Social Networking: Something Wicked This Way Comes?

[Bleck]

If this were the case, anything you type online becomes public domain.

PROTIP: WELCOME TO THE INTERNET

you dumbass

[The Pezman]

First I need to go offtopic again because I need to address an important point.

I am also high functioning autistic, and that my parents caught it early and dedicated their professional lives to it is both a blessing and a curse. They were doing everything they could to help me, but they were always asking me questions and trying to figure out how I might react to certain situations. They encouraged me to explain myself to my classmates to account for any odd behavior. And for a while I did that, without them fully understanding or appreciating what I meant. I don't think I had much recourse then, because I was doing things that were definitely and obviously out of whack. But once I hit college, and especially once I started doing a specialized neurotherapy I'm more than happy to talk to you about, I realized that continually bringing this point up no longer served me. It was better for people to understand me as a person, not an autistic. The disorder is so varied anyway it's impossible to make an effective prediction of how someone will or won't react to something. I don't know whether my particular quirks and issues are things I'll ever be able to move fully past, but that's my goal, and I think the first step in doing so is to identify them as MY quirks and issues, not an autistic's.

Just needed to get that out there.

Now, the issue at hand.

It sounds to me like you're upset with the proliferation of these social networks. That they're becoming the culturally in thing to have. Some people go crazy with them, but they're usually highly extroverted and don't mind being in contact with as many people as possible, with little to no regard for who they actually are.

In my case, and from what it sounds like the case with most people here, I use them in more practical ways. I don't use Myspace or Twitter. I especially don't see the point of Twitter. I do use Facebook, and I do create and respond to events on them. I just made an event earlier. Let's face it, how else will I invite over a hundred people to a birthday party? A mass email would probably leave a bad taste in their mouths (who likes a form letter?). The Facebook event gets right to the point: are you coming? Yes, no, maybe. Mechanically, it's not much different, but psychologically it really is.

I also write on people's walls, have Facebook chats, and troll around sometimes. I have over 500 friends, but I make sure they are limited to the people I would actually consider friends (which can be a judgment call sometimes, but I'm allowed to be arbitrary about who a friend is). I'm also more lenient with keeping people who might no longer be my friends who are from my past and don't live on campus.

I'm also probably guilty of spending a bit too much time on Facebook, but not to the extent where it eclipses my real life. Then again, I'm still in college. It's harder to have an offline social life after college, and I'm going to have to learn how to do it. So Facebook definitely serves some needs and fills some holes. But like everyone has said, use wisely.

[big giant circles]

How can something be considered an issue of privacy when the entire point was to put it online for everyone to see?

I don't see how anyone would be able to use that argument successfully.

I feel the same way, but I'm still waiting for someone to bring it up. There's always 2 sides to any argument, no matter how silly one side may seem.

[Native Jovian]

I'm personally really happy that this guy got screened that way, because I'm not entirely sure I'd trust someone like that with authority like deadly force.

I have issues with this. People present themselves differently in different situations. It's entirely possible to be a professional and dedicated individual at work and a lazy drunken asshole when you're out with your friends. There's nothing wrong with this. When you're at a job interview, you're presenting the professional side of yourself to a potential employer in the hopes that they'll hire you so that you can continue to display the professional side of yourself by working there. How does what you do with your leisure time affect your job qualifications? Who cares if you have a crazy vampire fetish? As long as it doesn't affect the job you do, it has no business affecting your career.

I have a computer science degree. Right now I'm working IT, but eventually I'd like to get a proper programming job. I use "Native Jovian" for more-or-less everything I do online, including my gmail address that I put on my resume. Now, what if a potential programming employer decides to Google "native jovian" and ends up here at OCR, and decides "hey, he plays way to many video games, he would probably goof off instead of working hard!" and didn't hire me because of that? Is that fair? Hell no -- what I do with my free time has no bearing whatsoever on my job.

That said, it's pretty easy to keep stuff like that from getting into the hands of potential employers. Don't friend people you don't know and set your profile information and the like to friends-only. But it still annoys me that it happens to people anyway.

(For the record, I just checked out of curiosity -- the first two Google hits for "Native Jovian" actually are on the OCR forums, with the third being a link to a Gundam wiki I signed up for like a year ago and promptly forgot about. Huh.)

