The Internet — Enabler of Guilty Pleasures

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "'Sure, the Internet has revolutionized the spread of information and all that high-minded stuff, but its combination of reach and anonymity also makes it the greatest enabler of guilty pleasures ever invented,' Jason Fry writes in the Wall Street Journal. 'Indulgence is just a click away, and nobody needs to know, except you and some server somewhere.' For example: Fry, a rock snob, has a double secret life as a pop-music fan (secret no more, of course). From the article: 'If your secret love of "Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy)" has caused it to creep into your iTunes list of 25 most-played songs, a simple right-click will let you reset the play count. If you want to hear Fall Out Boy, but would rather do so in secret, you can command Last.fm to ignore that the song was played — or delete it from your charts if you forget. Viewed from the standpoint of cool logic, this behavior is at least mildly insane. But who needs things that remind us of who we really are, as opposed to how we want others to see us — or how we'd like to see ourselves?'"

Comments

Oh so true

[lixee]

I caught myself watching MTV's "Wanna come in" few minutes ago and gave myself a slap.

Re:Oh so true

[tehwebguy]

i think the point is that you can be more secretive.. it doesn't take the kind of balls to do something online it might take to do in front of a store full of people (or even just one guy behind a counter)

Guilty pleasures?

[Anonymous Coward]

If by "guilty pleasures" you mean jacking it to man-on-man pornos while refreshing slashdot in another tab, well ALL ABOARD THE SLASHDOT EXPRESS!

Re:Guilty pleasures?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"If by "guilty pleasures" you mean jacking it to man-on-man pornos while refreshing slashdot in another tab, well ALL ABOARD THE SLASHDOT EXPRESS!"

Speak for yourself. I visit Digg, too!

Wasn't it easier to do these things decades ago?

[nEoN nOoDlE]

How does any of the write-up make sense? If I wanted to listen to New Kids on the Block without letting my Metallica friends know, I'd just go out and buy the tape and hide it in a different place than my regular tapes. The only person who'd know is me and the record store guy, and he cares less than some server somewhere since he probably doesn't keep records of every customer and every tape they bought. Whereas now, who cares if you could reset the play counter? Your friends are still gonna know if you have an N'Sync album on your iTunes because it's all there on the list.

Not just "mildly" insane

[blueZ3]

First off, people who care that much about what others think about their taste in music (or food, clothes, whatever) are in need of serious psychological help. If you don't have the self-confidence to like what you like, and the hell with the rest of the world, you are (in my book) suffering the deepest kind of herd mentality that deserves disdain at every level.

But more to the point, who in the world has other people looking at their iTunes playlist? If someone is looking at my PC and browsing my iTunes library, I suspect that they probably know me well enough to know of my love of 50's car songs (Jan and Dean & The Beach Boys) and penchant for listening to Weird Al's Starwars songs.

I have to ask what type of paranoid thinks that the whole world is trying to ferret out their listening habits...

Re:Not just "mildly" insane

[greg_barton]

If you don't have the self-confidence to like what you like, and the hell with the rest of the world, you are (in my book) suffering the deepest kind of herd mentality that deserves disdain at every level.

So, what you're saying is, "If you don't defy the herd, the herd should enforce herd defiance behavior!"

Welcome to the herd, bubba!

Re:Not just "mildly" insane

[FooAtWFU]

First off, people who care that much about what others think about their taste in music (or food, clothes, whatever) are in need of serious psychological help. If you don't have the self-confidence to like what you like, and the hell with the rest of the world, you are (in my book) suffering the deepest kind of herd mentality that deserves disdain at every level.

Slow down, tiger. To some extent, this sort of behaviour (especially at, say, the high-school-ish age level) is part of a search for belonging, and (some people more so than others) are unfortunate enough to be surrounded by a shallow sort of a society where the price of belonging is to maintain certain superficial things - tastes in music, for instance. Some people, if they were found out to like certain things, would be soundly ridiculed, and possibly alienated. Not everyone has the strength to stand up in the face of social isolation. Some people might already be somewhat ostracized. Do they "deserve disdain at every level" for seeking the approval - or even the begrudging acceptance - of peers? I don't think so. The search for belonging, approval, acceptance... that's a basic human impulse.

I'm not saying that it's spectacularly noble, or healthy, or The Thing To Do, but just... something as vehement as "disdain at every level" is too much.

Now, excuse me Slashdot, pop psychology mode off as I return to listening to Enya...

Re:Not just "mildly" insane

[aussersterne]

The respect of others creates real economic and political benefits that can't simply be written off with a sweep of the "if they don't like me, damn them, I'm me!"

The "herd mentality" doesn't arise from simple moral weakness and the desire to be loved, it arises becuase we are social beings in a social world. You can build rapport with people and get better service, a better chance of being hired for the job, a better deal on your new car, a more beautiful wife...

That rapport consists in large part of sharing likes and dislikes or at the very least not radically contradicting the personal prejudices and preferences of those whose favor you hope to gain.

