Six months ago I embarked upon an academic project which would take me to some dark corners of the internet. The first phase of my research involved diving head-first into what some might call an internet addiction, but which I still maintain was a diligent fact-finding mission. About a week into my immersion, a few themes surrounding “web 2.0” began to reveal themselves, some of them anxiety-inducing, particularly for someone who had spent years posting pictures and stories on blogs, social networks, and other internet platforms with reckless abandon. I quickly made up my mind to erase as much of myself as I possibly could from the internet—at least until I had the time to carefully doctor it all in an effort to make myself look much more responsible, intelligent, and all-around attractive.
I deactivated Facebook, Friendster, and Myspace accounts, and rid an old blog documenting a summer of misadventures in Paris of any mentions of my name.I e-mailed the editor-in-chief of The Maroon, my college paper, asking him to kindly remove my byline from some ill-conceived and overly-expository articles I had written during my brief career as a columnist there. He rebuffed me with some garbage about journalistic integrity, and I suppose now that he has graduated I will try to get a hold of the new editor to see if s/he’ll bite.
I finally have some time on my hands and I’ve decided it’s time to start rebuilding my online presence. One of the things I realized over the course of said project is that, on both a personal and professional level, it’s probably better to have a cursory google search of your name reveal a few embarrassing articles you penned as an undergraduate than to have it turn up nothing at all. The former, while recording for posterity (and potential employers) your various blunders as a twenty-year old, is really nothing compared to the latter, which exposes you as, quite simply, out of touch.
Much has been written about the quandary of bloggers and other “internet personalities”: the difficulties of accurately portraying one’s multi-faceted and deeply nuanced character, the impossibility of exerting any control or influence over one’s own public image on such a beastly, multi-dimensional platform. The only conclusion I can draw is that it’s not possible to control it, but the beauty of the internet is that you too, can join in the circus. So this is my contribution to the internet’s portrait of me. I hope to be able to formulate some thoughts that contribute to both a flattering and (at least somewhat) accurate portrayal of myself.
