I’ve Nothing to Say
Posted By Kathleen David on December 11, 2007
But I’m going to write this up anyway. It is not that I don’t have anything to think about. I have lots that I am pondering in my mind but nothing I care to put out on the Internet to be dug up in 20 years and used for nefarious purposes.
I have lots to do today and a plan of attack but that makes for pretty boring reading really.
Recently a number of people I know have been finding things that they wrote on boards when the Internet was young have been found and used to their disadvantage. They are not the same people as the people who wrote on those boards. For one thing we use to think that the Internet was much more private than it turned out to be and for another people change. The radical, rabid person you are at 20 is different from what you are at 25, 30 or even 40. Life changes every minute and so do you. I know a couple of people who use to make their money in the drug trade (middle management sort of) and now they are clean and living very productive lives. If what they had done comes back to them, it could shatter the lives that they have built after walking away from easy, all be it dangerous, money. I think they live with that in the back of their heads each and every day.
So is it fair to judge someone for a job or a security clearance based on some rant they did out on the Internet over almost 20 years ago? Apparently to some it does. Human Resources for large companies know how to use a search engine and do so with great frequency when going through job applications. They have said that it helps them sort out the candidates. So that photo that you use to have online of that tattoo on your butt that is a Dilbert cartoon against big business CAN come back and bite you on the ášš. But that is very short sighted on the part of the HR of the companies.
So today I bounced around to my usual spots on the web and looked for a topic to write about today and realized that I had nothing to say but I said it anyway.
I am grateful that I can find something to say even when I start with nothing.
…”So is it fair to judge someone for a job or a security clearance based on some rant they did out on the Internet over almost 20 years ago? “……
Depends on what they said or did, really, doesn’t it? What do you know about your examples from the drug trade, for example? Since they were middle management and making money as you say, do you know if they ordered any deaths or beatings? Cause I gotta say it would color my opinion of them today in a negative way, and I don’t care how Currier and Ives their current life has become.
That’s one thing I’ve always kept in mind. Not for job purposes, but whenever I’ve written anything that’s not intended for one other person (and often even then), I always ask myself before posting “if your mother saw this, would you be embarrassed?” That’s kept a couple of my rants cleaner than they would be otherwise…
And it’s actually a real possibility now rather than in the dark days of 1993, as my aunt recently found my fiction posting site… 🙂
Of course, if anyone did a search on me, they’d find that either I’m A)a really good photographer in San Fran, B)someone whose written articles for a Pagan newsletter in Scotland, or C)someone really dull who occasionally insults people named Mike and does video editing. Unfortunately for me, I’m C. Can you not get a job for being too dull? Egad, I hope not.
And it’s not that you had nothing to say, it’s that there wasn’t anything of the relevance deserving of your eloquence.
A few years back when we were living in Dawsonville, i did a Google on me and found out that i lived in Dawsonville Georgia and was a world-famous powerboat racer…