Micah ([info]micahellison) wrote in [info]blog_sociology,
@ 2004-03-27 20:02:00
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Operation Jour de Poisson: Meme Deception in LiveJournal
For those of you not on [info]moroveus's friends list, well, I'm sorry, you should be, he's a very entertaining guy, and his posts always have content, whether or not you agree with them.

But that's not what this post is about.

It's about his Operation Jour de Poisson, a project in which he decided to make a very pro-Pledge-of-Allegiance-in-classrooms meme, with an image of a flag and the text "one nation under God" superimposed over it. He added some vague text that could support the issue either way to it, but it looks like it very vehemently supports the image. He then joined tons of communities, mostly very Christian-conservative ones, and spread the meme. Tons of people took the bait (hence its name, "Jour de Poisson", which means "Day of Fish", the French version of April Fool's Day). Then he changed the image to somerthing very against putting God in the Pledge of Allegiance. Chaos ensued (read the comments).

Putting your opinion on God in the Pledge of Allegiance aside, I want to know what you think about this sort of chicanery. Is it moral? More importantly, is it immoral enough that actions should be taken against this sort of behavior? This is the first instance of meme deception that I've ever seen, but I think it may become more commonplace as the blogosphere continues to mature (or age, depending on your take on this sort of thing).

So, tell me what you think.

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[info]mr_dark
2004-03-27 08:59 pm UTC (link)
I think this whole thing is the equivalent of questioning the morality surrounding 13-year-old boys making prank calls asking about Prince Albert in a can or running refrigerators.

I mean, it has to be a -little- mature and intelligent to merit a sociological debate, right?

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[info]micahellison
2004-03-27 10:10 pm UTC (link)
Au contraire, I think the subject of immaturity is extremely important in sociological debate, especially in a society where people of all ages can participate.

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[info]ex_snej373
2004-03-27 09:15 pm UTC (link)
Ha! This is a lovely example of what every programmer knows, that pointer indirection can get you into trouble, i.e. the data the pointer points to could change without your knowing it.

This also reminds me of when one of my ljfriends posted a comment in my journal saying "This picture made me think of you..." followed by a very large photo of a penis. I was sort of taken aback. Then I looked at the picture's URL and found that it's from somethingawful.com, a humor site -- and the real picture at that URL was innocuous enough, but apparently the site admins dislike having external links to their images, so they have their server substitute the huge-spurting-penis picture if the referer header comes from outside their site.

Fortunately I was able to delete the comment before many people (incl my parents) saw it...

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[info]micahellison
2004-03-27 10:11 pm UTC (link)
Haha, yeah, the SomethingAwful guys are infamous for that, and tend to be very, very against remote-linking (probably because the whole Internet loves to link to their images).

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[info]jonah
2004-03-27 09:22 pm UTC (link)
I think it is immoral and an abuse of communication technology.

Why not hack into someone's journal and write a bunch of crap to make them look bad? Why not put a nasty bumper sticker on their car that they wouldn't agree with? Why not spread lies and gossip about someone else to all their friends? Heck, why not just put a "kick me" sign on their back?

It's lame and a waste of time, amusement at someone else's expense. The best jokes and the best sense of humor are when both parties can laugh. Sure, you can use April Fool's Day as an excuse, but I still don't think you should fuck with people, especially with such a sensitive issue such as this. There are much better ways to facilitate a debate than pissing people off through trickery and deceit. You need to gain people's trust and respect, otherwise they won't give a crap what you are talking about, no matter how rational or good you think your argument is.

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[info]micahellison
2004-03-27 10:23 pm UTC (link)
But what's the severity of the problem? Is it worth it for, say, the LJ Abuse folks to attack it? It is deliberately misleading, but, at the same time, nobody forced anyone to do it. And it doesn't seem to be in violation of the LJ TOS either. For all I can see, there's no mechanism beyond user education to prevent this sort of stuff from becoming widespread.

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[info]jonah
2004-03-27 10:49 pm UTC (link)
With the TOS, at worst case one could see it as "Content created solely to harass another user" or "Content intended to interfere with another user's use of the site."

