Dear Famous People: Stop Attempting Online Reputation Scrubbing; I Don't Want To Write Streisand Stories Anymore!

from the no-lessons-learned dept

I've learned a couple of things in my three-plus decades on this planet. First, no matter how hard you try, you're going to piss people off. It's unavoidable, so you're best off not bothering trying to avoid it. Second, people who are pissed off about you are going to talk about it, including on the internet. It's un-quashable, so you're best off not bothering to quash it. Third, the internet may forgive, but it never forgets. You can't force amnesia on the internet, so you're best off not even trying. And, finally, if you're the type of person who likes to ignore those first three lessons, particularly the last, the world is going to be a place of recursive ass-biting. Why can't people, particularly those in the public spotlight who should know better, keep themselves from trying to erase stuff they don't like from the interwebz? Members of government, professional sports tycoons, service companies; the list goes on and on. I'm begging you, all of you, please stop doing this. Because every time you do, I have to sit down at my computer and show the entire world how silly you look. My only motivation for doing so is that maybe, just maybe, I'll write up that single story that finally breaks the dam and from that point on everybody will understand the Streisand Effect and stop behaving so insipidly.

Here to demonstrate why that hasn't happened yet is a big fat list of people who decided that secretively engaging, what New York Magazine calls "black-ops reputation management" firms to scrub their public embarrassments from the web, would be a good idea, ostensibly never foreseeing the day when what they were up to would be reported. It began with one reporter's interest in Samuel "Phin" Upham, a man indicted for cheating the IRS out of taxes by hiding money in Zurich, accused of conspiring with his mother who set up a fake nonprofit entity, and supposedly surreptitiously ferreting money all around the world. Graeme Wood, who had gone to college breifly with Upham, set up a Google alert for his name, since Google searches were already rife with unflattering information. That's when the strangeness began.

Every alert email Wood received seemed to be glowingly positive, from reports of employment appointments, to articles on philosophy, to tales of Upham's philanthropic works. When Wood dug a bit deeper, cracks in this facade of positive news emerged.

But something was wrong with these sites, which in every case looked flimsy and temporary, especially when you got beyond the first page. Venture Cap Monthly listed a number of prominent writers as "authors," including the Financial Times columnist Christopher Caldwell, Fast Company journalist Danielle Sacks, and Slate critic-at-large Stephen Metcalf. Caldwell and Sacks write about business, so I could imagine—barely—that by contributing to an obscure site, they might be slumming for a paycheck. But I couldn't make any sense of the presence of Metcalf, who had written a scintillating essay about the films of Tom Cruise, I remembered, but nothing that would interest a venture capitalist.

Now each ping made me a little more suspicious. None of the articles by or about Phin mentioned donations, which I expected would be a major aspect of philanthropic work for someone who came from a family rich enough to hide $11 million from the Feds. And when I looked at Charity News Forum (another curiously bare site, more like a derelict blog), I saw that Phin's name was listed as a contributor alongside a few semi-prominent voices in philanthropy, as well as … the journalist Ron Rosenbaum? That seemed odd, given that Rosenbaum doesn't write regularly about philanthropy and is best known for a book about Hitler.
What Wood ended up with after further digging was a list of 33 websites that had been almost certainly created only to funnel good news about certain individuals into search engine results. It was a sham Upham's mother would have been proud of, the creation of fake entities for likely fraudulent purposes. Still not satisfied, Wood dug into the HTML code for the sites, looking for an author. He couldn't find one there, but the metadata did reveal more names alongside Upham's.
I noticed other names thrown in incongruously: Joe Ricketts, Helen Lee Schifter, Irena Briganti, Antonio Weiss, and Luke Weil. I also noticed the same Wikipedia editor, Belkin555, had tidied the entries of several of them. A few were powerful people with no apparent scandals to cover up: Joe Ricketts was the founder of TD Ameritrade, and Antonio Weiss runs investment banking for Lazard. Others, judging by the unforgiving kliegs of a Google search, had left much messier trails on the web.
For reference, if I had to guess, I'd suppose any interest Ricketts might have in internet-scrubbing would be related to either the slight controversy surrounding his PAC against President Obama in the last election cycle, or perhaps his staunch position against tax money going to private entities while his children were asking for exactly that as owners of the Chicago Cubs and the Wrigley Field renovation project. Neither being big deals, in my estimation, but I can understand his discomfort. Schifter has been the subject of some unflattering reports on her personal life. Irena Briganti is a PR flack for Fox News with something of an online reputation. Luke Weil sued a filmmaker over a documentary on children of very wealthy families and has also been accused of assaulting a music producer and his girlfriend, spending time in jail for the latter.

Now, none of the above is, as I mentioned, the kind of damning information that would normally get my trousers off. Add a little attempted cover up to the mix, however, and suddenly intrigue is introduced and everyone comes out looking slimy. That all of this positive online press appeared to be coming from a single source, an unknown entity called "Xander Fields", made it all the more intriguing. Which, of course, sent Wood digging further. He eventually found a company called Metal Rabbit Media and Bryce Tom, the man behind the company. Tom informed Wood of how the service worked, filling search engines with white noise releases to cover up his clients' dark pasts, all for upwards of $10k per month.

