Google Yourself

Philosophers tell us that mind-to-mind communication is impossible. If Person B wants to know what Person A is thinking, Person A has to articulate it through some physical means, before it can reach Person B, who has to comprehend the information through the same physical medium used by Person A. The implications of this evidently unavoidable predicament is that we can never really know how other human beings perceive themselves. We can only know how other people want other people to perceive them.

Memoirs, diaries, autobiographies; throughout history these things have provided they only means to know what people think of themselves, or at least, what they want other people to think of them. Then, without any warning, a movement swept through modernity that booted memoirs, diaries, and autobiographies from their exalted status as the source of personal information: enter, social media.

Have you ever googled yourself?

Most of us have. Some of us multiple times. Just to check, right?

Some people are blessed with the anonymity that comes with a common combination of given and surnames that renders them nearly impossible to find. Other people share a name with a celebrity, which achieves the same effect. But however hidden it may be, the truth is that almost all of us have, in some tiny respect, personal information, which we have published ourselves, accessible via the internet.  I call it publicly personal information.

Confession: I'm scared of social media.

Before we continue, let me make an important distinction.

• The legal definition of stalking: Criminal activity consisting of the repeated following and harassing of another person. (http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Stalking)
• The cultural definition of stalking: casually (okay…sometimes not so casually) researching another person using the information that can be found on the internet, usually published by the person in question themselves (thank you Facebook).

People engaged in the first activity are criminals and dangerous. Those of us that make ready use of the second are simply curious and non-malicious opportunists utilizing the resources made available by individuals themselves to find out more.

Frequently, within two or three weeks of meeting people—but never right away--I'll look them up online to see how they portray themselves. It's interesting to see a person's profile about himself or herself. It's also scary to see what those media allow strangers to learn about a person without their direct knowledge.

For instance, did you know that Instagram has a function that attaches location information to a photo? Mobile users may access a map view of a person's profile that presents each picture as a pin showing where it was taken. This means that, for the user who has this function enabled on a public profile, anyone who wishes can identify every spot that the user stopped to take a picture and post it online.

Again, it all depends on how much information a user allows the platform to access, but many times the platform doesn't divulge its intention. The Instagram app simply asks for permission to access location data, camera, photo history, and contacts at installation.

If you've read my bio, you know that Nicole Pendragon is not actually my name. Am I paranoid? Maybe a little bit. But if I am, my paranoia is not entirely unfounded.

I have a limited bubble of social networks under my real name, meaning two: linkedin and twitter. I'm not counting Google+ because I don't use it at all, and I only have it because I have an email and Google does that super annoying thing where it creates a page for you if you want to use any of its products.

I'm actually a pretty heavy twitter user. As a news junkie, I can follow all my favorite news sources, influential people, and select companies, neatly consolidated into one place. It's convenient for information consumption, but as a producer, I fall significantly short.

I like Linkedin because it’s a professional platform that allows me to stay connected to people I'm not necessarily friends with, but want to be in contact with nonetheless. Recently, I was reading an article about how to use Linkedin, and the author asked what happened when you googled your name. As mentioned beforehand, I'd done that before, but it had been some time, so I did it again. Now, I'm not one of those fortunate souls with a generic name or a celebrity affiliate, so the first several google results (for my real name) are actually me. I expected that the first to pop up would be my Linkedin page. To my considerable surprise, I discovered that my twitter handle, from which I have posted a grand total of five tweets in the course of less than a year was the first entry.

At that point I realized that I need to do two things:

(a) use twitter more

(b) use it for purely professional-grade activity

Perhaps you've run across the considerably debated question about whether or not it is ethical for employers to google their potential employees before hiring. I don't understand how that's even a question. In the first place, how could such a barrier be legally enforced? Also, what is unethical about it? All that can be discovered on the internet through facebook, twitter, instagram, and other such sites is information posted with the full control and consent of the person involved. And, depending on the position, the publicly personal details of an individual could be anywhere from moderately to extremely relevant to the employer.

I fully expect that any potential employer will have looked me up on the internet well before I interview. Today I have discovered that the first thing they will see is my activity on twitter. When I say that I intend to use twitter for profession-grade activity alone, I don't mean that I want it to be a twitter-version of my Linkedin activity—it’s still a personal platform, after all—instead I want my twitter page to be indicative of my personality, without revealing my personal activity.

It's interesting what you can learn about how a person chooses to represent themselves on any platform, including elevator speeches, professional profiles, and non-professional profiles such as their social media.

Facebook, Twitter, and the like sometimes get a bad rap for the idea that they allow a person to represent a false image of themselves (for any number of reasons; preserving anonymity, boosting self-image, etc) to the public. That certainly does happen, I grant you (it's what I'm doing right now, isn't it?), but more often than not, that bad rap is undeserved for two reasons.

Point A: People are unlikely to represent themselves falsely. Most people on social media connect themselves to people whom they know in person. Automatically, there's a accountability factor built in. Any falsified information posted to an online social platform is likely to be seen, and possibly revealed, by someone who knows better. Research suggests that the "paper trail" created by written words or images posted to a public platform creates quite the deterrent against dishonesty. Any lies posted online are generally not big enough to signify.

Point B: False representation is not always a bad thing. I write this blog under an assumed name so that I can keep a record of my writings in a public forum (my own form of accountability) without a breach in my privacy. Even in the case where a person is choosing to represent himself or herself falsely in order to garner a better image for themselves than they believe their own personality could, you can learn what they value in who they wish they were.

Social media allows us to access something that only autobiographies could provide previously: a person's self-perception. Philosophers will tell you that mind-to-mind communication is impossible, and thus you can never know truly how a person perceives themselves. However, the sort of statuses that a person posts to Facebook, or the pictures they upload to Instagram can reveal what they wish they were, and what they wish others to think about them. If you know that person in "real life", you suddenly have another perception of that person, a perspective separate from your own. False or otherwise, a person's social media profiles will always augment the information you have in real life.

So compose your version of how others ought to understand your self-perception; read between the lines about how your friends choose to present themselves. Consider how that contrasts with what you already know about them.

But don't be malicious about it. That's just not cool.

Best wishes,

Nicole