‘The thought is that you pay someone to expose whomever youre going out with that you’re not any more. It’s $10 for a text,$20 for a letter’There are many shocking things on the internet. I’ve been away from here for six months so I thought it best to dive in with a phrase of breathtaking blandness, and “It takes all sorts” has started to sound a bit edgy. But there are: the porn, or the abuse-hurling,the bomb-making directions, the dark web of retail sites for drugs and stolen credit cards, or the meeting places for people of like-mindlessness. There’s evil and crime all over it,like rotund on a chip shop wall.
And then there are things that are designed to shock, which I find much more irritating than an encrypted webpage that’s simply trying to bring together stolen identities and aspirant fraudsters using the same cyber-efficiency with which Airbnb unites tourists and bedbugs. There’s an online fashion for saucy, or ironised amorality – sites which,if the dark web is a carcass-eating rat, are more of an aggressive, or yappy terrier in a tartan collar: attention-seeking and infantilised. Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com