HI. BYE. YES. NO.
Let me throw some “shocking” news in your face. Many of us live online. We put our whole lives out there. Look who just had a baby! Look who just went on a vacation! Look who has problems in their lives! (remember to add arm flailing in that last bit there)
Normally, we would just consider it an annoyance to see endless amount of baby photos from that one girl you don’t like. Others may find it a blessing when they want to creep someone they barely know on Facebook.
But how does it both aid and destroy our personal lives?
In the defense of aiding our lives, we can put everything about us on a website. We can scroll back to when we first joined to get embarrassed at how stupid we sounded or see those old photos of us with our best friends from that one time we went camping out in Muskoka. It creates a space for us to share and express ourselves. Facebook has embraced the idea of sharing “memories”. They pull out old photos and posts from years before that allow us to look back at an exact day and re-share that memory all over again. It creates a sense of nostalgia, happiness and can give us a good laugh at times.
But other times, in the worst case scenarios, sharing that time you had in the bar 2 years ago when you got so piss drunk that you fell face first into a pile of puke, may not be the best time to capture on photo and share. But this is the age of the internet, you get caught on film doing something really stupid… be sure that someone is posting that somewhere. Furthermore, be sure that someone is going to find that; that someone may be determining whether or not you can pay off that mortgage and your student loans.
For most conventional 9–5 business jobs, you REALLY don’t want them to find those photos, they portray you as unprofessional, a party animal, unreliable… even that happened only one time. You have a profile picture of you smoking it up and your HR person hates that… say good-bye to that job at Google.
When asked “What role will social media play in tomorrow’s job search? Hiring? Firing?” I am going to look at the word “will”. Not only will it affect the job search, hiring or firing, it already has.
So many people have been let go from their jobs because of such incidents. Ie, that time a guy told his boss he was sick and he ended up going on vacation, to a beach, where he punched a shark to save someone and it ended up on video and going viral. His boss saw that, realized he was lied to and guess what? The hero was promptly fired. So apparently, being a hero doesn’t give you job security.
Now, a lot of people are smart and either private their accounts, hide their accounts in general, never make accounts or the smartest people limit themselves on what they post in the first place. Remember, whatever you put on the internet is on the internet forever.
Now, I pose a question to you. Is having to PG your profiles online an unintentional or possibly intentional censorship? Should they ignore our online personas and go off of what we do in the office or during an interview?
I think, in someway, it is. I mean, come on, I do great work in the office, but I accidentally partied too hard last night and I just so happened to do something I never do and of course, it just so happens that someone was pointing a camera at me …(I’m speaking hypothetically). I come back to the office the next day, sobered up, working just as hard as the day before… Does that make me a bad person? Does that constitute for job loss or loss of opportunity?
I don’t know. I feel like it is, I would love for someone to base me off of me and not off of some dumb photo on the internet, but I’ve personally never really had to worry about this stuff since I never party and hardly ever drink. But for those who have… how do you feel? Stifled or do you feel like that’s fair? I feel like it’s a personal space online for me and I don’t censor my bedroom and people are invited to that. So should I censor my space online? Thoughts?
