I've Nothing to Say

[puppetmaker]

But I'm going to write this up anyway. It is not that I don't have anything to think about. I have lots that I am pondering in my mind but nothing I care to put out on the Internet to be dug up in 20 years and used for nefarious purposes.

I have lots to do today and a plan of attack but that makes for pretty boring reading really.

Recently a number of people I know have been finding things that they wrote on boards when the Internet was young have been found and used to their disadvantage. They are not the same people as the people who wrote on those boards. For one thing we use to think that the Internet was much more private than it turned out to be and for another people change. The radical, rabid person you are at 20 is different from what you are at 25, 30 or even 40. Life changes every minute and so do you. I know a couple of people who use to make their money in the drug trade (middle management sort of) and now they are clean and living very productive lives. If what they had done comes back to them, it could shatter the lives that they have built after walking away from easy, all be it dangerous, money. I think they live with that in the back of their heads each and every day.

So is it fair to judge someone for a job or a security clearance based on some rant they did out on the Internet over almost 20 years ago? Apparently to some it does. Human Resources for large companies know how to use a search engine and do so with great frequency when going through job applications. They have said that it helps them sort out the candidates. So that photo that you use to have online of that tattoo on your butt that is a Dilbert cartoon against big business CAN come back and bite you on the ass. But that is very short sighted on the part of the HR of the companies.

So today I bounced around to my usual spots on the web and looked for a topic to write about today and realized that I had nothing to say but I said it anyway.

I am grateful that I can find something to say even when I start with nothing.

Comments

[amarafox.livejournal.com]

I'm of the mind that if HR digs something up from 1994 (When I started online) from me and uses it against me (Most of what I wrote was pretty fannish, and nothing too politically charged, but I was 19, and I was immature), I don't really want to work for them.

At one point I tried to hide my tracks that I was once very much into anthro art in the mid 90s (In a 100% I'm just here for the art way) and quickly realized that with a combination of google and the wayback machine it's impossible to do that.

I also discovered that most people don't give a crap, except for a small pocket of game developers, 2 or 3 bitter animators and pasty-white scrawny basement virgins who think it's fun to be am asshole on the internet. Everyone else goes 'OK, cool, you draw other stuff mostly' really missed drawing cartoon critters, and I do it again, but now I draw them for everyone, and not a specific audience.

[vysion-of-books.livejournal.com]

You have an uncanny ability to make a verbose nothing. :-P

[sneezythesquid.livejournal.com]

Sometimes the best thing you can say is, indeed, nothing.

[auryn29a.livejournal.com]

I worry about that sort of thing because of misinformation. How can you be sure that the John Smith who wrote a treatise on the evils of democracy in 1998 is the same John Smith who's applying for a job today?

If you Google my name, the first link is a pet-abuse.com profile about some teenager who tortured cats in MA. I wonder how many of the resumes I've been sending to jobs since May have been rejected because of that link.

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

There are certain identifiers that have to be researched and matched.

Not being on that end of the business, I don't know what they are, but I know they exist for those searches.

[paigemom.livejournal.com]

People do grow and change. It's always sad when others choose not to see that and remain old enemies...

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

Less HR directly and more "media and online searches" by third party companies.

[wonderbink.livejournal.com]

If you Google my real name, nothing about me shows up until page six of the results.

If you Google my screennames, you get me from page one.

At this point, I kinda prefer it that way.

[puppetmaker40.livejournal.com]

My maiden name has faded from google over the years but my current name is there in spades. But then I can't really hide due to Peter.

[hergrace.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Will was just giving the boys a similar talk about this last night. They love online RPG, and he gave them stern and solemn advice about not doing anything online they wouldn't want disclosed upon the highest rooftops.

It seems a pity that "private" communication (which, of course, the internet isn't) can get into our public lives and truly mess things up.

[wonderbink.livejournal.com]

he gave them stern and solemn advice about not doing anything online they wouldn't want disclosed upon the highest rooftops.

Which is why many of my journal entries about my torrid affair with Mr. TBH are under lock and filter, and why there are some things, no matter how much they're eating at me, that never make it past the paper journal on my bedside table.

[musesong.livejournal.com]

Thought-provoking and you are quite right. It is one of the things that made me cautious from the start and keeping my personal LJ 'friends only' and using a nickname rather than my legal name. Still I've been out of the broom closet since before the internet took off so any employer could easily discover those parts of my life. Not that this is an issue for me these days but for many it could be.

Your cat could be my Robin's twin.

[puppetmaker40.livejournal.com]

Is your cat a Hemingway Cat (polydactal?) Stalin is which makes clipping his claws a real adventure.

[caersidi.livejournal.com]

No, he's not and I can imagine it is hard. Plus, more claws to scratch you with!

Picture of Robin cunningly hiding in a paper bag.