May 2009 Archives

Does this image scare you?

The internet juggernaut needs to grease its wheels. Google Maps is facing opposition from several fronts: Japan, Greece, the UK, and even within the US by the Pentagon. In response to complaints in Japan, where population density makes scarce space and privacy even more precious, Google agreed to lower its Street View cameras on cars by 40cm (16in).

In the UK, residents form angry human barriers stopping Google Street View cars from filming their homes.

Greece's Hellenic Data Protection Authority rises up with the fiercest protest, banning filming until further information is granted.

"Google" for bizarre Street View shots, and get funny and candid shots of people around the world. Spaniards flipping the cameras, a couple on holiday in Rome, American houses and cars on fire, citizens under arrest—the private lives of others become internet sensations for our amusement.

What initiated as helpful directions to locate addresses now borders on the invasive when cameras can shoot over fences into your home, à la a Banksy painting . Just as we exercise sensible caution when posting our lives onto social networks, the international response to the growing effort to film, well, everything, puts us on the edge.

The "25 Random Things About Me" meme that wound its way through the Facebook circuit in recent months felt like a watershed moment for the site, with an impact that echoed far beyond the site and into the popular media with a depth and speed that was astonishing for what is basically a get-to-know-you chain letter. It seemed to be the absolute pinnacle of that delicate line between mere share and overshare: designed to be more penetrating and revealing than a simple status update, yet with all the same lightening velocity.

This came amid Facebook's highly-publicized, unsteady (and ongoing) first steps toward monetization. A lightbulb must have gone off somewhere because just as the steam ran out of "25 Random Things," the now-ubiquitous quizzes began to explode across the network. In essence, the endless quizzes offer the same satisfaction as the 25 Things meme did, with the added stickiness of endless pop-culture references and comparisons (apparently we love to equate ourselves with animals, movie characters, and songs), lots of little buttons to click, and -- the biggest difference -- the quizzes are full-blown applications, rather than simply cut-and-paste text.

Like with most FB trends, I resisted the barrage of quizzes until it seemed to reach critical mass, and the truth is (what the hell): they're fun after all. I'm glad that if I was a cult movie character I would be The Dude from The Big Lebowski, and if I was a fantasy creature I would be a Phoenix. These quizzes are flattering in the same way that reading your horoscope is flattering. They appear to distill all of your strengths and virtues into a few easy-to-digest images, and as an added fuzzy-warmth: all of your friends will know it too.

While we haven't seen much in the way of advertising pop up on the quiz apps yet, that must be at least part of the next step in the quest to turn Facebook into a money-maker. Not surprisingly, the quizzes have become so pervasive that several methods have come about to block them from your newsfeed, among them the One-Click Quiz Blocker (itself a Facebook application) and the GreaseMonkey Script known as Facebook Purity, which operates as an add-on in Firefox. I suspect these will become a lot more popular in coming months. After all, there are only so many cultural touchstones to compare ourselves with. While I'm at it, here's an idea for a new quiz: which slightly amusing but useless Facebook quiz are you?