The above is a logo for a website known as persecuting.us. Billed as something of an avant-garde art project by artist and media critic Paolo Cirio, the intent of the website is unclear. It feels like some clever prank or trolling operation, considering the conspiratorial tones much of the site uses in it’s descriptions of Cirio’s methodologies and motivations. For instance, in the “About” tab, it’s shared that persecuting.us’ data was secretly stolen by Cirio over a course of months using a single Twitter profile and knowledge of how to exploit Twitter.
One of the descriptions of the site is as follows:
The result is a database on the website Persecuting.us with over one million U.S. citizens sorted by political affiliation, and therefore exposed to the danger of future public persecution. Persecuting.us offers a platform where everyone can take part in a participatory model pushed to extremes, engaging people in surveying and persecuting each other in a form of info-civil-war of political polarization, which can potentially erupt into defamation, intimidation and oppression of domestic enemies.
So at the same time the site seems to be arguing AGAINST itself, another portion of the “About” section describes, more fully, the point of what Cirio is trying to prove: That businesses and politicians are exploiting collected data on citizens in order to craft more impact-filled messaging at the personal level. Another piece of description from the site:
These voters never gave permission to log their data like this, but that’s not the only concern. The main threat is to the democratic process itself and malicious use of this data could even lead to future anti-democratic politics. Profiling citizens politically means exploiting people’s opinions for political gain; it allows new forms of effective political manipulation and starts a process of monitoring every aspect of each person’s life to collect material for political sorting.
Persecute.US is an artwork that will show people the extent to which their political privacy has been compromised for political gain. The artwork raises concern through press and personal reactions to an artificial scenario with hundreds and thousands experiencing the purgatory of being exposed by social profiling.
It appears that Cirio may be inspired by the idea of “Alternate Reality Games” (ARGs). ARGs are a type of meta mind-fuck preferred by computer types. There are some famous ones out there, including what’s been termed as the “Golden Suicides“, which is the tale of two star-crossed lovers who committed suicide within weeks of each other back in 2007. A blog sprung up known as the Last Statue, that many believed was proof that the two people involved in the Golden Suicides were victims of ARG pranksters.
The only reason I mention the ARG stuff is because of how persecuting.us describes “social sculptural performance”.
This sociological exhibition through a coercive approach to forms of participation simultaneously involves hundreds of thousands of people in an artistic performance without their authorization.
Think the late 90’s movie, The Game, with Michael Douglas and Sean Penn.
Regardless, this is perhaps one of the weirder manifestations of social media in recent memory. While Cirio has some valid points about the availability and ease with which data can be collected on normal citizens, GOING to the extent of doing exactly what you’re stating you’re worried about, seems a bit strange. I must admit, it WAS unsettling to see many people I follow and interact with daily on Twitter, make the list for the “top” right-wing tweeters, as seen below:
Although, for the professional Twitter trolls out there, I guess this would prove to be an invaluable resource. Which is part of the point it appears Cirio is trying to make.
Hmmmm….
