Contains

Monday night, I sent a photo that my sister sent me by email to the author of a weblog, thinking that he'd post it on his site. I do this sometimes when there's stuff I'd rather not appear on my site, but also when I have no ethical dilemma having it posted somewhere else. Said weblog author he did indeed post the photo (contains nudity). I can now admit that it was a cynical attempt to get a spike in hits for this site. A successful attempt I might add. Granted, posting the photo here may have meant a bigger increase in hits, because hey, who doesn't like nudity? That's not what this site is about, though.

(I never really got the point of thanking people for linking to them, but Robert Scoble thinks a thank you for linking goes a long way, and not seeing the point of something has rarely stopped me from doing it. So I publicly—if parenthetically—thank ErosBlog for the links. Yes, plural.)

Relatedly, I have a problem with people who link to stuff and explicitly say simply "NSFW". Who knows, maybe you work for an employer who encourages visiting such websites. In fact, ErosBlog has touched on this and suggests "not safe for sex-hostile environments". But even "not safe for sex-hostile environments" is pretty silly, because maybe sex-hostile environments are the type of environments that need a little shaking up! My proposal is to simply to say something like "contains nudity" or "contains descriptions of sex" or something else a little more factual rather than judgmental. So you can judge for yourself whether clicking is in your best interest. That way, environments that are intentionally sex-hostile (e.g. schools, some people's employers, etc.) can browse at their own risk while those who find themselves in environments which are unintentionally sex-hostile (such as, evidently, my apartment) can do something to change that.