As you know, I loosely followed Anthony Weiner’s fall from grace.
Z and I watched Weiner, the other night – a documentary about Weiner’s campaign to be the mayor of New York in 2013.
We both knew a little about Anthony Weiner, beyond what we’d seen in the headlines. Despite his unfortunate sexting habit, Weiner was a promising politician and a seemingly upright guy.
The film was fascinating – Weiner is at once tragic, intelligent, funny, bright, and certainly his own worst enemy.
We learned that (at least some) of the women Weiner sent racy texts back-and-forth with had first reached out to him.
So, say you’re a public figure on Facebook – a politician, even. You have a social media profile so your constituents can reach out to you, and you to them. Boom! you start getting racy messages from young, nubile women.
So strange, right?
Z (absently, reflecting on the film): “That’d be hard, getting sexy text messages from young women all the time.”
Me: “What?! No – you’d just respond: ‘Thank you so much for your support. I’m flattered by your compliment. I’m happily married and love my wife.’ Simple. You wouldn’t even read them, you’d have a form response. Either that, or if it gets really crazy, you’d hire someone to take care of all your social media for you.”
Z: “Right. It’d be hard for a lesser man.”
Me: “Exactly.”
Z also mentioned: “Can you imagine how many nude photos that Bieber gets?” Which made me laugh.
Me: “Who would send some stranger a nude picture?!”
Z: “It’s probably more common than we think.”
In hindsight, this makes me feel old. “Bieber”, “nude photos”, “strangers” – these may be words or concepts that don’t exist for the young folk anymore.
