08:34 AM CST on Saturday, January 27, 2007 by Kathleen Parker for the Orlando Sentinel
Prediction: The new hot thing in our future will be anonymity.
To be un-famous.
To be Googled – and to not be there. No link. No Wiki.
No tube, space or face. No nothing.
It's too late for most adults – anyone with a job, a driver's license
or a signature on a public document. But in a world where anyone can be
known, what could be cooler than not being known? In a
celebrity-saturated culture, what could be hotter than not being a
celebrity?
You may have noticed that celebrity ain't what
it used to be. Where there was once hard work and accomplishment behind
one's being awarded celebrity status, today one need only wake up, plug
in the video cam and hit a button.
Voila! Insta-fame.
Time was, one had to do something to earn fame. Write a best-seller;
break a world record; find a cure. Now, one can be famous for being
famous. Think Paris Hilton, the most Googled person of 2006.
Thanks to people like Ms. Hilton, being anonymous is not, alas, high on
most people's agendas, especially among the 20-something crowd, the
so-called millennial generation.
On YouTube, millions
post everything from Saddam Hussein's execution to two guys being funny
in a dorm room. In some cases, really funny.
Millions of
others keep up with friends and make new ones on Facebook and MySpace,
where they post their biographies – and photographs many will live to
regret.
Both sites require membership to enter and
permission from owners to access personal areas. That seems civilized
enough, even though recent lawsuits against MySpace's parent company,
News Corp., on negligence and other charges related to adults' stalking
underage users, suggest that privacy is never absolute.
Other new Internet developments are less respectful of ownership. With
the advent of cellphone cameras and video, anyone can be made
involuntarily famous. The option of being unknown is practically nil,
while privacy may be unattainable.
The Wall Street Journal recently
reported on new snoop sites where people can anonymously post reports
about other people's foibles – everything from littering to bad parking
to, well, you know what you do. And now everyone else can know, too.
Thinking of slipping into a handicapped parking space? You may find
yourself posted at Caughtya.org. Drop your candy wrapper on the ground?
You may show up at LitterButt.com.
Shaming is back, say
observers of the trend. And while a little shame might be helpful in
curbing boorishness, snooping is another level of rude behavior. In
democratizing technology, we've also empowered the tiny-minded and the
underemployed. Everyone's a potential paparazzo.
Do we
really want to live in a world populated by nosy neighbors with nothing
better to do? Or who harbor malice toward another? Will cell stalking
become the latest misdemeanor?
Anonymity, meanwhile,
belongs only to the snoops and spies, who can blog someone's overheard
telephone conversation or capture a couple's quarrel and post it for
millions to see. No name, no blame. Only shame for the victims of
tattletales run amok.
On the plus side, video technology
has the potential to effect positive social change. In Los Angeles, Cop
Watch solicits pictures of people being abused by the police. In Iraq,
citizens are reporting events that otherwise might go unrecorded.
But in the personal realm, the bad may outweigh the good until we find
a balance between what we can do and what we should do. In the interim,
you should assume that wherever you are, whatever you're doing, someone
is watching through a lens darkly.
Pssst! Just between us, KATHLEEN PARKER is a columnist for the Orlando Sentinel. Her e-mail is kparker@kparker.com.
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