Reputation: A Numbers Game
According to dictionary.com, reputation is the estimation in which a person or thing is held, esp. by the community or the public generally. Reputations are held in high regard, and people are always concerned about their own. Even OJ Simpson in 1994 preached “clear my name!” from behind bar cells. He was more worried about his reputation than who ‘allegedly’ killed his wife.
Today, in this unique era of real time access to information, we need to be especially careful with how we conduct ourselves. Cell phones, flip cams, blogs, and tweets have made everyone a journalist or critic. Have we lost our privacy rights? Is everyone a gossip queen or king, even if they aren’t documenting the information? Are we are own worst enemies when it comes to violation of our own privacy rights? These are all difficult questions that have equally as complicated answers.
It is interesting to see how some people look at a situation and think there is a direct violation of privacy. Others look at the same scenario and don’t think twice about it. Daniel J. Solove writes in his book “The Future of Reputations: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet” about Qian, a sixteen-year old boy in China. Someone secretly took Qian’s photo and put it on the Internet. His pudgy face became an Internet sensation, with people photoshopping his unique face over well-known pop culture images. Qian, annoyed at first, decided to make the best of the sitiutaoitn, and celebrated his unique fame. If used in an appropriate context, people can take advantage of the vastness and transparency of the Internet.
Another example of privacy being in question is Conan O’brien’s latest ‘stunt’ on Twitter. Conan recently opened his own Twitter account. He has been using it for the past few weeks and up until a few days ago he was following no other users. However, on March 5 he decided to follow one person at random: Sarah Killen. He tweeted that he would be following her and that it was her lucky day. As of March 7 Conan has tweeted only twelve times and has more than 500,000 followers. Clearly he has some influence. Naturally, when he has something to say people are going to recognize it. So when he announced that he would be following one person and choosing at random, it caught the attention of his followers. Here is a chart showing how Sarah’s Twitter presence has increased since Conan’s announcement.
Now, it is apparent that Conan is being innocent and playful, but what if Sarah Killen doesn’t want this kind of attention? Is she comfortable with having 15,000 people checking her status everyday? Maybe she wanted to limit her audience to friends and family, and now her limited intentions have expanded far beyond her expectations. Did Sarah forfeit this right the moment she signed up for Twitter? If Sarah were emotionally effected by this transformation would Conan be held responsible, or Twitter?
It is interesting to think about the rights we give up the moment we sign on to something. It’s as if we are selling our souls to the devil in exchange for some Facebook pictures.
