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How to remove a Digital Tattoo

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20 pointsMurkin18 comments

It isn't us older professional folk who really have to worry. It is the 13-15 year old crowd. If you thought what you said at 18 was embarrassing, try the things you said at 13.

These kids will be seeking jobs some day, and guess what will come back?

My wife taught middle/high school, and we always wanted the kids to remember one thing. "If you post it online, it is public. Forever."

Even if not technically accurate, it is a safe mantra to follow.

You must remember that the people doing the hiring will not be the same in 10 years, either. Admittedly, the transition period to an "internet-understanding" management-age workforce is probably still 15-20 years off.

Maybe, maybe not. If you start facebooking at age 13, by the time you're looking for a job at age 22 there will be nine years worth of crap about you on the Web. Finding the embarrassing bits won't be that easy.

You got a great point there.

Its the crap we do unaware, that hurts us most.

No one really expected this open-social-revolution nor prepared us for the dangers/effects. Glad to hear teachers are aware

More and more people will have this problem in the future, which also means more and more people will probably be more understanding of it. I think that our culture's attitude will shift to be more tolerant of permanent, public statements from one's youth.

I think a better and more pro-active approach is to completely own one's past. My blog goes all the way back to shitty poetry I wrote and delusional statements of grandeur I made when I was 15. As far as I'm concerned, all they indicate is that I've come a long since way since then.

That's not easy to do in retrospect - both because the technology may not have existed to do so (automated blogs), or the content may be scattered in many places (message boards, listservs, etc.).

Also, you may control the source, but not its dissemination. Once your stuff makes its way onto archive.org, removing it from your won blog won't make a difference.

I think he means 'own' in the sense that he openly acknowledges his past and isn't ashamed of it, not that he has control over the information itself.

Ah, you are right. I guess I didn't see that because I don't see that is in opposition to what I said.

There should be a startup to provide anonymity through clutter. By creating fake identities with your name, you could make Google search less effective. This will neutralize most of the results, as the searcher will no longer know which of these sites is really yours.

There are a few. Here's a popular one:

http://www.reputationdefender.com/

If you won't forgive me for saying dumb shit years ago, I'm not so sure I want to be your friend anyhow.

Generally, I think making sure that there are good things associated with your name helps to drown out the bad things.

> If you won't forgive me for saying dumb shit years ago, I'm not so sure I want to be your friend anyhow.

The problem is that if you decide go into public service and run for office, your opponents won't forgive you. They'll be more than happy to dig up that one tiny moment when you were off guard ten years ago, take it out of context, and hold it up as an example of how you must really feel about the topic du jour.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpBzQI_7ez8

"Obama: You know, when I was a kid... I inhaled frequently. That was the point."

This seems like more of a problem when you have a more obscure name. I think Google is becoming less and less effective as more and more people use the internet and you get name collisions. It becomes harder to tell if the person whose name you googled is the actual person being referenced or not. At one point I knew all the links on the first page of Google were me - now it's about half. The less you use your real name the more that helps as well as the other people who share your name float to the top.

I regularly say stupid things online. shrug Most of those I might have offended forgave me long ago (and eventually the current ones will).

My hit/miss ratio has improved so it's less of a problem now.

I guess the only concern is if you hit the media spotlight for any reason someone is sure to dig up something disingenuous.

(Im lucky; someone a little more high profile shares my name and hogs google for me :D)

Also known as "be careful what you post when your name is Boris Dinkevich".

For all of you saying "well, other people will also have done the same thing, so it won't matter" or "if you don't understand and forgive me for stupid stuff I did when I was 12, then you're not worth having as a boss", etc.

This is rationalizing. The problem is that people are only too willing to NOT forgive you for stupid stuff they did themselves, only didn't get caught at it. So yes, perhaps there will be lots of "cool" places where everybody has a colorful public past, but you can better damn be certain that there will be lots of places where people didn't leave their dirty laundry around on the internet.

I'm not saying I like it. I'm saying that expecting other people to cut you some slack because basically, well, we're all screwed up at one time or another -- that's whacked. People have known that we're all screwed up for centuries. Hasn't changed the nature of mankind at all. I seriously doubt the internet is going to change that.

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