At the start of this year, Edward Majerczyk was sentenced to nine months in prison after initiating a series of phishing attacks targeting celebrities’ iCloud and Gmail accounts.
Majerczyk, 29, is said to have accessed as many as 300 online accounts, which subsequently led to the online dissemination of hundreds of famous women’s nude photos. In a court statement, the man’s attorney claimed that his client was “suffering from depression and looked to pornography websites and internet chat rooms in an attempt to fill some of the voids and disappointment he was feeling in his life.”
What Majerczyk’s lawyer failed to explain, or even scratch the surface of, is why this young man’s alleged “depression” compelled him to commit a series of violations against women, as if robbing beautiful women of their sexual autonomy would somehow mitigate his misery.
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That said, I can’t imagine how miserable a bastard you’d have to be to want to rain on Cardi B’s parade.
The rap diva formerly known as Belcalis Almanzar was without question the breakout musical star of 2017, riding the wave of No. 1 hit single “Bodak Yellow” to the top of the A-list. Last Friday, however, the very same day she released her hotly anticipated follow-up single “Bartier Cardi,” a 15-second clip of Cardi dancing nude leaked online. The leaker claimed that the video was a teaser for a sex tape of the hip-hop artist, insinuating that the longer version would soon find its way online, while representatives for Cardi’s fiancé, the rapper Offset of the group Migos, claimed that the video(s) had come from his recently-hacked iCloud.
Cardi has, of course, made no secret of her stripper past—“I don’t dance now, I make money moves,” goes the addictive chorus to “Bodak”—and her frank, no-bullshit attitude is, in addition to her impressive flow, a big reason why she’s become so damn beloved. So, she responded to the violation as only she could (and at noon on Christmas Day, no less): “People keep posting the nude videos of me like if i wasn’t a stripper before. You know there’s videos of me stripping with my titties & ass out on YouTube already right? anyways i know i know i got a nice body right.” If that weren’t enough, Cardi then streamed a prank sex tape to Instagram Live. “I don’t got no more in me left. You gotta give a whole hour,” she says to Offset, as he straddles her from behind.
Though Cardi’s decision to make light of the attempted slut-shaming is praiseworthy, not only does everyone handles thorny situations like these their own way, but it should by no means diminish the severity of the act itself. A sex crime was committed against the rapper with the perceived intent of tarnishing her reputation, and according to TMZ, who spoke with Cardi’s attorney, her team “is doing a full investigation to find the culprits.”
In the wake of the 2014 celebrity nude photo hack, an odious event crudely referred to in online forums as “The Fappening,” the actress Gabrielle Union, herself one of the victims, issued a pitch-perfect response: “I can’t help but be reminded that since the dawn of time women and children, specifically women of color, have been victimized, and the power over their own bodies taken from them. These atrocities against women and children continue worldwide…We have done nothing wrong.”
May the legions of disturbed young men—the Edward Majerczyks of the world—receive that message loud and clear.
