You may have noticed that Botgirl's Identity Circus has appeared in the list of blogs I find interesting. Botgirl is also curator of something called Nymwars which collates references to articles relating to the struggle relating to online identity which Facebook, and now Google+, are fostering, not because they have any concern about the morals or otherwise of the issue, but because they want to know who you are so they can convince advertisers to pay them more to target you because they are collecting masses of profile information on you.
This may not worry you - if you have nothing to worry about. Although, in the unlikely event that you have nothing to worry about (hand on heart - you have no skeletons in the cupboard at all?) it is easily conceivable that someone has made a mistake, or an enemy has lied, or an AI routine has put together 2 and 2 to make 5 and hey presto, your reputation is sunk, or you find youself barred from visiting a country or you're up in court for racism for making a joke about Martians.
I have lots of online persona. Every one carries the explicit or implict tagline "opinions expressed here do not reflect the management's views, nor necessarily those of the person typing" especially since sarcasm is only effectively expressible face to face - but then, you're smart enough to realise that. (Aren't you?) Which makes every online instantiation a character in a virtual fictive novel; if you choose to believe the words you read, with absolutely no corroboration, then that is YOUR decision. The motherhood and apple pie, nanny state, politically incorrect, ladies who lunch, incorrectly self-considered empathic whinging minority can go fuck themselves if they want to blame me for the feelings they themselves choose to have in reaction to any words of mine they read.
Here is an idea - instead of complaining, why don't you raise a petition to have Sir Anthony Hopkins sent to the electric chair for murdering and eating all those people?
Pep (is just a figment of YOUR imagination)
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I dislike the FB/Google attempts at getting at 'me', profiling my 'type' so that marketers may sling their shit at me. I take care cultivating friends I meet online and I have only a very few I consider RL friends as well.
ReplyDeleteI wonder about the younger generation where this stuff is ubiquitous and, only later, when the individual applies to university or for employment they find their online history flung back in their face.
That is kinda too late.