We didn’t have any share buttons in the 90s as far as I can remember. But bullying was definitely happening. The Internet existed in the 90s as well. This commercial, recently put out by Microsoft, shows a family having fun together in their living room. The father is ‘dancing’ to one of Microsoft’s new Kinect products called Dance Central, and he is being filmed by his daughter – who quickly forwards the video to her brother – who, in turn, posts it online after having modified the clip. He then puts the heading “tech-no” and changes the music. It happens very quickly. The father sees the video and he’s obviously embarrassed.
The problem is – if that happens in real life – there is no way to take that video back. It’s online forever.
At first the following video may not seem at all interesting or even funny. It may start to make you snicker after a while. However, the important thing to notice here is the quality of the video. It’s obviously made by this woman’s son or daughter, or maybe even husband, who wanted to catch her in the act before she opened her eyes (she’s then completely embarrassed). Someone obviously thought it would be a great idea to post this video on YouTube. Although it doesn’t compromise her entire image (it’s a cute video of her, and perhaps would hinder her chances at making it at American Idol or X-Factor, but other than that no real harm is done) – it has nearly 3 million views – and I don’t even think that’s the amount of views it has since 2005 – it must have more than that because it has been reposted. The problem is, once a video is up, it can be reposted a million times. There are tools that allow you to download videos from YouTube and other video sites, modify them and then repost them. That’s the problem with those 15 seconds of fame – these days they never end up being only 15 seconds of fame – but a lifetime of humiliation that can never been remedied.