Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

Googling as stalking

A new fearsome digital meme is solidifying in 2007, that of considering using a search engine to be stalking.
Today's Google stalk example comes from American partisan politics and the political blogosphere.  A MyDD (liberal) poster describes another blogger (conservative) as stalking politicians:

To fan the flames, Michelle Malkin is doing her usual stalking job on several of the questioners and has uncovered support for some of the Democratic candidates. God forbid!

At least one conservative blogger caught this and mocked away, pointing out the misuse of a term for psychological disorder when applied to basic web search.

In a 2004 essay, "Webstalker", collected in her new book, Katha Pollitt describes Google-stalking an ex-boyfriend.  She discusses this in a recent NPR interview, too.  It's a fascinating use of the term, which she deliberately uses with serious, disturbing reverberations (accompanied by "ghost," "obsession"), yet also undercuts:

It’s not like I was there on the street corner copying the key to get into his apartment. All I did was sit at my computer and Google. Is that so terrible?!

How far back does the Google-stalk term go?  everthing2 dates their entry as starting in 2004.  Urban Dictionary dates one definition from 2003.  It's old enough to be parodied as a new Google service (2007).

"Google stalk" draws on widespread concerns about visibility and privacy, of course.  It also picks up on multiple worries about Google, which one wag this year dubbed FOG (Fear of Google).  Google itself sometimes picks up on those worries to use rhetorically (2006).

A different negative sense for "google-stalk" comes from Five Blogs Before Lunch, which identifies it with trademark violation.

Secret society goes clockpunk: les UX surfaces

The French underground group who staged film festivals in Paris catacombs (2004) is back.  This time they staged a daring... horological rescue mission.  They snuck into the Panthéon repeatedly, for one year, building a secret workshop, all in order to fix a glorious clock.

The hardest part of the scheme was carrying up the planks used to make chairs and tables to furnish the Untergunther's cosy squat cum workshop, which has sweeping views over Paris.

The group managed to connect the hideaway to the electricity grid and install a computer connected to the net.

French authorities were not amused, and have only recently lost in court.

The semisecret UnterGunther group, who pulled this off, is but one segment of a larger, more ambitious, secret society.  What is les UX?

Mr Kunstmann said that les UX had 150 or so members divided into about ten branches.One group, which is all-female, specialises in “infiltration” – getting into museums after hours, finding a way through underground electric or gas networks and shutting down alarms. Another runs an internal message system and a coded, digital radio network accessible only to members.

A third group provides a database, a fourth organises subterranean shows and a fifth takes photographs of them. Mr Kunstmann refused to talk about the other groups.

Awesome.  Novelistic.  The sort of thing ARGs could evolve into.  Hakim Bey meets Bourbaki (and follow those links, if you don't know 'em).

(via BoingBoing et les autres amis)

Hacking YouTube: one man behind the curtain speaks

A web video viral marketing master reveals some secrets at TechCrunch this week.  It's a disturbing, hilarious post, brazenly confessing to a series of dodgy tricks, from astroturfing and sock puppets to deleting critical comments, nudity for hits and light spamming.

A-a-and one might wonder, how much of this is real, and how much... a viral campaign for the author's viral campaigns?  Is this the opening to a rabbit hole?  And this very post might be contributing to it.

Another book bound in human skin

A 1606 book was bound in the skin of the man whose execution it describes, according to the Guardian.

There's an unusual aspect to this gruesome tale:

Sid Wilkinson, from Wilkinson's Auctioneers in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, who will be selling the book on Sunday, said he could see the Jesuit priest's face peering out from the cover.

He said: "It's a little bit spooky because the front of the book looks like it has the face of a man on it, which is presumed to be the victim's face."

That's a sequel, in a sense, since Garnet's face appeared on an inanimate object before the book hit the presses.  On a piece of straw from the pile surrounding the execution stand, apparently.

Here at Infocult we keep up with anthropodermic bibliopegy.

(via the Cranky Professor)

South Korean cyberspace Gothic: the New York Times broods

South Korea has started sending computer-obsessed youth to reeducationInternet Rescue camps, according to a New York Times article.  The article is a useful sample for considering fearsome internet discourse.

To begin with, the piece uncritically assumes medicalization.  "Addiction" is used without caveat.  Listen to the calm, DSM-like assurance:

Compulsive Internet use has been identified as a mental health issue in other countries, including the United States.

Cleverly using passive voice, the piece quietly naturalizes and objectifies a contested, by no means agreed upon argument.

