briansolis: Casting a Digital Shadow; Your Reputation Precedes You
amnigos
· 4 months ago
Very interesting insights.
briansolis
· 4 months ago
Thank you!
Yvonne N. Pinckard
· 4 months ago
Food for thought.... Loved it!
briansolis
· 4 months ago
Appreciate it Yvonne!
Kevin Steltz
· 4 months ago
Exceptional advice, and applicable to just about everybody on the planet. Thank you for writing it.
briansolis
· 4 months ago
Kevin, thank you. Let's get this in front of as many people as possible!
yaelbeeri
· 4 months ago
Very interesting post. I can't help but linking it in my mind to discussions I have been having recently about the importance of transparancy and how the lack of is harmful to your online reputation. Your digital shadow - control it and make it real. Thanks Brian.
briansolis
· 4 months ago
Well said!
EricUngs
· 4 months ago
Great post! And right on! I think in the future resumes will become obsolete as social networks and search engines become even stronger than they are today. Even now, for the most part, resumes serve as a business card highlighting candidate’s contact info to perform a Google search. Reviewing results on Google allows hiring managers to better understand a candidate’s true personality and communication skills. None of that shows on resumes. Your professional future lies within the portrayal of your own web presence that is created by you. Always consider what your boss would think if you posted this or uploaded that. Thanks for the insight.
fausty
· 4 months ago
Odd as this might sound in current context, some of us are actually just as concerned with making a positive impact on the world - and living a life of honesty and integrity and service to others - as we are in "shaping" our "personal brand" so that we look like whitebread, vanilla, boring candidates for low-level employment at a mainstream company. Yes, I know - how utterly silly to be worried about something other than "trying to fit in" - but you might even say Western culture has a long tradition of people caring about more than just, you know, being employable.
If everyone on the web followed this advice - hide anything interesting or non-mainstream or remotely "controversial" behind the private walls of a for-profit "social network" - that would certainly succeed in creating a castrated, non-threatening, utterly self-censored public internet. And that, in turn, might help big companies to sell more crap to people and make more money. So, if that's the be-all and end-all of the existence of human life, then by all means let's all engage in frantic self-censorship to ensure that nobody things we're not (gasp!) like everyone else.
That said, I suspect a few of us will keep speaking our minds, keep presenting ourselves HONESTLY online - good and bad - rather than just shoving airbrushed caricatures ourselves forward as if they were real, keep exploring those scary "controversial" topics, and keep rejecting self-censorship. Ironically, it's often people who actually have the balls to be who they are, to speak with integrity instead of with mealy-mouthed corporate mumblewords, and to actively reach OUT in furtherance of spreading genuine ideas and experience who are considered "interesting" by the sheeple who are more interested in being spectators than being participants.
In other words, if you're going to self-neuter so that you look appropriately boring and content-free in your "public personal brand," then that just leaves more room for those of us who choose to be who we are and let the world think what it will. I.e. followers - and leaders.
There's another aspect to this. A favourite saying of mine is 'be careful of what you wish for. You might just get it'. Many people spend lifetimes in careers which ultimately give them little personal fulfillment. Maybe they make money, but little happiness. Just maybe having our 'real' self transparant to people who will influence our future direction might make it more likely that we end where we should be not somewhere we think we should.
angela b
· 4 months ago
geesh..now that we're all being "monitored" by corporate big brother, we can't have any fun online anymore..bring back the anonymous chatrooms of yesteryear where my profile was a sham and no one could trace it back to my real world self!
briansolis
· 4 months ago
I hear you. It's interesting how in the chatroom and IM culture we maintained a secret or alternate identity, but in social media (a very public forum) we are ourselves. However, I suggest that we diagnose ourselves with multiple personality "order" so that we can maintain multiple personalities online related to work and personal activity (including private interaction).
Jen Howver
· 4 months ago
great stuff brian. one thing i'd add...as a parent of two young children, it's definitely something i'm sure i'll have to teach them about someday, but it's also my responsibility right now to respect their identities and privacy. i stopped blogging about them, and only twitter about them on my private, locked profile. i decided that someday they may not want their friends (or future employer) to read the story about the time their diaper exploded or they did/said something silly, even though it was really cute at the time!
All Comments
I think in the future resumes will become obsolete as social networks and search engines become even stronger than they are today. Even now, for the most part, resumes serve as a business card highlighting candidate’s contact info to perform a Google search. Reviewing results on Google allows hiring managers to better understand a candidate’s true personality and communication skills. None of that shows on resumes. Your professional future lies within the portrayal of your own web presence that is created by you. Always consider what your boss would think if you posted this or uploaded that.
Thanks for the insight.
If everyone on the web followed this advice - hide anything interesting or non-mainstream or remotely "controversial" behind the private walls of a for-profit "social network" - that would certainly succeed in creating a castrated, non-threatening, utterly self-censored public internet. And that, in turn, might help big companies to sell more crap to people and make more money. So, if that's the be-all and end-all of the existence of human life, then by all means let's all engage in frantic self-censorship to ensure that nobody things we're not (gasp!) like everyone else.
That said, I suspect a few of us will keep speaking our minds, keep presenting ourselves HONESTLY online - good and bad - rather than just shoving airbrushed caricatures ourselves forward as if they were real, keep exploring those scary "controversial" topics, and keep rejecting self-censorship. Ironically, it's often people who actually have the balls to be who they are, to speak with integrity instead of with mealy-mouthed corporate mumblewords, and to actively reach OUT in furtherance of spreading genuine ideas and experience who are considered "interesting" by the sheeple who are more interested in being spectators than being participants.
In other words, if you're going to self-neuter so that you look appropriately boring and content-free in your "public personal brand," then that just leaves more room for those of us who choose to be who we are and let the world think what it will. I.e. followers - and leaders.
Fausty | www.cultureghost.org