Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck,
Speaker 1: there's Babs. This is short stuff. Let's go Babs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we talked about this at some point, the Streisand effect,
Speaker 1: wherein when you try to cover something up online, all
Speaker 1: you do is draw more attention to it. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it blows up in your face a ka, backfires Barbara. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I mean Barbara Streisand isn't the first person to
Speaker 1: have something blow up in her face or backfire when
Speaker 1: she tried to censor anything, and yet she got saddled
Speaker 1: with this term. I think it's just a little bit
Speaker 1: of internet justice. Maybe, um, but at the very least,
Speaker 1: we should probably give a little background on what Barbara
Speaker 1: did to try to censor something in the first place
Speaker 1: on the internet that drew the ire that ended up
Speaker 1: getting her saddled with this. Wait a minute, that was
Speaker 1: way too long for a short stuff, Chuck, let's edit
Speaker 1: this out and start over. So in two thousand three,
Speaker 1: Babs sued a photographer his name is Kenneth Adelman, because
Speaker 1: she said, I want you to delete this photo that
Speaker 1: you took from the sky that has my Malibu estate
Speaker 1: in it. She said, will you delete and he said, uh, well,
Speaker 1: first of all, I was I'm not paparazzo. I was
Speaker 1: doing an online project trekking erosion on the coastline. Your
Speaker 1: house happened to be in it, and it's a big
Speaker 1: environmental issue. And she said, well, I don't care. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna sue you for fifty million dollars. Fifty million dollars.
Speaker 1: This guy is not you know, it's not Sheldon Addleson.
Speaker 1: It's Kenneth Addleman. He doesn't have fifty million dollars. And
Speaker 1: she wasn't laying out in the nude. It was just
Speaker 1: her house, right, And again it was part of this
Speaker 1: erosion project. So um, when it got out pretty quickly
Speaker 1: that Barbara Streisan was suing some some guy for fifty
Speaker 1: million dollar dollers, it got picked up by the news
Speaker 1: and a lot of attention was drawn to this previously
Speaker 1: fully overlooked thing, which was the photo of her house
Speaker 1: on the Malibu Coastline. I believe it had been downloaded
Speaker 1: six times in the entire history of that photographs existence, um,
Speaker 1: and two of those times were by her lawyer. But
Speaker 1: I think the number jumped up quite a bit after
Speaker 1: word got out about the lawsuit. Is that not correct, Chuck, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the streisand effect happened and it was downloaded close to
Speaker 1: a half a million, half a million times. And the
Speaker 1: next month after this lawsuit came out, and it prompted
Speaker 1: a blogger from dirt Tech name Michael Masnick to what
Speaker 1: I say, dirt tech, dirt Tech, that's the hillbilly version.
Speaker 1: Uh he he labeled the strice End effect, and it
Speaker 1: kind of took hold. Yeah, it did, um because it's
Speaker 1: catchy and everybody likes Barbra Streisen, but there's also something
Speaker 1: about her that everybody doesn't like to you know, Uh,
Speaker 1: Emily loves her. There's nothing she doesn't like really since
Speaker 1: a little like then No, No, she's a big fan
Speaker 1: of Babs that that Christmas record plays on repeat. Have
Speaker 1: you ever heard well that I'm sure that the answer
Speaker 1: to this is yes. Have you ever heard, um that
Speaker 1: her duets with Barry Gibb Oh? Sure those are great? Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're about as good as a duet gets. And Barbara
Speaker 1: Strasend's great on her own. But I just think personally,
Speaker 1: I get the impression that she's always been the kind
Speaker 1: who would suit just an average person. For fifty million dollars.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean. You've never heard her take
Speaker 1: on jingle bells. I don't think so, which is bizarre
Speaker 1: because I've been on this planet for forty three years,
Speaker 1: and I thought I've heard every Christmas song ever created
Speaker 1: around the world fifty million times. Oh, you would know it.
Speaker 1: It's uh, she she changes it up a lot. I
Speaker 1: gotta hear this. It's jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell,
Speaker 1: jingle love the way. Hey what yes, Chuck, you just
Speaker 1: literally changed my life. Yeah, just go listen to it
Speaker 1: after this. You'll get a kick out of it, all right,
Speaker 1: I definitely will you. You're probably gonna want to throw
Speaker 1: your sound system out the window. Or you might think
Speaker 1: it's the best thing ever. It's it's one of the two. Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe I'll just keep vascillating back and forth. All right,
Speaker 1: So Strice in effect happens, she gets labeled, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: gets named after her. And they've actually been studies on
Speaker 1: this kind of thing since then. There was one in
Speaker 1: China in two thousand eighteen that found out that their
Speaker 1: attempts as a country to block access to Facebook and
Speaker 1: Twitter and other social media sites um that people may
Speaker 1: not have been interested in have they not tried to
Speaker 1: block it? Prompted millions of people UH to download VP
Speaker 1: and software just so they could get access to these sites.
