Social-media mugging: beware of murakami

Published on November 19, 2013

Berlin

First, con­sider this: In Berlin, this late au­tumn feels like minus 20 de­grees, ice-cold winds are sweep­ing every­one off the streets and into their favourite pub to con­gre­gate over beer and herbal tea. What might ap­pear quite comfy thanks to wooden ta­bles and plushy sofas has re­cently be­come dan­ger­ous ter­rain for lovers of dig­i­tal pri­vacy. Most cool cafés and bars list not only Be­liner Kindl and Club Mate, but also free Wi-Fi on their menus, so a lot of us take out our tablets or Mac­Books as soon as we have set­tled down into a chair or sofa. Some­times we might also read.

A lit­tle more cir­cum­spec­tion might be wise though, as this is when the so­cial-me­dia mug­ger is most likely to strike: “Hey, I just saw you're read­ing Mu­rakami... I re­ally like him, too!” Every­thing can be a con­ver­sa­tion starter, from art to Club Mate. “Every­one seems to be drink­ing it now, how un­cool.” Noth­ing out of the or­di­nary so far. Con­ver­sa­tions need to be started some­how and spon­ta­neous dis­cus­sions or serendip­i­tous meet­ings are usu­ally the most ex­cit­ing. “So you're a writer? I'm also doing art... on the in­ter­net.” Yet, no one has any time for a proper con­ver­sa­tion. Three min­utes pro­vide just enough time to make a com­ment about Berlin hip­sters be­fore the mug­ger takes off.

dig­i­tal mug­gings in our favourite bar

In his pocket, the mug­ger is car­ry­ing away the Face­book name of his star­tled vic­tim. In a few clicks, the in­ter­minable pro­ce­dures of the Face­book uni­verse are set in mo­tion. Years ago, we could still write down a wrong email ad­dress, in­vent a name, scrib­ble our mo­bile num­ber into in­de­ci­pher­abil­ity or pre­tend we weren't on Face­book out of prin­ci­ple. Back then, most of us would have laughed about so­cial-me­dia mug­ging. If you Google 'so­cial-me­dia mug­gings' the term comes up within the con­text of mug­gings and bur­glar­ies planned and timed by crim­i­nals with the help of so­cial net­works. But this is a dif­fer­ent kind of mug­ging. A mug­ging that takes place in the bars and cafés of Berlin – and it's a lot more com­mon.

How can you de­fend your pri­vacy in these times of in­escapable in­ter­net-ac­cess with­out tak­ing re­course to the ugly truth: “No thank you, I don't want to be your friend?” Nowa­days, it is only a mat­ter of sec­onds until fic­tional Face­book names or sim­i­lar in­ven­tions are ex­posed as cre­ative means of dig­i­tal self-pro­tec­tion. If you are still ad­her­ing to the po­lite­ness codes of the 20th cen­tury and can't voice an out­right re­fusal, you will have to be more in­ven­tive. Un­less you want your ac­counts in so­cial net­works to be in­un­dated by so­cial-me­dia mug­gers and to con­stantly live with a bad con­science. 

The fol­low­ing five strate­gies don't guar­an­tee full pro­tec­tion against all sorts of friend­ship at­tacks, but they should deter the ma­jor­ity of so­cial-me­dia mug­gers: 

the ul­ti­mate so­cial-me­dia mug­ger pro­tec­tion

1. Next time you go to a pub, take a highly com­pli­cated Der­rida book along, prefer­ably with a min­i­mal­ist dark blue Suhrkamp cover. This will scat­ter most so­cial-me­dia mug­gers of the Mu­rakami type. If you also take a pen and keep busily un­der­lin­ing ran­dom sen­tences, every­one will un­der­stand that you are a very busy in­tel­lec­tual with no time for su­per­fi­cial gos­sip. It would take a very stead­fast and con­vinced mug­ger to break through your post-struc­tural­ist wall. 

2. Come up with the most vac­u­ous name pos­si­ble (Sarah James or John Smith for ex­am­ple). When the so­cial-me­dia mug­ger types it into the Face­book search bar, ran­domly point at the first user of the same name with a blurred or un­recog­nis­able pro­file pic­ture. 

3. Keep sip­ping your beer while ex­plain­ing that you are only vis­it­ing Berlin, but live in a bor­ing lit­tle town where you are study­ing to be a bank clerk. This is only cred­i­ble if you are not sport­ing a full hip­ster at­tire. 

4. Cre­ate an en­tirely new Face­book pro­file re­served for so­cial-me­dia mug­gers. It might take some time to make it look le­git­i­mate (num­ber of friends, pic­tures, posts etc.), but it will then serve as an ex­cel­lent tool to as­sess the steady in­crease of so­cial-me­dia mug­gings. 

5. The ul­ti­mate mug­ger de­fence strat­egy (only for two peo­ple): as soon as you no­tice that you have at­tracted the at­ten­tion of a po­ten­tial so­cial-me­dia mug­ger, start look­ing se­ri­ous and af­fect a ner­vous twitch of the mouth. Stay ex­tremely friendly when the mug­ger strikes, plac­ing extra em­pha­sis on the fol­low­ing lines: “We're re­ally sorry, but we're just hav­ing a re­ally per­sonal con­ver­sa­tion. Ac­tu­ally, we are break­ing up. That's why we need some pri­vacy if that's okay.” This will elicit an em­pathic smile from even the tough­est mug­ger who is sure to dis­ap­pear back into his cor­ner. Make sure you never go back to the pub in ques­tion, though, un­less you want the failed at­tempt at mak­ing con­ver­sa­tion to trans­form into a ter­ri­ble flirt. 

Cred­its go to Chris Stevens who coined the term for this new phe­nom­e­non of dig­i­tal friend­ship at­tacks in the real world.

Translated from Social Media-Mugging: Von Kunst bis Club Mate