Blog #6
Googling
yourself is something that everyone has done at least once in their lives. Don’t
lie. You’ve done it. And that actually probably a good thing. From googling
myself this time I learned a lot about the information that is out there on the
internet about me. For me though, I was googling my “real name” instead of my “online
name”. As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I had a really bad stalker
throughout my senior year of high school and encountered some pretty bad
digital drama. Scheinbaum describes digital drama as “the occurrence of and
reactions to online consumer behaviors such as sexting, cyberbullying, fear of
missing out, abuse, and related online happenings” (Scheinbaum). For me, I was
unfortunately a part of a bad stalker that would send me death threats and
would harass me and my family online. I actually at that time had two stalkers
(one in real life who I went to school with and one that was online). Because
of these stalker incidents, the police advised me that from then on out if I
were not going to stop using social media, that I should use a different name
online. For me, I really only changed my last name and shortened it from what
it regularly is. From that point on I had tried to distance myself from
everything online that contained my real last name for safety purposes. So,
after googling myself online, I did not find that much stuff about me. Although
that is a good thing, I was surprised ot see of how little online identity I
really had with my real name. Hodapp explains online identity as “the establishment
of character and self for individual persons” (Hodapp). While I had essentially
tried throughout my high school and college years to erase my digital footprint
with everything with my real name on it, I was surprised to see that there were
still websites that were showing up.
The
first website that showed up when I searched my real name was my LinkedIn
account. I chose to use my real name on this account for obvious purposes (I
want employers to know my real name and not a name I created for myself because
of my stalker) but I did not think that this would be the first thing that
would show up when I googled my name. In fact, I was a little taken aback that
I did not realize how much this website told about my life. For some reason I
had always thought that my account was private, or maybe I just was not sure
how LinkedIn really worked. Within just clicking on the webpage I was able to
see everything about myself, where I have previously and currently work, where
I attend college, and where I interned with in high school. While this may not
seem like a big deal, it really was an eye-opening experience to me. Because of
the stalker that I had encountered in my real life (the one I went to high
school with) I had tried to keep which college I attend as private as I could
in fear that he would show up to campus one day. Another big problem with this
was also my online stalker, which could know in an instant where I lived (or
the area near where I live) and where I go to college. For me, this website
just held a little bit too much personal information for me to be comfortable
with.The
next website that showed up was Facebook, which was not that much of a surprise
to me. While I had changed my name on all of my social media sites, this was
one that I kept with my real name (mainly for my family to be able to find me
and friend me). This one was not that scary to me because I have always had
pretty good privacy settings on it, so when I clicked on my page no information
showed up. You were essentially only able to see my profile picture (which hasn’t
been changed in a couple of years because I unfortunately got locked out of my
Facebook account and still have been unable to get back into).The next site
that showed up in my searches were three different Pinterest accounts. I do not
remember making three Pinterest accounts, but I am pretty bad with getting
locked out of accounts or forgetting passwords, so I am not that surprised.
Nothing that showed up on my Pinterest page was that concerning for me, as the
only things that I pin on there are home inspiration or home décor ideas.
Something
that was pretty shocking to me was the amount of Christopher Newport University
related websites that showed up when I searched my name. I did not think that
there would be that much information that my college was posting that would be
tied back to my name, but I was really surprised. There were at least two
websites near the end of the search list that were both from CNU that had my
name in them. This was shocking to me as well, especially if you are trying to
keep you whereabouts private. I never thought that if someone just searched my
name that they would be able to so easily track where I was. I think to me, this
was one of the most unsettling searches to discover, mainly because I was
unaware that it was even taking place in the first place.
The
next search that I wanted to discuss, was when I searched my name in google
pictures. The first thing that showed up was my profile picture for my LinkedIn
account, which I was not that surprised about mainly because that was the first
result for when I searched my name. However, there were many other results that
shocked me more. For one, when I scrolled down the page a little bit I saw a
picture of my father, which was surprising because it was not a picture that I had
taken of him. Instead, it was a picture of a video that he was in that promoted
one of his friend’s companies. The next thing that was shocking for me to see
was a picture of my great-grandmother who had passed away. This picture was
from her obituary that was posted after she had passed, but I was incredibly
surprised to see it show up when I searched my name. While both of these things
may not be that important to the random person who searched my name (if anyone
out there is), but it was shocking to me because these were two members of my
family.
Overall,
googling yourself every once in a while, is a pretty shocking thing to do and I
think that everyone should do it at least once to see their results!
Works Cited:
Hodapp, C. (2017). Identity, the
internet, and masculine discourse. Men’s
Rights, Gender, And
Social Media. Lanham, Maryland. Lexington Books.
Scheinbaum, A. C. A framework for
the dark side of social media: From digital drama to digital
over-engagement.
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