Streisand Effect

From Encyclopedia Dramatica

People with faces like retarded box-terriers should adore any attention they get, not censor it.

The Streisand Effect is a term used to describe a commonly seen occurrence on the internet when somebody attempts to censor or remove some kind of information, documentation or photograph but somehow manages to forget that magic 'save as...' function that 99.9% of computers have. The censor ultimately ends up creating more buzz via censoring the file / image / document than if they simply just settled the fuck down and realized that nobody actually cared about them in the first place.

	“	The net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.	„
	— John Gilmore

Oh shit Barbra...

Oh hi Babs NICE MANSION

The Streisand Effect was coined after Barbra Streisand, who in 2003 sued a photographer for posting a picture of her home on the interwebs. Of course, nobody has ever given a fuck about Barbra other than her core demographic and faggots looking to whore her "music" to the masses, but after the news broke out that she was suing the photographer, the site's hits started coming in and more people eventually saw the photo than if Babs had just stfu in the first place. The irony is that the photographer was actually taking photos for an article on coastal erosion, causing Barbra to look like an even bigger fool.

Causes

IRL, this effect is known as "gossip". Back in the day when people had real lives, it was an interesting pasttime for many to spread details about other people in the community. If these details were "secret" or "taboo" that just made them more interesting. IRL the effect was normally limited thanks to people having the same issue or not wanting the subject of the gossip to know they were spreading rumors. Effective equivalents of proxies were rare, but bathroom walls and tabloids could be used to similar effect.

Basic human behaviour combined with the relative anonymity and ease of communication OTI leads to the usual results - you get a thousand retards with nothing better to do trying to play vigilant guardians of the sacred principles of free speech by spreading shit nobody cares about.

Reverse Streisand Effect

There's also a reverse Streisand Effect, in which a company anonymously pays for a site or advertisement to be put up that parodies the company's ads or depicts the company's products in an edgy way. They the company, acting as though it just become aware of the content, pretends to be outraged and demands that the content be taken down, perhaps claiming intellectual property infringement. If all goes according to plan, this attracts a bunch of free media attention.