[Schwaltzvald]

Off topic, but I didn't think you Nekofrog went to that site where I've seen that facetros...

Does the following line...

The power to deliver a pun so terrible, so mind-rending that he once sent the Dalai-Lamaa into a coma.

mean anything to you..?

It is a giant purple octopus possessed of an all-arming intellect after all...

Aww did I kill the thread now..?

[big giant circles]

I have issues with this.

I knew someone would. May as well be you.

In that case, I'm certainly glad that YOU are not in charge of the decision as to employ that dude as a law enforcement official or not.

Also, when it comes to "who cares what people do on their own time as long as they do it professionally?" That might hold true to an extent, but I've had experience in management, and one thing interviews are really looking for is integrity--that is, how people behave when no one is looking, or in this case, when people think their "bosses/company" is not looking. If people like to go out and drink/party but show up and perform their duties professionally, that's fine. However, when someone posts pictures of themselves with demonic imagery and boasting that the blood that they are covered with is "not theirs", do you not think that's crossing the lines of public decency even just a little bit? Or are you really going to honestly tell me that some guy that has surgically implanted fangs is not going to be a detriment to the performance of normal business operation (or law enforcement) on some level?

I'll agree with you so far that the level of screening does not need to be unnecessarily strict and that people should be free to "be themselves" within reason. Let's say Joe-Vampire actually did become a cop. His name is printed on the speeding ticket he just wrote you, and for the heck of it, you google it and find his myspace page. Would it not bother you in the least to see the imagery I've described? If not, then bravo to you, but I'm fairly certain that you'd be heavily, heavily outnumbered.

Also, taking the flaw in your argument to an extreme, by litereal interpretation of your logic, you're saying it's ok for, say, a pedophile to work at a daycare, so long as he did it on his own time and not at work, and was otherwise completely professional about his duties on the clock. Or are you not?

It's like Neko said. You can complain all you like about how it's not fair for jobs to stick their noses into your personal life, and you're right so far as their are laws that prohibit the most important types of discrimination. But you forget that when it comes to posting things on the internet, you are immediately forfeiting that "right to privacy". Even if you posted that picture where you were drunk and humping the horsey ride outside k-mart on your *private* page, there's still the possibility that people that recognize you at work will see it and make associations about you're character, and that can damage business. And businesses have every right to step in at that point.

[Bleck]

not to mention that you have to realize that because of the way the internet physically works whenever you upload embarrassing pictures you are literally putting them on someone else's computer

basically anyone who complains about 'privacy' on the internet is either naive or a moron

[1337 1]

We've been studying this in Communications at uni, and its actually quite interesting. The way that the internet in general (while the focus is often on social networking, it isn't always the "be all end all" case study) has changed the way that humans supposedly "socialise". 50 years ago, we didn't have these things. Hell, 50 years ago, our minds were quite different (something to do with synapses and such; it was pretty complicated, but basically our minds worked differently back then).

Nowadays, people often "exist" as much in the digital world as they do in the physical one. Our brains have changed as a result of our seeming reliance on these technologies (which sounds like some lame scifi theory, but as it was described to me, there seem to have been studies proving the idea). And while there's some advantage, one must ask if the advantages of these technologies yield any true, worthwhile advantage.

[Sole Signal]

I have issues with this. People present themselves differently in different situations. It's entirely possible to be a professional and dedicated individual at work and a lazy drunken asshole when you're out with your friends. There's nothing wrong with this. When you're at a job interview, you're presenting the professional side of yourself to a potential employer in the hopes that they'll hire you so that you can continue to display the professional side of yourself by working there. How does what you do with your leisure time affect your job qualifications? Who cares if you have a crazy vampire fetish? As long as it doesn't affect the job you do, it has no business affecting your career.

That's a rather idealistic view. I've held several supervisor-level positions, and with few exceptions unsavory off-job activities are in direct correlation to poor job performance. Laziness especially.

Having completely different personal and professional lives will only catch up to you (Michael Vick, Bill Clinton, Larry Craig, etc). If (when) I'm ever in a position to hire, I'll pick the good solid person with integrity in their personal life over Mr. Vampire 10 times out of 10.

[Meteo Xavier]

That's a rather idealistic view. I've held several supervisor-level positions, and with few exceptions unsavory off-job activities are in direct correlation to poor job performance. Laziness especially.

