Zac Echola is muffin but trouble

Say it: Mass media is dead

Published on 19/07/07
by Zac Echola

This was first meant to simply be a reply to Pramit Singh’s alarmist post, but it grew into something of it’s own.

Singh says:

Sometimes in future you are going to wonder at the amount of data you have left open online – your pictures which you realize must never have been brought in public, your contacts, your rants, abusive blog posts, silly incoherent writing - it is a long list.

You also realize that you spent most of your online time acting like a voyeur. There are footprints that you left behind.

The real voyeurs are those employers and companies that pry into our online lives unprovoked and unnecessarily.

Much of what is on the Internet is not intended for a mass audience and never reaches that–or any–audience.

It is delusional to think that everything that happens online has any relevance beyond its creator’s ego. In the case of drunken Facebook photos between friends, the intent is for other friends to view the photos, not anyone else.

It’s like doing something you wouldn’t want your employer to know about in front of a picture window in your home. About as many people would see it in the end. And let’s face it, you’re at home. On your free time. If you’re employer wants to control your personal life as well as your professional one, then I say they’re not worth working for.

But the Web is permanent, no? Those naughty photos and message board posts from high-school live on forever, right?

Sure, in a sense, but you have to know what you’re looking for. And if you find that someone under your employ is a fan of scat porn, so much a fan of shitting on their lovers that they (gasp) blog about it, what does it matter to your business if they don’t shit on your customers (either literally or figuratively)? Are people really so dumb that they can’t differentiate work from play on the Web? I think not. And I think there’s a generation of kids coming into the work force with a basic understanding of this.

We don’t change the way we act around our friends because our grandmother may be listening, unless we’re sure she may, in fact, be listening. Leaving the front door unlocked is not an invitation to my home. Speaking loudly at the bar does not make eavesdropping on my conversations ethical.

How is a conversation between two friends in a pub different than the same conversation on the Web? Who is the voyeur, really, if the message wasn’t meant for you (or worse yet, you pry the data out)?

The greatest flaw in thinking about the Internet, is thinking that bloggers (including me), Facebook users or people who post photos to flickr want mass attention and fame. We don’t (or at the very least, we don’t expect it). We target our message, whether it be photos of a night out with friends or posts about the Internet, to those few people who might perchance stumble across a slice of our digital selves (key word: slice). We are outliers. We are all Chris Anderson’s Tail.

15 minutes of fame has given way to being famous to 15 people. Mass media is dying, if it isn’t already dead. Get over yourselves.

Isn’t privacy a two-way street?

More thoughts on this to come soon.

The end. Or is it?

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