Streisand Effect: The backfiring of an attempt to hide or remove a piece of information. It was “named after American entertainer Barbra Streisand, whose attempt in 2003 to suppress photographs of her residence inadvertently generated further publicity” (Wikipedia).
“Streisand Effect” was coined in 2005 by Mike Masnick of TechDirt in a post about, believe it or not, photographs of urinals:
How long is it going to take before lawyers realize that the simple act of trying to repress something they don’t like online is likely to make it so that something that most people would never, ever see (like a photo of a urinal in some random beach resort) is now seen by many more people? Let’s call it the Streisand Effect.
On June 6, 2011, The Caucus—the New York Times’s politics and government blog—invoked the Streisand Effect in its coverage of one angle of a story about Sarah Palin’s confused account of the Paul Revere story (“By ringing those bells and making sure as he’s riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be secure and we were going to be free”*).
Since Ms. Palin described the ride last week while she was visiting Boston, Wikipedia’s Paul Revere article page has been the site of a mini “edit war.” And the page has gone from a little-visited one — 2,000 or so page views a day — to a more heavily trafficked one, with 54,000 on Saturday when Ms. Palin’s comments were gaining the most news attention. …
As a result, the Revere article has become much longer, and much better sourced -– a version of what Wikipedia users call the “Streisand Effect,” which is described as when “an attempt to hide or remove a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely.”
A blog called TheStreisandEffect.com collected other tales of information-suppression backfires. The blog has been dormant since March 2010.
Read about the Bradley Effect. Read about other eponymous effects: Coolidge, Droste, Forer, Fujiwhara, Martha Mitchell, McGurk, and Meissner.
(Wiki link via ADS-L.)
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I thought this post was going to be about the new club song all the hip kids like - Barbara Streisand, by Duck Sauce. http://youtu.be/uu_zwdmz0hE
Shows you my frame of reference!
Posted by: Nancy Davis Kho | June 14, 2011 at 07:08 AM
Hmmmmm, Phrase of the Week, perhaps?
Streisand Effect - two words there. One too many.
word |wərd|
noun
a single distinct meaningful element of speech or writing, used with others (or sometimes alone) to form a sentence and typically shown with a space on either side when written or printed.
phrase |freɪz|
noun
a small group of words standing together as a conceptual unit, typically forming a component of a clause.
For the love of the sacred internet please change your ways before the Grammar Nazis descent upon you! Oh, you wanted them to find you so you would become a victim of the Streisand Effect and reap the riches and fame.
Never mind.
Posted by: Bumper | June 15, 2011 at 07:13 PM
Wasn't this the guy who complained to the radio station that their Song of the Week was in fact an instrumental, therefore not actually sung?
Posted by: CGHill | June 16, 2011 at 08:48 AM
@Bumper: Oh my gosh, I absolutely hadn't realized that "Streisand Effect" was two words until you pointed it out! And then I had to check to make sure. One, two... yep, you're right! Definitely two words! How embarrassing!
I'm sure you'll also want to rebuke the American Dialect Society, whose 2010 Word of the Year list included numerous "rule"-breakers: kinetic event, phoenix firm, mama grizzly, et al: http://www.americandialect.org/American-Dialect-Society-2010-Word-of-the-Year-PRESS-RELEASE.pdf
On the other hand, the ADS's definition is good enough for me:
"Word of the Year is interpreted in its broader sense as 'vocabulary item'—not just words but phrases."
Posted by: Nancy Friedman | June 16, 2011 at 11:05 AM
(Knock knock.) "Open up. It's the Grammar Nazis."
There is some debate among grammarians about what exactly can be considered a compound word. In this case, "Streisand Effect" may be considered a single, non-hyphenated, compound, proper noun. Nancy, next time someone challenges your grammar, I recommend that you grab the shotgun and tell them to get off your porch. Whether your grammar is correct or not, you will win the argument.
Posted by: oz | June 16, 2011 at 12:40 PM