, sexting, such stories only get bigger. In conversations directly about sexting, it is often emphasized that the messages leaked to the public access seem ridiculous, embarrassing and not at all exciting. A recent example is Andrew Broad, a former member of the Australian Parliament. Australian said she met Broad at a dating site where women are looking for sponsors, and then went on a date with him. As proof, she provided the correspondence in the college, which attracted everyone's attention almost more than the subsequent problems in the career of a member of parliament: the phrase "I gently kiss you on the neck and whisper:" G'day mate "(traditional Australian greeting. - Note ed.) "caused a flurry of jokes and discussions about how absurd it sounds.
Even the laureate of the Booker Prize Salman Rushdie did not escape the ridicule, whose editor on the Facebook page Page 6 was provided by Page Editor Dewor Rose. According to Page Six, in the correspondence, Rushdie explains to the woman in detail why she cannot maintain relations with her, and several months later allegedly unexpectedly sends another message where she tells about what she is “awesome and hot”.
Many people wonder how well-known celebrities appear in intimate correspondence and how idol's messages look nonsexual. But is it worth it to ethics out of the brackets?
Taking out the brackets for the very appearance of private messages in the press, many wonder how celebrities appear in intimate correspondence, and how idols messages look nonsexual or unaesthetic. But after all, any correspondence out of context may sound strange - from the side, neither intonation nor the implications of the conversation are clear. Talking about sex is still more difficult: in addition to the awkwardness that its participants often have to overcome because of how taboo the topic is, sometimes there is simply no suitable terminology for this conversation (it was not for nothing that people in Sweden searched for a separate term for female masturbation). This is especially easy to imagine using the example of the Russian language: for discussions of sex, we have either strict terms that seem too “cold” and nonsexual to many, or swear words and “bold” expressions that for many do not sound sexy, but offensive or at least offensive . It is not surprising that the output is an awkward and sometimes ridiculous dialogue. Just like real sex is a little similar to what we used to see in the movies, erotic correspondence turns out to be less well-trained, though more lively, than what we used to see in novels.
But is it worth it to ethics out of the brackets? And do celebrities have the right to private privacy, if we are not talking about abjuse or physical abuse? Our relationship with technology is changing, and the rules and digital etiquette correspond with each other on the go. In an era when a huge part of communication is connected with social networks and instant messengers, it seems that plums of personal information are inevitable. Since 2014, when a huge archive of intimate photos stolen from celebrities got on the Internet, the situation has not become calmer, although so far it seems that it has never reached a similar scale. But if in the case of selfie in the nude, which can be part of the same sexting, everything seems to be understandable (few people doubt that this is an invasion of personal space), then there is no consensus with quoting someone else's correspondence, the boundaries are more blurred - especially if It is about a loud story and in addition about a serious business.
The case of Bezus, of course, is not only an abstract discussion of morality or writing style. Last year, Jeff Bezus was recognized as the richest man in history - his fortune is estimated at 137 billion dollars, and after a divorce this will obviously change. In addition, the separation can not affect the joint affairs of the couple: Mackenzie took part in the fate of Amazon, and not so long ago, they started a charitable foundation with Jeff. It can be assumed that a divorce or even the fact of betrayal in such a situation becomes "business" news. But is it important for us to know with whom exactly and with what words did Jeff Bezos speak in intimate correspondence - or as a fairly publicly disclosed fact?