Social Steganography

"I don't at all like knowing what people say of me behind my back. It makes me far too conceited." - Oscar Wilde

Today I recommend the article, Social Steganography: Learning to Hide in Plain Sight. I have a friend with a 13-yr-old daughter and the daughter loves facebook (FB). The mother is concerned about FB and carefully watches her daughter's page for inappropriate topics and language. And issues have come up - one boy asked for sexy photos for example.

In the article cited above, the author describes a similar situation where a mother comments on her daughter's every post which "scares everyone away". The daughter, Carmen, has to think - How will my mother respond to my post? Will she freak out? So Carmen has learned to comment in "code" using references her mother will think is safe but her friends know differently. The example given is quoting lyrics from Monty Python's "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" a happy song on the surface but if you know the story, "Life of Brian", it's sung by men being tortured to death by crucifixion.

The art of hiding secret messages in plain sight is called Steganography. Youth are forever creating new slang words to hide what they are saying. It's fat, or cool or bad. Parents are meant to be confused - does bad mean good?

Bottom Line

This gives a whole new spin to comments on FB. I often see song quotes or odd statements that have no context (for me). I'll have to start looking past the quotes to find the hidden message.