Good point, Roger -
There are times in which the role of 'curation' in terms of online
experimentation or even its conceptualization isn't executed well, and there
can be unexpected results. Perhaps this is proof that art still has some
power, however...
I hope that this is not off topic. I feel a little odd in this discussion,
as 'identity' is an issue I work with in other guises. This is a sticky
matter, when there are archives at The Way Back Machine, and so on that
leave a trail well affter the initial problem is gone. There are two
instances that I'd like to address.
For example, there are groups that co-opt identity in the Tactical Media
community for positive social change. There are plagiarist, The Yes Men,
Hacktivist, irational, and many others who have used corporate media
identity as critical tool. Fortunately, 90% of these are well-thought out,
insightful crritiques (most of the time), but what happens when an identity
hack is done without aplomb?
Or worse yet, what if one of 'the good guys' gets intervened upon? This can
be a bit of a problem, as the half-life of online media can be longer than
expected, if you know where to look. There may be ways to use 'identity
correction' methods to remedy this, but but I want to be cautious in
offering methodologies at the moment.
My best uunderstanding of reversing this is to follow up with the search
engines and archives in ensuring that as much of the material is removed as
possible. This can be lengthy, but may be worth the work.
For example, a colleague of mine (a 3D Animation instructor) had some of the
text from an entry in a CGI modelling contest, including his name, in the
'junk text' of several porn sites. This text is often used in the body of
html to throw off spam filters and SafeSearch engines. Because of his
ethhnicity and family sttatus, he was absolutely mortified to learn his name
(as well as several student) had been linked to the porn site.
However, he had pursued the mattered and worked with google and Yahoo to
reverse the matter, and it was eventually taken care of.
The alteration of media identity, intentional or not, has immense power.
I'm sorry to see one of our community inadvertantly (I would certainly hope
that it was inadvertant) be hurt by a media effect that, if well-thought out
in the proper tactical intervention, can have fantastic potential for
positive social activism.
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