What About That Internet Personae?

About a month ago, Russ published a post about his internet persona. If you're not familiar I encourage you to read it. The gist is an awareness of one's presence online as it pertains to romance, professional life and general self-interest. How do we balance who we really are, and how we are represented online to an expanding audience? Our ability to censor ourselves slips from our grasp everyday we keep our Myspace and Facebook profiles alive. Photos of us are tagged and shared without our discretion. Our interests, educational background, age, place of residence and network of friends are all public domain.

After Russ' insightful post, I couldn't help but take this more seriously. Perhaps because Russ, more than anyone, has sacrificed his public image for laughs. Before online communities, almost nothing was off limits. Public nudity, outrageous outfits and social self-sabotage were all fair game. Nude/incriminating photos were freely shared amongst friends, and why shouldn't they be?

Well ladies and gentlemen, the pendulum has shifted. We can no longer rely on the honor system to conceal our more vulnerable moments, and with the internet as our audience, future employers, girlfriends/boyfriends and grandparents are in the front row.

For instance, Facebook just alerted me that my name was tagged on a photo Felipe took:

This photo takes on a new dimension when my little cousins search for cousin Andrew, and find me with a pissing clown. My cover is blown when the pretty jewish girl who raises money for Africa I was trying to impress finds out I'm just a jokester. But what's the alternative? De-tag and lose face? Or worse, censor my real life experiences to save myself the trouble of damage control after the fact? Oh brother.

Well Russ, you've planted the seed of self-consciousness. I used to never care about my internet personae, do I now? I'd like to think not, but ever since your post it's been in the back of my mind. Today when I saw this photo of myself, ironically with the two of us in it, I couldn't help but feel a bit concerned. Now, Liz has the photo saved to her desktop, and god knows who else is rolling around laughing at our expense.

Even Sam, a famous self-effacer, drunkenly mumbled "Russ...don't make a movie" as you filmed him trying to take his pants off with his shoes on in his kitchen. Would Sam have ever said that before he thought it might come back to haunt him on the internet?

So many uncertainties, so little online forgiveness. I guess the real question is, how far a reach does our Facebook/Myspace account have in our day to day life? The fear of course, is finding out.