Numerous celebrities have been caught on tape, surprised — or not so surprised — to learn later that it was all captured by a cellphone camera.
Actor Piolo Pascual is the latest Filipino celebrity to be caught on tape. Pascual follows a number of pop icons, including Ethel Booba, Jennylyn Mercado and Karel Marquez, whose sexual prowess caught on tape have commanded market share.
In a cellphone kiosk off a street in Makati, the business district of Metro Manila, a peddler sells sex-tape downloads for 220 pesos, or $4. Internet sites command even a higher price.
In Pascual’s case, he is having sex with another man, according to most who have seen the video.
But with the cellphone’s inherent small-screen format, some question whether it really is him.
“First of all, the video was shot in a .3 Gps format, which rendered it fuzzy and grainy. Now how can people just believe that the man in the video was Piolo?” celebrity reporter Crispina Belen asked. “Was that a clear picture of him?”
Belen said that a trend in the Philippines is to sell celebrity sex tapes on the market in a quick-and-dirty fashion, regardless of authenticity.
“What I’m more concerned about are the other cellphone sex videos of celebrities being spread around,” Belen said. “I just hope that before anyone buys them off the street or downloads them from Limewire or any other peer-to-peer sites, they should think first before believing these things to be true.
“This is not in defense of Piolo, but it’s disappointing that people would simply believe as true these alleged mobile phone sex videos of some celebrities that seem to proliferate nowadays.”