[simondotau]

That’s not the point. It’s being singled out among the millions of instances where very slightly racy depictions of women have entered into mainstream culture. Except in this instance it never did break into mainstream culture; it was only ever a meme among a comically narrow set of programmers and researchers.

Bringing mainstream attention to it was an extreme example of the Streisand Effect.

[crtasm]

You seem to have the idea that the intended outcome was to prevent people seeing the image (it's going to be online forever, no chance of that), while I believe it was for people to stop using it in the places I described, as a part of scientific papers, etc., and help bring about a wider discussion of such imagery.

e.g. see the final quote in this piece https://www.insidehook.com/daily_brief/arts-entertainment/ho...

Forsén was interviewed in a documentary that featured the image. The entire point of which was to bring more attention to the fact the image existed and how it had been/was being used. Claiming this is an example of the Streisand effect is nonsense.

I'd be interested to hear what other specific images you feel should be getting a similar amount of discussion.

[simondotau]

The documentary is literally called "Losing Lena" and tried to advocate for the removal of a meme image from an academic context. And it did so by immensely amplifying its exposure in a mainstream context.

The supposedly "deeper" part of their argument is even more pathetic, maternalistic, infantilising nonsense. Are they seriously claiming that women are so fragile that they will forego pursuit of their intellectual passion because sometimes, some academic papers use the image of a women wearing a fancy hat and bare shoulders? What a low view of women these documentarians have. What a vile insult to half the population.

I can only imagine that the movie was made by freak puritanical zealots who would literally explode if they ever saw a television advertisement for shampoo. And these zealots seem to have zero concept of how technology works. The movie's tagline falsely claims that "There's a secret hidden in almost every website and every digital image you've ever seen." The fact that anyone took it seriously is itself a sick joke.

[crtasm]

...wow.