I don’t know who this singer is, and I suspect many people didn’t know who she was until a few weeks ago. This singer, Cassie, had a number of naked pictures of her leaked out on the web. These leaked photos were on her computer and someone happened to hack her files, so the claim goes. The singer released the following statement on her website:

"The recent personal pictures that have been leaked on the internet of me were hacked and stolen out of my computer. These photos were obviously never intended for the world to see and it's sad that people would really take time to steal and post them, it's just evil. At the end of the day breasts are breasts, mine weren't the first you've seen and they won’t be the last… people need to grow up, let's move on.

Thank you."

I hit a number of websites that mentioned this story and the comments, other than the obvious drooling idiots who commented about her beauty (read: wow she’s naked and hot) were that the story smells a little rotten. The consensus is it seems odd that before this she was an unknown singer with some minor hits on the R&B charts. After the pictures hit the web she became a minor internet search blip, which got people to her site and people seeking out her music. In other words she jump started a stalled career.

It does seem like odd timing that the photos came out right at the time of the Miss California controversy and her photos. It seems almost like piggybacking on the story. The sadder part of the story is if she did this for publicity, it only worked for a few days. About three days after her photos were leaked, another set of photos, these supposedly of a semi-nude Rhianna, were leaked to the web. So Cassie’s hope of getting attention from nude photos leaked helped her career for three days, because after the Rhianna photos came out, linked to the larger story of domestic violence, Cassie became an interesting footnote.

It’s ironic how the big issue on stations like FoxNews at the time concerns parents worrying about sexting, where teenagers are posting nude photos of themselves to their significant others, not realizing the consequences of their actions. They talk about teenagers not thinking about the repercussions of the postings, since once it’s on the web it will be somewhere for someone to find. The disconnect with young people on this matter comes with stories like Cassie, or Vanessa Hudgens, or Rhianna or any other number of semi-famous people caught in ‘compromising positions.’ They get more famous.

Cassie gets a blip in record sales because of leaked photos. She may claim about how evil the photos are, how it’s sad how people seemed to be hot and bothered about seeing her naked, yet she took the pictures, they got leaked and she’s being talked about. You can look at Kim Kardashian and Ray J, two barely talented people who made a sex tape and instead of being told how bad this is for young people, both have reality shows out and in the case of Ray J, also a barely there R&B singer it has helped his career. And who can forget Paris Hilton, who went from boring party girl to boring ‘celebrity’.

Parents go to their kids trying to tell them how sexting is wrong, yet some people out there, maybe even the parents themselves, are going online and watching the news for the next wannabe star to drop clothes to get attention. The thing is we’re going to look and that look is going to get someone to sign them to a contract and thousands of young people out there, hoping to get a break, are going to continue to try and get some scandalous pictures out there to help them become famous.