The Silicon Jungle

by Shumeet Baluja

  How could Molly have known what she would find? But it was her job to know, at least to have an intelligent guess. The people she found were not the caricatures she had imagined—the imaginary lives she had based her thesis plans on. If people posting on the forums were not the angry mob she envisioned, there would be little point in her thesis. Understanding a young boy’s decision about whether he could be friends with an American girl, or understanding a girl’s thoughts on acceptable garments to wear, as important as both may be, were a lot less likely to impress her thesis committee than insights into the role the Internet was playing on Middle Eastern peoples’ perceptions of the U.S.

  It was 3:55 a.m. when Stephen made his way back onto Ubatoo’s grounds. There were only a few lights still on—more security guards than workers. He had spent the full day at Ubatoo, working harder than usual so he could make it home early. He would have rather been anywhere other than back on grounds, but where else was he supposed to go?

  He didn’t walk to Building 11, resolving not to let himself do any more work. Instead, he walked along the brick pathway past the usual concrete buildings, toward the gurgling fountains and the manicured lawns. All paths seemed to eventually end at Xiao’s Ballroom. The lights were on inside. He went in, hoping someone would be playing games like they had after the internship contest, or hoping to at least find something to distract himself with for a few minutes.

  Aarti was in the room, sitting at one of the many elaborately decorated tables that had been readied for some press function taking place the next day. She had a stack of papers piled high next to her and was thoroughly engrossed in her reading. She hadn’t heard him, and he hadn’t planned on interrupting her. But when she glanced up, she waved. Tonight, it was enough of an invitation.

  She smiled when he approached. “Come here often, stranger?”

  “Couldn’t sleep. Just out taking a walk. How about you? You’re up late.”

  “I come here to read sometimes—to get out of my office and out of my apartment.” She looked a bit tired, but just as stunning as she had the first night at the party. Jeans and a white shirt were as flattering on her as what she had been wearing that night.

  “What are you reading?”

  Her cheeks flushed, and she smiled sheepishly as she looked away. Her hair, normally twisted close to her neck, was loose, and fell across one eye when she moved. “See all those papers right there?” She pointed to the stack of academic papers next to her. “Well, I’m not reading those.” She lifted a novel from her lap and held it up for Stephen to see. “Much more interesting, especially alone at night.” As soon as she remembered the salacious cover, though, she quickly put it back down, hoping he hadn’t had time to let it register.

  “Romance novels? You? I wouldn’t have guessed.”

  She shrugged her shoulder ever so slightly. “Ever since I was fifteen—read about one a week.”

  “And do all of them have covers like that one?”

  She held the book in her hand, now plainly visible for both of them to see, a bare-chested hulking man ripping off the flimsy, barely laced bodice of a forlorn maiden. Aarti responded in her characteristic drawl, this time made all the more alluring with the slight whisper of sleepiness. “Not all of them—just the ones I read.”

  And the conversation continued—talking a little about a lot. It probably would have continued until breakfast was served, but Stephen’s phone chirped, and a message from Molly interrupted them.

  Am truly sorry.

  I am waiting up for you.

  Won’t you please come home?

  -NEWSWORTHY-

  July 11, 2009.

  What makes a young boy living in London care about Americans in Iraq? Most kids don’t watch the news, don’t care about politics, and probably couldn’t find Iraq on a map. But on a message forum discussing America’s involvement in the Middle East, a boy, who went by the alias truthAndDare28, typed the following message on his cell phone because he did not have access to a computer; he was fifteen years old at the time:

  Posted By: truthAndDare28

  Posted: Jun 18 2:23 am

  Location: London

  they wont move because they stuff their fat faces with lard and hot dogs and feces all day they cant fight because they are a bunch of limp pricks, i pray that the day will come. let us all pray that it is soon. brothers pray together that we crush these disgusting vile military crusaders give us the power to overcome. i am ranting i know but really worked up about all this today i will post again when I have the picture to show and not before then. in two days if willing

  Though Molly never found out how the boy had come to have such a hatred toward America, within minutes of reading further, her curiosity about the pictures he wanted to show was no more. In posts dated two days later, others told of truthAndDare28’s outcome. He had died thirty-seven hours after his post, on his sixteenth birthday. There was violence. At least it was quick.

  As typical with Molly, the disappointment she felt because of the findings on her first day of searching made her more industrious over the next days. The initial indiscriminate exploratory investigations she had begun with were superseded by meticulous, deep searches. She methodically worked her way through the extensive list of results returned by Ubatoo. She had only needed to stumble upon the more obscure web sites, those that appeared far past the first few pages of Ubatoo’s search listings, for her perseverance to be rewarded.

  The pages she encountered in these seldom seen web sites contained posts from truthAndDare28, and far worse—the same hatred, the same urgency, but with deliberate wishful plans, clarity of thought, and explicit visions of cruelty. Each link she clicked led her deeper into the realm of questioning, hate, and the promised violence that every pressing news report had assured existed. For every post that expressed radicalism from one side, it was matched by dozens of posts that expressed it from the other.

