Context:
For my haunted media project, I chose to create a Google Drive that belongs to a Davidson College senior named Daniel Watson, also known as Dan, also known by many nicknames: Dan, Lit Dan, Dan the Man, and Danny. Daniel has a pretty flawless reputation on campus: He is an active member of a controversy-free fraternity on campus, serves on the Student Government Association, consistently does well in all of his classes, has nothing but positive things to say about everyone, comes from a wealthy family, has a high-paying banking job lined up after graduation, is popular and has a high traffic Instagram to prove it. The username/email to the account is “littyAFdan@gmail.com” and the password is “Watson2017”. For the sake of this story, Daniel’s brother knows his password and is easily able to have access to this account.
The Death of Dan the Man:
One day, on April 6th, President Quillen sends out a school-wide email to the student body informing everyone that Daniel Watson has been in a fatal car collision and was pronounced dead at noon that day, but it is inconclusive as to whether foul play was involved. The death of this charismatic and well-known student brings public outcry within the campus. Soon after the family is informed of Dan’s death, Charles (Dan’s brother) goes through Dan’s internet history to try to find out if there are any leads he can find on his own. Charles, informs the family that Dan’s internet history is very normal. Dan had checked a couple emails, watched some Netflix, was on his Google Drive throughout the day, and scrolled through his Instagram feed a handful of times. Nothing was out of the ordinary. Dan’s Google Drive consisted of a couple of class papers, a resume, class schedule, to-do list, and so on. It was not until a couple days later that Charles realized that a couple things were off in Dan’s Google Drive. There were a couple files that were illegible with gibberish like the following file “To-Do List”:
Charles realized that this file is encrypted. Luckily Dan left behind a hint on the document for the password to decrypt this file: “a man’s best friend.” Naturally, this hint makes Charles think of their childhood pet dog Maximus (you as the third party can know this by looking through Dan’s Instagram posts which are also conveniently on Dan’s Google Drive in the form of screenshots on a Google Slides file). If you click the “Protect File” tab at the top of this file and click “Decrypt,” type in the password “Maximus” and the gibberish will change into the following:
Looking at this decrypted to-do list, Charles is confused as to what Dan was delivering and who Mark is. Dan’s to-do list, its encryption, his paying someone for “supplies,” and his asking about an potential expansion all imply that there is secretive and illegal activity. Charles makes note that the tasks stopped being checked off starting from “ask Mark about expanding.” Charles is inclined to believe that Dan’s asking about “expanding” led to some trouble with Mark. Daniel’s death was not an accident by any means, rather it was a contracted killing.
Charles is thoroughly freaked out and begins to look through all of his brother’s files on his Google Drive in the hopes to find out what is behind Dan’s illegal activities and sudden death. Charles sees Dan’s schedule for the week. It is filled out with his classes for the day but there are mysterious 30-minute chunks of time that are blocked off in red with no description. By referencing the to-do list, Charles sees that the number of deliveries on the to-do list match the number of red boxes for every day. Dan was pronounced dead at noon, but according to this schedule there was a red box at 11:30. Maybe this was Dan’s meeting with Mark and Mark felt threatened by Dan’s savvy entrepreneur mind. Maybe Mark took care of it. The puzzle pieces were starting to fit.
There was one last document that Charles did not open which was titled “Look Here.” When he opened the document it was encrypted, too:
The hint this time was “best place on Earth.” Charles took a little longer to find this out, he tried “home” or his home city “NYC” or even “Davidson College,” but then he recalled all the times Dan talked so fondly of the family beach house in Hawaii, and surely “Honolulu” works to decrypt this final document. (In Dan’s Instagram, there is a post that has Honolulu as a geotag).
Charles must now decide whether to delete Dan’s Google Drive or to submit this information to the police with the hopes to investigate and prosecute Dan’s murderer to receive justice for his brother’s death.
Theoretical Analysis:
In making this haunted Google Drive, I raise a couple of questions regarding death in the digital age. First, should Charles comply to Dan’s last requests? Second, to what extent does the information on this drive belong to the purview of the public versus the private?
The letter encrypted in “Look Here” is, in an essence, Dan’s digital will. Though it is by no means a typical digital will, it is his one last request upon his death. Ending this story without resolution was an intentional decision because it leaves it up my audience to put themselves in Charles’ shoes and think about what they would have decided on amid unclear moral lines. This cliff hanger also makes it uncertain as to what will follow: closure for the Watson family, or the beginning of a complicated pain. In one of our class readings it explicates that “one of the defining features of postmodernism is the blurring of boundaries” (Pinedo 17). Gitlin, a postmodern and political science scholar, expands this definition by describing the postmodern era as a time where moral clarities are blurred (353). For Charles, the information on this drive leads to much confusion, inner turmoil, and a blurring of what is right and wrong. If Charles fulfills Dan’s wishes, he must come to terms with not fully knowing the story behind his brother’s murder. If he turns in this information into the police to for further investigation, then not only would Dan’s death become a scandal but his life’s flawless image and family’s great reputation would become tainted too.
This project taps into another debate brought up in one our class readings, in which we discussed the case of Mario Costeja Gonzalez and how he was protected by the “right to be forgotten” (Senemar). The article explains how “the data that ‘represents’ you on the internet, for the most part, does not belong to you. In fact, it often isn’t even created by you — it’s generated passively, an idle consequence of your living in a world in which all ‘things’ can be connected by the internet. So who really owns ‘your’ data?” (Senemar). Even if Charles decided to share the context of this Google Drive with the police, we must ask if this is fair and to whom. Does he still not have the right to be forgotten even though he is dead? The Watson family may feel that they have the right to know what happened to Daniel. However, if these rights are at odds with one another, which party deserves to be appeased?
Artist Struggles
I had a lot of fun creating this project, but it did not come without extra research and experimenting to figure how to make certain components of the Google Drive work or look aesthetically pleasing/appropriate for the storyline. For this project, I originally started with the idea of a simply email account that show email exchanges between Daniel and his close friends while he was still living. Once I made the account however, I realized that a Google Drive could encompass more platforms of sharing digital information (such as a using a slideshow for social media screenshots, class schedule, documents, unique passwords, etc.). When I questioned how to make it more haunted I thought about making the drive like an escape the room type of game, where one has to use the information they have access to to use as clues or codes to get to the next stage. I Googled how to password protect individual Google files and the only encrypt-able type of file on Google Drive was a Google sheet. I got the template and instructions from here. For this template to work I had to keep certain text in certain boxes, however this text was not relevant to the storyline, so I worked around this by making the text color the same as the cell’s background color to make it essentially invisible.
Regarding the Instagram screenshots, I got the template from here which allowed me to customize a profile picture, the number of likes, the geotags, and the captions. I wanted these images to look as real as possible so I made sure to make the handles and hashtags in the same blue font that Instagram uses for these specific linked words.
There are a couple of files that were not relevant to Dan’s death but were added for the aesthetic of being a college student. These files are not my own work. I copy and pasted from Wikipedia and resume samples online which are linked here: ENG 350, ECO 101, Resume.
Works Cited
Gitlin, Todd. “Postmodernism: Roots and Politics.” Cultural Politics in Contemporary America. Ed. Ian Angus and Sut Jhally. New York: Routledge, 1989. 347-60.
Pinedo, Isabel Cristina. Recreational Terror: Women and the Pleasures of Horror Film Viewing. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1997.
Senemar, Alex. “What Happens To Your Data When You Die?.” A Medium Corporation. 27 Jul. 2015. Web.