The Streisand effect & LeBron James

Being an avid social media junkie I heartily devoured the story of poor LeBron James. He just happens to be one of the best basketball players to ever grace the game. He also found himself getting slam-dunked on by a college sophomore, which was nothing more than slightly amusing…until he tried to confiscate the video.

Thanks to the ‘banned’ video the dunk has become legendary, spiralling out of control on message boards and blogs. Rivals.com (US College Sports website) points out that it is the very fact that the video can’t be seen that results in people assuming it makes James look as bad as possible.

The Streisand effect happens primarily online when an attempt to censor or remove a piece of information has the unintended result of causing the information to be publicised to a greater extent than would have occurred if no censorship had been attempted. The very act of trying to suppress information causes that information to go viral and snowball out of control.

Why Streisand? In 2003 she unsuccessfully attempted to sue photographer Kenneth Adelman for $50 million for an unsolicited picture of her mansion that, in Streisand’s opinion, was an invasion of her privacy. The story and, therefore, the picture that she tried to suppress went ballistic.

Other cases include BBQ grills that cook babies, Trafigura drawing attention to their waste dumping through (you guessed it) banning commentary on their waste dumping, and Tiger Woods (you can probably guess that one).

Just in case you thought I forgot, watch LeBron James getting slam-dunked here.

Thanks Barbra!

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