  This world she had uncovered was enormous. She pursued the connections from page to page, until she found herself at private sites that she was not allowed to access, or were written in a language she did not understand. So many links she found eventually led straight to MySpace pages, Facebook profiles, and YouTube videos, each serving as little enticements and open invitations for the too curious to delve further.

  These web sites provided Molly with a wealth of content to populate her web site, EasternDiscussions. Although some of these web sites devoted part of their offerings to everyday discussions like shopping, dating, and support, unlike her first sample, none shied away from encouraging debates on religion and law, often supporting, and other times vilifying, extremist viewpoints and politics.

  These were the posts that made the headlines. These were the posts that immediately sprung to mind when anyone spoke of fear, when anyone spoke of terrorism. These were the messages that would make it into her thesis; everything else was too pedestrian to be interesting.

  The more she read, the more convinced she became that she was on the right track with her thesis topic. As more people came online in the Middle East, the more the need existed to ensure that what they saw wasn’t just an echo of the hate for America that already surrounded them. How much did the views of a few vocal individuals, or a few violent posts, dictate the eventual perceptions of all the readers? If she could quantify the effect, her thesis would be complete.

  Still, she had to ask herself, what’s the difference between doing such a passive analysis and doing nothing at all? Unless she knew how to change the opinions of the readers and posters of a message board, why bother to study them? If she wasn’t going to be in the villages helping people, she reminded herself, the impact she needed to have must be just as long lasting, just as real, and even bigger.

  Could she systematically influence the readers and posters on message boards? Instead of just studying the influence of extremist individuals, could she limit their impact? Maybe it would be as simple as making sure the messages that espoused the “right” ide
as always bubbled to the top so readers saw them first. Maybe it was creating a credible authority, or set of authorities, to agree on a viewpoint and then expound on it. Or maybe it was much simpler. What about studying and controlling how long messages were—did shorter or longer messages have a bigger impact? How many calls to action should be included? How many references to prayer, to power, to God? Maybe it was even easier than that. Maybe it was just about presenting the “right” messages to the readers over and over again.

  All of these things had to have some impact—if she could just quantify the amount and document it, not only would her thesis be more impressive, but it would also be useful. No thesis committee could possibly question its significance. In fact, Gale would be overjoyed. This went far beyond simply measuring information effects from discussion forums. It explored how to covertly control them.

  What she needed right now, though, were subjects. She needed to have a web site where people were posting daily so she could run her experiments and study the effects they had on the evolution of opinions. How else could she test whether her methods of influence and control worked?

  Without visitors, as nice looking as it was, EasternDiscussions was worthless. However, attracting visitors was difficult. When people typed in relevant search terms on any search engine, including Ubatoo, her web site normally appeared in the fourth page of results or later, if it appeared at all. This meant almost nobody saw it. She was convinced that no search engine would put her web site high enough on their results pages until it became more popular. But to get popular, it either required a huge advertising budget or a lot of users. Neither of which she had. At the time, only six people had posted on the site. Of these six posters, two were real and four were pseudonyms that Molly used herself.

  To take matters into her own hands, under a variety of names, she posted on other discussion forums about any and all relevant topics. In her messages, she always placed a link to a similar discussion she had fabricated on EasternDiscussions. She hoped that at least a few people would click these links and be sufficiently enticed to stay and post their own messages on her web site.

  Her first post was made under the moniker Sahim Galab. She modeled her voice and tone after the more well thought out posts she had seen. Not only did this style come more naturally to her, but she also was drawn to those posts in her own explorations. Besides, she couldn’t bring herself to compose a post like truthAndDare28’s. The deceit of appearing so passionate about things she didn’t believe, especially in light of the boy’s grim fate, was too much. As it was, she already felt guilty for her excitement in wondering if anyone would take her seriously.

  A conference inviting Mustafa Kawlia, an extremist supporter who was not allowed in the U.S. because of his use of video messages that encouraged aggressive actions in the U.S. and Europe, had been announced. Numerous online discussion forums were teeming with fervent posts supporting the right for Mustafa to speak, as well as the opposite—soliciting violence against him if he actually stepped onto American soil. She needed all of these people on her own web site if she was going to get enough subjects for her study. In three forums on popular web sites discussing Mustafa Kawlia, this was what she posted:

  Dear Brothers,

  The right for Mustafa to speak must be respected. Anything less will only lead to more distrust from both sides. I do not understand why so many insist on trying to stop Mustafa from coming. Do you believe that as Muslims we cannot judge for ourselves whether he speaks for us? What do you take us for? You can see for yourself what he has said in the past (video1, video2). His words are severe, yet he has never told anyone to act violently. With or without him, it must be up to us to decide the actions, whether violent or not, we will take. To remove that choice from our hands is unacceptable, and I fear that it plainly forces us to one course of action over the other.

