Lindsay Mills and Exhibitionism on the Internet : The New Yorker

?I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded,? Edward Snowden, the twenty-nine-year-old spy who leaked documentation of the N.S.A.?s domestic surveillance program, told the journalist Glenn Greenwald. ?That is not something I am willing to support or live under.? Whether you find Snowden?s words heroic or dopily self-aggrandizing, they have a particular, inescapable irony when viewed alongside excerpts from the blog of Snowden?s girlfriend, Lindsay Mills, who recorded much of her life and posted it online.

Her blog, called LsJourney (as of Tuesday, it had been taken down), documents in whimsical detail the couple?s Hawaiian idyll and Mill?s adventures as an acrobat and pole dancer. I kept thinking, as I read about the blog, How did an outward person like Mills manage to live with such a reticent guy as Snowden, who left limited traces online, whose next-door neighbor in Hawaii said that Snowden barely greeted him, and whose high-school principal had no recollection of his existence? The seeming gap between their temperaments mirrors the general disconnect between the anger over the N.S.A.?s surveillance and the atmosphere of exhibitionism that prevails on the Internet. We already exist in a society where much of what we do is recorded?it?s just that people often record themselves.

LsJourney is an example?if a wackily theatrical one?of the type of fascinated self-exposure that many people engage in every day. In one of the hundreds of self-portraits that Mills posted on her blog, she stands just to the right of the center of the frame, wearing black lace underwear and a black bra, holding herself tight in a gesture of despondency, a bright yellow Forever 21 bag covering her face in a way that unfortunately recalls the infamous photos of prisoners in Abu Ghraib. In another underwear-clad photo (zebra-patterned this time), she sits on a chair, legs akimbo, staring into the camera with a dire expression. On one foot, she wears a hiking boot, on the other a high-heeled shoe (?wild + refined #selfportrait,? she calls it). In yet another, she?s holding herself in the air, one hand on a metal pole, above the heads of a bride and groom. Her pink tutu hovers over them.

The blog entries themselves are a mixture of chatty accounts of Mills?s days in Hawaii, stories of her athletic and pole-dancing feats, descriptions of fun evenings with friends, and declarations of girl power (she refers to herself throughout as a ?world-traveling, pole-dancing superhero?). After Snowden publically revealed his identity, she wrote,

My world has opened and closed all at once. Leaving me alone at sea without a compass. Surely there will be villainous pirates, distracting mermaids, tides change in the new open water chapter of my journey. But at the moment, all I feel is alone ? sometimes life doesn?t afford proper goodbyes.

The entry is illustrated with a photo of Mills, wearing a turquoise lace bra, making a fish face. She calls this portrait ?Fish out of water,? and, indeed, she gives the impression of a creature who has emerged from some unfathomable depth of the Internet (in one photo, she even wears a diving costume). It feels strange and a little mean to scrutinize Mills?s self-portraiture, especially now that her exposure will no doubt invite all kinds of speculation about her personality and her politics?but, until Tuesday, Mills offered herself up for scrutiny to whoever might wish to look at her blog.

There?s a difference, of course, between voluntarily posting a photo of yourself doing a complicated yoga pose on a chair and involuntarily committing your e-mails to a massive government server. But the fact that we are increasingly prepared to fling out details of our lives prompts the question of what, exactly, we fear when we rage about a loss of privacy. Most of us react with horror to the idea that our online messages are in the hands of the government?in the sense of being collected in a massive stream of data and analyzed for suspicious patterns?but have no problem posting a photo of our kids, our wedding, or our lunch on Facebook or Instagram.

Lindsay Mills?s blog and hammy self-portraiture evoke a benevolent Internet, an audience there to applaud. And, though she probably was writing for friends and professional acquaintances, Mills?s blog was public, and some part of her must have known, and perhaps hoped, that it would be seen by many more people. Her beseeching blue-eyed gaze supposes a reception that is essentially kind and responsive. This view is not uncommon, and is bolstered by the language we use to describe our activities on the Web, where we ?connect? with our ?friends? and ?followers.? Yes, we know that our Google searches are recorded and used to refine Google?s algorithm, that our behavior on social media is shared with advertisers, and that if we neglect to adjust our privacy settings, any stranger can see the photo from our college roommate?s bachelorette party. But most of us don?t think about this that much, because the fact that we are being watched feels vague and amorphous.

The trend, at least among young people, is to share more information on the Internet rather than less. Two weeks before news of the N.S.A.?s surveillance program leaked, the Pew Internet & American Life project released the results of a study on the views of privacy and social media held by teen-agers between the ages of twelve and seventeen. The study found that since 2006, the sharing of personal information (photos, names of schools and cities, e-mails addresses and phone numbers) are up by ten to twenty per cent across the board. Only nine per cent of the teen-agers surveyed expressed a ?very? high level of concern that the information they share on social-networking sites could be accessed by third parties (thirty-one per cent said they were ?somewhat? concerned), whereas forty-six per cent of parents expressed strong concern. It?s just one study, but it bears out what we observe in an unscientific way all the time: the Web increasingly seems like a good-natured auditorium filled with people wanting to be amused. Among other consequences of the developing N.S.A. story, maybe Snowden?s revelations will clarify something that is hard to grasp: the Internet is not just a place of freedom and friendly applause for pole-dancing superheroes.

Source: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2013/06/snowden-girlfriend-lindsay-mills-blog.html

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