Facebook as a pack of nails for later tabloid crucifixion
Wednesday, December 26, 2007

So you've almost certainly come across the slightly slimy Meredith Kercher murder hoo-hah, which like many recent news stories (particularly the salacious, kids-killing-each-other one) has featured prominent quotation from the suspects' Myspaces/Facebooks etc, mainly in support of their supposed guilt.

(Incidentally I've been rather taken aback at some of the more unique aspects of the Italian legal system. You know, lack of access to lawyers for days and days, allowed to be held in custody without charge for a year, etc... all of which has passed without any comment in the press, as far as I've been able to tell.)

It's all got me thinking what they'd say about me if I got fit up for a crime. In fact you can bet they'll quote this very post up... so hey, here are my key incriminating social media give aways.

• Identifies as "single" (i.e: a weird loner)
• Although this wouldn't tally with what some other sources might say, which would imply an agenda of deceit and something to hide
• Political views: "Other", which would make a good Roscarch blot for people to cross-interpret, perhaps some kind of crazed anarchist, Nazi, or Nazi anarchist
  
• Quote on Myspace and Facebook "The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend" which not only makes me sound like I enjoy destroying people, but also invalidates any and all support from friends, who are clearly all enemies I was merely conspiring to dismember at a convenient moment
• Left a wall post for friend: "I suggest embracing your inner deadness.YOU CAN'T KILL US, MAN, WE'RE ALREADY DEAD!"
• Just as the general public is preparing to flay me with my own intestines they find the Three Word Stories app on Facebook and the only one I participated in begins "When I murdered I was methodical. Piece by piece, I dissected minds with a clinical cold precision" and my status is upgraded to "truly fucked" with a punishment so horrific as to be unnameable (it involves the sensation of dry poster paint.)
  
• Myspace "about me" reads: "Everything you've heard of me is the slander of the depraved and the clucking tongues of the chattering classes" perhaps implying some kind of hidden truth, and as it's hidden, it's probably incriminating and deathy.
• Photo of me from years ago outside a funeral parlor suggests "obsession with death" is probably long-standing and has been gnawing away at my soul for a long time
• If you ask my friend Alex, he will tell you that as a kid I used to wander around the primary school playground, following the lines that demarcated the football/netball court, muttering to myself. I have no recollection of this but he's very insistent about it. Just putting that out there for you.
  

Labels: CONCLUSIVE PROOF THAT I WILL KILL "AGAIN", facebook, oh, social media

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Link me up before you go go
Saturday, July 07, 2007

• Interview with Anil Dash, VP of SixApart
  Good stuffs on community, social media, etc: "it's a recent leap for people to go from "I am kinda into that" to "Being into this sort of thing is part of my identity." Once you've made that statement, for anybody to contradict it is a huge affront."
• Girls Are Pretty - You And Your Wife Only Communicate Via Spyware Histories Day!
  You think your wife installed spyware on your computer (she has) so you are going to have to stop Googling her sister, and start Googling things like "What do I do when I love my wife so much that I doubt I’ll ever be able to express my love adequately?" and "How do I make my wife even happier?" and "The opposite of looking at pictures of my wife’s sister."
• The Penguin Blog - What's the point of Facebook?
  I think Facebook works because it cuts the unit cost of keeping in touch with an extra person to zero, and the unit cost of keeping track of an extra person to near-zero. (More in my comment on the post.)
• NO NO NO
  Toni & Guy did this to me. I will have my vengeance.
  

Labels: anil dash, facebook, girlsarepretty, haircut, social media, social networks

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Daily links
Friday, July 06, 2007

• Bears turned inside out
  Teddy bears ripped open, turned inside out, re-stuffed and photographed. Creepy, vulnerable, but still undeniably cute. Mostly.
• World prices of cocaine in anvils
  From a rather pithy blog I just discovered...
• Ethan Haas Was Right
  Stylish new game/puzzle/ARGiness in support of 'Cloverfield', a new film from JJ Abrams that looks a bit like War Of The Worlds meets Blair Witch (urban monster thriller shot by characters on handhelds.) Search YouTube for the trailer - inexplicably, Paramount keep issuing takedowns when people post it online.
• Do not be stealthy like the fox or stalking cheetah. Be stealthy like the animal that has no name, because it has never been seen, because it is SO MOTHERFUCKING STEALTHY.
• Friend Wheel
  
  Really lovely Facebook app that displays all the connections between you and your friends with some sexy info-visualisation. I am so hot for this stuff. Here's mine - click to enlarge:

Labels: anvils, bears, cloverfield, cocaine, ethanhaas, facebook, friends, stealth

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The taming of shaming
Wednesday, June 20, 2007

So I went along to Chinwag's Dark Side of Social Media on Tuesday, which turned out to be rather thought provoking.

I spoke briefly about my digital experiences. I first started being "public" online when I was 14. We'd consider it an "impressionable age" these days, I suppose, but at that time (the year 2000!) there wasn't a terrible amount of prior art for being young and mouthy online. GeoCities was, I suppose, the nearest thing to having a horribly pimped MySpace, and very few people I knew personally were using Friendster, the standard social network of its day.

So, I set up a blog, because that was really all there was to do. And the most interesting bloggers at that time used their real names, so I thought this was the thing to do too. That's what I did - and what I've done ever since.

(Up until recently, I was a Community Dude for an online game, which meant establishing a close relationship with the player community. A handful of Facebook friend requests later, a sizable number of them know the street I live on, my phone number, and more besides. I only mention it as an illustration of how lax my online privacy is, and also how the corporate transparency I tried to encourage as part of my job ended up influencing the degree of my personal visibility.)

I espouse the view that maintaining an integrated online identity keeps you honest. I like the idea of developing a 'reputation' online, and part of that is acting responsibly and politely. I might have an opinion on something, and there's a risk that other people will disagree and hold it against me, now or, as is increasingly possible, later. I owe it to myself, then, to express these opinions with a modicum of thought and decency. That's a good thing all round - a kind of digital citizenship.

I suppose this is partly a worldview thing - the counterargument from others would be that they're uncomfortable saying anything and associating it with their central identity, or at least they'd prefer not to. I entirely understand that, but I think it's a vaguely unhealthy viewpoint, a bit like 'not going to parties because people might find you annoying.' As I strive to become more active online, I do occasionally come up against these little mental barriers where I feel less-than-entirely comfortable with doing something under a "Guy Parsons brand." But George Foreman sells this lean mean grilling machine, right, and he says: "I'm so proud of it, I put my name on it!" You can switch the cause and effect, though - if you put your name on it, you can learn to be proud of it, or at least take ownership of it.

Luke Weaver later came back to a similar point (although I missed the comment he was responding to!) and saying that maybe, if technology does mean we sacrifice privacy, we might become more compassionate as a result. As our ability to hide the truth wanes, perhaps our ability to handle the truth - our truth, and the truth of others - increases.

One of the interesting facets of digital identity, and particularly social networking, is the element of passive performance. I think most people would be vaguely terrified of standing up in front of a crowd of 100-odd people - even people they already knew - and saying anything, but online that's exactly what you can do.

Labels: chinwag, facebook, identity, privacy, social media, social networks, socnets

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