Barbra Streisand doesn't want you to look at her house. She hasn't wanted you to look at her house for 20 years.
That's because, in 2003, she sued a photographer and his employer, Pictopia.com, for taking aerial photos to document coastal erosion as part of the California Coastal Records Project. They took 12,000 photos of the entire coastline.
But she wasn't concerned with the other 11,999 photos, just one in particular: Image 3850.
Streisand's Malibu coast mansion was part of the photo project and was captured in Image 3850. And all 12,000 images were available to the general public, meaning anyone and everyone could look at them.
Except she didn't want anyone and everyone to see her house. So she sued Pictopia.com for $50 million to remove Image 3850 from the site.
Before the lawsuit, the photo had only been downloaded six times total, and two of those were Streisand's attorneys. However, once the lawsuit was filed, there were 420,000 visits to the site the following month alone.
In other words, no one knew or cared if her house was on Pictopia.com until she made a big deal about it.
Ultimately, the lawsuit was dismissed, and Streisand was ordered to pay the photographer's attorney fees of $177,000. Plus, several million people have now seen Image 3850, mostly because we're all contrarian jerks who shared it with our friends, saying, "Barbra Streisand doesn't want you to LOOK AT THIS PHOTO. So whatever you do, don't LOOK AT THIS PHOTO."
(You can see it on my website at ErikDeckers.com. Because I'm a contrarian jerk, too.)
Thanks to Barbra, this is now called The Streisand Effect.
That's when someone tries to suppress something so other people won't see it, but people go out of their way to share that thing, thus ensuring many more people see it than if you had just kept your mouth shut in the first place.
In China, they call it "Wishing to cover, more conspicuous."
A group of doctors just got bitten by the Streisand Effect when they tried to ruin bacon for a Georgia baseball team and its fans.
Bacon is so wonderful, it once beat Chuck Norris in a fight, and Chuck thanked it.
In 1998, the Nobel Prize Committee tried to give all its awards to bacon, including the prize for literature.
The Most Interesting Man in the World has ceded his title to bacon.
Citizen Kane's sled wasn't really named Rosebud; that was the brand name of his favorite bacon company.
The last digit of pi is bacon.
Bacon never gets lost; your house was in the wrong place.
According to the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, none of that is true. In fact, they think bacon is bad for you!
There, there. It's OK. Let it all out. Don't worry, I won't let the bad people take bacon away.
Dr. Anna Herby of PCRM clearly hates America because she wrote to Bacon president Brandon Raphael: "Macon Bacon's glorification of bacon, a processed meat that raises the risk of colorectal cancer and other diseases, sends the wrong message to fans."
The biomedical busybodies also sponsored a billboard near Macon urging fans to "keep bacon off your plate." I usually eat it straight from the pan anyway.
Raphael responded: "The Macon Bacon do not view ourselves as a glorification of an unhealthy lifestyle. Rather, we pride ourselves on being a fun-natured organization focused on bringing families and communities together of Middle Georgia and beyond."
Herby then demonstrated she is not cut out for entertainment marketing by saying, "As for Kevin, Macon Bacon's mascot, he can reveal that he is actually plant-based bacon."
Seriously, stay in your lane, Dr. Herby. Brandon Raphael doesn't tell you how to create diet plans; don't tell him how to run a baseball team. And please don't try to give script notes; you're just embarrassing yourself.
Currently, the Bacon's food offerings include Steak Cut Bacon, Bacon Cheeseburger, and Bacon Wrapped Bacon, to name just a few delights.
But the Physicians Committee of People Who Hate America urged the team to stop serving these items and serve plant-based alternatives instead. They also want the team to change their name to Macon Facon Bacon and to start serving facon bacon (made from soybeans) or mushroom bacon (made from Satan's eye boogers).
They already serve a plant-based bacon option, which I'm sure people pretend to enjoy just to be polite.
I'd love to attend a Macon Bacon baseball game when they play their cross-state rivals, the Savannah Bananas, and create a new concession: bacon-wrapped bananas. Wrap some bacon around a peeled banana, cook it over a grill, and serve it on a stick. We'll call it the Baconana.
If anything, the Physicians Who Need to Mind Their Own Damn Business have made people want to eat even more bacon. Did the Streisand Effect teach you nothing?
You can't just tell people not to EAT MORE BACON. Because it will just make people EAT MORE BACON.
If you really want people to be healthier, tell them to quit eating salad, and they'll eat a lot more of it out of spite.
Especially if you put bacon on it.
Photo credit: California Coastal Records Project (Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons 3.0)
Photo credit: Shawnzam (Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons 2.0)
My new humor novel, Mackinac Island Nation, is finished and available from 4 Horsemen Publications. You can get the ebook and print versions here.