Ride the Lightning

Every Move You Make, We’ll Be Watching You

December 1, 2016

Every now and again, my work feels like play and I find myself chortling. Thanks to Dave Ries for turning me on to the Dutch website ClickClickClick. Make sure to turn your audio on, as the site asks you to do. You may feel a bit stoned out (a long ago sensation) by this site – so pick your moment to visit it.

As described by a Naked Security post, the point of the website is that the technology of today can track EVERY move we make and every click we take. There is quite a running audio commentary about everything you do. It teased me about logging in during working hours (hey, this is my work buddy!). And it protested if I moved my cursor to another monitor.

Are you still there? You haven't been around for quite some time now. I'm thinking, do you still like me?

The audio commentary is made in a jaunty Dutch accent – the site was created by Dutch media company VPRO and the Amsterdam-based interactive design company Studio Moniker.

It's a simple site – a white screen with a big green button labelled "Button" in the middle – and it has a simple mission: to observe and comment on everything that visitors do on the site, in great detail, and to thereby remind visitors about just how closely our online behavior is monitored.

Subject! Stay focused! …inactive… waiting possibly for something to happen? Come on, subject. You were being so great. Do something. Moving around a lot now. Curious and energetic. Interesting.

You may be my favorite visitor.

Studio Monkier designer Roel Wouters told news.com that ClickClickClick was designed to remind people about the serious themes of big data and privacy.

There's nothing unique about ClickClickClick's tracking. What is unique is that it's upfront about it, letting us see the granularity of that tracking in an ongoing log that streams on-screen with notations including where on the screen you moved, whether you zigzagged or moved straight, how many pixels, how long you were inactive and the like. The site actually tracks the possible "achievements" you can make. I made it up to 39% before I remembered that I had paying work to do.

Unusual behavior… Subject has been gone for 10 minutes… Very slow. Boring like hell.

Go play and have fun. I did decline to let the site see me by turning on my webcam. That was just too creepy, even my mesmerized, zoned out state!

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