In 2015 Microsoft will launch a new website called PeopleWatch.com. At People Watch, you can do exactly that – watch people. People Watch, allows people  to watch people from the comfort of their own home, for free. Want to know the last time Denzel Washington had a bowel movement? You can log on to to People Watch (dot) com. Curious about how long it takes Beyonce to brush her teeth in the morning? People Watch will have an app for that. Ever wonder how many times Rush Limbaugh uses the word nigger in 24 hours? You guessed it. Just log on to PeopleWatch.com.

 

How will People Watch work? When you’re sitting at work, bored, you can type in the name of the girl you’ve been too afraid to approach at the coffee shop. A series of data collected from infrared technology, cellphone microchips, and thousands of cameras placed throughout major metropolitan areas, will then be used to send dozens of photos and videos of your crush straight to your computer. Just in case your crush has a common name like Ashley Williams, Microsoft will also launch their sister site to People Watch - where you can type in specific physical features and all known recent locations - called MakeSureYouGotTheRightPerson.com, so you know, you can make sure you got the right person.

Okay, clearly, I’m making this all up but how far fetched is this, really?

 

Take for instance, Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg’s new privacy stance. It scares me: 

“People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that’s evolved over time,” Zuckerberg said. “We view it as our role in the system to constantly be innovating and be updating what our system is to reflect what the current social norms are.” Zuckerberg then pointed to Facebook’s recent privacy policy change that made user’s key information open by default as an example of the social network’s willingness to reflect “current social norms.”

 

Who out there is actually comfortable with all of this? What’s troubling about Facebook’s privacy stance is that the user no longer has control over what information is made public. I’m one of those conspiracy theorists who thinks the government plants cameras in our cable boxes, (when Bush was in office I never talked shit about him in front of the television). I’m okay with tiny cameras in my digital box though because I can never prove it. Now, I know for sure Facebook and dozens of people I’ll never know are watching me and it’s unsettling.

 

How do I know their watching me?  Because I’m watching them, clicking on people’s pages that I otherwise wouldn’t give a damn about, but I do now because Facebook is showing me that a friend of mine has recently commented on their status. Suchandsuch just wrote on Suchandsuch’s wall Giirrrrlll, he didn’t even know how to put it in right. How can I not click on that?!

 

In the past, I preferred Facebook to any other social networking site because I didn’t have to censor myself. Instead, I could pick and choose who I wanted to let in my world. Now I don’t have that choice. 

 

I know there are a lot of people who are very public about what they do in private, but should this be the social norm forced upon all of us? Or is this the price we have to pay for going online?  What’s next? PeopleWatch.com is a joke now, but who thought something like twitter would exist five years ago?

Tags: Facebook, Social Media, The Internets