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- The curious case of DikiLeaks
Content warning: discussion of image-based abuse/revenge porn.
It took 30 hours to take down a drive link containing nude images and explicit videos of 45 AFL players (past and present), meticulously organised so that each folder of revenge porn was labelled with his name. An anonymous email with the link was sent to the highest profile player on Tuesday night, with Google finally able to remove the content on Thursday morning. Of course, by that time the horse had bolted and the 498Mb of images and videos were already running wild online.
Apparently, they’re calling it DikiLeaks.
Some quick details before we get into the reactions, which is what I really want to discuss:
There was no ransom or blackmail attempt was made
Some of it is up to 10 years old, some of it is recent, and some “clearly doctored”. What’s not clear is how one person/s managed to collect material of so many players over such a long time frame (could be catfishing, crowdsourcing, hacking, etc)
Whoever is behind it has obviously gone to efforts to hide their identity. The only way to possibly identify them would be for a player to start civil action or make a criminal complaint, so Google would be required to give the IP address to police/lawyers. If they used IP encryption this would be a dead end anyway (and they would have)
These men are victims. Plain and simple. Unsurprisingly though, the footy-public largely blames the players. Comments on the sporting pages reporting this story are full of: “Maybe Players Should STOP taking Pictures of themselves and this wouldn’t happen!” “Took the photo, sent it on, too late to act outraged and complain. Accept responsibility.” “So keep your clothes on pretty simple.” The fact that some of this material is fake doesn’t seem to matter. The ratio of victim-blaming to jokes to support is like, 7:2:1. I’d expect no less from football’s male-dominated and misogynistic culture (I say this as a long-time footy fan).
The atmosphere of footy culture forces players to appear casual and unbothered when terribly unjust things happen to them. In 2022, nude and explicit images of Sydney Swans player Chad Warner were posted online without his consent. He was 21 at the time and praised by the club, the AFL and fans for how he handled the ordeal. In his own words: “Obviously it’s not great, something you don’t want to happen to you… All the boys, they helped me through it really well… [They] had a bit of a laugh about it, which probably helped me a bit. There’s no point feeling sorry for yourself.”
If that attitude helped Warner get through an exposing, vulnerable time, more power to him. But I can’t help but wonder how having your friends and work colleagues laughing at an invasion of your privacy would feel? Warner may be genuinely unbothered, but by reinforcing his as the ‘correct’ response the club, AFL and community sent a clear message to future victims of revenge porn (now relevant less than a year later).
This response from one of the DikiLeaks players was very revealing. He told the Herald Sun: “‘At first there was the typical schoolyard laughing it off and wisecracks about each other’s anatomy.’ But deeper, the mood was incredulous and flat he said, before pausing to rethink, changing the word to more of a feeling of disappointment… ‘It’s just not fair,’ he said.”
You can’t ignore the sadness and vulnerability in that statement. Jokes as a defence mechanism, a way to harden and brace yourself for what you know will be very little sympathy from the wider community, who don’t even really consider this a crime. And like many victims of sexual crimes, the players also seem to accept that there’s no point going to the cops. The Age spoke to reps for 17 of the players, and it seems most of them want to just leave it (as is their right). So far, only one South Australian player has indicated they might take it further.
These are the patriarchal expectations men are trapped within. Being considered celebrities, heroes and powerful figures by that kind of fanbase (male) and that kind of culture (hyper-masculinised) means they are not allowed to express hurt. When a crime is committed against them, oh well. Brush it off, she’ll be right. That approach might be helpful to some victims, but it will cause even more emotional damage to others. The problem is both the footy world, and broader Australian society, doesn’t give men a choice.
This goes a long of explaining why men in Australia can be so dismissive when women speak up about how patriarchal beliefs are hurting everyone, despite also suffering the same violence. Toxic masculinity has minimised and normalised these crimes and their consequences. One player told The Age he was “annoyed but not stressed”, which will become a reference point just like Chad Warner’s “no point feeling sorry for yourself.” When other victims – of any gender – use harsher, emotional language to explain the violation, they’re told to get over it. Why are you being hysterical? It’s your own fault, and besides, those footy players weren’t stressed about it and they have more to lose than you.
The stakes of all this are high, with AI-created deepfakes (your face realistically edited onto a video of someone else) getting more realistic by the minute. 96% of deepfake videos online are pornography, with faces of people who did not consent to being used. Celebrities and influencers, but also regular people like Noelle Martin. How do the AFL players in the fake images feel compared to the ones who know their material is real, I wonder?
It’s a deeply sad, very nuanced story that I don’t think we’ve seen the end of yet. I’m not sure that mainstream sports media has the capacity to do it justice, either. So if it comes up in conversation over the next few weeks, be vocal about your empathy for these men. Don’t let others laugh it off. We can still soften some of the hardened hearts around us.
Good stuff on Zee Feed rn:
It’s time to break your relationships out of their silos – getting your family, friends, neighbours, and wider community to connect with each other is, apparently, the key to happiness & resilience. CLICK HERE TO READ.
Smart stuff on the Internet 💭
All the stuff I found on the web that made me think, smile, or have an ‘aha!’ moment. Spend your Sunday reading them – you'll be better off for it:
The Lows of the High Life on the New Yorker
“I had never had money, and then I did. For three days in New York, I learned how not to use it.” A very special, long essay about suddenly having a lot of money after generations of having next to nothing.
A case for inconveniencing your friends on i-D
"‘If it doesn't fit into our schedule or causes us any stress, we can be quick to feel burdened by our friends, rather than seeing it as an opportunity to connect.’ This is where the self-care movement (which started as a form of resistance for Black women) has lost its original meaning and become an excuse for self-isolation and self-centered behavior.”
We all need our little stories on The Spinoff
This is really sweet! “‘Grandma needs to watch her stories’ was a phrase I was very familiar with growing up. It meant that every night, at an appointed time, some member of the family would disengage from the day-to-day stresses of the house, in favour of another world.”
The algorithmic anti-culture of scale on Garbage Day substack
“I’ve managed to meet a handful of these content creators, ones that decided to solely focus on Meta products. All of them eventually end up producing the same anti-culture nothingness that does well on Facebook or Instagram or, now, Threads. They have millions of “followers,” and yet nothing they create goes anywhere or matters in any tangible sense. No cultural value is ever really generated, but the numbers go up.”