Having completely different personal and professional lives will only catch up to you (Michael Vick, Bill Clinton, Larry Craig, etc). If (when) I'm ever in a position to hire, I'll pick the good solid person with integrity in their personal life over Mr. Vampire 10 times out of 10.

So what happens to those of us who enjoy having a personal freedom somewhere in our lives? Do we lay down and die to help clear the channel for others?

[Reaif]

This is an interesting topic. Communication changes with the times. The only thing limiting communication these days preference/mode of choice. As such it can be anywhere from very easy to very hard to get in touch with people. I'd say the only major problem is that there are too many methods. There are a lot of convenient tools that make it easy to be lazy in our daily communication, and too many tools to make it easy to use them all.

I'm actually not very comfortable with a lot of the changes I see in the way we communicate. I see more and more people who use internet lingo in their regular, face-to-face conversation, including myself. Weird? Decreasingly. Language evolves over time. The English that was spoken 100 years ago is very different from the English spoken now, even in the same geographical locations.

The change-in-communication thing has actually been on my mind for a while before now. As far as I can tell, the whole "impersonal yet personal messages" and "lazy corespondant" (sp?) thing first started cropping up in people's personal lives when cell phones started getting commonplace. When I was younger, it bugged me that my dad would drive up to pick me up from somewhere like a friend's house, and instead of getting out of the car and knocking on the door, he would call up the people on his cell phone. Yet nowadays I find myself doing the same thing all the time when I pick people up, but it's even worse now because the people I want to pick up have their own cell phones, so I don't even have to speak with someone I don't know, much less see them face to face. With technology these days it is VERY easy to be lazy in our communication.

Trying not to be too off-topic here, all of this really boils down to one thing, that being people.

People sell their souls to facebook and the like, foregoing other, more personal, methods of communication. People will purchase a WoW subscription, a game that has no inherent evils that I can see, but will then forget about babies who die of neglect because they can't take care of themselves, all the while the parents are too busy grinding away at a digital existence to take notice. Things always can get out of hand when you throw people into the equation. Its just a matter of self control. As was stated earlier by someone or other, everything in moderation.

As far as the availability of information goes, people can find out anything you are willing to give them. We have all the tools we need to keep our private lives private, and our public lives public. Occasionally people will make mistakes and let too much information get out, such as staying logged into a facebook account and someone else comes by and sees a lot of private messages, or a friend sending everyone on their contact list a picture of you doing something you don't want them to know you enjoy, etc. In situations like that, it is completely impossible to undo the damage that gets done. That is why you just gotta be careful and not let things get out too far.

When new methods of communication arise, and I'm dead certain we are far from the end of seeing new ways of saying LOL to a friend, it is always a personal choice as to whether or not to use them. You can jump on the band wagon, trail along behind, or just walk on. I'm in the "content to walk" category myself as far as the social networking applications go, mostly because I'm too lazy to try and keep track of all that. I don't have a facebook, a blog, a myspace, or any of that. I don't even get on MSN anymore. As far as text based/internet communication, I do some gmail chat, email, and text messages from my phone. Everyone else I generally speak to face-to-face. True I miss out on some things that way, but that is just life for you. You can't have it all.

Man I don't think I've rambled so much in my life. If I tried to spit that out at someone face-to-face, I think they would get bored and leave. Isn't the internet wonderful? I can spit out a whole bunch of crap, and while people might still get mad or annoyed at you, they still read it. I'm gonna go elsewhere now.

[big giant circles]

That's a rather idealistic view. I've held several supervisor-level positions, and with few exceptions unsavory off-job activities are in direct correlation to poor job performance. Laziness especially.

Absolutely. The same can be said for many many other traits.

Meteo, when you say it's basically having to surrender your personal freedom, that's a bit over the top, and a general skewed perspective IMO that a lot of other people have. People tend to look at their "rights" or "freedom" with the sense that a human being is entitled to do WHATEVER THEY WANT and that there should be little or no consequence for doing so. Do you have the right to show off your vampiric, physical alterations on your personal "Hey world! This is what I'm really all about!" website? Sure. Is it going to be without consequense? Probably not. As it's been stated, you're still making such knowledge available to the public, and this affects your image. As Audix has said, image OFTEN ties directly to personal integrity. Does it mean that Vampire guy is a bad guy? I have no idea. I don't know if he's got a criminal record or a mean personality or anything, but I do know that most people would find that disturbing, and again, this disrupts business on SOME level. Whether or not it's making co-workers uneasy, and therefore creating a hostile or uneasy work environment, or scaring away customers/clients or the general public.

