I knew this day was coming - the day when my soon-to-be-10-year-old daughter would make the change from naïve little girl focused on her immediate world to one becoming aware of the outside world. She would start changing from my little girl into a grown up, and I didn't want it to happen.
So in the midst of questions about how the world works and her eating us out of house and home while undergoing a growth spurt, I heard the statement I've been dreading. Last weekend, sitting on the couch with an old laptop on her lap, she told me, innocently, "Dad, I Googled you."
Oh boy.
Well, time to buck up and see what she found. I sat down beside her. What is she going to find?
She wasn't interested in the text stuff. Instead, she clicked on the images. There were several head shots, the type you see in newspapers alongside columns like this one. We often called them "floating heads," for good reason. But then most of the pictures were not of me, but by me. My cameras are programmed to insert my name and copyright information into every picture. A whole bunch came from my blog, too, which made sense.
After scrolling through page after page of pictures, there was nothing incriminating, as I expected. I generally don't do incriminating things, and even if I did, I wouldn't let people take pictures of me doing them. It turns out being a straight-laced nerd saves embarrassment down the road.
You see, I knew this day would happen. Someday my kids would start asking questions about what I have done in my life (I got a lot of those last night). I don't hide my failures from her, but I do stress how important it is to work hard to get somewhere. Not working hard in university means I now have to work hard every day to make up for it, likely for the rest of my life.
What I did not have to do is explain to her photos of people pouring beer down a rubber hose into my mouth, or dozens of photos of drunkenness. I am not ashamed of my life, and such photos do not exist, because it never happened.
I wonder how many other people, especially those who grew up with Facebook in their teens and 20s, can say the same?
We hear more and more that employers are looking into the social media footprint of prospective employees. If we send this person on a business trip, are they going to be respectful, or booze it up? Are they going to post embarrassing things about our company? Do they look like they have a drug or alcohol problem? Yes? Okay, into File 13 with that resume.
It is far easier to expunge a criminal record than it is to eliminate your Internet persona. What goes on the net, stays on the net, often forever.
I've found postings I've made to gun control and political discussion boards in 1994 still online, 20 years later. How's that for longevity? Those were posted the first year the World Wide Web came into play, using a browser called Mosaic. That was before Windows 95, for goodness sake. Yet my comments are still there, for all to see. Having written an opinion column for 22 years, I've always been pretty open about my thoughts. But for a private person, being Googled could be a devastating experience if the Googler finds something unpalatable about the Googlee. (Are those even words? I guess they are now.)
This is where things like sexting, sending sexually provocative texts or photos by cellphone, can really come back to bite someone in the exposed ass later.
Meatloaf once sang, "A wasted youth is better by far than a wise and productive old age." Maybe. But if one wants to find work while in that wise and productive old age, perhaps it's best to shy away from an Internet trail documenting that wasted youth. But what do I know? I'm just a boring nerd with an inquisitive daughter.
- Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at [email protected].
