#_______ of ______ people
Posted By Kathleen David on December 7, 2013
Recently I have been seeing a lot of lists and articles about behavior both good and bad. You can read about 10 habits of happy people or 20 habits of unhappy people or 7 strategies of important people or whatever. We are endlessly fascinated by how people do what they do or act how they act and we seem to like to distill that down into lists.
Part of this might be because I am keeping up with my Facebook feed which is off and on for me. Facebook seems to be made of lists and memes…and games lots and lots of games.
I know that blogging is still going on. I read various people’s thoughts on a variety of subjects still on Live Journal or another platform. I think I am starting to understand Tumbler. Pinrest is still not making much sense to me over all. I use to GetGlue but much less since the physical stickers are now gone and right after the Doctor Who marathon of stickers. I have a Twitter account but it is more for reading than commenting.
There was an article in the NYT about how one’s social footprint may influence which college they get into and what sort of scholarships might be offered to them. There was another article I read about Human Resources looking at one’s social footprint as part of the vetting process for a job. A candidate which looks good on paper and interviews well can find themselves not getting the job because of what they say on the Internet or what others say about them. So those “I was so drunk Friday night” messages present a person without self control and, if there is a pattern of these messages, a person with a potential problem. It seems that how you present yourself on the web is as important as how you present yourself in person.
I am thinking of joining Linkedin but I am unsure what I would do with it. I am looking for work but most of my leads have come from direct contact with people. Not that I have found a job or any freelance work recently. But this year has been about family needs more than anything else.
I am wondering what historians are going to make of our Internet footprints. What patterns are they going to see and what data will they mine? The world seems to be moving fast and we are moving closer together because of these electronic mediums. In some ways we have never been closer but in others we have never been further apart. And is there too much sharing?
I am grateful that I got on the Internet early in its existence.
I’m grateful that I’m too old to care and more or less in a position where it doesn’t matter. I’m pretty sure I’m not going to be dealing with too many prospective colleges in my future and my employer knows I’m the department eccentric, so my odd ramblings into horror, indie film-making, and the sights and activities of the average convention have started to become something they don’t even raise an eyebrow to these days. And it’s been years now since anyone I work with has even questioned the fact that they let me carry a gun.
🙂
I worry about my kids sometimes though. As social media becomes a bigger and bigger thing in every aspect of our lives, we see more and more weird stories where people are denied employment or lose their jobs over actions or activities that never would have gotten one in trouble before and shouldn’t have gotten anyone in trouble. I saw a news story a year or so ago about a teacher who lost her job because someone else posted pictures on Facebook of a party where drinking was going on. No stripping, no nudity, no R rated activity whatsoever in the pictures. But she was said to be engaging in activity that was not what the school wanted representing its image or the image of its teachers. Last month there was a story of a girl’s basketball coach getting fired over a “sexy” Facebook picture that was deemed immoral. It was a picture of she and her fiance out on some lake in a close embrace and her fiance has his hand on her chest.
The really cruddy thing that made that one a double hit for the stupidity column was that her fiance is a winning football coach for the same school. He got a reprimand.
I think the one saving grace when I think about what my kids will be dealing with is that most of their future employers and educators will have grown up in this environment as well. Hopefully, when it’s time for them to face these issues, the common wisdom on social media will be somewhat saner than it seems to be now.