Edit: The parent comment, which has since been deleted, read:

>It's occurred to me that r/jailbait is significantly tamer than the video for Britney Spears's "Baby One More Time".

Except that the actors in that video agreed to be recorded and broadcast, and were (presumably, I haven't got any citations) over the age of majority.

The pictures in /r/jailbait are, overwhelmingly, of people under the age of consent, and are being viewed and distributed without the consent or knowledge of the people in them.

While the content may be "tamer", those pictures are still being viewed for sexual gratification.

I've never browsed reddit (seriously.. A link to an Ama here and there and that's it), so these particular images are unfamiliar to me. That said:

"The pictures in /r/jailbait are, overwhelmingly, of people under the age of consent"

=> How can you tell? Which law applies? The reddit link (heh.. the one submitted on top) discusses vastly different laws in different countries. If it's legal to take nude (I understand the pictures weren't, but let me make this point) picture of yourself with 15 or 16 according to local laws and you post it to the internet, is it 'child pornography'?

"and are being viewed and distributed without the consent or knowledge of the people in them."

=> How is that determined? You might very well be correct, but is that really a fact or a possibility?

"While the content may be "tamer", those pictures are still being viewed for sexual gratification."

=> What does that even change? Pictures in the wild are used in all kinds of ways. Maybe you end up being a poster in a 16 year old girls room. Or as a backing of a dart board. Or someone gets 'sexual gratification' from your G+ or Facebook pictures. That doesn't change the pictures in the slightest. It's a reception on the other side. You cannot possible predict that, have no say in it.

True. I wasn't defending the tasteless content that some subreddits had (and, in some cases, continuing to have) but was pointing out that the phenomenon is not constrained to redditors with "unnatural appetites", i.e. mainstream media, commonly exploit it, e.g. the Vanity Fair topless photoshoot of Miley Cyrus who was 15 at the time (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miley_Cyrus#Controversies).

The interesting part is that it's not always clear to me why this exploitation is done, i.e. why dress the girl in the Mystery Island movie so provocatively (target age is probably around 10) or why Vanity Fair, whose target is not teenage boys, had those photos taken, etc.

The really worrying thought is that the sexual gratification explains only part of it, the rest is the worship of the youthful energy/sexuality of teenage girls by not only men and by everyone.

> The interesting part is that it's not always clear to me why this exploitation is done

My cynical guess is that there is significant money to be made in pushing girls towards early sexualization. The idea is to get them worrying about sexuality, and all of the things they think they need to do in order to be considered sexually attractive. This would include things like hair products, lipstick, and clothing. By creating this association between the mere ideas of "sexy" and "what everyone's already doing," they can instill a deep sense of status anxiety at an early age. This anxiety is not only easy to create (as the age group is highly hormonal), it feeds off of existing social hierarchies that are emerging. And, I believe, the advertiser hopes it is the beginning of a lifelong addiction to buying things in order to feel worthwhile.

I hope you don't take this to be hyperbole; I'm actually surprised it came out as dark as it did. But, now that I think of it, it is violence against the soul, and thus, evil.