Will the Transparency of Our Lives Damn Us or Legitimize Us?

Posted by Alex Kniess on 10.23.09 @ 10:43 AM


Alex Kniess

I'm all for living my life transparently. I think that by broadcasting what interests me, what I do and whom I talk to, I create a system of checks and balances. I hear a lot of tips for how to manage your online presence, limit what you broadcast and control who sees what. But honestly, I don't do many things that I would be embarrassed to show anyone. Maybe if more people felt the same way, then there would be fewer actions to hide and it may force people to do more that they're proud of.

Or maybe it will send society spinning out of control. I suppose that I was fortunate that my slow ascension into adulthood mirrored the slow growth of my online presence. I was one of the first people I knew that created websites and started blogging. But I was lucky that I wasn't easily able to do this until I was at an age where I realized to some degree what was appropriate and what was not. One of my friends was expelled in middle school for his website, so I learned quickly the do's and don'ts of broadcasting myself online.

But I feel sorry for everyone entering the workforce who is younger than myself. If I had been able to tweet and stalk people on Facebook in middle school, I'm not sure anyone would want to hire me. I would have left a digital trail wrought with misguided views, ill-informed statements and failed romantic relationships. I'm sure anyone else who has ever grown up would have done the same.

So now that hiring managers are Googling as part of the screening process and everyone's life glows hot under the focused lens of their magnifying glass, what are the ramifications? Personally, I'd love to make hiring decisions based on talent, experience, and ambition as well as personality. After all, I have to work with these people. However, there should be a statute of limitations or something. Maybe some slack can be given when stumbling across college op-eds or forgotten middle school MySpace accounts. But when the middle schooler with Twitter starts his career in the next 10 years, will he even be able to get past the first Googled-search screen? Will our broadcast lives legitimize us as genuine fun-to-work-with people or will they damn us to lifetime unemployment?

As long as you can do your job and you don't piss off your coworkers, does anyone really care? Think of how lame your grandparents' stories would be if they couldn't embellish them with years of glossed-over details and had to instead point you to ancient status updates and blog posts.

We are the lucky generation: Young enough to embrace it all, yet old enough to know where the line should be drawn and how to leverage our broadcast lives for career success. I wonder how those who follow me will fair. I wonder if I'd hire any of them.

2 Comments

By workinonaramp | Boca Raton, FL October 24, 2009 11:37:58 am:

You know, I think that closing the gap between the fake images we project in interviews and the images we (used to) freely project on Facebook (circa 2004) to our friends is a great thing. And it's going to be WAY more interesting (and easy) to delve into the lives of politicians and public spokespeople in the future. Ultimately, I think the transparency of the web has the potential to make us accept that people can do keg stands on Saturday night and be in the office at 8 a.m. ready to kick ass on assignments. Hell, students may even see that their teachers drink beer and have personal lives. Crazy..

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By digitaldarwin | LIVERMORE, CA October 26, 2009 07:44:13 pm:

I believe that our newfound transparent nature will continue to gain speed and we will find ourselves more and more transparent in the online world. Even you old timers.

Like a resume that doesn't reflect true experience, our online personas reflect who we truly are. The more we try and manage and control them, the more we will find ourselves with a flat personal brand.

Think of it this way. Could an agency make a company successful by promoting a brand message that wasn't true to the company's core values? We all know that the brand must reflect the company rather than the other way around.

Does that mean that a true leader doesn't practice yoga, have pro-choice beliefs or got caught running naked across campus in college (insert your preferred controversial issue here)? That "safe" image that we think we have to project is an illusion.

So too our online personas are a reflection of who we are. Moreover, the more transparency there is in the world the more we'll stop fabricating what "professional" or "competent" means. The executive across the desk is no more perfect than you are. And if he is going to judge you for a message you tweeted five years ago, then you probably don't want to work for him anyway.

In this new online way of life, you're either all in or not in at all. Good luck blogging or tweeting on a regular basis without being yourself. If you can do that then give up your day job and become a writer. Cuz faking that kind of fiction on a regular basis takes some incredible skills and stamina!

My advice is to be yourself and put yourself out there on a regular basis. Know what your personal brand is and be true to it both online and off. Otherwise you'll drive yourself nuts and won't have any fun on this ride called life. Otherwise, what's the point?

Darwin Stephenson
analogdarwin.com

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