I'm not saying you should kiss ass always and pretend to love everything the boss loves in order to get a raise. Far from it, I'm more the type to speak my mind and suffer for it later, while watching someone else climb the ladder in my place, sometimes with regret, sometimes not. I don't make a value judgment about that or try to wear it like a badge of honor, my point is to say that the construction of personal cool isn't simply a neurosis that happens in a vacuum, it's a deliberate strategy based on the specific network of social relationships and interaction that surrounds a person, and each person would do better to consider it as such rather than to simply take a position in the "Either you're a member of the herd or you're a rebel!" dichotomy and stake it out like dogma, though of course your position on the "herd mentality" is also another such social marker that will endear you to some and not to others as well.

Re:how pop?

[kfg]

. . .any god fearing man. . .

If God wants take issue with me he come on around and I'll mmmmmmmm bop 'im.

KFG

Clerks 2

[Rik Sweeney]

I think they put it best in Clerks 2:

"What's the point of having an internet connection if you're not using it to look up weird fucked up pictures of dirty sex you'd never have yourself?"

Anonymity?

[HugePedlar]

'Indulgence is just a click away, and nobody needs to know, except you and some server somewhere.'

Tell that to those AOL users. ;)

That one chick from Hanson is really hot!

[spun]

(Family Guy reference in case you didn't know)

Peter Griffin - If you could have any woman in the world, who would it be?
Quagmire - Taylor Hanson.
Joe Swanson - Taylor Hanson is a guy.
  [Pause]
Quagmire - [Laughs] You guys are yankin' me. "Hey, let's put one over on old Quagmire."
Peter - No, he's actually a guy, Quagmire.
Quagmire - What? That's insane. That's impossible.
  [Pause]
Quagmire - Oh god. Oh my god. I've got all these magazines. Oh god.

Re:That one chick from Hanson is really hot!

[bickerdyke]

Now let's talk about "Tokio Hotel"...

Fear not upright moral citizen!!!

[Churla]

Our brave US Attorney General is trying to get congress to make ISP's track every website you visit so you can go back to avoiding things you don't want others to know about.

In other news...

[PHAEDRU5]

Your guilty pleasures are a subpoena away from being public knowledge.

Re:The internet is really really rad!

[ahsile]

The internet is for porn!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=eMs_OjoBRcY

Re:Wasn't it easier to do these things decades ago

[soft_guy]

If I wanted to listen to New Kids on the Block without letting my Metallica friends know, I'd just go out and buy the tape and hide it in a different place than my regular tapes.

What is this "tape" you speak of?

He's posting from 1986.

Welcome to the real world

[Moraelin]

Actually, read some books on anthropology and you'll discover that it's more common and pervasive than you'd think. It's, in fact, so pervasive, that any poll asking people anything about themselves will basically get a bunch of more socially-acceptable lies, rather than the truth.

Actually, let me rephrase that: it's also not about consciously deciding to tell a lie, or actually being paranoid that someone will rummage through your computer. It's that humans have their own ideal of "what I _should_ be like", and from there use selective confirmation to "filter" the real "I" into fitting that ideal. It's not even as much for the benefit of others, as for one's own benefit. People need to believe that they're, basically, better than they really are.

If you will, it's sorta how every good Christian believes that someone else will go to Hell, but noone believes that he'll personally go there. If someone defines himself as a good Christian, he will distort his perception and memories to see himself actually fitting that ideal. He'll remember the time when he did something good and in line with God's commandments, but conveniently forget the times when he did nasty stuff that goes right against those commandments.

And I'm not just picking on Christians there, as the same applies to everyone and everything else. Good citizen, upstanding pillar of the community, patriot, charitable, top-notch computer expert, l33t h4xxx0r, teen rebel, good parent, whatever. If you define yourself as X, you'll distort your perception and memory to see yourself fitting the X ideal more than you actually do.

And, just for your entertainment or enlightenment (whichever you choose), here are some RL examples picked by anthropologists:

E.g., when asked to define themeselves, most members of a tribal community all claimed to be hunters and warriors. In reality, they had in the meantime turned mostly into peaceful agricultors. (Civilization can creep up on someone like that.) Extremely had actually used a weapon in years, or even owned one any more. But their culture was so biased towards hunters/warriors, that everyone basically kept viewing themselves as one even long past the point where it had become a lie.

E.g., a community defined itself as a shiny-happy model of cooperation where people help each other all the time, even help each other build a house and work together in the fields and everything. And everyone would cheefully tell you that they're still like that, and help each other all the time. The only problem is that the last time anyone helped another build a house was IIRC in the 50's, and they weren't helping each other work the fields any more either. But somehow kept believing that they do.

E.g., during a crisis where meat prices went up, they polled the people in some communities about what will they do. And everyone said basically "screw this, I'm not paying this much. I'll eat less meat until prices come back down to normal." The problem? According to both the sales data _and_ sifting through people's thrash to see what packaging they're throwing away (yes, they actually did that), people were buying _more_ meat than before. Go figure.

It may seem illogical to you (and maybe even is), but that's what humans do and how human society functions. In other words, welcome to the real world.