How a man googling PORN HUB ended up on the Herald's website
A Herald report last Friday began with a profound truth. 'Internet users are suffering,' it read, before adding six unnecessary words, 'outages across New Zealand this morning.' The story was a boilerplate account of the blackout, which later reports would reveal was the result of the Australian navy flicking the wrong switch and accidentally wiping out half our infrastructure.
So far, so New Zealand. But internet users who hadn't been severed from the mainframe by a clumsy seaman or petty officer were able to take a closer look at the article. They saw something awry. It was illustrated with a picture of a man sitting at a computer with Google open on his web browser. His search was easily visible if you zoomed in a bit. 'PORN HUB,' it read.
How did this image make it to the country's website of record? Why was it used in a story about internet outages? The obvious answer is that a bleary-eyed online editor added a stock image to the story without looking closely. But as sleuths on Reddit pointed out, PORN HUB man's bookmarks bar contains websites that don't feature on Getty, including Stuff and the Herald.
The only possible conclusion is someone met with a local photographer and sat down to be snapped typing 'PORN HUB' into Google. More websites and search requests may also have been involved, as it appears 'porno-hub videos – XVIDEOS.COM' has already been clicked.
The original story gave its image credit to George Heard, a photographer who works with the Herald in Christchurch. Emails to Heard were met with a request to refer questions to NZME's in-house comms person. The Spinoff did that, even though it suspected NZME's in-house comms person would be unlikely to divulge useful information. Its emails were not answered.
A reverse image search was more successful. It showed PORN HUB man may originally have been used in 2021 on stories by Anna Leask and David Fisher about revenge porn and child sexual abuse images. It's possible that in the Herald's image library, the photo wasn't titled in a way that indicated its true nature.
Whatever happened, PORN HUB man lay dormant until the morning of June 6, 2025, when a web editor typed something like 'internet' or 'computer' into the Herald CMS, and attached a photo that at first glance looked appropriate, but on closer inspection was of a man furiously googling PORN HUB to find genres such as 'teen', 'hottest porn videos', 'porn videos', 'gay porn', and 'recommended'.
The mistake was spotted quickly. Herald staffers contacted by The Spinoff said the image was removed within 15 minutes, after it was queried in the corrections channel of the office Slack. It wasn't fast enough. Diligent Redditors captured the image. One post about it has been upvoted more than 2,100 times.
Though some might be embarrassed, staff at the Herald appear to be taking the mistake in their stride. In a statement to The Spinoff, one summed up the reaction: 'I want you to know my available-for-publishing statement as an NZ Herald staffer is that the incident was 'funny as fuck'.'
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1News
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It is exemplified by the various artefacts Copland embeds in his book – memes and posts from the manosphere itself. Blackpilled incels are a subgroup of incels who believe their access to romantic and sexual relationships is doomed because of "lookism", the belief women choose sexual partners based solely on their physical features. Blackpilled ideology attributes romantic failure to genetically unalterable aspects of the human body, such as one's height or skull shape. Some blackpilled incels, who call themselves wristcels, even blame their lack of sexual success on the width of their wrists. ADVERTISEMENT This logic is countered by research that demonstrates men, in fact, show stronger preferences for physical attractiveness than women, with women tending to prioritise education level and earning potential. (Source: The manosphere, however, amplifies this type of thinking and filters out information that challenges these ideas and opinions, increasing group polarisation. 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Otago Daily Times
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Otago Daily Times
19 hours ago
- Otago Daily Times
52-year-old in court for sharing image of partly naked woman
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