“You are what you post” says Jay Ovittore in his personal blog. And what great words these are! The more I think about it, the more I see their deep meaning, veracity… sense. So why don’t we all make them a motto of sorts and start living under their shield. Because this is what these simple words can do, once we truly understand them: protect.

They will protect us against writing things that might harm and they will protect the ones we might hurt, at times unwillingly, through our words.

With the boom of the social media, these words could even protect us in the future.

You are whatever you publish online. Period.

No one is perfect. We all make mistakes. But the truth is that the Web is not the private playground of a teenager.

Imagine yourself naked in a public garden. This is the Web: no place to hide, people walking by, watching you, scrutinizing everything you choose to show them and seeing what you don’t want to show them too. Judging everything you do. Analyzing. Dissecting. Even taking pictures of you to show to their friends your silliest mistake or greatest accomplishment, the same way you would show curiosities from a gadget store or souvenirs from a distant country.

When you think that no one cares about what you do, how you act and who you are, remember that all your moves are watched by inquisitive eyes. You think you are alone. Think again.

Quantum Leap: There is no time, there is no space. You cannot erase your past from the Web.

In the old world, love letters could be burned, pictures could be ripped and shredded – or the targets of dart boards. In the web world, what you post today may be removed tomorrow, but it may already be in the hands of someone else, waiting to re-post it at some distant point.

I didn’t inhale.

This is what people fail to understand about the Internet. Some treat the Web as a place to go and have fun. They create accounts on obscure websites and they believe that they are protected just because they have a password. Maybe they aren’t even aware of those inquisitive eyes I was talking about. Wrong.

When you put it online, you throw privacy to the wind. That’s it. Face it. Assume it. Take responsibility and don’t be surprised when all your actions are revealed, when what you thought a “safe” way of spending time will turn into your worse nightmare. This doesn’t happen so often - yet.

Stories about people who didn’t even bother to hide their identity and compromised their whole future through irresponsible behavior are more common now.

David Rice and Naomi Broady got suspended for their Bebo life.

Even anonymous stories might get you in trouble – as it happened to the Queen of the Sky Ellen Simonetti.

And the web is full of stories about people losing their jobs because of stuff they publish on the Web, either on their blogs or on social sites.

The moral of the story? Don’t work and blog? Not at all.

Understand that with blogging and socializing there comes responsibility. Understand that with publishing something… anything, there comes effect. And create a set of personal rules guide your steps.

Three golden rules you should include (in addition to whatever else you want to put on your list):

• never publish something (not even under password protected login) that you wouldn’t want your children/mother to see;
• never publish information about your employer, colleagues, job;
• never publish a story without checking it twice, or thrice if necessary – just make sure you don’t pervert the truth;

“The pen is mightier than the sword” - Edward Bulwer-Lytton

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 25th, 2007 at 12:09 pm and is filed under Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.