The time on my dashboard read 8:18. Twelve minutes to kill before I needed to be inside for work. I pulled my cell phone out of my purse and unlocked it. A new text from Tanya.

ìOMG! Ariella just put up pictures of her baby! Cutest thing I have. ever. SEEN!î

Eager to be distracted until my shift started at Tech City, I closed my messages and clicked on the SocialStream icon. 

SocialStream changed again. I looked at my screen and kind of wanted to throw my phone across my car. All I wanted was to see the pictures of Ariella's baby, and instead I got a screen telling me I would not have access to my profile until I completed their brief survey. I hate surveys. I always feel they have a hidden motive. I glanced at the clock again. Still 8:18. I sighed and clicked, "Start."

"Just so you know, the information you provide will only be used by SocialStream and its authorized subsidiaries to make your social networking experience better. To review our privacy policy, click here."

In order to stave off the moment of actually beginning the survey a little longer, I clicked on the hyperlink that took me to the privacy policy. I was expecting the usual wash of legal jargon that I mostly understood. I was bracing myself for the certain knowledge that my continued use of SocialStream for pictures of friend's babies, engagement rings, and articles on Jos Whedon's newest project was at the cost of my soul. But that knowledge did not inundate me. Instead, an error message greeted my wide eyes.

"The page you requested is unavailable to you until you update your profile. To take part in the new SocialStream survey, click here."

ìWhat the heck?î I couldnít keep the words from blurting out of my mouth. They sounded too loud in my quiet car, but I was having trouble believing what I was seeing. Surely it was some sort of page redirection glitch. Probably it was only because I was looking at it on my phone app. If I got on my computer, I would certainly be able to read the privacy policy. But there was no way I was going to fill out that survey without knowing what I was agreeing to now that I knew something suspicious was happening. I closed my app and contemplated the home screen of my phone.

I was going to have to wait until after work to access the privacy policy on a computer. But my curiosity was not going to wait that long, so I asked my good friend, ìSiri, SocialStream privacy glitch.î About a million results popped up, most of them popular SocialStream profiles. Apparently every profile included the words ìSocialStreamî and ìprivacyî and a whole lot of them had the word ìglitchî in there somewhere. I would definitely have to be more strategic about this. ìPrivacy policy redirect to surveyî was about as fancy as I could think to word it while avoiding the use of ìSocialStream.î This time my search proved more fruitful and I clicked on an article from The Hacker News that was third from the top. 

I skimmed through the article. Mostly it acknowledged that there was a problem, talked about the bloggerís rather whiny series of attempts to get around the glitch, the eventual inability to do so, the ease of taking the SocialStream survey, and, finally, the official response from the company about the problem:

ìWe are aware of the problem and are fixing itÖ users can either forego their social network accounts through the corporation or take the fast and easy SocialStream survey.î

A chill ran down my spine. ì...through the corporationÖî I had a sinking feeling in my stomach that turned into outright nausea when I opened my Telealbum picture sharing app. 

"The page you requested is unavailable to you until you update your profile. To take part in the new SocialStream survey, click here."

I jammed the home button down to close that app too. I looked at my phone for a second, then powered it off completely. My frustration finally got the best of me and my phone rebounded off of the car door. It landed screen up on the passengerís seat, the stupid pink and black case not even scratched. I suddenly had this very strange feeling that it was watching me. I went into work five minutes early - the first time in the the three years I had been working at Tech City.

* * * * *

Most of the sick, frightened feeling Iíd had about my phone had worn off by the time I got off of work. I was left with just the angry, unhappy feelings that always seemed to accompany changes to SocialStream. I pulled my phone out of my purse and took a moment to check my appearance in the still dark screen. I refused, on the principal of the thing, to use the front-facing camera as a mirror. If random people could access the camera on my computer, surely they could do the same thing to my phone. Unfortunately, the darkened phone was good enough to see that my hair was mutinying against its pony tail again, curling chunks escaping near my face. Not the attractive ones that curly-haired movie stars manage. Just the gross, greasy ones with tiny pieces sticking out in every direction to give my face a halo that vaguely resembled a lionís mane. I hadnít bothered with any make-up because, well, I didnít want most of the guys I saw at Tech City to flirt with me. My brown eyes had no help from eyeliner or mascara to make them look exotic, they were just plain, sad eyes. That wanted to look at pictures of Ariellaís new baby.

I powered on my phone and let it warm up while I drove home. I only lived about ten minutes from work in an apartment complex far enough away from the local college that not a whole lot of students got units there, but close enough that they had to be priced to be competitive with the college apartment complexes. I had a gate opener mounted on my sun visor, but I might as well not have because there was always at least one broken gate leading into the complex. I could tell my phone was back up when it started dancing rhythmically in my cup holder as I turned into a parking space. ìSeven?î Again, my voice sounded loud in the quiet car. I rarely got text messages. What was I doing getting seven during one of my short shifts? Was one of my friends having a mental breakdown? If they had sent me one long text that got broken up into seven, I could only pray that the texts would be in order. I pressed on the message icon.

