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Antisocial Media Concerns?
By Matt Keough | January 3, 2008
While spending some time at Sphinn today, one of the hot topics was a post by Jennifer Laycock. It questioned if we should be concerned about not only our profiles, but the profiles of those we are connected with, even indirectly, in various social networking channels.
Here is a snippet:
That got me thinking and I began surfing around looking at some of the profiles of people I had “friended”. While I didn’t find many surprises there (as I only tend to accept invites from people I already have an acquaintance with) I did find some shockers when I clicked through to view THEIR connections. Strippers, bongs, beer stands, and talk of both recreational and hard-core drug usage left me wondering who exactly my “friends” were hanging out with. I’ll admit, it didn’t leave me with the best taste in my mouth.
So I wondered…with so much press popping up about the need to keep your social media profile “squeaky clean” and “professional” in case a company does a little background checking on your “character”…do we need to also watch for the day when they start examining our friends?
While I certainly understand her concern, I don’t share it completely. For starters, I do think that anyone sophisticated enough to be poking around Facebook (pun intended) on a reconnaissance mission might be hip enough to know that folks “friend” each other for many reasons and may be a little more indiscriminate than they are in real life. Although usually called “friends”, there is an understanding that a social media friend is not really a true blue friend, right?
Secondly, just by looking at your profile they probably get a fair idea of your interests if you have developed it to any extent. If you have not developed your profile, and they are using your tertiary connections as a surrogate for your values - I question their judgment.
And finally, I remember when I was a teenager and younger I would sometimes whine “Mother! You are embarrassing me!” My mom would just smirk and say “You can only embarrass yourself.”
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January 4th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Good perspectives. I would only add or agree that the profiles of others stand pretty much on their own. I don’t know how you can sanitize the questionable values of scores of friends probably best described as “People I May Know A Little or May Know A Lot or Somewhere In Between.”
January 4th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
It is kind of like the high school lunch room, eh? “Look - He is sitting with the D&D boys…” I never played D&D, but people assumed I did.
January 4th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
I really want to know why these sites won’t tell you how many degrees of separation one has from Kevin Bacon.
January 4th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
I bet one of your online friends does play D&D… I’m going to search profiles of all your friends, their friends, and their freinds’ friends. Muh ha ha! ….. just kidding.
January 10th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
I think this issue is fascinating, and we’ve seen it come into play on the national ‘08 political scene when Hillary was seen to have an unsavory MySpace friend sometime back in the fall. Never mind that the person (if I remember correctly) had never met her; some people tried to tar and feather her for this one odd connection. She may have since deleted that friend, but if you really want to know you can check out her MySpace profile for yourself. Have fun looking through this minute’s tally of 162,402 friends. And then sling some mud at her for associating with low-life’s!
January 10th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
Paul,
I really don’t think we need MySpace to dig up unsavory connections for most politicians. Non-virtual connections usually are enough to incriminate. :-)
Matt