Internet Fakery and thoughts about Surveillance

Hi,

When reading an nytimes page, as I often do, and as I often blog about, I came across what may or may not be some sort of opinion page (I'm not sure, I wasn't paying attention) about public shaming. Ahh public shaming. I'm glad it's back in action. It's the idea, that video sites like youtube are places where people post videos of their friends or others in order to publicly same them These people are often drunk, but sometimes they're not. So, while I'm rarely if ever drunk, I am slightly protective of my image being recorded and put on youtube for whomever to laugh at and make fun of without my permission. I'll do the blog, because I can control and regulate the blog, and it doesn't exist as a public forum for people to make fun or shame other people. But things like facebook or myspace or any sort of picture or image website is scary to me, for one reason, is that you don't have control over your image. Who is to stop someone from creating a false identity on that site? Yes, it's scary if it's someone you don't know, but it's also scary if someone you do know recreates them self, or represents them self falsely on an internet site.

Which brings me back to the my original point. This video a college student breaking up with his girlfriend in public. By all accounts, he advertised a public breakup on the face book, and had a girls a capella group sing a break up song to the girl as hundreds of students came out to see it. They had a public fight and the video was broadcast on youtube. You can read all about it. The video is a bonafide Internet hit. The problem is that it was represented as being real, but it wasn't. The whole thing was staged and became an internet hit. Question...If everyone knew it was staged, would they all have turned out to see it? Would it be as popular on youtube if people didn't think it was real? There's something terrible and mean about breaking up with your girlfriend publicly, but something downright nasty about posting it on the Internet. Yet, if the thing was staged, does that make it better? This type of video doesn't bother me, but the implications of it can be far more dangerous. If we can't tell which images and which videos are authentic and which ones are false, we're going to be in trouble.

With the far reaching scope of cameras and surveillance equipment, we have to be more cautious as to letting ourselves be photographed and letting the government and others invade our privacy. There's a theory, I'm thinking of Michel Foucault's panopticon - pan meaning everywhere, opticon from optics meaning to see - that says that if people are constantly being watched, then they will not act out or commit crimes. Now, say someone isn't watching you. Say it's a video camera. Now, say that that video camera takes a picture of you doing something illegal. But what if it's not you? There's something dangerous about being able to fake images and convince people that they're real. When internet shaming stops becoming funny and starts becoming about controlling people by discouraging behavior, things get messy.

Keep you ear to the grindstone

-cjfer-

click for some sweet public shaming