Speaker 1: So it's the whole idea of the forbidden fruit. It's
Speaker 1: like that that UM Chief Wigham telling Ralph to stay
Speaker 1: out of his forbidden closet of mystery. It's like, why
Speaker 1: are you so fascinated with whatever is in my forbidden
Speaker 1: closet of mystery? That's definitely part of it. It's like,
Speaker 1: if you're saying no, you're not allowed to see this,
Speaker 1: you're basically saying, do everything you can to see what
Speaker 1: I'm trying to keep you from seeing. UM. And just
Speaker 1: like how how Streisand's UM house photo that only be
Speaker 1: downloaded six times prior to the lawsuit and then went
Speaker 1: up to four thousand times right after. UM. That's just
Speaker 1: it's just part and parcel with it. If you leave
Speaker 1: it alone. I don't know about China and news of
Speaker 1: democracies and what democracies are doing, that might be an exception,
Speaker 1: but typically if you leave whatever you're trying to censor alone,
Speaker 1: apparently that will that will attract less attention to it
Speaker 1: than than saying like, you're not allowed to hear this.
Speaker 1: This is censored. Yeah, I mean, it's also the conundrum
Speaker 1: that every parent faces every day that their kid grows up.
Speaker 1: Is like everything from curse words like not making a
Speaker 1: big deal about it, to whatever they're watching and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. It's just you know, it's like, well maybe
Speaker 1: if we don't make a big deal out of it,
Speaker 1: it's not going to be a big deal. Yes, there
Speaker 1: is a giant bird and he's yellow and he loves you,
Speaker 1: but you cannot see him. You're not allowed to watch that.
Speaker 1: All right. We're gonna take a break and come back
Speaker 1: and talk about a few other versions of the Strisand
Speaker 1: effect over the years right after this. So I just
Speaker 1: want to point out if you're not gonna laugh at
Speaker 1: my jokes today, I'll laugh at my own jokes. I'll
Speaker 1: be over. Yeah, the big bird joke was a good one,
Speaker 1: all right. So, um, there's a pair of researchers Sue
Speaker 1: Curry Jensen and Brian Martin, and together they kind of
Speaker 1: created this paper partially on the Streisand effect, and they
Speaker 1: gave some other examples, like you know, in addition to
Speaker 1: Barber Streisand and China um banning Twitter and Facebook Um,
Speaker 1: some other other groups have have famously, you know, tried
Speaker 1: to censor things and it's blown up in their face.
Speaker 1: And one of them was I don't remember where we
Speaker 1: talked about it before, but the Mick Libel case, we
Speaker 1: definitely have mentioned it before. Yeah, this was McDonald's in
Speaker 1: the nineties. They sued a couple of volunteers from London
Speaker 1: green Peace because they had put out a pamphlet called
Speaker 1: What's wrong with McDonald's and this, you know, this is
Speaker 1: a street pamphlet. It wasn't even online. I mean, may
Speaker 1: have been at some point, but this is the nineties,
Speaker 1: so you know how pamphlets, it's not like that goes wide. Um,
Speaker 1: they were just pamphlets and they until they got sued
Speaker 1: and the British press got ahold of it, called it,
Speaker 1: like you said, McLibel, and it became the longest running
Speaker 1: civil trial in the history of Britain. And they lost
Speaker 1: that one too, So it's they didn't get the message
Speaker 1: or I guess when was Streisand's was that in the
Speaker 1: eighties Streisan No Streisand's was two thousand three because it
Speaker 1: was really internet project. Yeah, this proceeded Barbara Streisand so
Speaker 1: she hadn't take a note from McDonald's maybe don't bring
Speaker 1: the lawsuit, No, because I mean the fact that it
Speaker 1: was the longest running civil trial. The press stays interested
Speaker 1: in that kind of thing, so pretty frequently they would
Speaker 1: interview the plaintiffs or the defendants in the case and
Speaker 1: they would just give them this big microphone to talk
Speaker 1: about all the horrible things McDonald's was doing. It was
Speaker 1: a It was a bad move on McDonald's part, for sure. Um.
