For Thursday at 4 p.m., please consult the article below and relate it to Keen's concerns in THE CULT OF THE AMATEUR.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/08/us/08duke.html?emc=eta1
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A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce, or a tragedy, or perhaps both. -- James Madison
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man that is not news,
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dog, that is news.”
- Editor John B. Bogart, New York Sun
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16 comments:
Honestly, people are not that stupid. If you graduate from Duke you should know better than to put anything on the internet you don't want every single person in the world to see. The internet is infamous for spreading everything from pictures to rumors to fake emails throughout cyber space.
Keen is worried that we are too dependent on technology and that we are becoming more and more of a society built on adn around amateurs instead of experts. This girl who decided to waste her time making a fake thesis about her sex life is obviously not an expert at having any common sense.. and is definitely an amateur at being an attention seeking woman. So, maybe Keen is right. He's worried we are not as intelligent anymore, that we don't have any experts in specific fields. Well, did anyone ask what type of degree this girl graduated with? Did she graduate with honors? No one really cares. At all. She is now just a column in the gossip section and probably will never become an expert in whatever field it is she studied in between having sex with student athletes at Duke.
This article is a good example of some of Keen's concerns in The Cult of the Amateur. Firstly, what this girl did is completely egocentric. Not because the way she did it, rating her sexual partners and what not, but because she sent it to people. She obviously wanted people to think she was cool or cleaver or whatever she wanted them to think. Keen would say wanted to be "the news," but she wanted to limit her audience. It just didn't work out in her favor.
Now, all of us do this on some level with social networking sites. We give people a glimpse into our lives. But this girl gave people way more than a glimpse. On the other hand, she also made the lacrosse players the news, and we don't know how they reacted to it.
I know people say don't put anything on the Internet that you wouldn't want the world to see. I think this makes a lot of sense because with technology these days what you post or email has the potential to be seen by the world. But, the reality of the situation is that people do not always think like that. It is obvious from the ways in which people damage themselves via the Internet, and what is more scary is the potential people have to damage others. One click of a camera on a bad night and you could be all over Facebook in the morning.
I think that this article shows that Keen's concerns have some validity to them. However, I also think that there is a definite solution, or at least a way to attempt a solution.
In the age of the Internet, a dumb girl who wrote a dumb fake thesis about her sex life with student athletes can become news, which is something that's, well, dumb.
That is the kind of thing our culture seems to be interested in now.
I think what is really important is that cases like this, as well as cases where people don't get jobs because of pictures on facebook, etc, don't have to continue forever.
The fact that information on the Internet can go around the world and back and really just starting to be realized by the world. Kids should be taught in school the dangers of this, and what to post and what not to post. I think that if people are educated in the correct way, things like this would not happen nearly as often, and Keen could eventually be proven wrong.
The article about the Duke student who posted the 42 page Power Point presentation of her 13 student athletes sexual liaisons is an example in Keen’s book that all people desire personal attention. Although, Karen Owen did not intend for it to get viral and be posted all throughout the internet, she still sent it to her friends who sent it to their friends and the rest was history. The main purpose of Owen’s presentation was to gain some kind of attention or feedback from her friends not knowing that she’d receive it from the world.
According to Keen, the idea that websites would pick it up, post it and forward it to more websites shows that people are attracted to the dumb and entertaining parts of information instead of reading something such as a Shakespeare play, or a well written essay on world issues. Instead people are focused on how many men a random girl sleeps with. No one seems to care that such content could reach a child in his or her home.
Keen’s theory on democratizing the internet shows that just about everything gets past through the web. Whether it’s a clip from Jerry Springer, someone starring at themselves in the camera, a person in an accident, a band’s music video, Sesame Street episodes, a celebrity slip up photo, etc. When all forms of media are able to be shown or picked up without censorship, then room for privacy becomes little to none. Although, this college girl made an unethical and dumb decision, her professional life could most likely be ruined.
