Allison Stokke, John Seigenthaler and Wikipedia: Managing Notoriety in the Age of the Internet

In the era of Twitter, Youtube, and viral phenomenon, seemingly any act can be recorded, shared, and commented on. Sometimes the video or picture dies a lonely, neglected death on the internet. Other times, people cannot get enough of it. Take, for example, the saga of the "Star Wars Kid". During some free time in 2002, one Ghyslain Raza made a video of himself frenetically swinging around a golf ball retriever in a rather fervent, albeit humorous, fashion. His peers found the tape and posted the video online. By April 2003 Raza had been officially dubbed the "Star Wars Kid", and millions had seen the video. Once in a digital medium, the video was endlessly copied and transmitted, reuploaded in mashups and parodies (1). By late 2006, Viral marketing company The Viral Factory estimated that Raza's performance was the most viewed viral video of all time, with a staggering 900 million page views (2).

In an era when amateur actors, comedians, film producers and artists often use social-driven media to try and "break out" and be discovered (hopefully to parlay their ephemeral fame into physical cash), Raza did not enjoy the spotlight. According to MSNBC, Raza, "devastated by his sudden celebrity and the relentless teasing that came with it," dropped out of school and sought psychiatric treatment. His parents sued the families of the two teens responsible for uploading the video (3). An out-of-court settlement was eventually reached, but that's not much comfort for Raza, who apparently was thinking about changing his name over the two-minute clip.

Raza is among a growing number of accidental internet celebrities. Many try to capitalize. Many just grin and bear it, hoping the limelight will fade quickly-as was the case of Miss Teen South Carolina, Caitlin Upton, whose rambling and nonsensical response to a pageant question was branded on tshirts and became its own catchphrase (3).

Another young adult who suffered under internet noteriety was fetching pole-vaulter Allison Stokke. In 2007 a blogger received a photo of Stokke taken at a track-and-field meet and posted to a California prep track web site. The blogger, Matt Ufford, saw the attractive athlete as perfect for his male-oriented sports blog, WithLeather. And so he posted the pictures. From there, dozens of blogs and message boards copied the images (4).

Stokke had dealt with unwanted attention and pictures before. But now twice as many photographers were coming to her meets, and her high school was receiving calls requesting a photo shoot. The photos had disseminated to so many sites that it was impossible to delete all the files, even if webmasters complied with her wishes (4). Moreover, many people were well within their rights and copyrights to take the photos-they certainly weren't risque, and by being such a good pole-vaulter (as well as attractive) Stokke had set herself up for the attention, even if she hadn't realized it at the time-a cautionary tale.

The curious duality of the internet is that it simultaneously enables people to reach small audiences worldwide as internet celebrities (5), and can also catapault a chosen few beyond niche status and into the general consciousness-whether they want to or not. And of course, attempts to shut down the unwanted content can create more news and more content in response. And that brings us to Wikipedia.

Billed as the "encyclopedia anyone can edit", Wikipedia is a repository for many facets of internet culture, including the internet celebrity. The threshold for inclusion (that is, having a page on the site) is generally that there are nontrivial mentions of the subject in multiple reliable sources. While it at first sounds restrictive, such a bar is surprisingly low. Star Wars Kid's meteoric rise to fame (and the lawsuits it spawned) resulted in many stories being run by the blog flotsam of the internet, but also respected publications such as Newsweek, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times. As such, one could write a small, but entirely verifiable and fact-checked, article about Raza. And so it exists.

Notice, however, that the Wikipedia entry does not contain Raza's name; that's for a good reason. In the mid 2000s, Wikipedia was hit with a number of hoaxes and scandals as it grew in size and popularity-in one publicized instance, journalist John Seigenthaler's entry contained false statements that Seigenthaler had been investigated for a connection to the JFK assassination. This was untrue, yet it remained on the page for months (see "Wikipedia biography controversy"). In all these examples, things on the internet-whether pictures, videos, blog posts or incorrect information on Wikipedia-had tangible effects on the real-world life of the subjects.

Wikipedia's response to these ethical issues has been the creation of the "BLP" or Biographies of Living Persons policy. The policy has several components; aside from making recommendations on keeping biographies neutral and clean of bad content, it strengthens sourcing requirements, allows for on-the-spot, no-questions-asked removal of possible bad edits, and that people notable for only one event may simply be wiped entirely (6).

Of course, this is well and good, but the policy still has to be applied. Recently, there was a large debate over whether a biography of Rachel Uchitel should exist. Uchitel is one of Tiger Wood's alleged mistresses-however, she was also the subject of coverage due to the death of her husband in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, as due to her work as a nightclub manager. These were marginal mentions, but the sources existed-so did this mean she had exceeded the coverage threshold to be deleted for only one event? (As of writing, the article has been deleted, but discussed continues on whether to undelete it.)

Even if Wikipedia practices the conservative policy of "do no harm", Wikipedia is only one small (and public) part of the internet. Stokke's bio was duly scrubbed from the wiki, but her pictures will remain circulating on the internet, and she'll have to deal with that continued attention as long as she competes and keeps her name out there. Even if names are removed from Wikipedia, they will remain accessible in other places (or even on old mirrors of Wikipedia that have not been updated.)

Ultimately, the best hope for keeping things private is to never post it online at all, and that means prevention is the only effective solution. Facebook users or bloggers need to realize that anything they post can be reposted, and that they can rapidly lose control of content they originally controlled. Governments are also getting involved; in New Zealand, Google's new application to search using mobile pictures was blocked by New Zealand over fears it would be used to learn more about strangers (7). Ultimately, however, it is going to take more embarrassments before people as a whole learn to adapt to the new age of information we live in. That might mean that people will have to consciously try and stay out of the spotlight entirely. Is that fair? Perhaps not, but it's certainly the new order of things.

"Allison Stokke, John Seigenthaler and Wikipedia" References
* (1) RocketBoom (2009) "Know Your Meme: Star Wars Kid". Accessed 2009-12-13.
* (2) Staff (2006) "Star Wars Kid is top viral video". BBC. Accessed 2009-12-15.
* (3) Popkin, Helen (2007) "Survive your inevitable online humiliation". MSNBC. Accessed 2009-12-14.
* (4) Saslow, Eli (2007) "Teen tests Internet's Lewd Track Record". The Washington Post. Accessed 2009-11-30.
* (5) Hammock, Ann (2008) "The new fame: Internet celebrity". CNN. Accessed 2009-12-15.
* (6) Wikipedia contributors (2009) "Wikipedia:Biographies of Living Persons". Wikipedia. Accessed 2009-12-15.
* (7) Laurence, Jeremy (2009) "Internet service blocked over privacy fears". New Zealand Herald. Accessed 2009-12-15.