Cyberstalker - Blog #6

For this blog I started with a simple google search. Unfortunately with two presidents for a first and last name, and a state for a middle name, it was all just campaign history or just general history around the JFK and Johnson histories. I tried to narrow the search down with a city and state location and got a hit! The first two links were for my field hockey roster bios for Christopher Newport and my previous college Long Island University - Brooklyn. The Christopher Newport bio had some information, just basic things like academic and athletic accolades and information from high school, it also has a couple of pictures. The LIU link was just one picture, basic information like height and year, and what games I played in. So far, it seemed like there wasn’t going to be too much about me to find. Even though I knew everything that was written I tried to pretend not to and read through it anyway. I would first like to say shoutout to Kenny in the Christopher Newport Athletic Department, not only was he a great boss my three years at CNU, but he also made me look like a gold star student-athlete (#humblebrag). So, if I was someone trying to do research on me, say a possible employer, it would look pretty okay without going into depth on my personal life.

Then I broadened my horizons to social media, first up was Instagram. My account is private so I started by typing in “Kennedy Johnson Instagram” into google, and came up with no luck, just a bunch of profile links for people with a lot more followers than me. So I had my younger sister unfollow me and any social media she followed me on and I used her accounts to see what I could find. Of course when I searched myself I came up first in the search because she has previously followed me. When I looked at my profile I giggle a little, because my profile picture is of my face, upside down, with a hoodie tied close and I think I’m funny. Of course you can see how many followers I have, how many people I follow, how many posts I have, and my bio that says “I prefer tik tok” (which is true). I always try to keep things light but appropriate because social media should be fun, but also my family follows me so I have to really think about what I post beforehand.  

After Instagram I went to twitter, the only time I post is for class which is a whole different account than the one I usually use. When I google searched it, again just a lot of different Kennedy Johnsons who had a lot more followers and posts than me. When I searched it under my sisters account, I still didn’t come up. Some random people came up under the people, and the tweets were about some news things where one of the Kennedy’s and their son went missing again. But when I kept scrolling I came across a tweet from my class twitter that I had just posted prior to doing the rest of this blog. Both of my twitter accounts are public so you can see anything I like, tweet, or retweet, but I don’t have much on there except a few dark humor jokes (I just can’t help myself sometimes). Pinterest was a little more difficult to find me, I just did a google search (I’m the only one in my house with a Pinterest) and a bunch of Pinterest famous people came up. I didn’t even know you could be famous on Pinterest so that was interesting.

Lastly, I looked at Facebook and LinkedIn. Again, I’m the only one in my house with a LinkedIn so I just did a quick google search. There was a link with “100+ profiles of Kennedy Johnson” and it took me a little while but I finally found myself on the 7th or 8th page, here you could find all the professional information about me (work history, etc, we know how this works). I’m really bad at keeping up with LinkedIn so my profile looked a little sad and hadn’t been updated, so if someone was trying to do research they wouldn’t have any information past high school. With my Facebook google search, another link for a bunch of profiles came up; however, I couldn’t find myself. When I used my sisters facebook account, I was actually the first person to come up. This could’ve been because of our home address information and such, or that her face is in a lot of the pictures I posted. This account is also private, so all I could see were profile picture changes and the basic information about where I go to school, live, etc. I thought it was interesting that even though when your profile is private they can still see those types of information, I didn’t think people who aren’t my friend would be able to find that information.

I’m not quite sure what this says about my digital footprint, I thought it was weird to search yourself, I didn’t realize how much you do and don’t see. I like to think that it is somewhat of a good thing? I’ve tried really hard to make my social media private and appropriate because I have seen how some people got “ruined” by their social media, and my mom monitored a lot of it when I was younger. It was really interesting to try to look up myself from another person’s account because you really get an idea of what you can and can’t see. Again, I try to keep it professional and cute because I have been on the job hunt and know that some companies will look at things. It really made me start thinking about how people can choose to censor themselves or not on social media and how it isn’t the responsibility of the app company. Also, going back to Facebook with how much information is available even though I’m private, it also goes to show what kind of information people are and aren’t willing to share. It’s easy to decieve people who are directly involved in your life. All in all, I wasn’t able to find much on myself which, for now, is a good thing. Another thing I definitely learned is that there are a lot of Kennedy Johnsons, and I don’t know a single other Kennedy Johnson!