Keen enlightens his readers about the notion that the world is “flattening” out into a bunch of amateurs, relinquishing the need for experts. The student from Duke exposed those amateurs by drawing an enormous amount of interest with her thesis paper. She should have known better than to create a joke thesis instead of focusing her time and energy on an actual thesis. Did she really think the world would be better off knowing about her sexual encounters as opposed to reading anything intelligent she had to say? The sad part is she was probably right. She received way more acknowledgment by spicing things up a bit than she would have gotten by writing a more educational thesis that everyone else has to write (yawn). However, now that she’s had her 15 minutes of fame she won’t go nearly as far in life with this scandal following her everywhere she goes.
I honestly see very little wrong with Ms. Owens' actions, outside of perhaps trusting her friends to keep the email she sent out between themselves. We have ALL done something jokingly or in jest for the benefit and approval of our friends. Is it, maybe, odd this particular information is something that she wanted to share with her friends? Sure, but unless her email read "forward freely" at the end, I doubt she ever intended for her little project to become the sensation that it apparently has.
The real problem here is that our society is so interested in this kind of raunchy gossip that her friends read the power-point presentation and instantly thought of several people whom the author likely didn't know that would "just love this!" and sent it along. Each pair of eyes that saw the power-point likewise thought that they could tickle their friends, or some online community they belong to, by sharing the presentation and suddenly a personal joke between friends has become a public display.
I'm not sure how to relate this to Keen because I understand sharing a joke with friends. In an age where discussing sexual exploits openly is not taboo, Owens' thesis is just a creative project that was intended for the benefit of herself and her friends. She may not have minded her friends sharing originally, but I doubt she thought that anyone she or her friends trusted would make it so widely available. If anything, I have to disagree with Owens' wanting to "be the news"; I honestly think she simply intended to do something a little more creative for a laugh between friends (questionable subject matter or not). I don't blame her for including names in her thesis, because I doubt she foresaw the thesis going viral. I may have to argue that the friends - and then strangers - who decided to further share the video/post it on blogs and online communities are the amateurs who were seeking to be the news and impress people with a "hey, check out this funny, raunchy power point I found!". These are the people who are really lacking respect and foresight, spreading a (semi)private project intended for a limited audience with complete disregard for the privacy of the author and the athletes she named in her thesis (a list which would have been harmful if OTHERS hadn't felt the need to share with strangers for a cheap laugh).
If this had stayed between friends I don't think there would have been anything wrong with Owens' thesis and people wouldn't be scorning her and calling her names all over the net.
I found the whole situation ridiculously hilarious. However, this is not a sole indicator that the internet is the real reason this spread. I say this recognizing that the battlefield is and was on the internet, but it only served to expedite the situation. I feel that this was just a way more public version of say, telling an inappropriate joke about a teacher that was spread through the students and eventually reached the principal.
What I am saying is that stupid people have always made stupid decisions, and more often then not it comes back to bite them in the ass. This has just been a very public display of stupidity. As other blog-posters have said, you can not put something on the internet and not expect it to be public, the internet IS public. But it's not necessarily the internets fault that this has happened, its the fault of the person who created the power point.
I have en issue agreeing entirely with anything Keen has to say because his book is just short of being a Rant on a blog or a public forum. I agree with cultural flattening issues and how democratization of the web isnt a GREAT thing, but every point that Keen makes is'nt as golden as others.
Keen's concerns in The Cult of the Amateur are very valid in the NYT article.
In the book, he covers an interesting topic: people have a huge desire for attention. This girl made a stupid choice to goof off and make a lame Power Point about her sexual excursions, and that was her mistake. That was her, as someone else said, definitely being an idiot and an "amateur" of common sense. She didn't think. Most people, when they post to the Internet, don't think.
My mom once said to me that stuff that gets posted to the Internet is kind of like being posted on today's front page of a newspaper. It's bound to go viral. And it did.