I had seven text messages from six different people, each one telling me how cute Ariellaís baby was and asking me if I had seen the newest picture she just posted where he was sticking out his tongue. This time my phone landed on the floorboard.

Resigning myself to just take the stupid survey without reading the new privacy policy, I trudged up to my apartment. I unlocked my computer. Everything was as I had left it. Twelve tabs, including my email, the last episode Iíd watched of my latest binge TV show, and a couple of random reddit articles. I refreshed my email, praying that maybe I was a good enough friend that Ariella might have sent me an email announcing the birth of her son with a picture or two. No such luck. I did have an email from SocialStream, though, telling me that I would ì...not be able to access the normal features of my account until I completed the quick and easy SocialStream survey.î I wanted to scream at the stupid survey. I did notice, however, that in the fine print at the bottom of the email, there was a hyperlink to the privacy policy. Breathing a sigh of relief (the blogger hadnít tried to get at it through email), I clicked on the link. Unfortunately, that link took me to the SocialStream login page and I knew I would not be able to escape the SocialStream survey if I entered my credentials.

ìFine,î I conceded to my empty apartment. ìIíll take the stupid quiz.î

But I couldnít bring myself to type in my username and password just yet. Instead, I opened a new window and typed ìSocialStream current privacy policyî in the search bar. Once more I was overwhelmed with hits, none of them on the first three pages relevant to my quest. Frustrated, I asked the room, ìIs it even worth it?î 

I paused for a moment. ìValue of my SocialStream profileî was my search. I donít know what caused me to type that. Maybe I wanted to be convinced that there was redeeming value in knowing what people I hadnít talked to since high school were doing with their lives. Maybe I wanted someone to tell me it wasnít worth it and I should just leave my profile to rot in ìtake the surveyî limbo. But the link I clicked on did neither of those things.

It was an IRC log that had made its way to pastebin. Seven handles were commenting back and forth about a talk they attended at DEFCon. They were dissecting a fellow hackerís method of bypassing the SocialStream survey. Apparently there were mixed reviews as to how well your profile really worked once you bypassed the survey, but the conclusion was that you could search for other peopleís profiles and view them reasonably, and, most importantly to the commenters I was seeing, you could save the things you wanted to save and then delete your profile. Of course people pointed out again and again the futility of deleting anything on the internet, but I felt it was the principal of the thing. I did not want SocialStream to think I would fall for whatever malicious designs it was concocting through its survey.

ìI took the survey,î one brave soul typed. I could see the other contributors hold their collective breaths. No keys were touched, no snarky comments were entered as the contributor continued, ìI took screenshots of each of the questions. Tell me what you think:î

I clicked the imgur link and there followed a series of pictures that really did chill me. It was a personality quiz interspersed with questions I could see would make mapping your actual social network easy. It sneakily categorized people into groups. People you knew and kept up with in person and online. Your just online friends. People you talked to online and through some other means of communication (calling, texting, writing, etcÖ). And finally, those who you were interested in purely as a voyeur. The survey was brilliantly crafted with innocuous questions about your own pictures, about your interests (your likes as well as the types of status updates you were most likely to comment on), and about your friends (ìWould you describe Jacquelyn as your a)best friend b)close friend c)friend d)acquaintance or e)Iím not sure who Jacquelyn is).

It was the very last screenshot that really got me, though. The long searched for privacy policy could finally be accessed once the survey was completed. The wording was what I expected. The pictures you uploaded, your status updates, your likes, your comments all belonged to SocialStream. But it was a sentence near the very end, easily lost in the complicated legal jargon, that made me want to crawl in a SocialStream free hole and never emerge. 

ìSocialStream retains the right to, at any time, update their records to reflect changes in the users status, both as account holders and as pieces of the network that creates the SocialStream grid in perpetuity.î

If I was reading that right, and I had developed some expertise in the subject of legal interpretation while pursuing my pre-law degree, it meant that SocialStream could become me. They could, even if I deactivated it, take over my account and pretend to be me as long as they wanted to. They owned my online persona. They were me. Forever.

I deleted all the apps off of my phone that had ever in any way been tied to SocialStream. I had never linked my Prater feed to SocialStream, but I deleted that for good measure. Then I sat in my apartment and closed my eyes in defeat. We were helpless in the face of the monster SocialStream had become. Not even the hackers could truly beat the system social media had created. They might DDoS it. They might do funny things to SocialStream executivesí accounts. But, in the end, that would be just one more thing to talk about on SocialStream.

My phone alerted me to a new email. I unlocked my screen and clicked on the envelope icon of my inbox. I had an email from my mom. Usually they were chain emails, but this one wasnít a forward, so I opened it.

Jenny,

I donít know if you remember your friend Ariella, but her mom, Susan, and I are in the same dance class down at the rec center. She sent me an email with a picture of Ariellaís new baby boy! Let me know if you want me to forward it on to you.

Love,
Mom