Do you have what it takes to be a V.I.P.?

In 2003, Barbra Streisand learned that an aerial photo of her California beach house was captured as part of a series of photos of the California coastline that aerial photographer Kenneth Adelman was taking for a photographic project. Needless to say, the Funny Girl was not very amused. Streisand took to suing Adelman --not an uncommon move for someone in the league of prima divas, or female celebrities known to be "temperamental, and difficult to please" (Cashmore 2019). 

​

However, the California Coastal Records Project was protected under California law and went on to reproduce images that included shots of her Malibu mansion. Despite claiming that this was an infringement of privacy, Streisand's now very public legal move paradoxically encouraged 420,000 site viewers in a month. Sorry, Babs! The explosive backfire introduced what would later be coined The Streisand Effect.

​

The Streisand Effect blew up the notion of celebrity privacy. If Barbra Streisand couldn't get her way, who could? It was also at this time that Web 2.0 was coming into existence, an era of virtuosity that ushered in social networking sites, user-generated content, and the "democratization of celebrity and entertainment" (Marwick 2015). The impact on life in the early 2000s was unmistakable: A-listers became challenged with the onslaught of being public figures, and fans became paparazzi, content creators, and commodities.

​

Prying for information to sell has never been easier. Both in the sense of fans prying from celebrities, as well as companies prying from us every day.