One of the organisations I work for just asked me to help them out with their social media presence. I figured they asked me because I'm "down with the kids" despite the fact that someone who uses the phrase "down with the kids" is most certainly not. So I helped them out and connected them with several members of staff and all was fine. Then I was asked, after pointing out a funny and er... slightly inappropriate picture on someone's profile, to see if any other "career-threatening" posts existed on other profiles. This, to me, seemed like snooping. It's none of my business what they get up to in their own time. I felt slightly seedy sifting through people's posts and trying to spot dodgy stuff. I made a few notes and presented them - as requested - to the manager. This manager is a very nice chap with just two obvious character flaws. Firstly his taste in purchases is a little iffy. He just bought a lovely car which he seems to think is a deep mysterious colour but is in fact throbbing-cock-vein blue... He still owns a Nokia. He recommends Toshiba laptops.
Secondly, he thinks you can't fight the world.
I understand that it is almost impossible for one person to change the world, although lots of people through history would disagree and there are examples of these people all over the place. I think it's altogether more possible for groups of people to change the world. Social networks demonstrate people power all the time. Ok, maybe getting an apology out of a badly behaved corporation or highlighting a social injustice or annoying Keith Chegwin isn't exactly "changing the world" but it surely helps move us in the right direction? The Arab Spring was not, as my nan thought, a new sexual deviancy but a jaw dropping example of the power of technology in the hands of the common man. You might argue that not a lot has changed but that would only be if you hadn't done your research properly.
Anyway, I explained the issue I had to the manager and I closed down the account I had created - mainly because I had it in my own name and didn't want to be associated with being a snitch. They can set up their own account and do their own dirty work, thank you very much. The main thrust of the issue seems to be that posting a photo of, say, someone being drunk at a party or someone visiting the sex museum in Amsterdam could damage the career of the person who was in the image. Even if they hadn't taken the photo themselves! Also, it is possible to have the wrong type of friends or followers. Somebody might see something that brings the company into disrepute! Yes!! Somebody might see that a normal flawed human being doing something that has nothing to do with work and which almost all of us would probably do at some point or other exists in the company! Such displays of flagrant individualism must be crushed by the mighty boot of lowest-common-denominator-corporate-policy-making!
We're all familiar with these sorts of policies. I used to work at a popular high street book retailer. A handful of the staff (out of a few of several hundred branches) had been caught stealing books. A new policy quickly came into force whereby your bag, locker, pockets, pants, inside leg, arsehole, hamster cage and mother's under-stair cupboard could be searched in case you had nicked a copy of Dan Brown's latest masterpiece or Katie Price's latest execrable children's book. So... you want to look through my personal belongings because you assume that I would probably steal from you? Firstly, fuck you. Secondly, and your mother.
That's just a small example. There are countless others. But if enough people complain, you can change the situation. From this you get trade unions which, when they work properly, are a great idea. Unfortunately they also lead to people like Bob Crowe. That's not a good thing. But generally I stand by my argument. I may have slightly undermined myself here...
Anyway, the result of the snooping I mentioned, is that this will all go towards helping form a policy to protect the company from public ridicule and it will do so by sitting heavily on a majority of entirely blameless people. This will be backed up by a whole raft of cases currently going through the courts across the land where somebody has posted a booby or friended the wrong person or made a flippant comment about the boss's hairpiece and got themselves into hot water. I understand why these sweeping policies and laws get made. I just wish they'd stop doing it and properly think things through. Banning people from using Facebook or a newsgroup isn't going to stop pedophilia, for example.
Part of the problem is the fact that social network sites are a relatively recent thing. We haven't had time to think through and experience the many outcomes and consequences that an inappropriate post could lead to. Governments are shocked, confused and a little worried by this new voice for the masses. They aren't sure generally what to do with the internet, as the Digital Economy Bill showed. There is a classic example of broad-brush bullshit if I ever saw one. It'll carry on getting refined as successive politicians realise what a half-baked pile of cack it was until eventually - in 20 years time maybe - we'll have something that works. In the meantime the rest of the music industry will collapse and nobody will realise that the reason a lot of people download films for free is that almost all films are initially released without bonus material anymore. A digital copy is not a bonus. At best it's a timesaver for people like me who store a lot of films on a server. Most people will never use it...
Now I appreciate that we need to think about how all this stuff we post online could be viewed. You may have noticed that several bits of this blog are carefully written so as not to expose myself to a corporate kick in the nuts. It is entirely reasonable to suppose that companies will employ data-miners to round up all this virtual info about you and use it to decide whether you are going to have a career or not. And you can't trust Facebook to not suddenly change its terms and conditions and open up everything you've ever posted to the whole world. And it isn't really that hard to get at privately stored photos or hack into an account. It's only a matter of time before the contents of your DropBox are splashed across the web. An online life is risky. It's like sex with a tramp only not under a bridge and there's computers and stuff... and... er...
But the vast huge enormous majority of people are not online to groom young girls or exchange pictures of stomach churning sexual violence or to incite riots or to undermine their employers or themselves. Most people are just staying in touch with people who they don't see that often, because they spend so much of their life working and then blobbing out in front of some brightly coloured singing morons or prodding at a touch screen in a desperate attempt to numb their minds against the hopeless futility of it all, or looking for funny videos of cute kittens sitting on robot vacuum cleaners or figuring out where to meet in town or making silly comments to amuse people or playing a word game or pissing me off by filling up my timeline with some auto-post from one of the seemingly infinite variations on apparently endless farm games...
Most people are just being human. Sometimes stupid, sometimes wonderful, sometimes depressing. A world in which people are discouraged as much as possible from being human would end up as a very dull world indeed.
A bit like always eating vanilla ice cream or white bread or anything at all from Iceland. A bit like a damp Thursday in Stoke. A bit like a conversation with an audiophile - y'know when they claim that a gold plated HDMI cable will be better quality? Look, it's digital, you penis. You either hear sound or you don't... Geez... A bit like a letter from your mortgage company. A bit like a cardigan from Marks and Spencers.
You get the idea.
