Hacker News Reader

Comment by chris_armstrong | Hacker News Reader

I thought the article touched on an important point: the reluctance to be nude in public is the commodification of bodies (through photography, social media, plastic surgery, porn), where effectively people drawing a line where they did not have to before. I think people are increasingly aware of this in their interactions in public spaces, especially when so much more of our social interactions are up for commodification through social media and the like (even the commodification of sentiment and political issues which is raison detre for many Twitter personalities, journalists and podcast hosts)

View on HN

To some degree, nudity was/is a bit of a conscious countercultural thing against prudishness in society.

As society has become significantly less prudish about showing skin, the countercultural impact of total nudity has gone from total reversal, to being just a bit further down the free spectrum, and that gives the whole act in general less of a reason. It's a big deal, but not nearly as revolutionary, and so I would imagine most people would shrug and say "why?"

---

Also, it doesn't really help that nudity is these days associated with the crowd of its heyday, who are now well into being senior citizens, and that just makes the whole thing even less cool.

I agree with the (counter)cultural aspect and that after more than a generation isn't a hot new thing anymore. But it's not only nudity, it's also swimwear. Especially to be observed with young males, where we went from Speedos to voluminous, maybe multi-layered (if local regulation don't prohibit this) pants. There's definitely a "new shyness".

Speedos were never particularly big in the US, so I can’t particularly comment on those.

I will say, that in 2022 I don’t think it’s necessarily shyness. We are now generally much more aware of the harms of UV damage to skin than we were in the 60s and 70s, and so there is actually a trend away from tanning and towards covering up. Which is probably for the best since skin cancer is the most common cancer in the US.

I'm not sure if awareness of the dangers of UV damage serves an explanation. The area covered isn't huge and tights aren't typical regions for skin cancer. Having said that, the heightened awareness may introduce a cultural bias…

I guess speaking of cultural bias, one other thing to note is that Europe and the US are not the only game in town anymore.

Japan and Korea, and probably in the future China, are big players in cosmetics and fashion these days, and those countries never had a big nudist culture and generally dislike tanning and nudity even more so. And their products are gaining ever greater market share in the West.

Of course. I was writing mostly from a European perspective.

Right, but even young European influencers today are often hawking Japanese and Korean cosmetics.

Our cultures are mixing together in this globalized world, and other stuff like K-pop is already big business in Europe.

My recollection is that Speedos weren't exactly rare but they tended to be more associated with sports than something you wore to hang out at the beach.

There may be cultural differences (esp. regarding the US, which were generally known as somewhat prudish in these concerns), but in Europe sporty swimwear (rather by Adidas and similar domestic brands than real Speedos) was the default. Anything else was asking for an explanation or would even provoke open ridicule (like Hawaiian shorts).

That is almost certainly fair. I know I wore Speedo-like swimwear for water polo but would have worn nylon shorts of some sort at the beach generally.

Speedos are associated with older generations and/or homosexual themes. That is why they are not popular among young males. Nothing to do with shyness.

I don't know. I think some young males might not be sort of shy when it comes to punishment size. There's no shortage of posts on the internet or media stereotypes about size. And of course porn has a size bias too. It seems that some women want their man to stay private because they want the social approval of their friends group, which tends to place value on large members.

Obviously this doesn't apply to everyone, but I do think it's a non trivial number. Maybe it's a vicious cycle and more exposure of normal sizes would help normalize expectations/views.

I reject that hypothesis outright and submit another one:

It's the cameras. They're everywhere now.

cameras by themselves don't mean much but add in social media and my understanding is that this is already well known as 'social cooling' https://www.socialcooling.com/

in particular was a story about how in the past there was girls gone wild etc but that's now starting to fade away as young people are aware one dumb moment can live on forever thanks to social media

>cameras by themselves don't mean much

Couldn't disagree more. Years ago if you dropped your trunks at a beach and there were ~10 people around who didn't know you there there were virtually no potential consequences except a little embarrassment from a few total strangers (who you'd likely never see again) seeing you naked from a distance. With cameras your nudity is captured in HD from a distance and potentially distributed to the entire world, in perpetuity.

>but that's now starting to fade away as young people are aware one dumb moment can live on forever thanks to social media

Even if its true that shameful and/or embarrassing moments captured on film are less of a social stigma among young people (because they are so common now), that doesn't mean there isn't a massive difference today due to the ubiquitous presence of cameras. In my opinion this ever-present recording has significantly changed society and the way people behave - and not for the better.

On the positive side, cameras and social media are increasingly catching everything on the spectrum from anti-social behavior to crimes and providing consequences where there were never any before. You can't just trash a McDonalds, go on a racist tirade, or act belligerently in public without a good chance that someone's going to capture it and post it on social media. These are cases where "social cooling" is welcome.

