Short Stuff: Streisand Effect

with this term. I think it's just a little bit of internet justice. Maybe, um, but at the very least, we should probably give a little background on what Barbara did to try to censor something in the first place on the internet that drew the ire that ended up getting her saddled with this. Wait a minute, that was way too long for a short stuff, Chuck, let's edit

this out and start over. So in two thousand three, Babs sued a photographer his name is Kenneth Adelman, because she said, I want you to delete this photo that you took from the sky that has my Malibu estate in it. She said, will you delete and he said, uh, well, first of all, I was I'm not paparazzo. I was doing an online project trekking erosion on the coastline. Your house happened to be in it, and it's a big environmental issue. And she said, well, I don't care. I'm

gonna sue you for fifty million dollars. Fifty million dollars. This guy is not you know, it's not Sheldon Addleson. It's Kenneth Addleman. He doesn't have fifty million dollars. And she wasn't laying out in the nude. It was just her house, right, And again it was part of this

erosion project. So um, when it got out pretty quickly that Barbara Streisan was suing some some guy for fifty million dollar dollers, it got picked up by the news and a lot of attention was drawn to this previously fully overlooked thing, which was the photo of her house on the Malibu Coastline. I believe it had been downloaded six times in the entire history of that photographs existence, um, and two of those times were by her lawyer. But I think the number jumped up quite a bit after

word got out about the lawsuit. Is that not correct, Chuck, Yeah, the streisand effect happened and it was downloaded close to a half a million, half a million times. And the next month after this lawsuit came out, and it prompted a blogger from dirt Tech name Michael Masnick to what I say, dirt tech, dirt Tech, that's the hillbilly version. Uh he he labeled the strice End effect, and it

kind of took hold. Yeah, it did, um because it's catchy and everybody likes Barbra Streisen, but there's also something about her that everybody doesn't like to you know, Uh, Emily loves her. There's nothing she doesn't like really since a little like then No, No, she's a big fan of Babs that that Christmas record plays on repeat. Have you ever heard well that I'm sure that the answer to this is yes. Have you ever heard, um that her duets with Barry Gibb Oh? Sure those are great? Okay, Yeah,

they're about as good as a duet gets. And Barbara Strasend's great on her own. But I just think personally, I get the impression that she's always been the kind who would suit just an average person. For fifty million dollars. You know what I mean. You've never heard her take on jingle bells. I don't think so, which is bizarre because I've been on this planet for forty three years, and I thought I've heard every Christmas song ever created

around the world fifty million times. Oh, you would know it. It's uh, she she changes it up a lot. I gotta hear this. It's jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle love the way. Hey what yes, Chuck, you just literally changed my life. Yeah, just go listen to it after this. You'll get a kick out of it, all right, I definitely will you. You're probably gonna want to throw your sound system out the window. Or you might think it's the best thing ever. It's it's one of the two. Okay,

maybe I'll just keep vascillating back and forth. All right, So Strice in effect happens, she gets labeled, uh, you know, gets named after her. And they've actually been studies on this kind of thing since then. There was one in China in two thousand eighteen that found out that their attempts as a country to block access to Facebook and Twitter and other social media sites um that people may not have been interested in have they not tried to

block it? Prompted millions of people UH to download VP and software just so they could get access to these sites. So it's the whole idea of the forbidden fruit. It's like that that UM Chief Wigham telling Ralph to stay out of his forbidden closet of mystery. It's like, why are you so fascinated with whatever is in my forbidden

closet of mystery? That's definitely part of it. It's like, if you're saying no, you're not allowed to see this, you're basically saying, do everything you can to see what I'm trying to keep you from seeing. UM. And just like how how Streisand's UM house photo that only be downloaded six times prior to the lawsuit and then went up to four thousand times right after. UM. That's just it's just part and parcel with it. If you leave

it alone. I don't know about China and news of democracies and what democracies are doing, that might be an exception, but typically if you leave whatever you're trying to censor alone, apparently that will that will attract less attention to it than than saying like, you're not allowed to hear this. This is censored. Yeah, I mean, it's also the conundrum that every parent faces every day that their kid grows up.

Is like everything from curse words like not making a big deal about it, to whatever they're watching and stuff like that. It's just you know, it's like, well maybe if we don't make a big deal out of it, it's not going to be a big deal. Yes, there is a giant bird and he's yellow and he loves you, but you cannot see him. You're not allowed to watch that. All right. We're gonna take a break and come back and talk about a few other versions of the Strisand

effect over the years right after this. So I just want to point out if you're not gonna laugh at my jokes today, I'll laugh at my own jokes. I'll be over. Yeah, the big bird joke was a good one,

all right. So, um, there's a pair of researchers Sue Curry Jensen and Brian Martin, and together they kind of created this paper partially on the Streisand effect, and they gave some other examples, like you know, in addition to Barber Streisand and China um banning Twitter and Facebook Um, some other other groups have have famously, you know, tried to censor things and it's blown up in their face. And one of them was I don't remember where we talked about it before, but the Mick Libel case, we

