Jon Ronson is a journalist, author, and documentary filmmaker.
He talks about the time he found someone else using his identity on Twitter.
The first tweet he read was as follows:
“Going home, got to get the recipe for guarana and mayonnaise in a bap – yummy”
Ronson tweeted back “Who are you?”
In answer, he got the following:
“Watching Seinfeld, I would love a big plate of celeriac and sour cream kebab with lemongrass #foodie”
He didn’t know what to make of it, and next morning they’d tweeted, as him, “I’m thinking about time and cock”
Being a journalist, he traced the source of the fake twitter account.
He found it was a spambot created by an academic, from Warwick University, called Luke Robert Mason.
Jon Ronson asked him to please take his name and photograph off the spambot.
Mason said it wasn’t ‘a spambot’ it was ‘an infomorph’.
Jon Ronson asked what the difference was.
Mason replied it was for “repurposing social media data into an infomorphic aesthetic.”
Jon Ronson asked him to stop.
Luke Robert Mason said he was willing to meet and discuss it, on camera, with two other academics present.
The one who did most of the talking was Dr. Dan O’Hara.
He said “We don’t think you’re saying you want to maintain your integrity as the real Jon Ronson. We think there’s already a layer of artifice there, and what you’re saying is it’s your online personality, the brand Jon Ronson, that you’re trying to protect.”
Jon Ronson asked them to please just stop using his name.
Dr Dan O’Hara said “This is bizarre, you must be one of the very few people I’ve ever come across who’ve chosen to come on Twitter and use their own name as their Twitter name. I don’t know anyone who does that and that’s why I’m suspicious of your motives. That’s why I say I think you’re using it as brand management, that’s why you’re using your own name.”
Again Jon Ronson asked them to please just stop using his name.
Dr Dan O’Hara said “That’s bizarre, I find it psychologically interesting. There’s an uncanny sense of aggression as if you’d like to kill the algorithm, so you must feel threatened by it in some way.”
What I found strange was the way two different realities collided.
In Jon Ronson’s reality it was wrong to use his name without his agreement.
In the academics’ reality there was something suspicious about using your own name on Twitter.
In their world no one used their own name on Twitter so it must not be normal behaviour.
Wanting to use your own name must be significant of something weird.
This is part of my problem with technological evangelists.
They think everything starts with technology and people are merely passive recipients.
Whereas in my world everything starts with people, and technology is just a tool to communicate.
If you’re a client, you have to choose who you want to trust to spend your money.
People who think the world is all about algorithms.
Or people who think the world is all about people.
We, becomes Algorithm, becomes Isomorph, becomes Research, becomes Bullshit.
Then clients read it as Empirical Evidence and trash all their cash.
I suspect Professor Plum, with an Isomorph, in the Greenhouse.
Dave,
My experience as a recovering academic is that this isn’t about perspective, it’s just bad faith. It’s a kind of anti-communication they use to beat down dissenting opinion.
What’s telling is the repeated use of the word ‘bizarre.’ This word (and others like it) are a trick they use to humiliate people who disagree with them. Repackage a perfectly ordinary opinion that any person with an ounce of common sense would understand as ‘bizarre’ and you’re half way to getting the other side to just leave in disgust.
Same thing with the accusation of ‘feeling threatened’ by something. Of course you can understand someone would be upset or disturbed that someone was using their identity to do something like this. But threatened? It’s a complete non sequitur. Same thing again with their responses to his questions making it his problem rather than theirs (‘We prefer the term infomorph,’ is a sentence which means nothing, and they know this.) And by continuing to engage them in a dialogue, you more or less have to accept their terms.
The digital and tech maniacs are also great at doing this. As we’ve all seen.
Hi Jon,
Totally agree with you. I had such trouble doing my Psychology Degree because I ran straight into the ‘Establishment’. I was told “Don’t come up with new theories or ideas, just copy what you’ve read and qualify it.” So what happens in Academia is one person discovers a turd, the next describes it as a stool and the next person calls it a chair. Top marks. This sick twisted logic ends up in conclusions like: A table has 4 legs. A cow has 4 legs. Therefore every table is a cow. Great! Give that man a professor’s cap and stifle the planet with stupidity.
“People who think the world is all about algorithms. Or people who think the world is all about people”.
What about the ones who think people are only algorithms?
Hi Ian, It’s very worrying. If you look at the way medical science is progressing and how scientists want to use embyology to develop things like spare parts for human bodies. It’s not the idea that’s bad. The idea is a good one for people if they can improve the quality of an amputee’s life, but at the expense of the life of another person? That’s just carnage of the vilest kind. Some scientists are now developing a way of removing the ageing gene. Other scientists are meddling with the genetics in food so that seeds will never reproduce naturally. Why? So that they make more profit by forcing the farmers to purchase their seeds every year rather than letting them have what nature has provided freely for thousands of years. They are messing with nature for profit and that’s bad for everyone. 100 years from now, can you imagine, people walking into a limb shop for a replacement? Scientists should protect nature, not destroy it for profit.
I’m very confused by this. Twitter wouldn’t take accounts without your real name on them for years. They’ve loosened up a bit, but almost everyone I follow tweets under their legal given name. If they use a handle, their email usually reveals their real name.
Is Twitter in the UK that different from the US?