In 1993, cartoonist Peter Steiner drew this now-famous comic for the New Yorker. At the time, it perfectly captured a key issue surrounding emerging Internet technology, namely the ability to communicate with someone online completely anonymously. However, with the emergence of social media in the last decade, the resonance of this cartoon has faded.
While anonymity is still an important part of Internet culture, it is rapidly being replaced by a more open mentality. In the social media world, having a clearly defined identity is not only expected, but embraced. More often than not, you want the world to see your blog, or your Twitter, or your Flickr account. There are also times, however, when you don’t want the world to see what you’re sharing online, which is why Facebook has gotten so much bad press over the last couple of months.
When the company first began, Facebook was billed as a way for users to stay in touch and share things with friends through the creation of a closed community. After giving users this expectation of privacy, Facebook pulled a bait-and-switch, flipping its privacy controls so that public sharing was now a default. Needless to say, many users were embarrassed to find that their “private” lives were now public and that the only way they could set things right was through a complicated series of privacy settings.
Recently, cartoonist Rob Cottingham of the popular webcomic Noise to Signal captured the issue of Facebook privacy online with a clever reimagining of Peter Steiner’s original New Yorker comic strip. Check out the comic below, and feel free to leave your own comment on this post. It can be about the comic, Facebook, or any other issue that comes to mind.
3 comments ↓
Thanks, Rob – I’m glad you liked the cartoon!
I’ve always been amazed that Peter Steiner actually wasn’t even trying to say anything insightful or deep about the Internet. And yet he completely nailed the way a lot of us saw things at the time.
These days, of course, a dog has to go to a lot more effort to pass as human. So far, though, nobody’s caught me.
Haha. I’m sure they’ll catch you soon enough.
Thanks for the comment and all of your great work on Noise to Signal. Feel free to come back and leave us a comment any time.
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