The Happy Moron

And the police get mad if you hunt illegally.

(Summary – Guys hunt ducks (illegally), put video up on youtube. Video gets popular, people say “Oh the poor ducks”, police get wind, say “Hey, that’s illegal, is it not?”, guys get busted, learn lesson(hopefully))

The problem with publishing stuff to the internet is that there’s this great conflict of interest going on.

The first half of the conflict is that you want people to know about it. That’s why you put it up. You want strangers to know about it, because you don’t get 60K views from just your friends. The point is to make it public.

Unfortunately, no-one is really familiar with the side effects and consequences of having everybody know about something.

We’re familar with one possible outcome (you get 15 million hits and become Internet Famous and get a book deal) but that’s probably the least likely of all possible outcomes. Unfortunately it’s the outcome we hear most about, because it’s the most sensational. This has the effect of totally messing up our assessment of likelihood, because our brains are wired to think that the more we hear about something, the more common it is.

That’s the first half of the conflict. We put stuff up to get seen.

The second half of the conflict is that pretty much the only think that makes privacy kinda maybe sorta work on the internet is that nobody cares about you.

There is no privacy. There is only obscurity. Which, of course, is the very thing that you destroy by achieving the goal of being seen.

And, of course, you can’t control the actions of other people once they notice you.

He added, however, that the matter had taken on a life of its own through the internet and that commentators, in his view, took advantage of the circumstances.

“What we didn’t appreciate,” Fraser said, “was the fact that various hunter associations and groups decided to make us their poster boy to try to make themselves look better.”

That says it all, really.

Most people aren’t famous; most people aren’t used to being famous (even for 15 minutes). Most people don’t know the costs, don’t know the benefits. By most people, I mean me. And my ilk.

Of course, we’re learning more about this stuff on a daily basis.

Make sure it’s not illegal before you post it.