I am not finding a strong connection between this article and The Cult of the Amateur. Keen talks extensively about how the democracy of Internet allows a lot of junk to be published and in that sense the article applies. I am going to have to disagree with those of you who have said that Ms. Owen was seeking attention. I believe that she was just trying to make a joke with her friends, who obviously could not be trusted, and was not seeking any recognition from a mass audience. She is obviously embarrassed that the mock thesis has gone viral because she has not made a public comment. Owen had a major lapse in judgment and she will have to suffer the consequences, possibly for the rest of her life. Yes, what she did was stupid, but like "Fagnani" said, that is not the real issue. The problem is that people care about Owen's sexual exploits and are wasting their time reading about it. The problem is that the Times is writing an article about it. One could argue that the Times wrote the article in order to warn our generation about the dangers of posting private information on the Internet, but I think that is only part of it. The article included a lot of details, exposed who Owen was, and gave the mock thesis more national attention.
That this went viral so quickly on the Internet is more of a testament to what we as a society view as interesting and news and less as an example of the failings of the Internet.
I heard this story a couple weeks, maybe even a month ago, on Jezebel I think, and I read the powerpoint. While not wholly innocuous, her biggest mistake was including real names. If she new she was going to put this on the Internet, she should have known that it had the possibility of going viral and been respectful to the identities of the guys she talked about.
In actuality, the reaction and response against her and Duke might prove that we are getting smarter when it comes to "noble amateurs," and thus, an antithesis to Keen's argument. We all read it and we all passed it around, but, for the most part, people knew it was a pretty shitty thing to do (by which I mean not the actual "gathering" of the information, but rather, putting it online). That's why Duke is so worried about its reputation now. If Keen is suggesting that we are unaware of who is an amateur and who is a professional, then I think the spread of this powerpoint shows that we know who is DEFINITELY NOT a professional. The Internet didn't invade these guys' privacy. She did. Though the Internet did both expedite the situation as well as amplify it, the fault remains solely on her shoulders
The article relates to Keene’s ideas expressed in his book to the T. He explains how people are dependent on the internet and crave attention. By this girl posting her personal information and thinking that no one will get a hold of it is absolutely absurd. Obviously this smart girl has gone on the internet before and knows that things spread. By thinking that sharing something personal on the internet will not go viral and will not by seen by many people she was definitely mistaken. She is an “amateur” of knowing what is right and wrong, and thinking that something this personal will remain this personal. If you don’t want something to spread then keep it to yourself. Even showing one person could lead to other people seeing it and later becoming the top story in the New York Times, as it so did.
Unless I'm missing something, everyone in the class writing "she should have known this would happen when she posted it" is not reading the article correctly. Where did Owens post it? From what I got from the article, she emailed it to some select friends who probably knew exactly what was being talked about in the "thesis" and were "in" on the joke. I email things to my little brother or my dad or aunt sometimes that might be inappropriate for, say, another family member to see but I don't expect the recipient of the email to turn around on facebook and go "look what matt just sent me everybody!". I still believe the problem here is not the thesis being made or shared with FRIENDS but the fact that our society finds so much fascination and entertainment with these kinds of things that others felt the need to share it with strangers.
To me this article illustrates the power of the Internet and the power that any user is instantly endowed with. This is a problem Keen has with the World Wide Web. Average people have the power to disseminate sensitive information to millions if they so choose and if the content is “juicy” enough.
In this case, a girl’s sexual history was sent to a lot more people that she really bargained for. By sending this out to friends, she was giving them the choice of whether to make the thesis viewable by one person or over one million persons.
This, to me, is the dark side of the Internet. A few years back there was a viral video of a kid performing to Star Wars esque light saber moves with a golf ball retriever. The video inevitably went viral, but was posted without the permission of the subject. As a result the embarrassing swords dance has been seen by over 19 million people on Youtube, all against the will of it’s subject. This is the same type of situation, but instead of a nerdy kid’s embarrassing dance, it was a woman’s sexual history.
Everything has the power to go viral because everyone has the power to publish something to sites that can be viewed by everyone with an Internet connection. Everything that is not in direct control of the subject or the creator is safe from going viral.
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