The article also harps on the theme of grievous bodily harm and death, hinting at a large-scale, violent plague:

...a new and potentially deadly addiction: cyberspace.
...users started dropping dead from exhaustion after playing online games for days on end. A growing number of students have skipped school to stay online, shockingly self-destructive behavior in this intensely competitive society.

We've noted stories of people dropping from exhaustion while playing games (for example), and suspected that such rare occurrences would become fodder for subsequent arguments about the scary power of computing.  But can anyone cite the death toll?  Is there a "killed by games this year" stat?  Note, too, the missed opportunity of discussing dropping out as an objection to a society perhaps too obsessed (but not addicted to) competition.

The article contrasts this violent, dangerous world with... exhausting physical activity.  Hackler or the camps don't go quite so far as to advocate, say, American-style football over MMOGs (or real car-racing over the virtual; but see this).  Yet Hackler does mention horseback riding and long marches in cold rain, hardly activities without health risks even under supervision.  And there is still a romantic allure cast over physical activition, rendered harmless and safe in the virtual's deadly glow.  This sort of discouse is related to one typical response to a new technology, romanticizing and naturalizing what it threatens.

Meanwhile, a newspaper that prides itself on speaking truth to power calmly endorses government-funded science and mandated clinics.

To address the problem, the government has built a network of 140 Internet-addiction counseling centers, in addition to treatment programs at almost 100 hospitals and, most recently, the Internet Rescue camp, which started this summer...
Up to 30 percent of South Koreans under 18, or about 2.4 million people, are at risk of Internet addiction, said Ahn Dong-hyun, a child psychiatrist at Hanyang University in Seoul who just completed a three-year government-financed survey of the problem. (emphases added)

To be fair, Fackler does eventually point to criticism, but in a such a way as to easily set it aside:

Though some health experts here and abroad question whether overuse of the Internet or computers in general is an addiction in the strict medical sense, many agree that obsessive computer use has become a growing problem in many countries.

"Some" versus "many"; the inference is that addiction has been accepted by a majority of experts.

Last note: hear the Gothic aura around a PC cafe -

[S]ocial life for the young revolves around the “PC bang,” dim Internet parlors that sit on practically every street corner.

One wonders if the dimness has to do with screen visibility, or just a flat-out desire to imitate (say) opium dens.

Fan remix and the IP underground: vidding well

A terrific epigram for the state of copyright today:

Luminosity is the best fan that shows like Friday Night Lights, Highlander, Farscape, and Buffy ever had—but she can’t use her real name in this interview for fear that their producers will sue her.

She goes on:

How do vidders find one another?
I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you—no, seriously, this is a highly contested issue within the vidding community. Even though we believe our work is legitimate and transformative art, a lot of vidders prefer to stay out of the spotlight until the legal situation is clearer.

Having to hide under pseudonyms, meet in secret, share in the shadows - copyright law has brought us to a pretty place. 

The whole interview is worth reading.

(via Reasonblog)

Suicide and fake identity in MySpace and media

A fake MySpace identity lies at the center of a suicide.  The real issue seems to be specific inter- and intra-family dynamics, but, typically, media coverage emphasizes the digital technology.  The dark reputation of MySpace continues to grow.

The story began last year (thanks to Making Light for one chronology), when Megan Meier, 13, struck up a friendship with another teenager via MySpace.  This lasted for several months, until the boy, Josh Evans, suddenly cut things off in a cruel way.  Megan, just short of turning 14, who already had a history of depression, hanged herself.  Her parents subsequently divorced.

One month later Josh turned out to not be a boy, but a collaborative fiction created by a family down the street from the now-grieving Meiers.  Parents and a child built this persona together, apparently in order to fish for Megan's thoughts about themselves.  They even invited another family's child to contribute, and that teen revealed the scheme.

No legal response to this hoax was able to stick, however.  Local law enforcement argued that no statutes had been violated.  In fact, the closest thing to illegality was Megan Meier's initial signup for MySpace, when she was one year too young (13) for the TOS (14).  In one posthumous response, the nearest city decided to criminalize internet-mediated harassment shortly after the story broke.

Extralegal responses also occurred.  The hoaxing family's house was apparently targeted for various acts of vandalism.  Megan's father dumped a broken foosball table on their yard.  On the internet, blogs, blog posts, and other websites have been set up naming names and calling for condemnation or the filing of child abuse charges. For example,

What was said to Megan Meier
May come back to haunt you, Lori Drew.

Or this:

Some people are born evil.

Hitler...

...Stalin...

...Lori Drew.

