Clara Listensprechen's Cranny: Facebook turns 10 years old, with Freud's ghost; PEGASYS update

Snowmageddon has hit Enid and the first order of business is digging out...of about 3 inches over here, while some OKC guy driving through downtown Enid was saying it was 5 or 6 inches. Yeah, I don't think so.

Turned on the tube, flipped to MSNBC to watch Prof. Jachk Learner, of USC Gould School of Law, talk about Facebook at 10 years and privacy issues...whereupon he used the term "gaslight". Enter Sigmund Freud's ghost, and the ghost of summer Chautauqua in Enid, at this point. The theme was the 1920s and "Anything Goes", with one of the characters having her mental health issues discussed with zero consideration of the impact the aforementioned Austrian had to change American attitudes toward mental health and the American usage of resulting mental health laws to use as a weapon against spouses, nearly all female.

Ari Melber didn't recognize the term "gaslight" and submitted instead that it be called "the Seinfeld Effect--It's not me, it's you". Doing that might make the concept more understandable, but the term "gaslight" evokes the entirety of the history of the practice, as the term originates from a stage play, by Patrick Hamilton, about exactly that, scenes taking place in the time period of the 1920s. It was eventually made into a movie in the 1940s, by the same title, because mental health abuses continued to ramp up between the 1920s and, quite frankly, through the 1960s.

Prof. Learner was saying that today's companies were about the business of creating an online environment where privacy wasn't considered the norm, and in doing so, the fault of being alarmed wasn't their fault but all in the minds of the people online who objected. Yup--that is indeed a classic case of gaslighting. Calling it the Seinfeld Effect does this no justice especially when it makes the concept comical. It is a serious matter indeed; it never should be thus trivialized.

Those of you reading this post and are snowed in are urged to take this time to view the movie "Gaslight", the 1940s movie, keeping in mind that this may very well be happening with online service providers other than Facebook as well. Learn from history lest ye repeat it.

Ummm, no--I will not be attending Winter Chautauqua this year. Or the Summer event either. I've said so before: it's good for the basics and I'm beyond the basics. I don't get much out of it these days and I've got more productive things to do with my time--going is pretty pointless. That's that. Finis.

PEGASYS research update: Found the original Articles of Incorporation filed with the State of Oklahoma. Love me or hate me, fact remains that I'm a helluva researcher whether you plonk me down into a public library, university library, science library, or law library. And as Will Sonnet used to say: That ain't brag--that's fact.

I don't see the City Council mentioned in the corporation laws/bylaws....

Oklahoma State Courts Network
The case: PEGASYS v City of Enid

UPDATE 2: Still doing some legal research but in regards to the public's right to demand public access channels as a public forum, and specifically the Pruneyard case from which came "the Pruneyard Test" utilized in subsequent court cases. If this line of research pans out, that means that the clause in the most recent contract PEGASYS entered into with the City is unenforceable and the City is out of line demanding that City promotion can be demanded as a "priority", as stated in that contract. Interesting.

Of interest are the footnotes which reference specific precedent legal cases, possibly brought to bear on the City's demand that PEGASYS place the needs of the City to promote itself over and above (a "priority") over access that the community is within its rights to demand.

Basically, even on private property, if the public frequents something or somewhere, it's still a public place, and so this can be said of public access channels, which, by definition, provide access to the public. The City's demands on the channels restrict that access by the public.

Another snippet of analysis on the PruneYard Test

Part of Supreme Court decision: Justice Thomas, joined by the Chief Justice and Justice Scalia, concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part. rendered June 28, 1996.

The lawsuit filed:
(The following have been resized and margins cropped)