Overview:
The Clickbait exhibit at HMNS explains how data travels and is misused on the internet.
The internet has teeth, and the new Clickbait exhibit at the Houston Museum of Natural Science (HMNS) made that clear in the first room. Two giant blank faces dominate the space like a prototype of the Wizard of Oz’s great and powerful façade. If you step behind the heads, a camera will project an image of your face onto the surface, blowing up every pore and feature to macroscopic proportions. On a counter in front, there are buttons so other visitors can react with thumbs ups, hearts, and all the other arcane hieroglyphics of the social media age.
I watched a dad and his two daughters approach the exhibit. The younger one, who was around 12 years old, was immediately excited to try the interactive installation. The older, maybe 14, smiled at first, then visibly recoiled as she had second thoughts. That’s the movement of someone who has been bitten by the internet already, and probably hard. Her wonder at the neat toy was tempered by fear of how humanity often uses it.
To be fair, that is kind of the point of the exhibit, in spite of the bright colors and cool tricks.
“The function of the exhibit is to help create awareness and digital literacy,” said Nicole Temple, Vice President of Education for HMNS. “It’s a really good jumping off point for people who have families with potentially young kids who are getting into phones and the internet at this point, so that you can have conversations about what’s happening when you go online.”
Clickbait is a joint venture between HMNS and Madatech currently housed in the old Cullen Hall of Gems and Minerals on the second floor. The space was previous a restful, dark, and quiet exhibit given to thoughtful appreciation of the slow growth of rocks and crystals.
Now it’s a shining, screaming exploration of the AI-driven internet experience blown up to cyclopean size. This is a terrifying, but effective way to show people the way the internet impacts us. Experiencing the online space through the small portal of a smartphone makes it seem tiny and unreal. Clickbait is the equivalent of seeing a spider the size of a deer.
Before you even enter, you are asked to read a set of terms and conditions about the use of your digital image and name. Temple assures that that all the data is unconnected to wider internet and is destroyed at the end of the business day, but it’s another way Clickbait recontextualizes the way our information is used. There’s just something different about a wall of text that is actually a wall and an accept button the size of a self-destruct trigger in a James Bond film. The scale shocks you into awareness.
“The more information you have, the better you will be at assessing how you want to use a tool and how a tool should be used,” said Temple. “If you give a toddler a hammer, they’re going to use it differently than if you give a carpenter.”
It’s not all grim. There are some fun quiz stations (as the Houston Press’s resident game reviewer I was relieved to have aced a video game quiz). Positive moments in virality such as the Ice Bucket Challenge or Carter Wilkerson earning free nuggets for a year from Wendy’s are proof that the internet is at least sometimes helpful and fun.
But the cloud of toxicity hangs over the whole thing. Next to the face installation is a stark sign explaining that 58 percent of teens have experienced online harassment, with girls three times more likely to be targeted as boys. Other displays highlight constant surveillance around the world, the rates of stolen identity, and the fact that 90 percent of email is spam.
There’s this portal in the exhibit where you move through a visual representation of a loading screen. It’s supposed to be fun. On paper it is. I don’t know if this is on purpose, but I had to stoop to get through it, and I am not a tall person. The portal was bright, loud, and ultimately suffocating, which might be the perfect analogy for the modern internet rife with misinformation and enshittification.
Clickbait is like an unethical scientist merged The Emoji Movie and a Hell House staged by survivors of GamerGate. It’s all information the general public desperately needs as we robotically click through life, but it was not comfortable to experience no matter how many funny animal pictures or viral celebrity moments are showcased.
Clickbait is open daily at the Houston Museum of Natural Science through September 7. $20-$35, does not include general admission.