definitely have mentioned it before. Yeah, this was McDonald's in the nineties. They sued a couple of volunteers from London green Peace because they had put out a pamphlet called What's wrong with McDonald's and this, you know, this is a street pamphlet. It wasn't even online. I mean, may have been at some point, but this is the nineties,

so you know how pamphlets, it's not like that goes wide. Um, they were just pamphlets and they until they got sued and the British press got ahold of it, called it, like you said, McLibel, and it became the longest running civil trial in the history of Britain. And they lost that one too, So it's they didn't get the message or I guess when was Streisand's was that in the eighties Streisan No Streisand's was two thousand three because it

was really internet project. Yeah, this proceeded Barbara Streisand so she hadn't take a note from McDonald's maybe don't bring the lawsuit, No, because I mean the fact that it was the longest running civil trial. The press stays interested in that kind of thing, so pretty frequently they would interview the plaintiffs or the defendants in the case and they would just give them this big microphone to talk about all the horrible things McDonald's was doing. It was

a It was a bad move on McDonald's part, for sure. Um. There was also one, as far as food goes, a schoolgirl in Scotland named Martha Payne who was nine at the time, back in two thousand twelve, and she sounds like one of the cooler nine year olds I've ever heard of. She had a food blog, but her food blog was about how terrible the food was at her school, in her cafeteria, and so she would take pictures of her school lunch and posted a picture on her blog

and talk about the food and all that. And I guess Jamie Oliver, who's a well known food guy and food communicator, if there is such a thing. Sure, Um, yeah, So Jamie Oliver tweeted about it and there was a bunch of traffic to her blog, and the local school board said, oh, we we can't have this. She's gonna make us look dumb, so let's just ban her from taking photos in school of her food. Yeah, that didn't

work out. That blew up in their face as well, because then what you end up being accused of is like squashing the voice of a child. Um. Kind of like what happened recently here in Georgia when that high school girl took a picture of her crowded school without masks, and they suspended her for like a day. And then we're like, uh, never mind, you can. I guess we shouldn't try and squash health whistleblowers in high school their Torrian sound. Yeah, so they let her back in school too,

They did. It was it was, it was rough, just a very idea that they suspended her for. That is really disappointing. What's even more disappointing, though, is that um that the two researchers I mentioned early or um they basically said, you know, there's some really great famous cases about this streisand effect happening, but way more often than not, the sensors who are working to censor things, um are they do? They they censor and they like the streisand

effect doesn't happen. It's much more the exception than the rule. And that even when UM there is a streisand effect to it. There's kind of a playbook what they call outrage management UM that's used to kind of keep the public outcry against whatever was discovered or the censorship that was discovered in in order in manageable, I guess, which hence the name. Yeah, it's pretty scuzzy, uh to see what they do, but it's sort of right out of the playbook that you would expect. Oh, it all sounds

It sounds very familiar, doesn't it. Yeah, very Bynesian. And plus it's just the kind of thing you see all the time. You know, they trying to cover up or they devalue the target, or they basically lie about it and reinterpret it. UM. They Another one is use official channels to give an appearance of justice, right and then

intimidate people. So they gave in this In this article, Jansen and Martin gave an example of the Nazis and their youthan Asia making air quotes everybody program of people with disabilities, and that they used all five methods of that UM. They hid the program from the public. That's number one. Um, they stigmatized people with disabilities as a burden for society. That's devaluing the target. They lied about

the events, so that's reinterpreting it. Anybody who had a question, like a parent of the victim, that kind of thing, they would just out and out say, oh, no, they died of you know this other this other disease or from natural causes or something. They also intimidated parents who would not back down into saying, hey, you want to lose the rest of your kids, no, well, then be quiet.

And then they also allowed for formal complaints to be levied. Um. But of course they never went anywhere, so it gave the appearance of using official channels for justice. So leave it to the Nazis to check off all five of

those scuzzie boxes. Stupid Nazis. Yeah. I think one of my favorite cases was when Al Franken, previous to being a senator, wrote that book Lies and the lying liars who tell them colon a fair and balanced to look at the right and and Fox News took him to court and says, wait a minute, that's our term fair and balance. That's intellectual property and the judge said, no, those are just two words that are pretty commonly used. Uh,

you don't own them. And Al Franken, I imagine as soon as he heard that Fox News was suing him, was like hit the roof and was like sweet because all that did was bring just tons and tons of pressed to his new book it was being launched. Yeah, and I guess it shot right onto the best seller list right after that too. So maybe Fox News will come and sue us because of our book. Maybe we should change the title the Stuff you should Know an

incomplete compendium of mostly interesting, fair and balanced things. Can you believe this title? And then maybe we could get taken the court and get a lot of publicity out of it. That'd be wonderful, or chuck, if everybody just went and bought our book, which you can pre order now anywhere books are available, Um, that would have the same effect without us having to go through the problem being sued. That'd be great too, or having to go back and retitle the things you got anything else? I

don't have anything else. Beautiful segue by the way, nice plug. Uh, And since we don't have anything else and we're down to plugs, short stuff is app. Stuff you should know is production of iHeart Radios. How stuff works for more podcasts for my heart Radio? Is it the iHeart Radio app? Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H