The Shelf Life of Shame
I’m not sure if this happens more now than it used to, or if the internet just makes it more visible, but when I was in school nobody I knew made a sex tape. That’s no longer true for students at a secondary school in Regensburg, where four underage girls filmed a hardcore porn and distributed it through WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook to their classmates.
None of them is older than thirteen, which means the police are now investigating for distribution of child pornography. A police spokesperson was unambiguous: Anyone who shares it is committing a crime.
The girls themselves won’t be charged—they’re minors, below the age of criminal responsibility—but youth social workers, school psychologists, and counselors have been deployed. At least five schools in the area confirmed the video was already circulating in their classrooms.
The city condemned it as an act of violence. Hermann Scheuer-Englisch from a local family counseling center had a more measured read on it: Ultimately it’s a reflection of our society that doing or posting something like this feels exciting.
He’s probably right.
We live in a time when teenagers perform for likes, follows, and comments across a dozen platforms at once, treating their bodies as content and their attention as currency. The line between "I want to be seen" and "I want to be wanted" is genuinely blurry when you’re thirteen and the entire architecture of social media is designed to exploit exactly that confusion. None of which makes it legal, or smart, or safe—but it does make it legible.
A practical note for anyone in the darkened corners of the internet already mobilizing to track this video down: don’t. Asa Akira, Sasha Grey, Stoya—pick one, they’re professionals, they’re exceptional at what they do, there is no shortage of material, and none of it will land you a criminal charge. There is genuinely no excuse.
And to the four girls probably wishing the floor would swallow them: it passes. When I was around that age, photos I’d sent to someone I trusted made the rounds at school. The humiliation felt permanent and total—people said things, did things. It is not permanent. Most of those people are now living small, mean lives somewhere, quietly unhappy in ways they can’t name. The shame has a shelf life. Yours will expire too. I promise.