Normally, this column deals with celebrity gossip; a manifestation of my obsession with sordid celebrities and their expensive clothes, gross relationships and overall uselessness. I read about it on the Internet on websites such as www.dlisted.com and www.thesuperficial.com; I peruse People and Us Weekly; I try to catch TMZ on television whenever I can.
As I mentioned in the first edition of this column, I validate this vice with the idea that celebrities invite media attention, so our discussion – and judgment – of them is to be expected. But it’s different with private figures. Me, you, any other random person on this campus – most of us deserve a right to privacy. If you’re not an elected official (such as Student Government Association President Andrew Friedson or President-elect Jonathan Sachs) or someone who thrusts himself or herself into the public eye (such as high-profile student athletes like basketball players Bambale Osby or Marissa Coleman), your personal actions should be just that – personal.
But thanks to the new website www.gossipreport.com, anyone can get on the Internet and anonymously libel anyone else. In a press release, the website claims it “allows fraternities, sororities and college students to anonymously gossip about average people and everyday life,” and if you go to the website itself, you can – instead of creating a profile about yourself, as you do on Facebook or MySpace – “create a profile about someone else.”
Divided into different sections – “WWGD?,” “G Spot,” “G Blog,” “G Parties” and “Karma” – the website allows you to gossip and invite others to do so, too.
But the important thing here is that you can create profiles of other people without them knowing. Click on some of them, and some seem real, some seem fake. Examples: Cara Davis, supposedly from Raleigh, N.C., supposedly attending Wake Technical Community College. There’s a picture of her and two threads labeling her as “trashy.” Stories about her include an anecdote labeled “hilarious revenge!!!” in which user “String Leader” talks about how her boyfriend tied her up and “called her a lying whore,” leaving her to “yell at her parents to come upstairs to uncuff her, and there they found all of their precious daughter’s sex toys and dress-up sex costumes laying on the bed.”
Maybe true? But if this girl does exist, wouldn’t she be on Facebook? Isn’t that where these haters would have stolen her picture from? Curious.
Similarly annoying: that website co-creator Elizabeth Bloch claims in the website’s press release that the site will “remove ‘trashy’ gossip,” but also states that people will be rated in three categories: “personality, looks and in bed.” Hypocritical much?
Bloch also says, “We have created tools to encourage valuable gossip and discourage trash talk,” but what exactly is “valuable” gossip? Isn’t all gossip inherently mean, under-handed and spiteful? Why try to present the website as something more than it is? Claiming the mission of the website is “to raise the level of conversation [in order to] teach people how to gossip constructively” is not only foolish but also ignores the inherent point of gossip.
And public forums like this are not only libelous, but can also possibly ruin people’s careers and futures. Last year, The Washington Post wrote a story about a law-school message board on AutoAdmit that contained “hundreds of chats posted by anonymous users that feature derisive statements about women, gays, blacks, Asians and Jews. In scores of messages, the users disparage individuals by name or other personally identifying information. Some of the messages included false claims about sexual activity and diseases.”
In reality, we all talk about one another. In middle school, we passed notes; now we Google Chat and Facebook-message about people we don’t like. But publishing those thoughts, without any evidence, on a public forum for all to see is a different matter entirely.
On the Internet, what is to keep falsities from being passed off as truths? Celebrity gossip websites often back up their juicy tidbits with pictures and on-the-record sources, while public forum websites don’t require either. All you need is a vendetta and the Internet. Thanks to www.gossipreport.com, you now have both.
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