Streisand Effect

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

Basically, this phenomenon is where attempts to censor something have the opposite effect. The phenomenon gets its name from a controversy where Barbara Streisand tried to get an already low-key image of her house taken off a publicly available website cataloging california coastal erosion. Because she tried to censor it, it ended up becoming widely popular, far more than would have been the case if the issue were just left alone. Other examples include 09 f9, the Church of Scientology's attempts to control all media reporting of itself, etc. Whenever new expression is suppressed, new creative ways of distributing the information become available.

So I ask you guys: what is it that causes human minds to want to do this. Does "Information wants to be free, yo" truly apply to the human consciousness? Or is it something that is merely an expression of curiosity?

Maybe it appeals to our problem solving nature?

Dunno, maybe it's because of Chever Guevara.

This reminds me of an incident a few years back, when Kelsey Grammer somehow thought that porn mogul Seth Warshavsky had acquired a sex tape featuring him. In fact Warshavsky did not have a video of Grammer, but he immediately posted a hefty bounty for the video, since by suing him Grammer tipped his hand that a video not only existed, but was in circulation somewhere.

Was there anyone else featured in KG's sex tape?

The Streisan Effect is byproduct of really huge celebrity egos.




BTW do all gay men worship Barbara?

It's quite evident in 9/11 and flying saucer discussions where the more attempts are made to deny something the more suspicions are raised as to why the suppression attempts are so strong. The old saying that where there's smoke there's fire. It was used successfully by G.W.Bush to get the war started over WMDs.

Firstly, it's difficult to know the extent or pervasiveness of the effect precisely because where the effect does not manifest, the information remains low key. We know of instances where it did manifest, but cannot measure this against instances where things were successfully hushed up without the effect manifesting.

As to why it manifests, well human interest etc is relevant, but this is down-stream from the initial 'trigger' which is the spectacle of someone being indiscreet about their attempt to be discreet. Indiscreet attempts at discretion signal to others that there is something someone thinks is worth hiding, and what would be worth hiding other than something interesting or important to know?

Indeed it does!

Don't forget Madonna.

No one knows, the tape never surfaced. I can't imagine there would have been a huge market for a Kelsey Grammer sex tape myself, but then again I'm not an internet pornography kingpin, so what do I know?

simple:
Some people want to know the truth, but everyone wants to know a secret.

The Danish Muhammed cartoons are another great example. They were only made so famous because of the uprising against them. If they had been let go at the beginning, no press coverage about the cartoons would've been made.

Bingo. Secrets are social currency you buy and trade influence in relationships with them (to oversimplify and put things bluntly) the more popular or successful the owner of the secret the more valuable it is (as you can "sell" other peoples secrets to increase your own popularity aka gossip).

QFT

as mentioned before; never attribute to conspiracy that which can be explained by stupidity...