I want to tell you a story, but at first, I want to tell you about being found.
On Thanksgiving, I posted the following picture and asked people to name my location:
As usual, my precise location was found pretty quickly.
The first person to find me was Justin, and he did it using a method that is growing more and more popular, Google Lens:
My former colleague, Timmi, found me quickly too:
However, as we discussed, Google Lens was acting differently for all of us (I had also run my picture through Google Lens, as had several other people I had talked to before I did this experiment).
Here, for example, are Justin’s results:
The results that I had gotten, and I had tried using the whole picture AND cropping it differently, were not the same. Check them out:
I also scrolled the results, don’t worry! Lights of the South, where I was actually standing, didn’t come up for me.
I also didn’t have Google Lens pick up on my scarf at all (and I tried to have it do just that), while other participants did:
You know what this means?
Well, obviously, it means that Google Lens can work differently for different users — and as we input the same picture more and more often, Google Lens is learning. We are witnessing AI in action. It’s humbling and also a little scary.
But, more importantly for our purposes, what it also means is this: Simply scanning your photos through Google Lens and deciding that they can’t be quickly geolocated is a bad idea.
I’ve seen people do this. “I ran this picture through Google Lens, there were no results, so if I post it online, my privacy isn’t likely to be invaded right away — and so I can post in real time.” Wrong. It still can be. And as Google Lens grows smarter and smarter, we’re all going to learn just how very wrong we are.
All of this brings me to the Lights of the South. And the story I promised to tell you.
A long time ago, when I was a girl growing up in Charlotte, my mother had a good friend down in Georgia who was being stalked by an ex-husband.
At the time, the friend learned to avoid certain places where she could find herself isolated: parks, cemeteries, and the deep, dark woods. It’s been twenty years since her ex finally moved on, but to this day, she clings to some of the old patterns of avoidance. When she goes to the woods — of which she is a big fan, just as I am — she takes friends.
I’ve always loved going to Georgia as a child, and the last time I was there before this Thanksgiving was all the way back in 2018, when I gave a guest lecture at lovely Georgia College. It was great to go back for the holiday, and great to stomp around Lights of the South — a cheerfully Christian and patriotic light display in little Grovetown.
You can take a hayride after purchasing your tickets, or walk the trail, which was what we did.
It’s a big area. Once you step out of the pools of festive lights, you can feel the darkness like a presence all around you. I remembered the words of my mom’s friend, and felt lucky that I wasn’t alone.
Something that I found out much later from my mom was that the ex-husband did find her friend. This was the era before social media and widespread internet penetration, when finding people was much harder. But a couple of years after things had seemed to die down, the son she shared with her ex gave his mom an envelope: It contained pictures of her outside the house of the guy she ended up marrying. They were taken from a distance. The son found them when clearing out his dead father’s house.
She hadn’t been receiving mail at that address. No one was supposed to know she was there. But the pictures proved that she had been found and observed. And, thankfully, spared from whatever plans may have been cooking in her jealous ex’s head.
The son’s theory was that a particular friend whom his mom had confided in had led the ex to the location. Much like we do on social media today — she shared information, and didn’t realize that it would be passed on to someone with bad intentions.
Her story, and many other stories, including some of mine, inspired me to both be a writer and to do these exercises.
When I tromped around Lights of the South, I knew that had I shared my picture while still on the grounds — it would’ve been a while until I made it to the exit. The area is beautiful, but fairly secluded. I imagined myself as a local girl from Grovetown, with a stalker in town, who could pull up my Instagram and see exactly where I was, or else use Google Lens to find out. And if the picture had been a selfie, he could’ve surmised that I was separated from my friends.
I’m not telling you this to make you upset. I’m telling you this to remind you to try not to post pictures or videos in real time — unless you’re safe. And to remind you that technology, like Google Lens, isn’t always on your side. It all depends on the situation, and some situations we find ourselves in are too risky.
If you learned something new today, I hope you get a paid subscription! Just $5 month is a great Christmas present that you can give me!