And the point is that five-figures per month is a great deal of money to pay for something that most likely won't work, is dishonest, and will ultimately making you look far worse in the end. I've said it before, but it's worth repeating: the cover up is always worse than the crime. Some of the folks listed above did some things that will make some people mad. Not horrible things, but perhaps they are unflattering. Still, most people don't care. Try to cover those things up, however, and now you have a great many people who will think that's shifty and will wonder what else you're trying to hide, assuming the attempted cover up comes to light. Which it almost certainly will, on a long enough timeline.

So, please, again, stop trying to game the internet. It won't work and I'm tired of writing these stories.

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Filed Under: antonio weiss, christopher caldwell, danielle sacks, helen lee schifter, irena briganti, joe ricketts, luke weil, reputation management, reputation scrubbing, samuel upham, stephen metcalf, streisand effect


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  • identicon
    CK20XX, 21 Jun 2013 @ 10:51am

    Instead of writing individual stories, maybe you should assemble a Hall of Fame, with the people who are the most famous for failing to erase their fame being the star exhibits. You could then measure each new instance of failure against the previous ones. Maybe it could even become a sort of contest like the Darwin Awards or the Golden Raspberry Awards.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    S. T. Stone, 21 Jun 2013 @ 11:00am

    Xander Fields?

    Damn. I thought for a second that Awesome X had done all this.

    (Boosh.)

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    jackn, 21 Jun 2013 @ 11:11am

    It is good that we have techdirt and other blogs to capture their real reputation.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Chris ODonnell (profile), 21 Jun 2013 @ 11:34am

    $10K a month to build cheap looking spam sites? I'm in the wrong business...

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Ninja (profile), 21 Jun 2013 @ 12:17pm

    Well, tbh it would be much worse if Streisand did not trigger. It would mean that even the Internet doesn't care about you.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Some Other Guy (profile), 21 Jun 2013 @ 12:29pm

    Typo

    In the second paragraph 'breifly' should be 'briefly'

    Also, should 'ferreting' (seeking/hunting) be 'squirrelling away' (hiding) in context?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 21 Jun 2013 @ 12:42pm

    Particularly parsing

    recursive ass-biting


    Now this is a particularly useful term.

    This could describe what stupid people do trying desperately to not look bad to others, or it could describe the phenomenon and manifestion of every 'Internet meme' that ever was, or anything among a million other common situations of living in this world today.

    In any case, I think the term warrants built-in 'emoticons' across the board.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 21 Jun 2013 @ 12:45pm

    Stupidity

    Often the Streisand Effect creates more publicity than if the person had shut up. I do not follow most celeberties or rich people lives. So if there is a minor, unflattering news item about them I am likely not to ever see it (or care). But when the "reputation management" runs amok I often see a report about the cover up and thence the original incident. Tne net effect is make the person look like an idiot.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anon, 21 Jun 2013 @ 1:57pm

    Am I the only one . . .

    who thinks that donating 10k/month to charity is a much better way to restore your reputation?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Matthew Cline (profile), 21 Jun 2013 @ 3:21pm

    Venture Cap Monthly listed a number of prominent writers as "authors," including the Financial Times columnist Christopher Caldwell, Fast Company journalist Danielle Sacks, and Slate critic-at-large Stephen Metcalf.
    Surely that's illegal? I mean, it must at least violate the right of publicity laws.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Fortune Cookie, 21 Jun 2013 @ 7:02pm

    Help! I've been kidnapped and forced to work in a Streisand-story sweatshop / fortune cookie factory!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Christina, 22 Aug 2013 @ 9:47am

    Here's the latest one...

    Remember the Tonya Cooley/MTV/Viacom lawsuit that alleged MTV personalities, Kenny Santucci and Evan Starkman, committed sexually assault with a toothbrush? Their lawyer is currently e-papering the town with Cease and Desist Notices to websites that reported on it:

    http://www.christinagarner.com/2013/08/05/let-the-toothbrushes-fall-where-they-may/

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Andy, 12 Nov 2014 @ 12:23am

    The right to be forgotten

    There is a new law now in Europe called "The right to be forgotten." This is going to help many with reputation problems. The US should do the same.
    Here are more details:
    http://tiny.cc/7ed7ox

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Sam, 2 Feb 2015 @ 7:28pm

    This is a very interesting. I read the whole article at New York Magazine. So someone is accused of tax evasion and then charges are dropped and then tries to clean up his reputation.... nothing wrong with that. The government should really go after the real fraudsters. Tax evasion refers to attempts by individuals, corporations or trusts to avoid paying the total amount of taxes owed through illegal means, known as tax evasion fraud. This may include underreporting income, misrepresenting deductions, offshore tax evasion strategies, or failing to file returns in a timely manner. Tax evasion penalties can have serious repercussions. The government imposes serious tax evasion sentence and penalties on offenders, including prison terms and hefty fines, for tax evasion.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 16 Mar 2015 @ 7:13pm

    Many 'news' sites close comments after a short while, and many discussion forums will quickly lock a very old post that gets "bumped" for no good reason. Of course, the vast majority of posts to old discussion threads are generally going to be from spam bots anyway -- with the possible exception of Walter O'Brien apologists.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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