Streisand Effect: Hide something and it will go viral
Why are we so attracted to the forbidden?
🏷️ Categories: Behavior, Social relationships.
The best way to make something go viral is to try to hide it.
Think of someone who makes a mistake. Instead of acknowledging it, they try to cover it up. That desperate attempt to erase it from everyone’s sight… only amplifies it. The information spreads at maximum speed. And in the end, everyone ends up knowing what otherwise might have gone unnoticed.
This is the Streisand Effect: what you want to hide always comes back.
Bigger.
Louder.
More evident.
Hide it, make it famous
In ancient China they already had an expression for this, more than two thousand years ago: 欲蓋彌彰 (yù gài mí zhāng) — to try to conceal something, and in doing so, make it famous.
The story behind this proverb is brutal (Durrant et al., 2016).
During the Spring and Autumn period, a powerful military officer of the State of Qi, Cui Zhu, murdered his ruler. He did it because the ruler was having an affair with his wife, Tang Jiang. After committing this brutal crime, Cui Zhu tried to erase every trace. He pressured the state historian to omit the fact so there would be no official record. But the historian, faithful to his duty, wrote: “Cui Zhu killed his sovereign.”
Cui Zhu’s reaction was immediate: he killed him.
Now the court was missing two people: the monarch and the historian. And it got worse…
The historian’s brother took over and wrote exactly the same thing. He too was killed. Then a third brother wrote the same words. He was also executed. Finally, a fourth and last brother of the historian wrote the same sentence and…
Cui Zhu gave up.
Each death, each attempt at censorship, only aggravated his crime. Within days, word had spread throughout the State of Qi and beyond its borders: everyone knew Cui Zhu had murdered his ruler — and that he would meet the same fate.
Cover something up, and you’ll only make it more famous.
The Streisand Effect
The phenomenon has existed for millennia, but in 2003 it was given a name: the Streisand Effect.
Singer Barbra Streisand discovered that in a public archive of aerial photographs of the California coastline, one of the images showed her house in Malibu. Nothing remarkable. Before her reaction, that photo had been downloaded only four times.
Streisand sued for $50 million to have it removed.
The result? More than 420,000 downloads in a month (Jansen & Martin, 2015).
Why does this happen? Why are we fascinated by what is clandestine or censored?
The psychology of the forbidden
The attraction we feel toward what is forbidden is innate.
It’s in the oldest myths, like that of Adam, Eve, and the apple — irresistible precisely because it was forbidden. The Roman historian Tacitus observed the same in imperial Rome: “While possessing these writings was dangerous, they were eagerly sought after and read; once possession was permitted with freedom, they fell into oblivion” (Jansen & Martin, 2015).
Censorship does not kill curiosity. It feeds it.
Modern psychology calls this phenomenon reactance (Brehm, 1966). When we feel that our freedom of choice is threatened, a motivation arises against whatever makes us feel restricted. It happens in all sorts of contexts: warnings and restrictions, instead of discouraging, increase attraction.
If you tell me “you can’t see this”, what you awaken in me is an even greater desire to look.
Bring that dynamic into the digital arena and it amplifies infinitely.
Jansen and Martin (2015) noted that this explosion of popularity occurs on the internet and in the media because when someone tries to silence or censor information, the entire network experiences reactance and a collective indignation to preserve it.
Just like the photo of Barbra Streisand’s house.
Visibility or silence
And so we reach the big question…
What do we do with ideas like flat-earth theories, historical denialism, climate change denial, racist or conspiratorial discourses?
If the media give them space to debate publicly, they gain visibility and status. Simply appearing in relevant channels popularizes them and grants them — even if only in appearance — legitimacy or seriousness.
On the other hand, if they are excluded, they fuel the narrative of “they want to silence us”, reinforced by the Streisand Effect.
So what should we do? Give them a voice or not?
The answer: critical thinking
I believe that all ideas, even the most uncomfortable ones, should have space.
What matters is how we react to them.
The problem is not that someone voices a message, but how we receive it. If we accept it without questioning, if we share it simply because we’re attracted to the allure of secrecy or the aura of censorship makes it seem more convincing, then we are complicit in its spread. That’s the problem of our era: it’s easier to retweet someone else’s idea than to think for ourselves.
The real antidote is not silence. It’s cultivating critical thinking.
We need to do the work of forming our own opinions by contrasting information. That is the only way to be free: to value ideas by their arguments and not be swayed by the mysterious or “revolutionary” aura they might carry.
Nothing more to say.
✍️ Your turn: Where have you seen the Streisand Effect?
💭 Quote of the day: “Tyrants can no longer hide. It is necessary, and it will be, to document and hold accountable, and we must bear witness. And for this, I insist, everything that happens must be known.” — Dave Eggers, The Circle
See you next time! 👋
References 📚
Brehm, J. W. (1966). A theory of psychological reactance.
Durrant, S. W., Li, W., & Schaberg, D. (2016). Zuo Tradition.
Jansen, S. & Martin, B. (2015). The Streisand Effect and Censorship Backfire. 9, 16–16. URL
Well, this is certainly appropriate for this strange year of conspiracies and media frenzies in the U.S. I often wonder if the rest of the world is also spinning in reaction to our nutty little circus or if they have the ability to go on with their affairs calmly.