Ubiquitous cameras are also slowly starting to allow the public to hold police and other public authorities accountable for actions they were previously totally unaccountable for.

>These are cases where "social cooling" is welcome.

Maybe. Some young (or not) person does something dumb one time maybe after getting a bit too intoxicated (and maybe even somewhat out of context) and a recording is available for an indefinite period of time at the top of Google searches of their name doesn't seem obviously always a good outcome.

There's arguably something to be said for having a common name. Or at least not having an unusual name that you nonetheless share with the wrong person.

I don't view social media justice as positively as you do. Even when it seems like the person really deserves it, those subreddits etc. that exist for no reason other than to gawk at terrible moments in other people's lives aren't doing anyone any favors. There are no limits on the length or severity or appropriateness of the punishment.

At the same time, the worst of society doesn't seem all that cool to me but it could just be unusual times.

Not just cameras. They're just one small part in the overall degradation of privacy. Constant surveillance _is_, unfortunately a reality. Dystopia right before our very eyes.

3 years ago if someone took a picture it wouldn’t be seen by anyone else (or very few)

Today it’s shared on the internet, not only seen by dozens of the photographers friends, but linked via face recognition to you even though you live the other side of the world and was on holiday.

The problem isn’t the camera, it’s the internet.

It's really the combination of cameras plus internet.

I was thinking about the same thing. If you go to nude beach somebody could take your picture and put it online and then when you apply for a job they could find that nude picture and could think there is something wrong about you.

Shows there is something wrong with our culture when anybody could think there is something “wrong” about somebody relaxing on a beach while being nude in a non-sexual context…

I don’t want anyone on the planet to be able to see a picture of me naked and it has nothing to do with the perception they’d think something was wrong with me. Merely a healthy interest in personal privacy.

Not to mention legitimate blackmail of the content being sent to friends family and coworkers. Almost always accompanied by a threat to be paid in, guess it, Bitcoin

My family and coworkers would just go "haha who that weirdo sending nudes of you?" They would see fault with that person, not me. But some people could be spooked by the threat, yes. I wonder whether this population is large enough to make attempts worthwhile.

They’d need to identify the correct person to blackmail first though, I don’t know that I could 1:1 recognize a total stranger on the beach

Guardians or the "norms" will use any deviation from norms against you.

And? If somebody is not offering me a job because of some image of me on a nude beach I am glad they sorted themselves out for me. I would not want to work for people like that.

That’s all well and good until that means no one with interesting work or good pay wants you to work for them.

Which for many people is a real concern.

Serious, non-rhetorical question:

Do you guys think that the correlation between "interesting work or good pay" and "would not hire a employee who frequents a nude beach" is positive or negative?

(Probably best to mention the country where you work, when you give your answer.)

That's not quite the question I think to ask.

What might be more useful to ask is 'in my area/social strata/available employer options, would they hesitate to hire me if my nude photos at a nude beach show up when someone does a typical google search for my name.'.

Replace nude beach with 'revenge porn', 'embarrassing rant at taco bell', or whatever.

Relating to the nude beach thread, don't forget that can happen due to things outside of their control (rando comment on a picture someone else took, creeper writing some 'ship fiction, god knows what).

There is a ton of noise out there of course, so odds are even something really embarrassing won't be found unless it makes the social media spotlight of the day, but most sane folks are going to think twice before doing something because of it. Which is enough for a chilling effect.

A great many employers (including ones that many people here consider interesting work and good pay) would hesitate to hire someone with that kind of baggage for public facing jobs. Some of them even for internal jobs.

Tech tends to be pretty unusual here, in that there isn't a lot of public facing jobs period, and they tend to be so in demand (recently) that employers can't be very picky. If you're high profile though, it can still be a problem, because they'd need to ask 'am I ok having this person represent me publicly, when x thing shows up in a Google search'. You might see that in leadership positions, for instance.

A findable Twitter post that seems believable enough from someone claiming you sexually harassed them, for instance, could be enough to round-file you for a leadership position at a FAANG.

Most of the population doesn't have a lot of good job prospects accessible to them - they might have only 1-2 decent employers for their type of work in their area, and have a house and kids - and in some geographic regions, such things that are considered boring in Tech can not only make you homeless/unable to support your family, but get you outright murdered or thrown in jail for life.

I can largely agree with your post except for one critical passage:

> Replace nude beach with 'revenge porn', 'embarrassing rant at taco bell', or whatever.

These three things are in no way comparable.

