"...lot of articles and comments about deepfakes saying, ‘Why is it a serious crime when it’s not even your real body?’”"
This seems like a deep societal issue that cannot be solved through harsh criminal penalties alone.
Impersonating someone else is always a serious crime. We call it fraud.
These are of course real issues, which is why this is going to be an increasingly large problem. The easiest way to ‘deal’ with them is to double down on them - aka [https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/3jfqo9/til_t...] - but not very many people have the, uh, testicular fortitude to be able to do that.
Especially women.
Neo-Victorian’ism anyone?
A really dedicated person might crank out a painting or two per week, and a minuscule fraction of the population has the skills to do so at all. Around the turn of the millennium, a much larger (but still small) fraction of the population had access and skills to use digital photo editing tools, and it still took quite some time if you wanted to make something convincing.
I am fairly confident that if one were to spend an hour or two researching how, a significant fraction of the population could generate dozens of images in a single evening.
Dictators have been murdered over nothing, let alone scandals - but he was strong enough at the time that yes, it would have just propped up his image.
Teachers rarely have that degree of control of their environment.
SK (like most Asian societies) also has a huge ‘crabs in a bucket’ problem, also known as ‘the nail that sticks out gets hammered down’.
The Victorian era saw most women (statistically) in unstable relationships, and a great many using prostitution to support themselves. Which also gave them a lot of individual freedom.
It was also a time of incredible social mobility, and also fraud.
The ‘prudishness’ was as much society trying to use shaming and in group/out group dynamics to maintain control and some degree of integrity to limit the damage from the widespread disruption of the social fabric.
It also was applied against men, but men are able to leave easier/escape, as they don’t have the biological issue of being pregnant/young kids in tow to slow them down.
Which is also why so many of the middle class had to do things like rent tableware (or even food), etc. to appear ‘upper class’ to avoid being kicked out of whatever support circle they needed, and keep some semblance of propriety.
It was an extremely unstable time for everyone, precisely because so many were ‘free’.
Society is, and always will be, a giant ouroboros/wheel of control, influence, fighting for independence, etc.
The reason why women get stomped on to try to deprive them of sexual agency and autonomy, is precisely because they have so much power with sexual agency.
Most women, if unrestricted, can get most men to do almost anything they want using sex.
Most men, if unrestricted, can then leave to go do something else, leaving the woman ‘holding the bag’ when she is pregnant.
Birth control has unhinged the equation quite a lot, and free flow of information is doing so even more.
That scares all the rest of the women, and many of the men, which is why we have what we have. The more freedom is actually present, the more unhinged the attacks eventually become. Because the goal is control, even if it is pathological control.
Interesting times, eh?
You have a deeply negative view of my sex. Do you seriously believe that all men are robots who loose all agency when they're horny? If so, why isn't all the world run by women?
North and South are two magnetic poles that can only exist because the other does.
Structured one way, they can form one of the most powerful and directed kinds of motors possible. Structured another, one of the most destructive forces possible. If aware.
Unstructured or mixed up, just makes a chaotic goo, or nothing at all.
Would you take a similar negative view on ‘most men, uncontrolled, can kill almost anything that walks on this earth.’? Do you think that makes lions, tigers, bears, etc. little blobs of jelly ripe for the taking?
Personally, I take it as a super power, because it is true - despite them definitely not being blobs of jelly. Just like what I said above, despite all men definitely not being robots.