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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 3, 2024

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It can't be the creation or existence of the images that harms the girls.

I mean sure but in practice this only comes to light when they’re discovered or distributed which does harm the girls. And I think “creation + distribution” is worse than “distribution” alone if for no other reason than it speaks to a more culpable mens rea and greater capacity to reoffend.

I don’t think the boys should go to jail but I do think they should be suspended or probably expelled.

If instead of photo-realistic AI generation it was anime would you think the same?

If instead of AI it was hand drawn by one of the boys in the style of , 'I want you to draw me like one of your French girls.'? Is this better, worse or the same?

The degree of realism and personalization intuitively matters a lot so without any other context the AI thing seems worse. But as with many things like this often the real answer is that context matters and fact finders on the ground are better at determining that than we are on some random online forum. It also seems like a sort of a bad faith waste of time to try to legalistically determine which side of the line some particular way of sexually harassing high school girls falls on.