An embarrassing public rant is direct evidence of you being rude, unhinged, and/or prone to substance abuse. It is legitimate evidence against your character, even if it was a one-time event many years removed.

Revenge porn is not your fault and should not affect your professional reputation. However, I can see how it can paint an unflattering or unpleasant picture of you. Maybe you're being the submissive in a S/M relationship, which pretty much by definition will make you appear passive and low-status. Or vice-versa, maybe you're very dominating during sex and it might make others afraid to deal with you even if you're the nicest dude ever in the office.

Going to a nude beach says nothing bad about your character, assuming you are just sunbathing or swimming and not acting like a douche. And neither does it paint an unflattering picture of you, assuming your private parts are not utterly out of the ordinary.

Those are entirely socially subjective judgements.

Do you think a manager from Saudi Arabia, India, Japan, or China would agree with your assessment? Or who grew up in the Bible Belt in the US?

Especially if the candidate happened to be female? Culturally, odds aren’t great.

In fact, in some of these cultures, I could see the nude beach as being the biggest offense since it was the most clearly voluntary. Everyone has a bad day and gets angry sometimes after all (Taco Bell rant), or can be attacked by an angry Ex (revenge porn).

Not condoning, providing understanding for those who haven’t seen that kind of judgement happen from someone before.

I can't imagine a company saying "sorry, we have to let you go because we saw a naked pic of you on xvideos in a non-sexual context made by a creep"

Of course they wouldn’t say it, generally, you’d just be round filed along with 90%+ of the other applicants and never know why.

Unless they’re entertainingly dumb, in which case they’ll bring screenshots. Which has happened.

Most companies don’t want drama with, around, or from employees. They want people who get what they need done, done.

Something comes up that looks like drama? Round file.

And good luck contesting it if they do this - courts generally give quite wide discretion to hiring decisions like this. It would need to be explicitly based on a protected class, which is quite narrow, AND they’d have to have documented it as such - which they’d have to be complete idiots to do.

Oh, and you’d have to know about, and find the documentation.

Then you aren't very imaginative. Teachers have literally had this happen to them for a couple decades now. As have politicians.

Do you think HR is going to investigate? The type of company that rejects you for something like that is just going to look at the thumbnail and not mention why they haven't hired you.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-62601044

Our economy hates full employment so people are always scared of being the one who is unemployed.

But that somebody would need to somehow connect that image with my name.

I mean one thing is taking nude selfies and then posting them on my IG or whatever and the other is random stranger snapping pictures from far away. How would the latter turn up when someone is looking for me? Face recognition? Possible, but I don’t think we’re there yet, or?

Automated facial recognition and image correlation has been widespread and used on photos on the internet for a decade at least now.

Okay, true. But which employer is going to use this to check up on new hires?

It used to be pretty common in California, which is why California passed all it's various laws restricting background check scope and degree of information. Now most big corps farm out background checks to various third parties.

In my experience it's usually the small to medium companies that don't care about stuff like if it's actually legal or not, and it's not like it's hard to do - [https://pimeyes.com/en] is one of a great many.

That said, if a hiring manager looks it up, and passes instead of hires and doesn't tell anyone why, it's not like that would show up in a database or procedure somewhere.

That's only one side though: the other side is that people really like posting their own lives, particularly highlights like going to the beach. But they certainly wouldn't want to do that in the form of nudes. Nude beaches are supposed to be a camera free zone, and people are not interested in camera free zones. If it's not on Insta is did not happen, to paraphrase the Strava addict's creed. Nude beaches are dying because everyone has become too exhibitionist to go there.

There are a ton on people that barely use social media and do not post anything, so this is at most a very limited explanation

How is that person going to link your name with your nude picture taken by a stranger?

Facebook used to do that for you though maybe that has been curtailed? The tech is there in any case.

I believe systems like clearview.ai are forerunners for ... well, everything.

YES. The cameras. At least here in the EU, many don't mind being naked, but have absolutely no interest to end up on a porn (or whatever) website. Basically people do not want to be THAT guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Vx008uwMfA

Before cameras and internet, that would have been a fun local event and long forgotten. Now the pictures are everywhere.

I don't care except for the negative impact of getting fired, etc. If it's something I'm fine with doing in public, then I'm fine with it on the internet. I doubt there's very much demand for non-sexual public nudity photos as compared to all the other stuff on those sites. I'd easily be lost in the noise. I'm also a guy, so there's probably a different viewpoint for some women.

Cameras facilitate making 'the body' a commodity in a way they couldn't in the past i.e. cameras, and the ability to share photos with others are both ubiquitous now.

Why give it up for free, nude is for your subscribers only.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com