I tend to not like people who are "someone else" in situation A than they are in situation B. This heavily impares one's ability to trust that person, and that pertains to things like businesses or jobs directly.

Everything comes at a price. I'm not a huge believer in entitlement. It basically suggests that we are all free to have whatever we want at no cost whatsoever, and there's all kinds of things wrong with that. If the guy has such a fixation on vampire stuff, surely he's got to know that pursuing that fetish is going to come at a price.

[Sole Signal]

So what happens to those of us who enjoy having a personal freedom somewhere in our lives? Do we lay down and die to help clear the channel for others?

Well, actions have consequences. Are there things I want to do that I restrain myself from doing? Sure. Is this encroaching on my "personal freedom"? Maybe, but I certainly don't look at it that way. That's where character is often born, by exhibiting self-control and showing your strength over a situation. I'm not saying I'm that perfect example at all, but I do make a conscious effort to assess my actions and decision-making. So what if it means I don't do this or don't do that. I can deal.

I have worked with plenty of people who are all about exhibiting their personal freedom, and they're usually the last people I would want with me on a project. Even if they aren't that demonstrative about it at work, you can still tell what's under the surface -- disrespect, laziness, a complaining attitude. As bgc said, how can you trust someone who acts a different way entirely off the clock?

[Bleck]

This is an interesting topic.

no it's actually really insipid

[SoulinEther]

I think this section is mostly directed at Native Jovian:

I have used SoulinEther forever, including in my personal email, but I don't think I want to give my employer my personal email, necessarily. It all depends on what kind of job I'm applying for, and if I think my employer would be alright with knowing what are my interests. In fact, I would prolly only give my personal email address if I think having an online presence would somehow make me a more viable candidate for the job.

I don't really have anything to hide from a potential employer, but still, under most circumstances I would provide him/her/them with a more serious, business-y email address (one that contains my name). I would just consider it as part of my implicit separation of work life and personal life...

And, concerning personal freedoms separate from work... it's already been said. You can have them. But if they're things that people might consider "bad," don't make them public! Unless you're willing to go on a crusade to gain widespread acceptance for your habits. Even then... lol.

[abg]

Just want to say that I find this subject fascinating and I've been following this thread since post 1, as this is something I've thought about a lot myself. I'd share my own views but they're complicated and would require way too much text (a mistake I've made in these forums once already ). I would like to say though that basically what it all comes down to is context. In the real world, each social situation you find yourself in has its own context and you behave differently depending on that context. The internet has a different context too, which is actually very impersonal because you're not actually with anyone when you're communicating online. I think it's because of this impersonality that websites like twitter and facebook are able to thrive- it takes no effort at all to read a small blip of text or a status update to see what's happening in people's lives. These websites are used to share personal information in the most impersonal way imaginable... I mean, facebook just gives you a bigass list of what your friends have been doing, it just draws information from a database and puts it in front of you.

I'm not trying to say genuine personal communication is impossible online, but it's not what these social networking sites are trying to crack it up to be. Text-chat and voice-chat programs are far more personal, but they will never be a substitute for real human interaction. Websites like Facebook are best used to supplement your social life, not to define it (obviously).

Edit: On the subject of employers checking facebook, I have a few problems with this. For starters, there are certain questions that employers are not allowed to ask in an interview (for good reason) that they could investigate on your personal webpage. Questions like, for example, what are your religious beliefs? Employers are not supposed to hire based on this sort of personal information, but if this information is readily available online, what's to stop them from reading it and making decisions based on it?

What if your facebook is private and "friends only"? Surely there's nothing wrong with this practice, but who's to say your employer won't assume this means you are "secretive" and therefore an undesirable employee? Obviously this is a bit of a stretch but who's to say this hasn't or never will happen?

I don't have any answers, only questions...

[Palpable]

Edit: On the subject of employers checking facebook, I have a few problems with this. For starters, there are certain questions that employers are not allowed to ask in an interview (for good reason) that they could investigate on your personal webpage. Questions like, for example, what are your religious beliefs? Employers are not supposed to hire based on this sort of personal information, but if this information is readily available online, what's to stop them from reading it and making decisions based on it?

