Googlization: A New Synonym for Bullying?

            In Siva Vaidhyanathan’s “The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry)”, he introduces and explains the five major “privacy interfaces.”  These domains are essentially what we can control what others know about us, and “each of these interfaces offers varying levels of control and surveillance” (94).  I am going to decipher the fifth major privacy interface, which Vaidhyanathan calls “person to public.”

            As Vaidhyanathan explains it, the “person to public” interface “…is now located largely online” and also that “…people have found their lives exposed, their names and faces ridiculed, and their well-being harmed immeasurably by the rapid proliferation of images, the asocial nature of much ostensibly “social” Web behavior, and the permanence of the digital record” (94).  For example:  A YouTube user named Dylan Weigle uploaded a video of a red-haired kid defending himself along with his other pale-skinned, freckle-faced friends.  The video of this (most commonly known as ginger-kid) was intended for South Park creators to hear and see.  South Park is a very popular, crude, and humorous cartoon on global television, that previously made episodes in which these red-haired, pale-skin, and freckle-covered people are relentlessly picked on and treated differently only because of their physical appearance.  The show actually started the whole joke that gave these kids a nickname, “gingers,” and also stated that they have no souls.  This joke spread like wildfire across the nation and is actually used amongst everyday people like you and I.  After South Park saw this kid’s response video to their jokes about soulless, red-haired kids, they took it to a whole other level—they had one of the main characters, Eric Cartman, pose as this specific “ginger-kid” as they re-made his whole video, heavily mocking him in the process.  Everything I have just mentioned about the red-haired kid, and also South Park, has streamed across the Internet.  It is now one of the top searches on Google and YouTube when one types in “ginger-kid” in the search engine tool-bar.  This kid will forever be associated with this joke put on by South Park as the hits on YouTube (many different uploads pertaining to the same video) reach several million as a whole.  As Vaidhyanathan puts it, this kid’s face has now been publicly ridiculed and that ridicule will continue with the permanence of the digital record (94).  To watch the video on YouTube, follow the link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxocjZ01f2I&feature=related