Selling Vanity

Everyone knows about the shenanigans that goes on on the internet; isn't something like one half the content on the world wide web sexually oriented? Humans show their true selves in the anonymity of the net.

The term "slut shaming" refers to a  popular pastime, in which revealing pictures are elicited from girls, which are later used to humiliate them. Another form of this is "sextortion", in which the pictures are used to blackmail.

At the root of all this is the human ego, and the exploitation and manipulaton of it. The world's highest paying profession, sales, is based on the process of exploitation through manipulation, with deliberate self esteem enhancement, aka, crudely, "ass kissing". 

Every salesman knows that successful salespeople don't sell their product, you sell themselves. A good selesperson can sell anybody anything by selling the salesperson. And this is done, of course, by being, chameleon like, whatever the customer wants.

And what the customer usually wants is for the salesperson (or anybody else) to make the customer feel better about the customer, to help the customer feel important. Can do, anytime, anywhere, the shrewd salesman realizes. IN insurance, cars, furniture, you name it, the principle applies.

And the principle applies on the internet, where the vultures lurk and try to pray upon young, inexperienced people. Hell, they don't even have to be young and experienced. The "victim" (of one's own poor judgment and self esteem needs) can be anyone really, but most often, is the easiest prey.

The easiet prey is the youngest, most inexperienced prey. Hence the profusion of teen aged girls victimized by sextortion in america, and to one degree or another, all over the world. If only parents would monitor their children's online activities.  Alas, if only human beings were sufficiently wise and unvain to not send nude pictures of themselves to strangers.

But, alas, they are neither, and this, is the case with most everyone. Few among us are sufficiently wise or self esteemed to resist the sales pitch of the master salesman, and some of the best are online, talking young women out of their dignity, and often, much more.