The 'Barbara Streisand Effect' is one of the internet's most significant contributions to the Laws of Unintended Consequences. It refers to a 2003 situation in which the famous chanteuse demanded through legal counsel that pictures of her house, which had appeared on an unauthorized website, be taken down. The effect was, perversely, that her demands succeeded only in stimulating an exponential increase in exposure for the subjects she wanted so desperately to keep hidden.
Manchester United soccer/football star Ryan Giggs learned this lesson more recently and history has, in all probability, condemned him to be remembered more for his contribution to social evolution than for his exploits on the pitch.
'Giggsy' as he is known to the faithful, is one of numberless Premier-level soccer stars who has been caught having an affair with someone other than his wife. In his case, the inamorata was a reality-television contestant (we could comment on the convergence of illusion and reality here, but that would be a distracting digression). As if coverage in Britain's notorious tabloids was not fulsome enough, Giggs then compounded the error by seeking a legal remedy unique to the UK known as a super-injunction which would ostensibly prevent further mention of his name. His target? Twitter. The effect? Do we really need to explain? Well, ok: an even greater explosion of interest on the 'net and beyond, driven by his vain legal attempt to demand privacy.
The power of the internet to spread a message about, say demonstrations in Cairo's Tahrir Square, or the release of Lady Gaga's latest album, or the gathering of a flash mob at Buckingham Palace is tremendously forceful. Your message will be seen by untold numbers and many will act on it. The commercial implications for sales of popular products has become legendary.
What is both fascinating and a little scary is that the law of internet distribution - or whatever sociologists will eventually call it - has superseded national legal authority. Were Streisand and Giggs within their rights to demand legal remedy? Sure. Is that worth a damn? Nope.
The lesson is that celebrities, garden-variety citizens, business middle managers and everyone else, for that matter, are subject to the internet's insatiable demand for information. And the more you try to stop information from spreading, the more you publicize its existence which only further stimulates knowledge of it and therefore its availablity. This power can make you rich, or famous, or both, but it can also tear you down and humiliate you. It defies laws, boundaries and historical cultural mores whose origins are lost in the mists of time.
Can it be tamed over time? Perhaps by evolution of cultural and sociological norms. But this space wouldnt bet on it. Learn to harness the power FOR you, but also learn to respect what that power can do TO you - and act accordingly. JL
Mathew Ingram comments in GigaOm:
"If there’s one thing the Internet is good at, it’s distributing information, regardless of whether those who control the information want to see it distributed or not. And this “democracy of distribution,” as Om likes to call it, is particularly powerful when it is combined with a real-time social tool like Twitter. Those forces can help you spread a message, or they can help others spread messages about you — as a British football player has discovered to his chagrin, by trying to prevent not only the media in his country from reporting on his personal life, but all of Twitter as well.
Manchester United player Ryan Giggs started this particular ball rolling earlier this year by getting what is called a “super injunction” in a British court: an order that not only prevents the media from reporting on an affair between Giggs and a prominent reality TV star, but also prevents anyone from reporting that such an injunction even exists. While these kinds of super injunctions, which are unique to Britain, work to some extent on the local media, they are no match for a distributed network like Twitter.
After tens of thousands of users started discussing the Giggs case and who was involved, the footballer got a second court order aimed at forcing Twitter to reveal their names and identities. The company hasn’t said how it plans to respond to the order, but the ironic outcome of Giggs’ court orders has been to publicize the very things the plaintiff says he doesn’t want publicized.
If there’s one thing the Internet is good at, it’s distributing information, regardless of whether those who control the information want to see it distributed or not. And this “democracy of distribution,” as Om likes to call it, is particularly powerful when it is combined with a real-time social tool like Twitter. Those forces can help you spread a message, or they can help others spread messages about you — as a British football player has discovered to his chagrin, by trying to prevent not only the media in his country from reporting on his personal life, but all of Twitter as well.
Manchester United player Ryan Giggs started this particular ball rolling earlier this year by getting what is called a “super injunction” in a British court: an order that not only prevents the media from reporting on an affair between Giggs and a prominent reality TV star, but also prevents anyone from reporting that such an injunction even exists. While these kinds of super injunctions, which are unique to Britain, work to some extent on the local media, they are no match for a distributed network like Twitter.
After tens of thousands of users started discussing the Giggs case and who was involved, the footballer got a second court order aimed at forcing Twitter to reveal their names and identities. The company hasn’t said how it plans to respond to the order, but the ironic outcome of Giggs’ court orders has been to publicize the very things the plaintiff says he doesn’t want publicized.
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