…And the title of the post pretty much says it all. That fact that “Wasabisoft – Sean Coincon Has An Eleven Inch Penis?“ is the first entry could potentially cast a misleading light is unavoidable at this point, but I am consoled by the fact that actually reading the post serves to rearrange the set lighting to something a bit more photographic. Besides, what better way to illustrate my love of satire? Anyways.
A supposedly common fear of people using the Internet (or even people not using the Internet) is that they could miss out on potential employment or random social opportunities due to information available about themselves on the Internet. While xkcd presented my feelings on this subject in the most ideal and succinct way possible, I choose to paraphrase: “OMG, don’t write anything you actually mean on teh Interwebs, someone could Google you and decide not to give you a job!”
This raises an interesting question for me: why does a person’s personal life have any bearing whatsoever on that person’s professional life? Even on a small scope: most people work a given portion of the day and then go home. When people get home, they tend to go through some kind of relaxation routine, be it something as simple as taking off one’s shoes or as complex as shooting terrorists in the face in any number of myriad video games. I myself generally strip down to my boxers and grab a beverage of alcohol content higher than that of root beer. None of these are acceptable practices at work (unless you have an unusually chill workplace; and if so, where should I send a resume?), where standards of professionalism are in force. However, with the apparent exception of celebrities and politicians, NO ONE is expected to adhere to the same professional standards at home as they do at work… and honestly, any contract which required me to do so would not get signed.
So on that note: if you are a potential employer and you’ve reached this article (or any others I’ve written) through running a Google search for my name, I’m confident that you will recognise a post-work stress relief activity when you see it because you are, after all, a professional. This kind of stuff is my way of mentally having a brewski after a long, productive day of being a professional. A damn good one, too, as my resume will no doubt convey. I would think that MOST people operate the same way: with firm divides between their work persona and their personal persona. While I have seen some people discuss their work in some kind of internet context, it’s generally along the lines of “man, work was rough today” or “I had so much fun at work today,” not really anything you’d consider to be a breach of professional conduct. Honestly, I don’t write much about my work because my work isn’t interesting, even to me, much less anyone reading the stuff I write.
And to be even more honest: any employer willing to deny employment to an individual based on things they do in their personal lives is not an employer for which I care to work. Such a thing denotes a strong lack of integrity to me, and you guys all know (or SHOULD goddamn know) where I stand on integrity by now. Practically: the only employers who should even conceivably be worried about what a person writes in a blog on the internet are political ass-coverers and owners of blogs. That last group may even look favorably upon opinionated discourse.
So in summary: the person a person is on the web is nothing like the person a person is at work. Attempting to project aspects of one onto the other is intellectually void at best and misleading to the point of libel at worst. The social and business spheres are separate entities so that people can keep separate these two aspects of their lives which are mutually exclusive by definition. Hell, the whole reason resumes exist is so people can present their professional qualifications to employers in lieu of employers having to go bug our friends for uninformed anecdotes about how good we are at our jobs. I can understand looking up a potential hire to make sure he hasn’t been in the news lately for blowing up an abortion clinic; looking him up to discover he answers questions on Formspring every once in a while under the alias “DarianSentient” is kinda childish, really. Going one step further and Googling “DarianSentient” to discover I post stuff at HuffingtonPost, arstechnica and cnn.com too is even weirder; finding my OkCupid profile and telling me I’m “f0ine” is borderline stalkery.
No, actually, it IS stalkery. So quit it.