Quotes / Streisand Effect

Real Life

Barbara Streisand herself

"The lawsuit eventually fell through, although not before ensuring that millions of people stared in confusion at an innocuous photo of Barbra Streisand's backyard. The offending site is still active today, complete with the original photo and a new page containing links to every news story about the spectacle, transcripts of everything Streisand's lawyers sent and a note basically telling her to go fuck herself. Not to mention as a final insult, she was court ordered to pay their legal fees."

— Cracked.com's description of the Trope Namer

Actors

Jewel Staite: Dear Internet; While I agree that I was indeed a precociously adorable child, let's go ahead and bury the PartyMania. Cool? Thx a million.
GlitchMike: @JewelStaite: You do realize that you've just caused 38,000 people to google "Jewel Staite Party Mania", right?
JewelStaite: Aw, shit.

— Twitter conversation

Comic Books

"If there is something in my text that someone doesn't wish to be known to the public, it seems to me that inclusion in an expensive book set that has only a few thousand buyers in several different countries would be a rather harmless revelation. But now that text will be on the INTERNET. That was never part of my original intention."

— Don Rosa, describing a written epilogue about his retirement that Disney refused to print in a compilation of his Duck comics

Film — Live-Action

You do realize no one gave a single solitary shit about this movie until you guys started attacking it, right? Now everyone will go see the movie out of curiosity and/or patriotism!

— Seth Rogen, referring to the hackers who targeted Sony, in the Abridged Script for The Interview.

Literature

"When I read that my 1991 novel "A Thousand Acres" was on a list of books banned in Idaho I was delighted because the only thing this ban will achieve is people wanting to read it."

— Jane Smiley, The Daily Beast, "Why I'm Thrilled My Pulitzer-Winning Book Has Been Banned"

Music

"...and right before that I had a meeting where someone said, 'How does it feel to be banned from MTV?' I was like, excuse me? Now I think my career's over. I remember talking to Heidi Robinson, Rick's publicist, and she said, 'No, no! Now you're the forbidden fruit; now you're really gonna sell some records!'"

— Sir Mix-A-Lot, on MTV banning Baby Got Back

Politics

"I think that I owe this in the first place to the fact that this book, as in general almost all my works that were still current at the time, was prohibited within the German Empire immediately after the Anti-Socialist Law was promulgated. To anyone whose brain has not been ossified by the hereditary bureaucratic prejudices of the countries of the Holy Alliance, the effect of this measure must have been self-evident: a doubled and trebled sale of the prohibited books, and the exposure of the impotence of the gentlemen in Berlin who issue prohibitions and are unable to enforce them. Indeed the kindness of the Imperial Government has brought me more new editions of my minor works than I could really cope with; I have had no time to make a proper revision of the text, and in most cases have been obliged simply to allow it to be reprinted as it stood."

— Friedrich Engels in the second preface to Anti-Duhring

"It's not the crime that kills you, it's the cover-up."

— Richard Nixon

"What were the Republicans in Tennessee hoping to accomplish here? They look horrible. They have made superstars out of the Tennessee three. These are three extraordinarily impressive and eloquent figures that you never would have heard of if it weren't for this vindictive retaliation by the Republicans, who decided, 'We have a supermajority and we can do this.'"

— Charlie Sykes remarking on the 2023 Tennessee House of Representatives expulsions

Video Games

"I think you can see this is not an innocent developer being attacked and abused by some YouTuber out to profiteer from their hard work. This is a developer who has repeatedly acted in an underhanded way, and continues to do so to this very day. A developer that not only cannot take criticism, but actively goes out to censor it with the sole purpose of selling as many copies of their wretched disaster of a game as possible."

— John "TotalBiscuit" Bain

"TRY BANNY GAME MAKE PEOPLE WANTY GAME MORE!"

— Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw in his Maypole of Controversy video for Zero Punctuation, explaining how all the fuss over Hatred only boosted its sales

"i'll take fan-games that just don't die for a hundred, alex"

— A Google search for Another Metroid 2 Remake in SomecallmeJohnny's Metroid II: Return of Samus review

One of the biggest ironies here is that, like so many other "me too" 2D fighters from the early 90s, Fighter's History would've probably flown under the radar and faded into obscurity had Capcom just left things alone. In filing a lawsuit, Capcom acknowledged that Data East's game posed some sort of threat. They gave Fighter's History a sense of legitimacy and notoriety that no amount of advertising could've ever generated on its own.
Oops.

