You know Whitney Cummings — stand-up comedian, actor, producer, and all-around hilarious human being.
Yesterday, Whitney shared some upsetting news on Twitter: A stranger on the internet was trying to blackmail her with a nude photo:
1) In April I accidentally posted an insta story that showed nipple. Once I realized, I deleted. The people who took screen grabs are trying to get money from me, some said they have offers to sell them, some are asking for money to not post the photo.
"How much would it cost to not share this photo?" the stranger asked Whitney in a DM, adding a red scribble around her nipple, in an apparent effort to extort money out of her.
But instead of paying these people off, Whitney sent a gigantic "fuck you" to all of them by releasing the photo to her 1.3 million Twitter followers — thus making sure nobody would be able to sell it.
After posting the pic, some of Whitney's famous friends, including comedian Chris D'Elia, "leaked" embarrassing photos of themselves in solidarity.
Real friends send you their embarrassing pix when you're embarrassing pix come out. Thank you @chrisdelia for humiliating yourself to make me feel better.
But all jokes aside, Whitney had an important message to share about the implications of this sort of predatory behavior.
When a woman in the public eye is extorted, we have to spend time, money and energy dealing with it, hiring lawyers and security experts, and living with a pit in our stomach about when and how we will be humiliated. Y’all can have my nipple, but not my time or money anymore.
Unfortunately, Whitney says the harassment hasn't stopped yet.
Now I'm getting threatened with "we have access to your iCloud." I'll be honest, I stand by most of my nudes. Frankly I'm way more embarrassed by all the inspirational quotes I've screen grabbed.
In the wake of her coming forward, lots of fans have rallied around her using the hashtag #IStandWithWhitney, which of course Whitney had some jokes about.
Nobody is more bummed than me that #istandwithwhitney isn’t about Whitney Houston
I woke up to so much support around the nipple photo incident. It means the world to me and I’m sorry that the pic I had to release looks like I’m having a home birth.
And according to Whitney, the most embarrassing thing you'll see in her iCloud are screenshots of inspirational quotes she took "a couple years back when [she] was clearly going through something."
Getting ahead of any photo leaks...here are the most embarrassing things anyone could leak from my iCloud: my screen grabs from a couple years back when I was clearly going through something.
It's worth noting that what these people did to Whitney is extremely illegal and they could get in serious trouble for it, although Whitney says she's decided not to release their names:
I'm not posting the names of the people trying to extort me because some of them might be dumb kids. I wouldn't want the stupid ideas I had when I was a teenager to follow me around forever or else every time someone Googled me, they'd see me shoplifting a NO FEAR t-shirt. .
Whitney Cummings: 1. Creeps on the internet: 0. Goodbye!
