I was scouring the internet for information on entering the back door. (Sex tip: Never be ashamed to admit when you’re in over your head. Swem can be a sexcellent resource.) In addition to numerous medical and how-to sites, I pulled up some porn. Specifically, a site now near and dear to my heart, deepasses.net. I spent about 15 minutes perusing the hundreds of pictures of cumshots, double penetrations, anal beads, grimacing faces and anuses spread to the point of ridiculousness. Enthralling as all that was, I admit that I got a little bored. I was about to click away and learn about the health aspects of driving the Hershey highway, when I saw two women that I recognized.

I saw a picture of two of my friends on deepasses.net. I knew it was them because I recognized the picture: It was taken in my bedroom, on my bed, at my 16th birthday party. I might even have been the photographer. My friends are completely clothed, with their arms around each other and their tongues out in a drunken, mock-sexual pose. The photo was meant to be funny. It certainly didn’t lead to any anal penetration (or lesbian activity) later that night.

I was curious to see what video their picture linked to. (Was it possible that the company had found two similar-looking girls to have anal?) When I clicked, it took me to a site with real homemade amateur teen movies of real girlfriends. Again, amidst the plethora of carpet-munching photos, there was the picture of my friends with their tongues out.

Looking through a few other porn sites, I realized that there are tons of relatively innocent pictures mixed in with the anatomy lessons of hardcore porno pictures. All of these pictures link to legitimate sites with skin vids, but none of the people in the pictures are “getting their pussies exploded.” These pictures have clearly been lifted off of photo-sharing sites such as Flikr and Webshots, which apparently means there are people out there whose job it is to troll these sites looking for photos of good-looking women.

Now, I hated high school, and I always knew it would come back to bite me in the ass, but I never considered that ass-biting would actually involve ass. And I’m sure most of you have taken stupid or drunken pictures that may or may not be suggestive and could come back to haunt you. We’re all at risk.
But is there any harm in all of this? Well, yes and no. On the one hand, having a picture of my friends next to a woman with a wine bottle inserted completely into her anal cavity — wide end first — is rather unsavory. But it’s anonymous. It’s a complete fluke that I came across this picture. No future employer could Google them and have deepasses.net come up in the search results. However, one of my friends could be recognized on the street and hassled by a loyal deepasses.net subscriber. And who knows how far and wide, and to what other sites, this picture has traveled?

In an age where information can be instantaneously shared with the world, is this what we are to expect of our sexual culture? Are there no boundaries to our privacy? Or are we responsible for taking pictures with our tongues out and posting them, even if we had no idea of the possible consequences? Should we sit back and allow our faces to be plastered next to gang bangs and salad tossings?

I don’t know the answer to any of these questions, but I do know that now I have a legitimate (and maybe even noble) reason to spend more of my free time looking at porno.

Maya Horowitz is The Flat Hat sex columnist. She wants to warn you that you better watch out, you could become a porn star, too.