He is obviously pissing people off... I don't know if you think this is a problem or not. And how does one go about educating people on how to trust others? I see what he did as a form of trolling. Too bad LJ doesn't have a karma system in place, like Slashdot.org

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[info]micahellison
2004-03-27 10:53 pm UTC (link)
"Too bad LJ doesn't have a karma system in place"

Ahh, yeah, that would be really handy. It's too bad that it doesn't. The closest thing we have, really, is "Friend of", and that never says enough. =(

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[info]discoflamingo
2004-03-27 11:06 pm UTC (link)
I think /. karma is a bad example - Advogato, maybe.

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[info]purejuice
2004-03-28 06:56 am UTC (link)
can you provide a link to slashdot's karma system? thanks.

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[info]purejuice
2004-03-28 07:08 am UTC (link)
and advogato, please?

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[info]discoflamingo
2004-03-29 09:03 pm UTC (link)
Slashdot Karma - Comments and Moderation.

Advogato - Caution: Overly Technical Explanation

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[info]purejuice
2004-03-30 06:21 am UTC (link)
oh goodie, thank you.

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[info]juliann
2004-03-28 07:19 am UTC (link)
Annoying and harassing are still different. Harassment is generally targetting an individual and making repeated attempts to disturb them. (And when speaking in legal terms it's a lot more than that before it becomes "harassment")

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[info]khristomophelle
2004-03-27 09:30 pm UTC (link)
This shouldn't come as too much of a shock. Whether or not it is moral, there should always be caution in these kinds of things. Plus, this is the internet: with such anonymity, one should expect there to be people like this who will mess around with what they can in order to get a few laughs (however childish). The internet isn't some pure place of honest friendship and love for one's fellow human. Many might wish it would be, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't take these kinds of things with a grain of salt right from the beginning.

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[info]micahellison
2004-03-27 10:19 pm UTC (link)
That's my initial reaction, too: the Internet is mean, so don't let it take it advantage of you. At the same time, though, simply accepting its negative sides will usually tend to make folks more uninterested in "fixing" its the problems, and we wouldn't be getting very far if that were the case. Popular forums like Slashdot or SomethingAwful would be hell without all the rules and systems they use.

The real question, to me, anyway, is, what's the fix?

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[info]discoflamingo
2004-03-27 11:10 pm UTC (link)
The problem of negativity, immaturity, and cynicism is not endemic to the Internet - it's fairly standard fare for anywhere in the world.

And the Slashdot system is pretty much a joke - it's designed to weed out the spammers, crapflooders, and basic idiot trolls. It fails as a system of trust because /. Karma exists as a system with rules that make people feel like they can trust the numbers to tell them who to trust.

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[info]khristomophelle
2004-03-28 11:31 am UTC (link)
Well, no one can sensibly expect there to be a one-for-all "fix" to rudeness on the internet. In cases like these, ignoring will do a lot more than complaining, because complaining is bound to result in flame wars by people who take things a bit too seriously. Since this is taking place in someone's personal journal, and not a community, it's easy to ignore.

When flaming and harassment take place in communities that are supposed to be open, welcoming, and friendly environments, that's when it becomes a troubling issue. One of the fabulous (or not-so-fabulous) things about the internet is that anyone can say (almost) whatever they want with a chance of getting read. However, on whose website they're doing this is another matter, and when rude comments or tricks played end up in something getting deleted by someone in a moderating position, chaos ensues. People shout out TYRANNY! and OPPRESSION! and label the moderator(s) in question as fascist dictators who should be put on trial for heinous crimes. We've all seen that in one place or another.

So for personal websites or blogs, I'd just ignore them and move on. For communities or forums, I'd request something get done. If nothing gets done in such a case, I'd move on and find somewhere better. One advantage the internet has in dealing with such behaviour is that it's easier to ignore such things. If people behaved this way in real life, it's much harder just to simply ignore.

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[info]discoflamingo
2004-03-27 10:44 pm UTC (link)
People see what they want to see, and people fool themselves more often than they are themselves fooled.

Unlike great power, anonymity does not come with great responsibility.

