I was thinking other day about how you could know all these little facts about a person and not really know anything about them. For example, my previous post on Amanda Palmer. I knew that she was engaged to a writer I like and that was pretty much it. And, I’ve collected all manner of other little facts over the course of the six months or so I’ve followed her on twitter. Life seems to be a little bit like that. We gather all these interesting little facts about things but knowing facts doesn’t necessarily translate into knowing something “real” about a thing. (Of course, we can debate on and on about what I mean about “knowing something ‘real’”. There is potentially a lot to unpack in that sentence. But, basically, what I mean is that I know that AFP just co-produced something with Jason Webley, she’s getting married, apparently she’s from the Boston area, but I’m not sure I’d recognize her if I were sardined up against her in a rush-hour packed subway car and even if I did and I was like, “AFP!” that I’d be able to carry on any sort of coherent discourse with the woman. But, if we were talking about my sister, I can tell you both general things about her like what she’s up to but I can also have, and do have, interesting conversations with her whether or not I’m accidently sardined into a rush-hour packed subway care with her. Basically, the information about my sister I’ve gathered from genuine interaction with my sister whereas the information I’ve gathered about AFP I’ve gotten from twitter and her website.)
Which brings me to my point. There is a lot of information about there in the connections and terminuses (termini? terminae?) of the interwebs and with the right software there is an awful lot you can find out about yourself or others if you choose to search. Like, where they live. Like, their email addresses. Like, their credit scores and how much the home they live in is actually worth. I find this a little creepy. And, I find it creepier that sites like Spokeo.com make this sort of random fact aggregation about the value of one’s home and one’s credit score even easier by listing all of this information for one place. There is probably nothing I can do about nosy people finding out these little facts about me, but I do think they should have to work for it. I don’t think there should be one stop shopping in terms of getting someone a set of facts about someone else.
