If you think a naked selfie or 2 between lovers shouldn't ruin lives, John Oliver's got your back.
If you got mugged, the police wouldn't be like, "Well, you should have known better than to carry cash!"
John Oliver wants to talk to you about online harassment and revenge porn. So of course he's using a random and, yes, hilarious, vintage AOL video to do it. I can't really do the spoof justice, but you can scroll to the bottom to watch it. But back to the online harassment thing.
John starts the convo by letting us know that in general, his online trolls are really tame:
So he wants to congratulate those of you who, like him, have NEVER been viciously harassed online and made to feel truly unsafe.
Because if you've NEVER experienced severe online harassment, odds are you don't have a vagina.
By and large, women who decide to have an idea and share it online are subject to some pretty nasty treatment.
TRIGGER WARNING: The following example describes rape threats.
Harassment happens. A lot. Check out the stories of Felicia Day, Anita Sarkeesian, and finally Amanda Hess, whose harasser tweeted her this:
“Happy to say we live in the same state. Im looking you up, and when I find you, im going to rape you and remove your head."
But wait. That's not all. Some women also have exes who decide to share private photos of them online after breakups. Don't believe revenge porn is really "a thing"? Check out the story of Ian Barber. He tweeted a nude photo of his ex and sent it to her employer. A New York judge threw out the case because state laws don't provide the tools needed to navigate it.
There's good news, though.
Women are fighting back and starting to get somewhere with their efforts. Just read the story of the California man who uploaded over 10,000 X-rated photos of women without their consent to his revenge porn site. He got 18 years in prison.
And there's another ray of hope: Google made a landmark decision that it will remove revenge porn from search results at the behest of unlucky victims.
In the meantime, talking about it and getting people to pay attention is pretty important. And nobody does it better than John. He's hilarious, even while the subject that he talks about gets the gravity it deserves: