🫖 Good morning! Given the holiday, I’ve been thinking about independence. Today’s Tea explores the ways we enjoy performing authenticity on the internet and how the realities of data privacy complicate these dreams of independence. 🫖
On Saturday, Diet Prada put it simply to their 3.2 M Instagram followers:
Frankly, I don’t think America deserves a birthday party this year.
You don’t need me to summarize the manifold reasons to feel cynical and exhausted today. The Fourth of July is meant to be a celebration of freedom. You don’t need me to point out the historical hypocrisies and the current-day threats to personal autonomy that cast an ironic shadow over the holiday.
While the Fourth is rooted in the myth of America’s collective independence from being a British colony, the holiday also reflects the sustained cultural value of individual independence. So many of our founding stories reflect the triumph of the exceptional, the outstanding, the singular.
But, you can’t have independence without loneliness. The forces that encourage us to value rugged individualism over collective wellbeing are not accidental: those with power directly benefit from a culture that is scattered, divided and isolated.
What Lurks Below
One of the insidious ways that the internet has adapted to please us is to validate our unquenchable thirst to believe we are unique. The desire to create a personal brand is both born of and perpetuated by surveillance capitalism—our personal experiences are monetized, packaged and sold back to us.
I recently indulged in one such brand-affirming fad. A few people that I follow on Instagram were sharing screenshots of their “Spotify Icebergs.” The premise is simple: you go to Icebergify.com, give them your data, and it generates a cute graphic revealing how obscure your music taste is. The farther down the iceberg goes, the less commercial/popular/etc. the artists are.
The whole thing reminds me of a mini Spotify Wrapped—the cursed yearly phenomenon that has gotten more and more boring and ridiculous by the year, but nonetheless just as shared. Icebergify feels fresher because it is simpler and more value-neutral. The Spotify Wrapped copywriting is telling: “Your 2020 contained multitudes. It deserves a playlist.” “Share Your 2018. If you listen to a year’s worth of amazing music and don’t post about it, did it really happen?” In 2021, the language inspired more eye rolls than ever before.
The subtext of Icebergify is a tale as old as time. It’s a performance of cool based on the obscurity of your music taste. Obscurity is unconventionality is indieness is mystery. When I was a college DJ, the fellow music dudes went to great lengths to police the obscurity of the radio station. One time when I played a song by Tame Impala, another DJ asked me if I had heard of Pond, and that I should consider playing them instead.
When I reached the Icebergify privacy page, I had a millisecond of pause. The time came to give performative consent for the website to access my data. In the current political and social climate, I’ve grown warier and warier of the ways we willingly offer up personal information for frivolous fancies. I wondered who was behind the website.1 I recalled the 2019 FaceApp SNAFU when the FBI issued a warning about the potential threats of a Russian company owning access to millions of faces and names.
Checking that box that says “I have read and agree with the terms and conditions” is a fun little deal with the devil. Understanding the complexities of data privacy is a full-time job that most of us don’t (and can’t) have the time for. I've been historically myopic about my own data privacy. I already know that my information was compromised during the 2021 Accellion breach. While this adds to my mounting background anxiety about data privacy, it’s hard to see the effects on my day-to-day life. It’s impossible to remove yourself from all risks. Boycott Google. Bury your phone in the backyard. You’ll still get a targeted ad for The Curse of Oak Island the day after you talked about it, and your social security number still might live on the dark web if you received a paycheck from UC Berkeley.
And, hey, certain risks are rewarded with a bit of cheeky fun.
Data Privacy. Periodt.
Last week, when I was fishing around the app store to learn more about BeReal, I was surprised to see an app called Stardust holding the #1 spot on the leaderboards (it has since been demoted to #41). It’s an ovulatory cycle tracking app that incorporates horoscopes. It beckons with language like: “Sync your cycle to the moon and stars” and “Gaze into the crystal ball and predict future periods.”
It makes sense that it was topping the charts when I looked. I was writing during the immediate aftermath of the Dobbs decision. A panic was rippling through social media cautioning people who have periods to immediately delete all period tracking apps. The concern is that these apps contain powerful information about fertility, which could be weaponized as evidence that a person ended a pregnancy in violation of new, restrictive laws.
This is entangled with privacy in two ways.
First, there are the legal questions of who has the right to privacy, and under what circumstances. Does a person have the right to an abortion? Do two people of different races have the right to marry? Do people have the right to have sex that is not procreative, monogamous and heterosexual? In essence, do individuals have the right to make private decisions about their bodies?
The second layer has to do with data privacy. We all know that our devices track more than we can imagine. It’s naïve to believe that our right to digital privacy is protected. “Thousands of law enforcement agencies across the country have access to cell phone search equipment, which can bypass many security features in order to extract all data from a phone,” writes the attorney Kendra Albert. A Vice journalist bought a week’s worth of data from Planned Parenthood for thirty pieces of silver to prove an unsettling point. In this stunning op-ed, the sociologist Zeynep Tufekci argues that “our digital infrastructure has become the infrastructure of authoritarianism.”
Many fertility-related apps have addressed these privacy concerns head-on. On the app store, Stardust greets you with a sweeping, righteous statement about who they are, what they believe, and what they do with your data:
“In light of Roe v. Wade being overturned, we want to make our commitment clear to you. We are a women-owned app founded on a belief in freedom of choice and freedom of privacy. We do not sell data. We have never sold data. We will never sell data. We have encrypted your information to ensure that no governments or companies will ever access data that belongs to you and you alone. It will stay this way forever.”
We live in a brave new world. Law enforcement entities and vigilantes can incriminate anything from our online searches to websites visited to messages sent. Even girlbossy horoscope apps that tell you “what kind of witch you are” based on when you menstruate are issuing fierce battle cries.
It’s hard to know what to do. Should we even bother to take independent measures to protect ourselves? While these efforts might help a little, I sense that our rugged individualism will fall short. To return to Tufekci’s article:
“What’s needed, for all Americans, is a full legal and political reckoning with the reckless manner in which digital technology has been allowed to invade our lives. The collection, use and manipulation of electronic data must finally be regulated and severely limited. Only then can we comfortably enjoy all the good that can come from these technologies.”
Miss Informed
One thing that scares me is the rising tide of my own apathy. My personal resolve to do certain things that I once considered to be morally good has waned significantly. My decade-plus-long vow of vegetarianism is at an all-time low: hamburgers, bacon, and chicken tinga tacos have recently passed my lips. My personal efforts to recycle, avoid plastic straws and conserve water feel performative and unsubstantial. I didn’t march in the streets when Roe was overturned.
I literally rolled my eyes when my phone notified me of a Jia Tolentino New Yorker op-ed that dropped within minutes of the breaking news. I envisioned the author’s index finger hovering over the “ENTER” key to publish the 3,000-word article the instant the leaked news was made official. Don’t get me wrong: I think Tolentino is one of the great writers of our time. I just feel oversaturated and hard-boiled and jaded. When perfectly-crafted opinion writing is released simultaneously with the news, there is no time to individually process.
As tragedy strikes again and again, my reaction has often been to isolate myself and read. Read and read articles upon articles until things make sense. Until I can try to determine the expert path forward. Absorb all possible knowledge, figure out what actions to take. Harden myself into a rock, an island, an iceberg. This habit is symptomatic of our cultural admiration of independence. But, instead of leaving me feeling informed and empowered, it just leaves me fucking exhausted.
The next time something awful happens, I’ll leave the articles at home. Instead, I resolve to meet up with a friend and cry.
5 Songs for Rugged Individualists
In these songs, I detect adventure, independence, and loneliness. Yet, they’re all surprisingly danceable… Crush an empty can of Natty Light on your forehead and go ballistic, fellow Americans!
“A Rush and a Push and the Land Is Ours,” The Smiths
🎶 They said: ‘There’s too much caffeine in your bloodstream and a lack of real spice in your life.’ I said: ‘Leave me alone because I’m alright, dad, surprised to still be on my own. 🎶
“HIRATHAE,” KENTENSHI
As you can probably tell by now, my music taste can get mired in certain eras and genres. New music can feel too emotionally overpowering, so I often default to the familiar. Shout out to Jacob for showing me this song! It has such a poignant sense of longing, nevertheless driving the listener forward with snappy drum beats.
“I Could Be Happy,” Altered Images
After three minutes of punchy build-up, the first verbal moment stutters out, resembling a warped record repeating a phrase four times before moving on. To me, this song feels like running away from all society and going it alone.
🎶 How I’d like to climb high in a tree. I could be happy, I could be happy. 🎶
“The Difference,” Flume, Toro y Moi
Another song for running or running away. I love the music video, too. This song transports me to a very specific time: when it came out, I would listen to it on runs during the early pandemic, back when we were so afraid to leave the house that we would cross the street to avoid being within breathing distance of a stranger.
🎶 Just another world that I gotta get a grip of and hold onto. 🎶
“Lo Boob Oscillator,” Stereolab
🎶 La lune est libre je crois. 🎶
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To be clear, it seems that Icebergify is not a nefarious data-mining project. Reading through the Privacy and About pages on the website, it seems like a side project developed by a student at Rice University. I actually sent him an email, to which he responded graciously. I was curious about his intentions behind the website and his thoughts on the cultural value of obscurity. He didn’t have time to reply in-depth before this piece came out, but I will follow up if he does :-) Also, don’t get mad at me if Icebergify ends up being the next FaceApp…. Here I am saying, “He seems nice! He probably won’t sell your data to a broker!”