What if your facebook is private and "friends only"? Surely there's nothing wrong with this practice, but who's to say your employer won't assume this means you are "secretive" and therefore an undesirable employee? Obviously this is a bit of a stretch but who's to say this hasn't or never will happen?

I don't have any answers, only questions...

Interesting point. I wonder whether down the line sharing personal information publically on the Internet would become so common that employers might explicitly state that they don't google prospective hires. Or who knows, there might even be a law against it! Seems absurd, and a law would obv be impossible to enforce, but I think it's a possibility given other restrictions that have been placed on hiring practices. After all, like you said, it's easy to claim that X employer googled you, saw you were such-and-such religion, then decided not to hire you based on that. By stating that they don't google, employers maintain that they aren't holding your... extra-curricular activities against you. I think we'll see more on this issue in the near-future, especially as more and more minors put things that damage themselves up on the Internet, that can never be removed.

[Native Jovian]

If people like to go out and drink/party but show up and perform their duties professionally, that's fine. However, when someone posts pictures of themselves with demonic imagery and boasting that the blood that they are covered with is "not theirs", do you not think that's crossing the lines of public decency even just a little bit?

What's the difference? (I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that the "not my blood" thing isn't actually a case of him going out and assaulting someone, but rather part of his "hey I'm a vampire lulz" fantasy land.) The fact that you're more comfortable with drinking than you are with pretending to be a vampire? Again, what he does in his personal life has nothing to do with how he performs his job.

Or are you really going to honestly tell me that some guy that has surgically implanted fangs is not going to be a detriment to the performance of normal business operation (or law enforcement) on some level?

You already said that they weren't particularly noticeable when he wasn't showing them off, so what's the different? Are you going to not hire someone because they have a tattoo that's usually covered by their sleeves? Or how about a guy with pierced ears?

Let's say Joe-Vampire actually did become a cop. His name is printed on the speeding ticket he just wrote you, and for the heck of it, you google it and find his myspace page. Would it not bother you in the least to see the imagery I've described?

Who cares? How is it relevant? Suppose I'm a hardcore teatotaling prohibitionist, and instead of Joe-Vampire I find Joe-Binge Drinker? Would that make it any better?

Also, taking the flaw in your argument to an extreme, by litereal interpretation of your logic, you're saying it's ok for, say, a pedophile to work at a daycare, so long as he did it on his own time and not at work, and was otherwise completely professional about his duties on the clock. Or are you not?

Pedophilia is illegal -- pretending to be a vampire is not. Having images of yourself pretending to be a vampire on your MySpace or whatever is fine; having images of yourself being a pedophile is a completely different thing. Comparing the two is like comparing someone who likes to play paintball with someone who likes to shoot people just to watch them die.

That's a rather idealistic view. I've held several supervisor-level positions, and with few exceptions unsavory off-job activities are in direct correlation to poor job performance. Laziness especially.

Firing (or not hiring) someone because of poor job performance (eg they're lazy) is a completely different thing than firing/not hiring someone because you saw pictures of them doing unprofessional things during their free time.

I tend to not like people who are "someone else" in situation A than they are in situation B. This heavily impares one's ability to trust that person, and that pertains to things like businesses or jobs directly.

Then you must not like anyone because literally everyone does this. People act different in different situations. This is a fact. It's not a matter of people being "fake" or "two-faced" or "dishonest" or anything like that -- it's just that different situations call for different behavior.

Do you act the same around your mother as you do around your friends? Is that also the way you act at work? In church? At school? I seriously, seriously doubt it.

Let me give you an extreme example because I think that's the only way I'm going to be able to make my point. Say you want to have sex with your wife. Hey, awesome. You head to your bedroom, lock the door behind you, and do the nasty. Perfectly fine. Now, what if you suddenly get the urge, say, in a bar. Is it acceptable to just start humping her right then and there? No, of course not, because you're in a different situation. Things that are acceptable in one place (in your home, behind closed doors) are not acceptable in another place (in public, in full view of others). What is wrong with this? Does it "heavily impair" your ability to trust someone because they won't have sex with their significant other in front of you? If it sounds stupid, good, because the whole idea is absurd. To expect anyone to act the same in different situations is absurd.

