On Kanye’s Cock And Whether Or Not You Should Care

For weeks there were rumors about pictures of hip-hop icon Kanye West's penis. On Friday the shots finally made their way online. So Kanye (allegedly) snapped a shot of his dick and sent them over the Internet. Uh, who hasn't?

Here's a funny story: One night during our sophomore year of college we decided to engage in two of our favorite university pastimes—trolling for sex on Craigslist and applying for summer internships—at the same time. This turned out to be a mistake. We were trying to get a particularly eager young, closeted NYU jock uptown and into our dorm room, and in convincing him to do so, decided to take a quick shot of our junk. You know, for advertising. Anyway, we uploaded the picture, attached it to an open email window, and clicked send—only to find that, of course, we'd just sent a picture of our naked crotch to some marketing firm in the East Village.

If these pictures are to be believed then Kanye West is more like you and me that we had had ever thought possible. Besides forever putting an end to our ambitions of wasting that summer cold calling suburban social clubs and offering them package deals on New York City bus tours, that experience left us with a complete inability to judge anyone for the mistakes they make on the Internet. Let's face it: Every single gay man with a cable modem has a Manhunt, Adam4Adam, OKCupid, or Dudesnude profile, and the vast majority of those profiles feature raunchy and potentially embarrassing self-portraits of the naked torso, cock or ass.

And even if you don't have any political career-killing photos swimming around the tubes somewhere, tell us that you've never written a blog entry that divulged maybe a little too much about your personal life. Tell us that you've never made a twitter post or Facebook update that you immediately regretted. The impulse to overshare on the Internet is a mighty one. For you, those incidents may be far off, cringe-inducing memories. For poor Kanye, his ill-advised cockshot has become national news.

Not that we feel too bad for the guy. He took the pictures while he was already famous. Sending them to anyone over the Internet was just an invitation to have this thing come back and bite him in the ass. Besides, unlike fellow normal-celebrity-turned-cell-phone-cockshot-celebrity, Brett Favre, Kanye West is neither married nor attempting to maintain any sort of wholesome good boy image. His album is coming out as scheduled and will, in all likelihood, be a chart topping, critically acclaimed masterpiece. No, we don't feel bad checking out and sharing pictures of Kanye's cock. But we're not looking to condemn anyone here. We're only really looking ‘cause it's Kanye, and ‘cause it's big, and ‘cause…well, the silly rapper with a haute couture phoenix for a girlfriend just got a whole lot hotter.

· Advice to Kanye West and Brett Favre: Penis shots don't work! (zeitgeistyreport.com)
· Kanye West Cock Shots for Sale, and Other Things to Fear (gawker.com)