It's Creepy Because It Doesn't Fade

It’s heartening to be remembered, but it’s creepy to be recorded.

In the sense that both hold onto a version of me, they are the same. If anything, the record is more accurate. And yet, one feels like affection, while the other feels like surveillance. What is the difference?

Human memory is rewritten every time

In 1974, Elizabeth Loftus and John Palmer conducted an experiment where they showed students a video of a car accident.

After the viewing, they asked about the speed of the cars. However, they only changed the way the question was phrased. The group asked how fast the cars were going when they “smashed” answered with an average of 40.8 mph. For “collided,” it was 39.3. For “bumped,” 38.1. For “hit,” 34.0. The group asked how fast they were going when they “contacted” each other answered 31.8. It was the same video. A single different verb shifted the result by nine miles.

In a second experiment, they showed the video to another 150 people and called them back a week later. Then, they asked: “Did you see any broken glass?” There was no glass in the video.

Of the fifty people who had been asked about “smashing,” sixteen answered that they saw glass. In the “hit” group, it was seven. In the group that hadn’t been asked anything, it was six.

Over the course of a week, something that wasn’t in the video had entered their memories. Moreover, it wasn’t the experimenters who put it there; they had simply provided a single verb.

Why this happens was demonstrated in 2000 by Karim Nader and others using mice. Memories that were supposed to be solidified return to a soft state the moment they are recalled. From there, they are solidified once again. When this re-solidification is blocked with medication, the memory that was supposed to have been recalled disappears.

Recalling is not about taking something out and reading it. It is about taking it out, reconstructing it, and putting it back.

Therefore, when a person remembers someone, that image is reconstructed every time. If the relationship changes, the image changes. An incident from ten years ago is overwritten by the ten years that follow.

To remember is to keep rewriting.

Records do not fade on their own

In 1998, a Spanish lawyer named Mario Costeja González had his real estate seized due to unpaid social security contributions. The public notice of the auction was published in a newspaper called La Vanguardia, including his name.

He paid the debt afterward. The matter was settled.

However, the newspaper digitized its archives. Search engines indexed them. For over ten years after that, searching for his name brought up the 1998 auction notice.

He filed a complaint with the Spanish data protection agency. The dispute went all the way to the Court of Justice of the European Union, and a ruling was issued on May 13, 2014. It stated that search engines, under certain conditions, must remove links from search results based on a person’s name. This came to be known as the “right to be forgotten.”

What catches the eye in the ruling is that the newspaper was told it didn’t have to do anything. The publication of the notice had followed the laws of the time, and the article could remain as it was. What was forced to be removed was the search index.

In other words, the point of contention wasn’t that the information existed. It was the way it appeared—the fact that it inevitably surfaced whenever a name was entered.

And to stop that, it took a Supreme Court ruling. Because even after sixteen years, that notice had not faded in the slightest.

Because records do not fade on their own, it took the law to erase them.

Sincerity means allowing for editing

When you place the two side-by-side, you realize there is only one difference.

Human memory exists within a relationship. Every time we meet, every time we speak, the image is reconstructed. Therefore, my own behavior reaches the version of me inside the other person. Things can be made right.

Records exist outside of relationships. No matter what I do, they aren’t rewritten. Even in 2014, the man there is still the man who defaulted in 1998.

What’s creepy isn’t being remembered. It’s that a record wears the face of “remembering” while remaining beyond my reach. It isn’t a question of accuracy. The more accurate it is, the more immovable it becomes.

If that’s the case, there is only one sincere way forward: to allow the person themselves to edit how they are remembered.

The reason it’s heartening to be remembered is that the image can still move. If it doesn’t move, it isn’t a memory—it’s just a stone with my name on it.