Speaker 1: There was also one, as far as food goes, a
Speaker 1: schoolgirl in Scotland named Martha Payne who was nine at
Speaker 1: the time, back in two thousand twelve, and she sounds
Speaker 1: like one of the cooler nine year olds I've ever
Speaker 1: heard of. She had a food blog, but her food
Speaker 1: blog was about how terrible the food was at her school,
Speaker 1: in her cafeteria, and so she would take pictures of
Speaker 1: her school lunch and posted a picture on her blog
Speaker 1: and talk about the food and all that. And I
Speaker 1: guess Jamie Oliver, who's a well known food guy and
Speaker 1: food communicator, if there is such a thing. Sure, Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: So Jamie Oliver tweeted about it and there was a
Speaker 1: bunch of traffic to her blog, and the local school
Speaker 1: board said, oh, we we can't have this. She's gonna
Speaker 1: make us look dumb, so let's just ban her from
Speaker 1: taking photos in school of her food. Yeah, that didn't
Speaker 1: work out. That blew up in their face as well,
Speaker 1: because then what you end up being accused of is
Speaker 1: like squashing the voice of a child. Um. Kind of
Speaker 1: like what happened recently here in Georgia when that high
Speaker 1: school girl took a picture of her crowded school without masks,
Speaker 1: and they suspended her for like a day. And then
Speaker 1: we're like, uh, never mind, you can. I guess we
Speaker 1: shouldn't try and squash health whistleblowers in high school their
Speaker 1: Torrian sound. Yeah, so they let her back in school too,
Speaker 1: They did. It was it was, it was rough, just
Speaker 1: a very idea that they suspended her for. That is
Speaker 1: really disappointing. What's even more disappointing, though, is that um
Speaker 1: that the two researchers I mentioned early or um they
Speaker 1: basically said, you know, there's some really great famous cases
Speaker 1: about this streisand effect happening, but way more often than not,
Speaker 1: the sensors who are working to censor things, um are
Speaker 1: they do? They they censor and they like the streisand
Speaker 1: effect doesn't happen. It's much more the exception than the rule.
Speaker 1: And that even when UM there is a streisand effect
Speaker 1: to it. There's kind of a playbook what they call
Speaker 1: outrage management UM that's used to kind of keep the
Speaker 1: public outcry against whatever was discovered or the censorship that
Speaker 1: was discovered in in order in manageable, I guess, which
Speaker 1: hence the name. Yeah, it's pretty scuzzy, uh to see
Speaker 1: what they do, but it's sort of right out of
Speaker 1: the playbook that you would expect. Oh, it all sounds
Speaker 1: It sounds very familiar, doesn't it. Yeah, very Bynesian. And
Speaker 1: plus it's just the kind of thing you see all
Speaker 1: the time. You know, they trying to cover up or
Speaker 1: they devalue the target, or they basically lie about it
Speaker 1: and reinterpret it. UM. They Another one is use official
Speaker 1: channels to give an appearance of justice, right and then
Speaker 1: intimidate people. So they gave in this In this article,
Speaker 1: Jansen and Martin gave an example of the Nazis and
Speaker 1: their youthan Asia making air quotes everybody program of people
Speaker 1: with disabilities, and that they used all five methods of
Speaker 1: that UM. They hid the program from the public. That's
Speaker 1: number one. Um, they stigmatized people with disabilities as a
Speaker 1: burden for society. That's devaluing the target. They lied about
Speaker 1: the events, so that's reinterpreting it. Anybody who had a question,
Speaker 1: like a parent of the victim, that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: they would just out and out say, oh, no, they
Speaker 1: died of you know this other this other disease or
Speaker 1: from natural causes or something. They also intimidated parents who
Speaker 1: would not back down into saying, hey, you want to
Speaker 1: lose the rest of your kids, no, well, then be quiet.
Speaker 1: And then they also allowed for formal complaints to be levied. Um.
Speaker 1: But of course they never went anywhere, so it gave
Speaker 1: the appearance of using official channels for justice. So leave
Speaker 1: it to the Nazis to check off all five of
Speaker 1: those scuzzie boxes. Stupid Nazis. Yeah. I think one of
Speaker 1: my favorite cases was when Al Franken, previous to being
Speaker 1: a senator, wrote that book Lies and the lying liars
Speaker 1: who tell them colon a fair and balanced to look
Speaker 1: at the right and and Fox News took him to
Speaker 1: court and says, wait a minute, that's our term fair
Speaker 1: and balance. That's intellectual property and the judge said, no,
Speaker 1: those are just two words that are pretty commonly used. Uh,
Speaker 1: you don't own them. And Al Franken, I imagine as
Speaker 1: soon as he heard that Fox News was suing him,
Speaker 1: was like hit the roof and was like sweet because
Speaker 1: all that did was bring just tons and tons of
Speaker 1: pressed to his new book it was being launched. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I guess it shot right onto the best seller
Speaker 1: list right after that too. So maybe Fox News will
Speaker 1: come and sue us because of our book. Maybe we
Speaker 1: should change the title the Stuff you should Know an
Speaker 1: incomplete compendium of mostly interesting, fair and balanced things. Can
Speaker 1: you believe this title? And then maybe we could get
Speaker 1: taken the court and get a lot of publicity out
Speaker 1: of it. That'd be wonderful, or chuck, if everybody just
Speaker 1: went and bought our book, which you can pre order
Speaker 1: now anywhere books are available, Um, that would have the
Speaker 1: same effect without us having to go through the problem
Speaker 1: being sued. That'd be great too, or having to go
Speaker 1: back and retitle the things you got anything else? I
Speaker 1: don't have anything else. Beautiful segue by the way, nice plug. Uh,
Speaker 1: And since we don't have anything else and we're down
Speaker 1: to plugs, short stuff is app. Stuff you should know
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