Okay, I’ll admit it. The main reason I haven’t done the “old profile/new profile” thing or the “10 years ago vs now” “aging harder” meme is because I don’t have ready access to any pictures from ten years ago. Sad but true. This article from Wired raises some great points about the meme, though, and legitimate concerns that come with it. What’s grabbing my attention right now is the ready list of potential abuses that sprang to my mind, even though I didn’t think of them before I read this article.
I’m about to date myself here (ironic in a post about ways to abuse a meme relating to aging) but I remember cyberpunk. I loved that stuff. I couldn’t get enough of it. When I was a kid we couldn’t afford a computer, so everything in those books seemed even more distant and fantastic. What I do remember as a hallmark of the genre was the paranoia. If something bad could be done, especially with information or human life, it would be done.
And no one powerful would face consequences, ever.
Cyberpunk felt less relevant to me as I grew up, studied archaeology, and became an adult. I worked for corporations now, and I had a better understanding of how machines and networks operated. I grasped the laws better. Sure, they got broken. But consequences existed, and there were real benefits to many of these applications and networks.
Then 2016 happened.
I don’t want to turn this into a political soapbox. (I’m a bisexual woman, writing LGBTQ+ fiction, in 2019. I haven’t been subtle about my leanings.) What I do want is to shine a light, just for a moment, on how the 2016 election made a lot of people look at our very real vulnerabilities and rethink how we interact online.
I’ll talk about Facebook, because they’re a giant and they’re mentioned specifically in the article. Their effect on the 2016 election is fairly well documented, too. The author of the above article mentions how they would have participated in the “aging harder” meme ten years ago, but now they’re thinking twice about it.
Think about all of those “get to know me” memes, or even better all the fun little games we play on Facebook. Find your Goth Punk Reindeer Stripper Name! Choose your first name from this list, which comes from your birth month. The second name comes from your mother’s maiden name…
They’re fun, and they’re cute, and thousands of people post their responses for the whole world to see. I’m obviously exaggerating there, but many of these “games” incorporate common security questions for financial services websites.
When I was a young kid reading a lot of cyberpunk, I would have backed away. I’d have read the game, and answered it in my head, but I wouldn’t have posted the answer publicly. (Hey, I did mention we couldn’t afford a computer, right? Don’t go putting any special virtue on me.) Then as I got older, I figured I was just being paranoid.
Now I’m feeling like those authors were right. I see a meme like the “aging harder” meme, and I don’t just wonder who could be abusing it. I have a list of ways it’s being abused, a list of “next steps” for abuse, and now I’m looking over my shoulder for the next unmarked car.
None of which stops me from posting other pictures, so I guess the lesson hasn’t quite sunk in yet. Also, my Goth Punk Reindeer Stripper name is Pulcheria Vixen.