Unfortunately, this week fell on the negative side of pop culture news. The biggest scandal was, of course, the massive leak on Sunday, Aug. 31 of nude photos of several female celebrities including Jennifer Lawrence, Kaley Cuoco and Kirsten Dunst.

The photos were later discovered to have been obtained through a breach in the Apple iCloud. Once released, they circulated all over online platforms including Twitter and Reddit. The affected celebrities’ responses were varied and some remained silent after the leak.

Some publicists and lawyers denied the authenticity of the alleged photos of their clients, while others, Dunst, Lawrence and Couco included, have confirmed that the photos are genuine.

Actress and singer Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who co-starred in the film, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, took to Twitter to express her disgust at her own photos being leaked. Winstead wrote in one post, “To those of you looking at photos I took with my husband years ago in the privacy of our own home, I hope you feel great about yourselves.” A second post read, “Knowing those photos were deleted long ago, I can only imagine the creepy effort that went into this. Feeling for everyone who got hacked.”

Winstead hit the nail on the head. Part of the issue with the leak is not that it happened, but that the world then allowed the photos to circulate and be viewed by millions of people before any authorities had the chance to remove the images.

Popstar Ariana Grande’s publicist said that the photos of her were fake, and fellow former Nickelodeon teen queen Victoria Justice posted on Twitter asserting that hers were fake as well.

Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter whether or not the various photos are real or not. The fact that in today’s hyper social media obsessed culture, where we put our lives on display daily, the privacy of individuals, even celebrities, are often compromised. The fact that many of these were previously deleted or on private accounts means that they were never intended to be seen. This should be a cautionary tale, then, of what should and should not be put on iCloud.

Celebrities do put themselves out there and the price of fame is sometimes the loss of privacy, and it is hard to have a separation between their public and personal lives. An actress posing nude for a magazine cover is different than taking semi-nude photos to track weight loss, as rhythm and blues singer Jill Scott has said with regard to her leaked photo.

A bizarre twist is the announcement that artist XVALA will display the images on life-size canvas as part of his “Fear Google” campaign in October in Florida. How is this okay? I hope that the so-called “art show,” titled “No Delete,” gets few visitors, but I know that this won’t be the case. This brings the debate about Internet privacy to a head; the campaign is supposed to be about the dangerous depths of the web, but it is instead promoting the illegal work of hackers who violated an otherwise secure system.

The leak was just another day in the world of celebrity photo leaks, but this seems to be one of, if not the, biggest to date. Apple and the FBI are investigating the leak, and Apple CEO Tim Cook has said that the iCloud will receive security updates to prevent future hackings.

Let’s hope that the world moves forward as well and finds better things to do with its time than obsess over private images of public figures.