Facebook sprinkles me. It so, so does.
When I signed up to Facebook I did have one fun thought: “A.U. told me there’s a ‘What Dictator Are You?’ app. and she’s Mohamar Khadaffi. So seriously, which dictator might I be?” (I’m a good one! too! and she’s on my profile.)
And there’s other fun stuff. Like I belong to a group called: I OWE THAT BITCH SALLIE MAE MONEY and while its the funniest thing I’ve heard in a long time – I do owe that bitch money – it worries me swearing under my “own name.”
No, I don’t swear at work. Quit smirking.
The Internet, for me, is a great, big, gigantic, super-huge, titanic, mega-gigantic, google-able … resume. I make my living online and so how I represent myself matters. No one wants to have the person publicly listed as their Web site administrator show up in some online nastiness somewhere when a client tries to find them to report a broken link, or friend them on Facebook because at work they seem so cheerful and customer-oriented, and then have something embarrassing turn up. This blog is as loose I get online and I do share it with some people I work with, but I don’t advertise it. It’s for friends and family and folks who want to keep up with me.
And tonight I’m thinking about how I handle this because Facebook is so charming it lures me to be fun. To have fun. To loosen up more than my threshold for such things normally allows. That whole status update thing? Like… “Snakelady is…” I’m so into that. Snakelady is pissed off. Snakelady is disappointed. Snakelady is proud. Snakelady did a good thing. Snakelady bombed dinner. I feel so inclined to share what’s up because it works so good for me when other people are doing it. A friend updated how he’d rolled the Magic 8 ball to see if he was going to score with this guy he’s sparking on and I’m all, Cool, send him a high five. And my friend A. had on her IM status one day, “I hate children.” And I’m all, oh, not going so good on the children’s desk today. Better send her a cake. Etc. etc. I’m amazed how much I can keep up with people just via their status. And I want to play, too.
But it might be more revealing than I like sometimes – anything “emotional” might be more than I want to share, what with colleagues reading it, and not “friend-colleagues-people-I-went-to-school-with” but just regular colleagues. But I want to join in, and for real, not “Snakelady joined the American Library Association” and “Snakelady is available for spring speaking engagements” and “Snakelady’s favorite children’s database is SIRS.” I mean, come on.
Right now? Seriously? I try not to do anything online that my boss couldn’t see and be OK with. That may sound extreme, so maybe I should say, “I don’t do anything online my future employers wouldn’t be comfortable associating themselves with on the day they get my application and google me and look me up on MySpace and Facebook.”
No, I don’t have a “secret identity” online. After a while, everything comes out. Somebody sees into your gmail over your shoulder one day and it is all over friends. Or you do something so fabulous under your pseudonym that you just have to share it with someone you know and then you forgot that you published a 125-page twenty-eight-part sexual fantasy featuring the cast of Star Trek under that pseudonym that has its own fan base and Googles really well and you’re like “Crap!!”
I have a MySpace profile – but I’m top friends with my work and my biggest site and so my “About Me” section talks about which professional associations I belong to. If you click through my friends you’ll be fine. If you happen to click into one of my family members, though, watch out, we’re a lively bunch 😉
In any case, some thoughts. It’s a consideration.
No, I still don’t have enough super-pokes to trout slap someone. No, I won’t trout slap anyone from work.
Plum Librarian LLC 