On October 20, 2020 I got an email from Google. It looked like this:
The photo is of a Starbucks by Roche Brothers near my home, and I took it in October of 2016.
At the time, I had the thought that it was kind of crazy that this photo I took (probably while failing to be productive with schoolwork while someone else was grocery shopping) at age 14 would probably be the most viewed thing I ever create.
100,000 views is a lot.
Then, just over a year later on December 15, 2021 I got this email:
I was kind of in shock.
400,000 is even more than 100,000.
It’s 10 times the population of Jamaica Plain (~ 40,000), and 100,000 times the number of people in my family. And all looking at this photo of a Starbucks I randomly took.
It made me think of Data Dignity, and whether or not I should be getting paid royalties for the image.
I can’t find the original one anywhere in my files, but here it is downloaded from Google Maps:
It’s just so surreal. I don’t really have anything to say about it. It’s utterly unbelievable to me that this image has been seen so much.