I'm losing a battle, the battle to keep my personal online self separated from my work/professional online self. And losing that battle has some potentially serious consequences.
In the 15 or so years I've been "on the web," I've tried to maintain a division between my personal life and my professional life. The reason is pretty simple: some of the things I might say or do with friends and family might be incompatible with expectations for my behavior as whatever kind of professional I'm employed as at the time.
I'm not talking anything scandalous...no KKK activities, secret families, or felony indictments...but statements and actions that might seem totally innocuous in one context and to one person (e.g., joking with an old friend) might seem out-of-place in another context to a different person (e.g., to a student or client).
And that division is slowly eroding...slipping away as my ability to keep one "life" separate from the other disintegrates. Some of my work colleagues and students have started following me on Twitter and friending me on Facebook (hi, folks!), places that I've never intended to engage anyone from work (with, perhaps, a few exceptions). More confounding is LinkedIn, on which I have a complete cross-section of associations from every corner of my personal and professional lives.
Many of those connections, and the overall intermixing of my personae, are, admittedly, my own fault. When I initially set up Facebook, I accidentally let it troll through my Gmail addressbook and send out automatic invitations. Newbie mistake. On Twitter, my profile is open, meaning anyone can follow me. And, I also have this tendency to only use my real name online; I never felt comfortable hiding behind a quasi-anonymous pseudonym or fake profile. All considered, I really only have myself to blame for allowing the online division between my personal self and my work self to blur.
So what does this mean? I think it means that my online "self" will have to be much more thoughtful and considerate of the implications, for every facet of my life, of my actions online. A bawdy joke told in a small, yet public, mailing list could easily find its way to my boss' desk. A thoughtless, or even mean-spirited, comment could ultimately offend a co-worker. These unintended consequences are like civilian casualties in a war; collateral damage from acting thoughtlessly in a casual space that is, ultimately, connected in a very real sense to one's professional environment.
Perhaps this is precisely what all those Gen-Y kids were learning when their Facebook profiles and Myspace pages were being used by potential employers as reasons to not hire them; 27 photos of you drunk off your butt at a fraternity party doesn't tend to impress the HR department very much.
So, the bottom line is this, what I'm calling my Golden Rule for the digital era:
If I treat every interaction, whether online or face-to-face, as if it were happening in person, I'm sure there would be times I would handle it differently. Is it better to have less freedom to do as my basest reactionary self wants, less consideration for the human on the other end of the bitpipe? No, I think society has always relied on our ability to reign in that temptation. And the Internet changes nothing in that regard, except, perhaps, to give us more opportunities to screw up.
So, now, going forward, the real test is seeing if I can live by that rule of mine. Wish me luck!
that's probaly good advice for everyone. i wish more people would follow it.
That's good. Can I use it?
My personal and professional lives have been intertwined for so long that I don't think I could divide the two even if I wanted to. So from where I sit, it feels more like the rest of the world is just catching up.
I think it's for the better, even if it does mean having to think a little more carefully when interacting online.
Just this morning I commented to a friend that I say things on twitter that I probably think to myself but don't say out loud. Most of that is because I'm thinking it in the car and no one is around to hear me. Still, it's a matter of my being real, and gauging whether or not my thoughts published to the world represent what I value.
Not to be too profound, though, because most of life is the mundane periods of time between moments where lessons are learned. During these mundane periods I need to process the lessons. And during these mundane periods, I need to make sure I'm treating the others around me, physically and virtually, the way they would like to be treated.
Good thoughts, Craig.