That last blog post also names the Drews' business, lists contact info, and displays a map to their home.  Many bloggers and other people collaborated to build this knowledge, then share it with the world.  It's clearly a form of Jochai Benkler's commons-based peer production.

The Drews' responses?  Not much beyond silence so far, from the parents.  Apparently their daughter started a blog to defend herself, with a disturbing and revealing title: Megan Had It Coming.

On one level this story embodies a series of established digital fear patterns.  It turns on one of the key elements of cyberfear in American culture, adults fearing teenagers who use technology to act on their desires.  This case also adds the ever-popular theme of fake identity.  But it is unusual in showing adults using technology in uncanny ways, in order to dupe minors; the reverse is more commonly discussed, and feared.

On another level we see in microcosm the full range of possibilities for internet-mediated collective action: online friendship and romance, information-seeking and popular surveillance (about the Drews).

That last part opens up a third layer, which is information disclosure by media during the age of citizen journalism.  Should reporters name the hoaxing family?  When the St. Louis Post-Dispatch broke the story (November 11, 2007) the account refused to name them.  Yet the drive to out the perps was widespread. The Jezebel site, for example, urged all readers to "START SNITCHING" (caps in original).  Jim Romanesko offers a snapshot of popular demand for journalists to out the simulacrum-makers.  This raises the interesting possibility that mainstream media can hew to a standard of probity, once the rest of us dive in to discover and spread the dirt.

In particular, as noted above, MySpace's dark reputation continues to grow.  Notice how the local paper describes it:

SHADOWY CYBERSPACE

Tina Meier was wary of the cyber-world of MySpace and its 70 million users. People are not always who they say they are.

Tina knew firsthand...

That meme is well enough developed that that account can play off of it ironically.

One last note: consider dana boyd's hypothesis about MySpace, Facebook, and class. What would such a story look like if the platform had been Facebook, if it happened at all?

(thanks to a whole slew of emails and IMs)

Whatever happened to Don LaRose?

Following up on the Satanic double-identity Arkansas kidnapping story, it's worth mentioning the poor guy's webpage.  That's where his backstory appears.

[O]ne day, out of the clear blue, a rather unusual letter arrived.   It was addressed to me.   However, the letters that made up the address had been cut out of magazines and newspapers and pasted on the envelope.   Inside was a piece of black paper with a pasted-up message on it.   I don't know exactly what the message was, but it accused me of blaspheming Satan and committing sacrilege against him.   A few days later a second letter arrived.

                  Then, on Election Day, 1975, I disappeared.   The police were called in, and after several weeks were unable to produce any clues as to what had happened.   My car was found a week later, abandoned in a run-down part of Binghamton.   According to the police, it was found locked and wiped clean of all fingerprints...

...The story I told the doctor was incredible.   It sounded like something a TV mystery writer might have concocted.

(via BoingBoing)

It's not a void. It's a doorway into another universe.

Remember that vast hole in the universe discovered this summer?  It was an immense empty space, for which many Infocult readers had excellent theories.  We missed this explanation, however:

"It is the unmistakable imprint of another universe beyond the edge of our own," says Laura Mersini-Houghton of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
It is a staggering claim. If Mersini-Houghton's team is right, the giant void is the first experimental evidence for another universe. It would also vindicate string theory, our most promising understanding of how the universe works at its most fundamental level...

Unfortunately the rest of the article is behind a paywall.  Best advert for a subscription I've seen in a while!

(once again, via Argus-eyed Warren Ellis)

Best political resignation story in recorded history

The mayor of an Arkansas town resigned this week, and offered as an explanation the best withdrawal-from-politics explanation of all time.  Does he want to "spend time with his family"?  No.  The article begins:

The mayor of an Arkansas town resigned on Wednesday, claiming he was abducted and brainwashed by Satan worshippers nearly three decades ago.

See, it all started in Indiana, and a different life:

Williams told authorities he was born Don LaRose and that in the mid-1970s, he was a preacher in Indiana. He said he was abducted and brainwashed into forgetting all about his life as Don LaRose.

How did it finally emerge into the daylight of public life?

It was a double-life he had never acknowledged, Williams said, because he didn't even realize it existed until he had recently taken a truth-serum injection...
The information went public, Williams said, because he runs a Web site about Don LaRose and his disappearance. LaRose's former family found the Web site and started inquiring about its author. They found the site registered to a Ken Williams and went from there.

There is a video, which begins with a coincidentally appropriate ad, asking you, dear viewer, if you would like to double your money with a new job.  According to the video, the mayor's resignation letter was signed with two names.

(via the ever-generous Warren Ellis)