[zircon]

Pedophilia is illegal -- pretending to be a vampire is not. Having images of yourself pretending to be a vampire on your MySpace or whatever is fine; having images of yourself being a pedophile is a completely different thing. Comparing the two is like comparing someone who likes to play paintball with someone who likes to shoot people just to watch them die.

Being a pedophile isn't illegal, acting on it is. BGC and Audix are right. Doing stupid stuff on your own personal time illustrates a lack of judgment, simple as that. Yeah, SOME people might be able to completely separate out their behavior, but for most, it's just the human condition; poor judgment is poor judgment.

[Native Jovian]

So I guess that means that everyone who goes out and has a night on the town with their friends on the weekends is automatically a terrible, lazy, irresponsible, untrustworthy person in all aspects of their life.

But only if they post pictures of it on the internet.

[zircon]

Well, yeah, pretty much. If you have the poor judgment to do stupid stuff and either let people take pictures of you or upload them yourself, then that means you're pretty irresponsible. That's just the way the world works.

[Native Jovian]

Explain to me how this is true, because I'm not seeing it. Either you're assuming that it's inherently irresponsible to not act with professional decorum at all times (which is patently ridiculous) or you're using circular logic (posting pictures of your off-duty activities online is irresponsible -> if employers see you doing irresponsible things online they'll react negatively -> employers react negatively to posting pictures of yourself online -> therefore posting pictures of your off-duty activities online is irresponsible).

[big giant circles]

So I guess that means that everyone who goes out and has a night on the town with their friends on the weekends is automatically a terrible, lazy, irresponsible, untrustworthy person in all aspects of their life.

But only if they post pictures of it on the internet.

Are you really that dense? I think you misunderstood EVERYTHING I just said. And it seems you completely overlooked everything I said that specifically ties my explanation in with businesses and why they have a right to be concerned about these things.

Or did you possibly not mention that because you simply can't counter that point?

Let me expand on zircon's explanation, since he understood it and you apparently did not. It is NOT illegal to be a pedophile. Instead of being a vampire, let's say he simply put random pictures up of young kids with captions that said something like "Ohh, man, check out THIS little hottie! /drools"

That's not illegal, but it is sure creepy as hell, and I'm pretty sure that 99.9999% of any employers would have a problem with that because when ANYONE in the public sees it, it damages the image of the employer. Just because you're off the clock does not mean you don't still represent the company in some way. I didn't ask you if this was fair, or if you like it, I'm telling you that's how it works. I'm sorry if you feel repressed or inconvenienced, but as zircon also said, that's just how the world works. Before you get all huffy and try to attack my system of reasoning, think of speed limits. Sometimes they seem ridiculous and you might feel imposed on, and by all means, no one can stop you from pushing the gas pedal down any further. You might even get away with it. But you're risking consequences by doing so, and depending on the amount that you go over, the more severe the penalty can become.

[zircon]

I think what you're not understanding is that for many, MANY jobs, you ARE expected to act with professional decorum at all times. Not literally wearing a suit and tie and never letting loose a bit, but not acting like a frat boy either. Is this really so hard to comprehend? As BGC pointed out, unprofessional activity reflects poorly on the employer, but moreover, it (again) shows a lack of maturity and judgment. These are qualities that, in the real world, real companies want. They don't want to settle for someone who acts like a dumbass when they're not at work.

[Schwaltzvald]

Either you're assuming that it's inherently irresponsible to not act with professional decorum at all times (which is patently ridiculous) or you're using circular logic (posting pictures of your off-duty activities online is irresponsible -> if employers see you doing irresponsible things online they'll react negatively -> employers react negatively to posting pictures of yourself online -> therefore posting pictures of your off-duty activities online is irresponsible).

It's sad but true...

Hell this cheerleader coach was fired because of a previous stint on working with playboy before becoming a coach.

Funny thing is, NO ONE COMPLAINED until...

...the Playboy photos were brought to the school's attention by a mother whose daughter wasn't allowed to try out for the squad because of too many unexcused absences from school...

From what I've read elsewhere she was an awesome coach... So...

WHAT THE FUCKING SHIT?!

Not even just "irresponsible activities" but a previous job/occupation can get you screwed over...