I don't see where the harm is - I don't see how this is immoral. Deceptive, certainly - but I don't think it's worthy of moral sanctioning.

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[info]micahellison
2004-03-27 10:48 pm UTC (link)
"I don't see where the harm is - I don't see how this is immoral. Deceptive, certainly - but I don't think it's worthy of moral sanctioning."

But isn't deception immoral, unless it's for causes that are moral?

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[info]discoflamingo
2004-03-27 11:04 pm UTC (link)
That depends what you mean by "deception". Because on the Internet, nobody knows you're really a super-intelligent dog. Or an ordinary hamster with a spellchecker.

And no, the ends do not always justify the means. Certain people have responsibilities to uphold honesty with those they share a particular type of relationship with.

It is human nature to deceive one's self and others. How honest is any one person with themself that they can be perfectly honest with everybody else? Not many, since most people who believe they are basically honest are lying to themselves.

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[info]juliann
2004-03-28 07:21 am UTC (link)
Doesn't that beg the question of morality? I have issues with that term to the point where I'm really not sure that deception is immoral across the board.

I would however call it unethical, ethics being definable by the group in which the actor exists and not by some outside criteria.

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[info]welfy
2004-03-27 10:46 pm UTC (link)
That's too bad. I think that is rude.

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[info]walpurgis01
2004-03-28 12:01 am UTC (link)
Well, the image is certainly rude, but it is not against God but in favour of a clear separation of religion and state, which is what the U.S. is currently lacking, IMHO.

When I lived in America as a foreigner (and yes, I do love your country, and I'm very fond of you people), I found the American obsession with flags, anthems and national pride extremely offensive. I went to an American school that did not do this pledge of allegiance thing, and I don't want to know how sixteen-year-old me would have reacted if they had made me do it. No other western democracy is so obsessed with national pride, and I quite welcome the fact that there are people who challenge it.

That said, there's no need to call other people names.

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[info]purejuice
2004-03-28 06:53 am UTC (link)
yeah, i think its immoral.
(see dante, eighth circle.)
this bothers me far less than the tactical backlash -- wingnuts aggrieved by proponents of separation of church and state, now all seen as deceitful motherfuckers.

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[info]ertla
2004-03-28 07:24 am UTC (link)
If he called it 'jour de poisson', where this could be seen, then I find he's in a long tradition of April Fool's pranks. Sure, the average unilingual Christian (not french!) would misread that as 'day of the fish', with the fish being a symbol of their god. But they were warned. That puts it in the same tradition as faked announcements from management, dated 1 April, and otherwise as realistic as possible, except for the implausible (and generally satirical) content. It's also in the traditions of the postings from 'kremvax', an imaginary computer system in the Kremlin, which used to appear regularly on Usenet each April.

For maximum good taste, he should have made the switch on 1 April, whihc he clearly cannot have done, given when I'm reading this posting.

That said, meme deception is potentially extremely annoying, particularly when it becomes a general thing. I half expect gags at the beginning of April, and am only moderately annoyed to fall for them. I'd probably avoid an environment where such things were a daily routine.

Still, I don't think it's particularly immoral, or not more immoral than e.g. posting flame bait. And on the third hand, things can be forbidden or blocked even if they aren't immoral; this could lead to some commmunities forbidding memes entirely, or forbidding offsite links in meme output. That would perhaps be a shame.

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[info]micahellison
2004-03-28 07:33 am UTC (link)
"...this could lead to some commmunities forbidding memes entirely, or forbidding offsite links in meme output. That would perhaps be a shame."

I was rather thinking the opposite, that less image memes would be better, for the most part, as they tend to lack original insight and could be called just "information pollution," for lack of a better word. But that's just my take. =P

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[info]happyelfling
2004-03-28 09:28 am UTC (link)
Agreed. I know I'm not the only one who thinks image memes are silly and is annoyed when half my friends page has the same one...

