The nude photos of a local TV personality are doing the rounds by e-mail. They're not the full monty though. Or rather they are, but all the bits and bobs usually normally covered by underwear are artfully concealed by a raised leg or a carefully placed object. Maybe they were meant to emulate Pirelli calendars.

When I saw them I just couldn't shake off the memory of the opening sequence of the Austin Powers film where the spy wiggles around in the altogether while various pieces of fruit preserve his modesty. Something on the same lines was shown in Calendar Girls where bunches of bananas and pyramids of apples prevented viewers from copping an eyeful of Helen Mirren and friends in their birthday suit. Our guy in the raw has placed something more substantial than a fig-leaf covering the essentials, and it's just as well judging by the over-zealous use of the magnifying function by viewers who ruled out the probability of the photos being a photomontage.

I have no idea how the photos made it to the Net. It is unlikely that they were intended to be seen by such a wide audience, but it's hard to imagine that they were meant for purely private use. After all, why go through the hassle of posing in the buff to have a pictorial record of your naked torso, when you can look at a mirror and see the same thing? A more likely explanation is that the photos were meant for a few eyes only. Still, they reveal a streak of exhibitionism - a trait which is becoming ever more commonplace. This last batch of photos got everybody giggling and talking because of the high visibility of the person involved.

However, they are not that different from thousands of other photos of girls in push-up bras and boys bracing their pecs posted online. The latter don't exact as much comment because their subjects are unknowns. Yet, they're there on hundreds of different sites - people baring their bodies and more, for countless unknown viewers to pore over.

The desire to let it all hang out, to tell all and sundry about one's love-life, dirty laundry or haemorrhoids seems to have taken over the minds of many. Exhibitionism is no longer considered to be weird or off-putting. It has become a modern virtue. These days it's all about trying to attract attention even by doing the most mundane things.

Consider some examples of modern-day exhibitionism. Sites where people post photos of themselves in their briefs so that viewers can judge whether they are fit or not. Marks are awarded, with 10 being the maximum obtainable. Don't imagine that the only people strutting about in their smalls online are sex-mad foreigners. The Maltese presence is quite marked on a certain site.

Then there are the confessional blogs where people reveal their most intimate secrets online. One such blog, which eventually made it to book form, was written by Stephanie Klein. She had no qualms about blogging about her marriage, divorce, how she feelings about oral sex, her bed-wetting till the age of 11, an abortion she had, or her ongoing battle with diarrhoea. Too much information? It's standard fare for the confessional blog genre.

Similarly, reality shows are packed with people owning up to affairs, incestuous relationships, and generally questionable behaviour. Facebook hosts thousands of snaps of people with their friends, families and lovers. An internet snoop could have a field day tracing friend networks. There is even a site where people post homemade porn. And now people post their webcam streams so viewers can watch them going about the daily grind.

It seems eerily like the futuristic scenario depicted in Ben Elton's book Blind Faith. Elton writes about a world where everybody streams live footage of themselves round the clock for others to watch. Failure to show footage or to watch others' streaming is considered to be dangerously asocial. In this society, privacy is a perversion. As Confessor Bailey tells the main character. "Privacy is blasphemy. Only perverts do things in private."

We may not have reached the stage where full disclosure of our lives and thoughts is de rigeur, but we no longer appreciate the value of privacy. In our scramble to occupy the spotlight, we have forgotten about the importance of retaining a sphere of knowledge which is known only to us and which is shared with a select few.

Identity theft and online sexual predators are the dangers we most commonly associate with the publication of personal data. But there are other threats that are equally harmful and which may be underestimated.

Giving complete strangers access to our innermost thoughts, hopes and peccadilloes provides them with information which they can use to study us and to manipulate or blackmail us. The saddest aspect of it all is that this is a problem entirely of our own making. Big Brother isn't the problem - our penchant for exhibitionism is.

cl.bon@nextgen.net.mt