NSFW

I'm a fan of the online community. A morning, afternoon, and evening doesn't pass me by without logging into Facebook, surfing Blogger, and checking Gmail. I feel that as a 25 year-old I'm more than familiar with the online world. Recently, however, my faith in my prowess as a consumer of the interweb has been a little shaken.

I'm currently enrolled in a class that looks at popular constructs of gender, especially within the media. My instructor believes in freedom of speech, as well as freedom of exploration. Because of this a large portion of our class is participation in a class blog, titled UglyBuddy. (Read it here, you won't be bored, I promise...) Both students and teacher participate in this LiveJournal, spouting thoughts, sharing rants, or posting pictures that have to do with our discussions. Or sometimes that have to do with absolutely nothing at all.

I often find myself turning to UglyBuddy as part of my blog surfing. I'm always curious as to what random post will be up, what article will be linked, or what music reference I can search out. My classmates, I am finding, are much more eloquent in the online world and speak conversationally about icons, emoticons, and blogger-talk. LOL, TTYL, WTF. These are phrases I know about, but don't use, but apparantly acronyms are big in the online community, also. I learned this the hard way.

Last week, while unequivocally bored during a particularly slow session of peer advising I decided to see what was up with UglyBuddy. The most recent post was a picture of Madonna that was linked to another picture. My instructor labelled the link NSFW. I racked my mind trying to think of what organization NSFW was. A national society? A foundation for women? I had no idea, so I figured I'd move onto the picture to try and figure out the letters.

As I clicked on the icon from my open seat in the Department of Communication I was greeted with a full page, black-and-white, there for all the world to see, naked picture of Madonna. Now when I say naked, I mean NAKED. I mean that I now know what her personal grooming habits were in the 80's when this photo was taken.

I was shocked- not because I was looking at a centerfold of the Material Girl without any material, but because it was now on display for all of the Department of Communication to see. We're liberal... but we're not that liberal. I quickly exited out of my browser and promptly deleted the history on the computer. I told my instructor this and he just laughed, wondering why I hadn't heeded his warning.

"What warning???" I wondered.

"Well I told you it wasn't safe for work". Ahhh.... it's all making sense now.

Be advised: NSFW. NOT SAFE FOR WORK.

That's a lesson I won't have to learn twice...