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[info]zare_k
2004-03-28 10:40 am UTC (link)
Eh. I don't think that kind of bait and switch behavior is especially honorable. If one has a point there are better ways to make it, and I think this shows a lack of maturity. On the other hand, there are better ways to make a statement of opinion that linking to someone's image meme. Also, I think people need to remember that they don't control the external content that they link to-- it can be deleted, moved, changed, etc. This prank falls well short of more serious behavior like spreading false or degrading information about someone, actively harrassing a user or group, and so on. It's annoying but not really worth getting bent out of shape about.

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[info]jennyweatherup
2004-03-28 03:24 pm UTC (link)
I think it's a nasty prank, though I also think the 'victims' of the joke are probably overreacting. I can't see this really harming anyone that much, since it seems like the only potential harms I can see are embarrassment or frustration.

I would probably be a bit peeved if I were in the position of one of the pro-pledgers; it would be frustrating for a person to 'express' themselves with a political meme and later find that the meme in their personal journal expressed a viewpoint that was diametrecally opposed to their own beliefs. It might have been less annoying if it was done on April first, since people would be more willing to shrug it off as a joke.

That said, I don't find this particular switch to be that terrible, since it didn't incorporate obscene or innately offensive language or imagery. I don't understand why the people who posted the meme would make the effort to comment/flame at all. It seems easier to delete the meme and, if one is somehow that worried about giving friends a false impression, quickly explain the mistake. Though I wouldn't mind taking action in cases where the joke was more extreme (for example, if the revised image/text was "not safe for work"), I don't know whether this prank is offensive enough to warrant intervention.

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HE won't join, so...
[info]wraithtdk
2004-03-29 09:31 am UTC (link)
From [info]genericcow

Damn you, friends only!
Well, the community I tried posting to is friends only, and I have no interest in becoming friends with it, so I'll simply link to req's journal, and state that this is my reaction to morveous' prank.

One problem I see with the prank is that there's no sister prank to the flip-side of the issue. Where's the anti-pledge meme followed by subbing in a pro-pledge picture? The sad fact here is that if the people that took the bait were instead the ones who thought and enacted the joke, you all would've been much madder, and this would've been one more bit of ammo to use against the christian-conservatives.

Aside from that, I ask this: what purpose did it serve? I mean, given the fact that he didn't make a sister-prank for a liberal group, I have to assume that moroveus is at least leaning to the left. So how does this prank help a liberal cause? It doesn't. What it does is this: it tells everyone who catches wind of this that liberals are deceitful little bitches (a) afraid to just come out and speak their views, instead resorting to a prank that offers the victims no substantial way to rebuff, and (b) exactly the kind of thing they pretend to be fighting against. A lot of liberals have been waxing for years now on the lies and deceit by Bush's administration. How does this prank make them look any better?

I chalk this up to one more highschool knowitall thinking he's smarter than his parents. He may be in college (or past that) and not living with his parents, but clearly he hasn't moved beyond that phase of life yet.

PS: I invite moroveus and anyone else to post here if they choose. I'm not on friend's only posting (except for not-for-work posts) and I'm not about screening responses to my journal, because it defeats the purpose of making a journal on a public website.

Current Mood: annoyed
Current Music: Elton John - Rocket Man

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Re: HE won't join, so...
[info]wraithtdk
2004-03-29 09:32 am UTC (link)
For the record, I agree.

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[info]grendelkhan
2004-04-02 12:40 pm UTC (link)
But, you see, people who copy and paste memes are retarded. There's nothing clever or innovative about reposting the same crap hundreds, if not thousands, of other twits have put in their own journals. They're not adding any actual content.

Folks got what they deserved. I'd be saying the same thing if someone had baited-and-switched one of those insipid colorbars.

So, yeah. It was moral. It's always moral to mock the stupid and lazy. (Lazy, I say, because if one really wanted to take a stand on an issue, one would write their own damned opinion about it, which would take more than fifteen seconds of effort.)

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[info]micahellison
2004-04-02 04:16 pm UTC (link)
Harsh words, but actually a little similar to my take. I still think it's a Bad Thing(TM) to deceive people into appearing to endorse something they don't agree with (especially in this case, where it accomplishes next to nothing), but, at the same time, this is a shot in the battle against annoying, cookie-cutter memes.

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