My mom is forever insisting that my blogging activities are going to inevitably get me into all kinds of trouble and ruin many potential career paths. In today’s internet age it seems that everything you do leaves behind web footprints. You can Google almost anyone to find dirt on them. For example, any of the following searches can (and have) led internet surfers to my innocuous little blog:
-new haircuts for wide faced brown haired girls
-dr sanjay gupta honeymoon
-ecstasy induced trance and subliminal messaging
-Why los angeles sucks
-kissinger + cia + chile + allende + cockroaches
-worlds mosts sickest pictures
-bad thinking inside the mind
And of course SO MANY people have at least one atrocious picture of themselves embedded somewhere it the bowels of the internet. It’s a picture that they took (for example) right after they had to walk a half mile on a very humid day when it was drizzling, which in turn made their hair all puffy and chia-pet like. The New York Times Stephanie Rosenbloom writes:
IN the winter of 1996, back when I was a brunette who wore sensible shoes, a photographer snapped my picture during a rehearsal for a college musical. The production mattered; eating and sleeping did not. The resulting portrait showed a pasty, gaunt girl being swallowed by a XXX-large T-shirt.
The only thing more unfortunate than the photo is that nearly a decade after it was taken - a decade in which I became a blonde and graduated to stilettos - it is still the definitive image of me on the World Wide Web, the one that pops up every time my name is entered in a Google search. It even has the dubious distinction of being in the top 10 hits in a list of several hundred, most of them articles I have written.
The photo caption says that as the show’s director, I was working “behind the scenes.” I beg to differ. I am center stage in cyberspace. Never mind that the photograph accompanies an article about my theatrical achievements. If a prospective date were to encounter the virtual me before the flesh-and-blood me, he would not be moved to schedule aperitifs.
But if misery loves company, then there is solace in knowing that many people bristle at the mere thought of being Googled because of the photographs, news clippings or blog entries that they feel do not reflect who they really are. Such is the plight of the Google-ee.
I mean seriously! The caring, sensitive individual that I am (who really just wants to be held) doesn’t come through at all if you Google me to find out who I am. Instead, there is talk of Henry Kissinger and the cockroaches he used in some alleged coup attempt. Any sane person would be scared off. Is it any wonder I can’t get a date?
Anil Dash, who describes himself on Anildash.com as “a writer/geek/New Yorker living in San Francisco,” has been blogging since the 90’s and has built a virtual identity that he says accurately reflects who he is.
“The Internet is a very good analogy to a company,” Mr. Dash said. “There is always going to be somebody complaining. At least the first voice they hear is yours.”
Last year Mr. Dash participated in a challenge in which competitors attempted to get their Web site to be the first Google result for the made-up phrase “Nigritude Ultramarine.” Mr. Dash won the second round by posting a request on his popular blog asking readers to link from their own sites to his using the phrase.
An attempt to influence the rank of a site returned by a Google search is known as Google Washing or Google Bombing. Referring to the process as “gaming Google,” Mr. Palfrey explained that Google’s dominance as a search engine was largely due to a technology called PageRank, which he called the company’s “special sauce.”
In the interest of full disclosure I felt it was necessary to reveal to our readers some pictures of current and former SM bloggers that can be freely found on the internet. These are just examples of what the New York Times article was referring to in case you didn’t quite get it:
Now some of you might be wondering, “Why doesn’t Abhi show us a picture of Manish? Surely there is an embarrassing picture out there somewhere?” I owe Manish all kinds of payback though for various posts making fun of me. His fate shall be much, much worse.