— NintendoComplete on Fighter's History getting Data East sued for its similarities with Street Fighter II.

Miscellaneous

"ITN have been hurriedly going around trying to remove it from YouTube and people keep putting it back up. So now we've broadcast it! Fuck you, ITN!"

— Charlie Brooker, You Have Been Watching — the "it" in question was a tasteless fluff piece comparing the funerals of Michael Jackson and Princess Diana, complete with score cards

"Unfortunately folks, Rick Santorum complaining about the more popular "Santorum" only made things worse. Last week, "Santorum" was one of the hottest search terms on Google. The only people who haven't heard about this are the Amish. I have a feeling he'll do well with the Pennsylvania Dutch."

— Stephen Colbert

"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."

— John Gilmore, over a decade before the term for the effect he described was coined

"All the proceeds for this stream will go to Mermaids, a charity which works to provide resources and support to young people with gender dysphoria. [...] I chose Mermaids in specific because when they were designated some funding by the National Lottery, Graham Linehan — a comedy writer who did some work on a good show, uh... twenty years ago? — who happens to be a very normal man who's just very angry about trans people all day nowadays, went on Mumsnet, and told them to email a lady from the National Lottery en masse, and now the funding is under review. So, well done, Graham! You have a MASSIVE audience, and the power to choose to fight for progress in all the many forms we need in the world right now, and you used it to make sure some children won't have access to helpful resources. Well, not really, they're probably still gonna GET the funding, once the National Lottery realizes the outrage they received was a celebrity deliberately telling Mumsnetters to e-mail poor Dawn thousands of fake, copy-pasted sockpuppet e-mails of quote unquote "concern". And on top of that, now TONS more people know about Mermaids and want to support them just to spite you! Good job raising awareness for a charity, genius! PLEASE talk loudly and angrily about more people who need support! You fucking trash man! You piss boy! You prodigious buffoon!"

— H.Bomberguy

"You better download as much free porn as you can before the all-powerful Beyoncé calls up Al Gore and tells him to pull the plug and shut down the entire Internet, because SANS PHOTOSHOP pictures of her face are out there. The Internet was good while it lasted, but we dun goofed."

— Michael K., "RIP the Internet"

"When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say."

— George R. R. Martin

"I'm thinking of putting a superinjunction on next year's tour dates, because it does seem a very effective way of getting the word out."

— Dara Ó Briain on Twitter.

"Also, just a suggestion—if you tell me I can't film you in public, no matter what, filming you in public is going to move way up my priority list. Because what you're telling me is 'I'm about to do something ridiculous, illegal, or ridiculously illegal. So don't look.' I'm not only looking, I'm deleting all my other videos right now so I have room to get all of whatever you are about to do. So that's how that works."

— Kevin Underhill, Lowering The Bar

"Jean Duffey was head of the drug task force within Saline County. On the first day that she got the job, her higher-up came to her and said 'whatever you do, never use the drug task force to investigate any public officials' which, like... that's the worst thing you can say to someone who has a drug task force."

— Wendigoon, "The Boys on the Tracks & a 35 Year Cover-up"

In-Universe

Literature

"What happened down in the dungeons between you and Professor Quirrell is a complete secret, so, naturally, the whole school knows."

— Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

"If [Umbridge] could have done one thing to make absolutely sure that every single person in this school will read your interview, it was banning it!"

— Hermione Granger, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Live-Action TV

"An injunction is a very expensive way to make sure a very boring story reaches the maximum number of people."

— Jeremy Clarkson, Have I Got News for You

"The problem is that if you say to a journalist, 'Can you avoid that topic?', that's when they really go for it. It's like saying to the school bully, 'I'll wet myself if you tickle me.'"

— Terri Coverley, The Thick of It

"Let me tell you something I've learned in my years; there are victims of fires, there are victims of car accidents. This kind of thing, there are no victims, just volunteers. Of course we'll get in the game; I'll talk to the editors of the major papers but we're not going to publicly refute every bogus charge. First of all, there's too many of them. Second of all, I'm not giving this guy and his book the weight of the White House. As far as the press is concerned, I've read the book because I had to. You have a vague recollection of the guy, but he wasn't here long enough to make a lasting impression. "Have you read the book?" Of course not. You're too busy doing a job."

— White House Press Secretary C.J. Cregg, displaying rare savviness about this trope with regards to a "tell-all" White House memoir, The West Wing

---