Every week in Rambling Dispatches, Quinn McGee rants about anything current that comes to mind.

(Editor’s note: Most of this week’s article links flirt with NSFW. Proceed with caution.)

So I don’t know if you know this, but it appears the royalty in England has gone and committed a bit of a gaffe. And guess whose fault it was? It was that damn commoner that married into the royal family, that Middleton girl. Apparently the common rabble over there can’t seem to keep their tops on, and of course we over here in America hear the term “exposed nipples” and put all lenses on the person in question. But back to the Brits. I feel like I keep hearing the name Middleton and the term nudity a lot lately, and it’s because if it’s not their new princess, it’s the cousin of that princess posing (non-nude) in Playboy. And it isn’t just the ladies, it’s also William dancing around with his Willy out and dressing like Hitler. I don’t remember Princess Diana going balls to the wall and flashing the goods, nor do I think Charles wants to picture Camilla throwing around her lady bits. (Sorry for making you all picture that, but now you get to feel my pain.)

I’m not writing this article to talk about the Royal Family, really. I have no beef with them, and I think that Kate is a lovely woman. This article is more about a trend I’m noticing more and more lately. It’s the nude celebrity trend. I don’t think that Princess Middleton is doing anything that a normal woman her age wouldn’t do, such as taking the top off to avoid the tan lines because they can be oh-so distracting from the real attraction at parties: the crazy hats. And she was in a private area of France, but let’s be real. Google has a camera in space that can show me if my dog shit in the yard, so is any place private? I want to talk about what it means to be famous nowadays, and what I think is the defining point of famous vs. not famous. That’s the presence of candid or fake nudes of yourself. Yeah, I don’t think it’s due to performance or doing stupid things anymore. It’s all about the up-skirts, the topless beach photos, the sex tapes and the thousands of neck-beards with pirated Photoshop and a sticky mouse.

I was reading about how there are even web studies done about the dangers of searching a celebrity’s name and nude photos together. (It was a Red Eye article, so that answers the question of why that article even exists.) The fact that these searches are so dangerous means that the searches happen so often that the people who create viruses know to target that demographic.  You don’t target a fringe group with a virus. The fact that this demographic is large enough to warrant a study of it helps my point. I think that you know you’re really popular if there are nudes of you, or at least total fakes that allow people to suspend disbelief and get creative.

Guess who’s the most dangerous search? Emma Watson. You know how many times she’s been nude on film or otherwise? Never! She’s never been naked in any media. Who the hell is searching for these pictures if they don’t exist? People have to know they are an absolute fabrication. People can’t be thinking that “well, maybe she posed for that nude photo in a studio or something just for me, yeah, that’s got to be it.” People just want and have to see famous people naked. Regular people just can’t do it, apparently, so they settle for these fake pictures of celebrities and these privacy-invading paparazzi shots.

And it’s not just the women; the men are looked at the same way. Remember Chris Brown’s penis all over the internet?  You could see it across the room if someone had it open on their computer, it was so large. You remember Brett Favre’s dick? I know he hopes you don’t, because it was cold that day. And it isn’t even the idiots who take the cell phone photos that are being made; there are fakes out there I hope are created by a shadow group of women with pirated Photoshop who also wrote the Fifty Shades of Grey series, the Twilight series and any book with Fabio on the cover.

Anyways, my point is that I think the way you know you have made it as a celebrity is not through awards and commendations, but through the level of obsession people have with seeing you naked.  To be honest, this is a trend that will never go away, because we are a people who are never satisfied and always want to see more. It’s the drive and need that keeps Mr. Skin alive, a man I like to imagine as a real person who acts just like Buffalo Bill. It looks like the trend is here to stay, so it’s time to fire up that Photoshop and give the people what they want, I guess.