  —Sahim

  The advertisement for EasternDiscussions was subtle—it had to be in order to be effective. The links video1 and video2 went to pages on her web site that discussed the videos. She had created these fictional discussions between Sahim and other, more fanatical, imagined characters. Though the actual links to the videos were included on her pages, she hoped the discussion that users would first encounter would convince them to join in the fray and post their own arguments.

  The idea worked, but only a little. Within a few days, she had twelve more real visitors to her site. But there were still few, if any, postings. Who would bother to write something if there was no one to read it? But she was patient. Within a week, there were forty-eight people on her message board who had posted more than eighteen messages in a single day. She was excited. It was small now, but this could be the first sign that traction was building. She eagerly shared the news with Stephen. But for someone who routinely dealt with hundreds of millions of users at Ubatoo, it was difficult to be enthusiastic about her forty-eight. Nonetheless, it was because of this exchange that the discussion with Andrew would arise a few days later, and a path to obtain Molly’s users would present itself. So, perhaps, it was worth this temporary disappointment.

  -PATIENCE-

  July 20, 2009.

  Judging from the flashing lights, news cameras, and roar of the crowd, the event could easily have been mistaken for a Hollywood movie premiere. The first sign that it wasn’t such frivolity was the abundance of police officers in full protective gear. The second was the color of the skin of the people waiting in line to enter. The 1,500 tickets to tonight’s event had been sold out since they went on sale two months ago, even before Mustafa Kawlia was given permission to enter the U.S.

  Only a single entrance of UCLA’s Royce Hall Auditorium was in use. The flow of people in and out of the auditorium was carefully monitored. All the news stories had warned against attending the event. But being there, amidst the crowd, waiting in line and watching and feeling the spectacle, with all of the energy skirting so close to violence, made even the most hyperbolic warnings sedate in comparison. The shouts from surrounding crowds and the yells in response from those in line were deafening.

  Earlier this morning, Mohammad still had not decided whether he would bring his son, Adam. By the afternoon, watching the news reports showing the growing crowds of protesters, he had decided that Adam wasn’t ready for this yet. Perhaps Mohammad was just being overly protective. But what father of a six-year-old son wouldn’t be? Looking at the chaos surrounding him now, he was happy he had left his son at home. Maybe in a few years he could handle all this, but right now this was no place for him.

  Mohammad had been waiting in line for over an hour, and the line behind him still stretched further back than he could see. He hadn’t even planned on being here. Kawlia was well known, and the subject of his appearance a public controversy, but Kawlia was not the only one who spoke honestly. No, many already believed everything Kawlia would say tonight. Kawlia spoke openly and without fear, but the words he said were echoed by thousands every day. Being here, to show support in such a public place, was an empty gesture. Had Mohammad’s imam not brought these tickets to Mohammad himself, he would not have come. But he had insisted, and now Mohammad stood in line, being jostled and herded like all the rest.

  Only a few feet away from where he stood, among the shields and vests and clubs and guns, the barely recognizable bodies of the police officers stood joined, holding back a sea of protesters who threatened more violence than any of those standing in line. Over 8,000 protesters were expected on the lawn that night, more than five times the number of guests attending.

  The line moved slowly. The entrance to the red brick building that held the auditorium was only thirty feet away, situated between the two imposing towers of Royce Hall on either side. When he was finally close enough to see inside the entrance doors, he noticed metal detectors had been set up. He saw the desks at which everyone’s ID was being recorded, checked, and rechecked; saw the policemen searching every person entering—roughly handling every man and boy; saw the
short bald man in a police uniform laying his hands on the few women who wanted entrance, mindlessly feeling for any weapons they might be hiding. He said nothing, but when he followed the gazes of those in front of him, he discovered them watching as carefully as he was. One wrong step, one accidental slip of this bald man’s hand, and there would be immediate retribution. It wouldn’t take much.

  Throughout, the screaming and yelling continued around him. A young Muslim girl in yellow shorts on the shoulders of another Muslim boy directed her yells straight to Mohammad, imploring him not to go in. The sign she held simply stated, “This is not Islam.” No, Mohammad thought, it is not. Amidst the pulsating sea of signs and posters, hers was not unique. Dozens of girls and boys clutched the same poster, declaring to the world through the news cameras busily scanning the crowds that they were not part of what Kawlia was saying—distancing themselves from the words spoken here. They were losing themselves, Mohammad understood. They wanted to be lost and not to be found again.

  The coolness of the inside air, and the escape from the crowds and the overwhelming noise, eased the tension in Mohammad’s body. He relaxed a moment; even let himself be moved by the crowd. Soon, he would be seated, and the disgraceful yelling and noise would just be a memory. The metal detector was beeping and the overhead red light was flashing. A guard standing to the left of the detector roughly pushed him to the side. “Pay attention,” the guard barked. “Can’t you see it’s red!” he shouted, angrily thumping the flashing light above him as though Mohammad were a child. “Take off your belt and shoes and give the man in the blue shirt any metal objects you’re carrying.”