14 DAY TRIAL // British comedian Ricky Gervais landed himself in very hot waters the other day when, in the aftermath of the biggest celebrity photo leak of our times, he took to Twitter to say that the female celebrities targeted in it carried a share of the blame.
Over the weekend, a hacker broke into the iCloud accounts of several high-profile names, including Jennifer Lawrence, Kirsten Dunst, Kate Upton and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and stole private, very revealing photos they had there for backup. He then posted them on 4chan, together with lots of fakes of other celebrities, like Ariana Grande, Victoria Justice or McKayla Maroney.
The incident reopened the debate on online privacy, which continues to this moment, as the FBI and Apple are looking into it, to determine if it occurred by some fault of Apple’s, and of course, in order to find the person responsible for the leak.
As Gervais sees it, if all these women hadn’t taken such revealing shots of themselves, they would have never had today a reason to feel ashamed that their privacy was violated. “Celebrities, make it harder for hackers to get nude pics of you from your computer by not putting nude pics of yourself on your computer,” the comedian tweeted.
The reaction to this was instantaneous and very harsh, so Gervais took down the offensive tweet, the Daily Mail reports. He’s not exactly apologizing for it though, writing on the same social networking website that, just because a situation is as dramatic as this one is, it doesn’t mean that people can’t crack jokes about it.
“Making a joke about a thing doesn't mean you condone that thing. Of course the hackers are 100% to blame but you can still makes jokes about it. Jokes don't portray your true serious feelings on a subject,” Gervais writes.
“It's more important to spend your energy trying to stop actual bad things than to run around trying to stop jokes about bad things,” he adds, with a final word of advice for his followers to “make jokes, not war.”
Clearly, the celebrities who have been thus exposed in the leak are failing to see the funny side of the incident. Attorneys for Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Upton have already announced that they would sue anyone who shares or distributes online the illegally obtained photos, and reports claim that both are “mortified” that millions of people got to see them in the buff.
Other women targeted, like Winstead or Maroney or Dunst, took to Twitter to either deny the photos were real (Maroney) or to blast Apple, the hacker, or anyone looking at the pics, for violating their privacy.
Making a joke about a thing doesn't mean you condone that thing.
— Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) September 1, 2014
Of course the hackers are 100% to blame but you can still makes jokes about it. Jokes don't portray your true serious feelings on a subject
— Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) September 1, 2014
It's more important to spend your energy trying to stop actual bad things than to run around trying to stop jokes about bad things.
— Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) September 1, 2014
Whenever I defend freedom of speech someone always says "so you'd let Hitler off?" Haha. It wasn't his words so much as all that genocide.
— Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) September 1, 2014
Make jokes, not war.
— Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) September 1, 2014