We’re All Going To Die!
November 6th, 2007Oh my God, everybody PANIC! We’re all going to die!
Well, you know, eventually…
But, this provoked some thinkin’ – What are we going to leave behind when we go?
I don’t mean “who” are we going to leave behind. And I don’t mean “what”, as in material possessions or money. I don’t even really mean “our legacy” – you know, “world’s greatest guitarist” or “most prolific writer”. I mean, what are we going to leave on the Web, postmortem?
In anticipation of death, we all have designated our “Porn Buddy”, or at least should have. The Porn Buddy is that one person whom we trust above all others – who will be automatically paged at the time of our death, enabling them to get to our home or office before anyone else learns of our untimely demise. They will then gain access to our computers and destroy all files contained in the massive porn collection.
You don’t really think all of my Zombie Cheerleader From Hell references are in my head do you? Heck, those alone probably consume 10 Gigabytes of my porn collection.
But, what about the remnants of our life which will be left behind on the web?
Between Google cache and archive.org, the contents of this blog will be around for many decades. I can easily find some of my old, abandoned, websites from the mid-1990s on archive.org.
I can find many threads in numerous message forums which I participated in a decade ago – some of them more embarrassing than others.
Recently, people have become more aware of the impact their online comments, posts, and websites can have on them with potential employers. And in many cases they have a right to worry. Things posted online during high school and college may have seemed pretty funny at the time, but how will the interviewer at your potential dream job view them?
Unlike a recent college graduate, I have little concern about potential employers reading my deepest thoughts online. First, I had already survived my bong-worshiping college years before it became common for everyone post logs and photos online of their activities, legal or otherwise. And also because I am an expert in my field and potential employers come to me with offers, not the reverse.
While working on a recent project I had the need to spend some time on MySpace. Much to my surprise, I did actually “meet” a selection of very intelligent and interesting people. A small selection. Actually, a very small selection. As for the other 57,000,000 profiles I visited, all I can is… “Wow”. I believe I have just viewed 57,000,000 unemployable people.
Not that I didn’t have my share of dumbass moments early in life, but at least I didn’t publish them to the world. But, I do wonder, what will my great-grandchildren think of my fetish for Zombie Cheerleaders From Hell?
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