Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life

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Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life
Directed by	Tom McLoughlin
Written by	Wesley Bishop Richard Kletter
Starring	Jeremy Sumpter Kelly Lynch Lyndsy Fonseca
Distributed by	Lifetime
Release date(s)	June 20, 2005
Running time	87 min
Country	United States
Language	English
IMDb profile

Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life is an original Lifetime television movie which was first broadcast on June 20, 2005. It was directed by Tom McLoughlin and written by Wesley Bishop and Richard Kletter. The movie stars Jeremy Sumpter, Kelly Lynch, and Lyndsy Fonseca.

Taglines: Seduced. Addicted. Destroyed.

1 Plot
2 Reaction
3 Trivia
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Plot

Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life is the story of Justin Peterson, a 16-year-old boy who discovers internet pornography. The film establishes Justin as a popular student with a steady girlfriend, and a successful swimmer who had just made the All-State team. However, as his obsession with porn increases, he loses interest in everything his life had consisted of up until now: school, his swimming career, his parents, his friends and his girlfriend Amy.

Justin is introduced to pornography when a friend sends him a link to a softcore site featuring Monica, a fellow student who has a crush on him. Enthralled by the images, Justin is later exposed to a porn film at a party, and later browses more explicit pornographic websites, only to be caught by his mother Diane. She tells her husband, but he just brushes her off, telling her that it is natural for teenage boys to look at pictures of girls.

Justin's late nights in front of the computer and increasing obsession with porn soon impact upon his lap times, and he betrays Amy's trust by downloading porn on to her PDA. He also exposes his younger brother Alex to porn, leaving him queasy. Justin soon begins to gain a reputation at school of being a "porn freak" after showing his friends S&M porn. Eventually, his addiction causes him to almost miss the All-State swim finals, where he places third. However, Justin's mother is disappointed at the result.

Discovering a CD-R titled Virgin Vaginas that Justin had burned his porn on to, Diane confronts him and moves Justin's computer out of his room. However, this doesn't stop him, and he continues to surreptitiously surf the web for porn, eventually racking up extensive bills on his parent's credit cards, bringing attention to Diane about his addiction. She later discovers a co-worker's marriage had been destroyed by her ex-husband's porn addiction, alarming her further. Justin also goes to the extent of using a computer at school to access pornography and gets caught hacking the internet firewall to do so. As a result of that, he is suspended from the swim team and on probation overall.

Meanwhile, Justin has become closer to Monica, but increasingly ignores his girlfriend. Eventually, after being pressured to have sex with him, Amy breaks up with Justin. Justin meets with Monica and she tries to seduce him. However, unsure of the situation, he hesitates and an angry Monica kicks him out of her house. Monica then throws a physical tantrum alone after feeling rejected by Justin and bangs her own head causing blood to come out.

Soon after, Justin then tries to make amends with Amy and turn his life around. After leaving Amy and walking down the street he is noticed by another schoolmate who relays to other schoolmates at a nearby restaurant that he is close by. Monica is sitting with the schoolmates with noticeable face injuries and it is presumed she told the others that Justin was responsible for them. The schoolmates track down Justin and beat him up in the street, disturbed by his reputation as a "porn freak" and the incident with Monica.

Depressed after being physically attacked, Justin arrives at the school's swimming pool and leaps in feeling that he is at rockbottom (presumably to drown himself). Earlier in the movie, he would be under the water fantasizing about women and pornography being near him but this time he thinks of all the things he has to live for. He sees images of his mother and family, the cheering that took place from the crowd when he swam, and other positive feelings. He saves himself and apparently breaks his addiction.

[edit] Reaction

The movie drew significant attention from online communities, who generally criticized the heavy handedness the film took in trying to get its message across, and mocked the numerous ways the film tried to present the subject matter in a way suitable for the general viewing audience of the Lifetime Network.

For example, the "pornography" shown during the course of the film could be considered excessively tame in its depiction, with no nudity and little reference to sexual activity evident. Justin is also never suggested to masturbate upon delving into his addiction, with commentators joking about how he seems to develop an energy drink addiction to represent this instead.^[1] Commentators were also quick to point out that actress Kelly Lynch, who plays Justin's concerned mother Diane Peterson, has made numerous nude appearances in other films herself, of which images are widely available on the internet.

Another problem that viewers had with the movie is that while the main character's life does indeed go into a downward spiral, it is debatable how much of it was actually caused by pornography. In contrast, most of the main character's problems are either caused by his parents' intolerance of pornography or the other characters themselves. It is also suggested the movie had too close ties to religion to be even handed in its representation of pornography and overly negative portrayal of pornography.

Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life has been widely compared to the infamous Reefer Madness which, in similar vein to Cyber Seduction, warned against the dangers of marijuana^{[citation needed]}.

[edit] Trivia

The movie was filmed at Humberside Collegiate Institute in Toronto, Canada.
Original title of the movie was "Addicted dot com", however that was changed before its release.