On sundays I often go for a walk with a good old friend of mine. We drink coffee and talk about life, and today we even danced around in the snow and jumped in snowbanks. (Yeah, I know, we are like kids when we get together sometimes). As we danced down Götgatan some guy went by us filming with a video camera. I would never have noticed this hadn’t it been for my friend commenting on it “oops, now we’re on film”. This got me thinking.
My friend doesn’t have a very open web presence. I do. Could this be why I didn’t even notice the camera? I’m on Twitter, I have two blogs, my Facebook profile is pretty open, and my LinkedIn-profile is detailed. If you search for me, you get a pretty well fed Google response. If another video goes up there of me dancing in the streets? Big deal. I have thousands of pieces of information up there showing me, and this will represent 1/1000 of my total image. It really doesn’t matter.
But what if you only have 10 pieces of information up there? Well – then the dancing video will suddenly make up 10% of your Internet grand total. Each piece of information up there then counts for much more! Anxiety attack!
Perhaps the obvious logic of cautious people being more impervious to for example slander is incorrect in the Internet age? Perhaps it is precisely the other way around – that openness actually acts as a shield? Let’s do an experiment. Brace yourselves for anxiety attack on my behalf! Here comes the pictures you get back of me from the first 10 SERPs on Google image search for “Walter Naeslund”:
This is me. This is my history. Would I put all of these in my CV? Probably not. Do they represent a true image of who I am? Nope. But even so, if one “less-than-wonderful” picture of me would hit a strong blog, these other images would all act as a shield showing that “ok, he may have danced around naked with bunny ears in a Tokyo Kareoke bar in this pic, but besides that he seems to a) at least be fairly social b) lecture quite a bit (can’t be complete nut), c) does have friends d) travels (guess you got that from the Tokyo-bunny-ear-kareoke pic too), e) enjoys good food, f) has some form of serious side, g) enjoys music…” and so on and so on.
Compare that to what would have happened to my friend. The naked-with-bunny-ears-kareoke pic would have hit the front page along with one or maybe two other images. It would make up 1/3 of his web presence image-wise. He needs to be much more cautious than me about precisely what goes up there, because each piece matters much more. This, of course, also explains why newbie bloggers experience so much performance anxiety. One crappy post feels like DEATH for them, but only in the vicinity of 0.001% death for me. I have others that I’m proud of.
A minute ago, my beautiful girlfriend came in the room and asked me if it was really such a good idea to post this picture experiment in the blog since there are, after all, a whole lot of semi weird party pics in that mix. But really, it’s not like you can’t simply do that Google search for yourselves. It’s all up there already, and besides, this is who I am! Perhaps it’s not a mistake to post this at all. Perhaps the mistake is really on the part of the cautious non-posters? Perhaps the real security is actually in the numbers and in making your mark before somebody else does it for you? I believe so. And I believe that this goes for videos and text as well.
So, get out there now to protect your turf! Just remember one thing – never lie.
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{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Right on.
Just a little comment. I feel that “having an open web presence” is possible only if you are comfortable with it, if it's a part of your personality to be straightforward and not preoccupied too much by the parts of your web presence that you have no control over.
Also, most exemples you give are pretty harmless. I think it's a matter of what you might be hiding in your closet… for some people, the closet is empty. But how is it for people with, let's say, a criminal background? embarrasing addictions, diseases, illnesses or handicaps?
Then openness is clearly a danger, that must be handled with care.
True. There are things that are out of your control. And even though I believe in opening up there too (you can't pull the pants of a proudly naked person to sort of paraphrase Joakim Jardenberg), I can see your point. Things that you ARE in control of though need to be handled up front. Behave in a way that you can be proud of. Simple as that.
Even so, I agree that there are things that you REALLY don't want up there, for sure. But still, don't you think being super open about everything else is then a really good strategy to provide privacy around that particular thing? Perhaps, right?
Halloj Walter – klockren artikel! Kolla in min understreckare i SvD om Steve Mann – ni skulle gilla varandra:)
http://www.svd.se/kulturnoje/understrecket/over...
Tack Olof! Will do. Gillar din artikel!
Tack Olof! Will do. Gillar din artikel!
Openness is one thing. Privacy may well be another. Most people conflate the two. Walter might not care about pictures of him appearing online, and certainly posts are meant to be public, but there's always going to be something that people consider to be private. Maybe it's a home address, personal cellphone, Sofi-nummer, income, etc… People can more or less expect pictures taken of them to show up online, but I think most people would be surprised to see credit card numbers and home addresses, etc.. show up. Saying “I'm open to having pictures of me online” is not the same as saying “Full Disclosure”.
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