Shannon Sharpe and the Modern-Day Sex Tape

It was first reported this week that Pro Football Hall of Famer tight-end Super Bowl champion/sports media personality Shannon Sharpe, presently on ESPN’s First Take had his Instagram account hacked. "Beware my @ShannonSharpe84 Instagram was hacked this morning, my team and I are working vigorously to figure this out. - UNC," Sharpe wrote in a post.

What was specifically heard but not seen across Sharpe’s Instagram Live was what appeared to be a darkened screen of a phone lying face-down while a woman was heard in the throes of some sort of sexual activity.

A man's voice is heard relating a rather blatant sexual suggestion as well as uttering a woman’s name.

Now, Sharpe is admitting he accidentally posted the naughty few moments to his 3.2 million followers.

Too many to name

It’s one thing to inadvertently post a pic or video, it’s quite another to find yourself hacked.

Looking down this extensive list of celebrities who have been hacked in the last ten years, during and after the famous and massive CelebGate scandal, cybercriminals have surely been busy stealing, leaking, and then posting private materials. Ariel Winter, Ariana Grande, Dakota Johnson, Kristen Stewart, Rihanna and a score more have been affected by this stealing, having all learned all too terribly that a net cloud account offers little protection to one’s most private pics and videos.

And it seems it is hard to take down the revenge porn sites that post these videos and pictures as the law is very sketchy on what the media can and cannot do with material outed by other sources for public consumption.

Before the cloud and the post, there was tape

There was Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee’s canoodling across beds and boat decks. A much younger Kim Kardashian and her then-boyfriend Ray J, in bed. Paris Hilton and Rick Salomon (who sold the tape himself), and arguably one of the earliest and most famous of instances, Rob Lowe's sex tape that he has since claimed got him sober from the bruhaha he experienced over it.

Back-in-the-day a leaked sex tape was all we had to look into the intimate private lives of Hollywood royalty.

Or those not so royal anymore.

"Saved By The Bell," star Dustin Diamond released a sex tape quite a few years after the brush-fire of tapes going public, in 2006 specifically, But he has since claimed he actually faked the whole affaird. D.D. even employed a body double, editing his face in afterward, hoping to make millions later from selling the tape.

What of the above was deliberately leaked or what others had been stolen has always been part of modern culture conjecture. As what can now be accomplished via deep fakes, is startling.

A parting shot at sexual infamy

Of course, as there usually is with this kind of here-today-gone-tomorrow-for-some-other-news-story, the triple x site The Porn Dude offered $100,000 to see Shannon Sharpe “score the ultimate BBC touchdown on our set.”

There doesn’t seem to be an end to the money that could be offered to a Sharpe or a magnesium-flash celebrity like a Haliey Welch to pose for even a tamer outlet like Playboy. As long as there is skin, naughty sound or the promise of either the offers will keep coming as will the news keep posting.