the book groundswell starts out with a story about Barbara Streisand complaining about a photo project that covered the entire California coast. she wanted pictures of her house taken down. of course, this spread throughout the internet, and there was a lot of publicity (mostly negative) about her. was the complaint worth it?
today, a model demanded that google take down remarks about her that were written on someone’s blog (hosted on google – nothing to do with search) – article here. now, when you search her name, the first 10 to 15 links on google are all articles about her lawsuit. the main article, “Skanks in New York”, was #2 on LA’s Buzz List for January 7th. No image links. She is a model, right?
this may be good publicity for her. i never heard of her, and i’ve just blogged about her. but is all publicity good? will this be good for her career? think about, one person wrote something nasty about her (maybe true, maybe not), probably 30-50 people read it. She takes offense, sues, and now millions of people read it.
it just goes to show, you can’t control what’s said on the internet. if you try to correct something, depending on how you do it, you’ll most likely end up exacerbating the problem. be careful with what you say! also be careful with how you react! don’t forget Liskula Cohen!
#1 by Liskula on March 9, 2009 - 10:15 am
Hi, just clicked my way to your site. Interesting perspective. But you are right, people should be careful what they say. And they should have learned that lesson in grade school. As for the blog, I don’t care. Yes it hurt my feelings for a day or so, and yes if I knew the media was going to pick this up and turn it into a media circus… would I have pursued it..No, although I do believe that it is a fight worthy fighting… So I have quite literally been thrown into this fire, and I will stand up for what I think is right. People should be responsible for what they say, its that simple. The freedom of speech is a wonderful thing, but when you are going to use the constitution to hurt others, for no apparent reason. To defame someone out of boredom or jealousy.
#2 by Adam Ainbinder on March 9, 2009 - 5:35 pm
Liskula, thanks for responding to my blog. I think standing up for what you believe is important. I used this as an example of the power of the internet, good or bad. It really is amazing how people will take whatever is said and draw it out, particularly if its a way for the media to blow up a story that isn’t a big deal. anyways, fight the good fight and good luck!