Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Fun with Polls Do you worry about being googled?

You and me both. My gosh, I was sober for FIVE years and then I bought the DVD box sets and it just spiralled from there.

Lovin' my insobriety though, I must admit. But, of course, I'll only admit that *here*. Which just makes me love the rest of you all the more.

So, Sue, from your last post, does that mean you used to write fanfic before you recently returned?
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I think this is awful, too. I bet if this happened in the States, that the applicant could say discrimination had occurred. After all, if the person had published a book - any kind, fiction including naughty fiction, no big deal would have been made out of it. They probably would have thought it was great. The only thing that should have affected her is if she had written truly distasteful fiction (nasty S&M or kiddy porn, etc.). Just because the people hiring didn't like her pasttime doesn't mean they should hold it against her. It's hard to say what that person doing the hiring did as a pasttime. Maybe, someday, if that person's pasttime gets used against them, they will know how stupid they were.

It does give me pause to think that since I'm currently in a job search that I should make sure they know I never lived in the city where that other RN lives.
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Yes, people can be stupid. I list missionary work on my resume, because I learned so much (including another language), and I think it's important part of my background. You'd be surprised how many people have actually asked me what church I did this with (against the law in the States). I have gone both ways - I've refused to answer, and I've given the answer. It all depends on how they ask it.
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Yes, and a lot of women are rejected because they are older, too. I see myself facing that now, and I'm... well, I'm not that old.
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You'd think, wouldn't you? I've had a couple of people's facial expressions totally change when I tell them I'm an artsy type person - as in arts and crafts and music, etc...
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Exactly. And you're not obsessed, Sue.... Just because your son was out of underwear and socks, doesn't mean you are obsessed. (I'm teasing. If you were really obsessed, you would have quit your job and done nothing more than write fanfic and let your son starve. OH, my god! I've got to find a job.... Really, this hasn't kept me from finding a job... really )
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Exactly.
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What does LJ mean?
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I must not have worked for the most trusting employers. Believe it or not there are lots of jobs out there where nurses don't have to work in a hospital or doctor's office, etc. I've worked for insurance companies, etc, where I've sat in an office cubicle all day long. Nearly every place I've worked in an office the employer monitored the sites everyone visited. Some didn't even allow internet access - only intranet access. One place I worked had internet access, but I wasn't even allowed to check my Yahoo mail while I was at work. Yahoo mail was blocked. One place I worked, a coworker and I looked at a genealogy site for about two minutes. Two minutes - that's it. It took me a 1/2 hour to explain that I was just getting on long enough to mostly give her the address. Of course, they were mostly upset because they had found out she was gaming (which I didn't know), but then I had to explain my brief access because I was her supervisor. Arggghhhh.....
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Yeah, and the people that write them that fast produce 'pulp fiction' (not the movie). The stuff is out of order, lots of stuff is misspelled, the grammar is horrible, and my biggest pet peeve - some people can't be bothered to use capitals when capital letters should be used - or better yet, when they can't be bothered to use any punctuaion. No wonder fanfic gets a bad rap. Would that everyone wrote as well as Wendy.
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Interesting discussion.

Sorry! LJ is LiveJournal. Some fandoms are all but headquartered over there these days, though this one seems not to have moved quite as drastically in that direction.

Caroline

I don't think employers take the time to think any of this through to this degree - in either a positive or negative direction.

Yvonne makes a good point in relation to this. How many times on the news have you seen a positive story linked to people using the internet? Mostly, it's about the weirdos. Be they fanatical fans of something, cheating students, or child molesters.

And how many times have you seen a documentary or news item (convention coverage, for example, on local TV) about fans that showed them in a positive light? They always focus on the creeps and weird fish - the ones that the rest of us are cringing at.

So it's probably not surprising that most people who don't use the net socially or regularly see it as a negative thing to be involved in and are suspicious of those who do.

Employers with a pool of potential employees aren't going to take the time to deeply explore the reasons why one is spending all their time on the net as a hobby when they have others who don't and are probably - in their eyes at least - a safer bet, more responsible, mature and not so flakey. <g>

This, too, makes a good point. Aside from all of the above, I think what most employers associate the net with is all those stories they've seen on the news about employees getting fired for spending their working day sending risque joke emails to one another or browsing porn sites. Again, they're not going to spend time finding out differently if they're not interested in the first place and there are other potential employees to hire who don't use the net at all. Like most of us they'll take the path of least resistence and take the easiest route to hiring.

LabRat

It did happen in the US. And the person concerned is having to stay away from all leisure-based internet activity until her job-hunt is over and she's secure in her job.


Wendy

Why on earth doesn't she simply use a secret identity?

Er . . . I mean a pen name.

I don't know enough about the situation to know how it all came to light. I do know that her LJ username was nothing like her real name (which I also know thanks to email correspondence). Somehow, and I have no idea how, her LJ was linked to her real identity - it's possible that she uses the same nick in different places, as I do - I suppose it wouldn't be difficult at all to put together that Wendymr is the person whose full name is on the Fanfic Archive and who is also applying for X positions, and then is also the person active on Live Journal in other respects. Though, yes, it would require a fair bit of searching. So I can only see it as having happened at a very late stage in a process - perhaps when she was on the point of being offered a job.

As I said, I don't know the details. But, as a general point, employment counsellors and employment agencies in North America are now warning people that online activity may be examined and could harm them in getting a job. Which I think is totally ridiculous in the case of 99% of those active online, but there you go. :rolleyes:


Wendy

Sorry I was too late to reply, Rivka. Thanks.

I'm loving the discussion over here!

See ya,
AnnaBtG.

It really wouldn't. As I explained to Anna, all it takes is ONE LINK connecting her LJ to a site that shows her real name (or one that links to one that links to one, under the right circumstances).

I have a LJ. But I am exceedingly careful to not link it to ANY site remotely connected to any forums I post on. Let alone anywhere with my real name. I also friendslock almost everything (not that I post there all that often!) I never use my real name there (even first), and if a friend does in a comment, I ask them to edit.

This is not paranoia. This is the only way to not have search engines (especially but not exclusively Goggle) make the connection between my LJ and my other web presences.

And it's not foolproof. Someone could figure out who I am based on some of my LJ friends, who do link to fora we post on. Hence the locked posts.

Yes I worry. I don't want to get teased or someone decide to pretend they are me. I know I've said my real name though...

I looked up my e-mail address and only found it twice when I used google. My e-mail got grabbed from one site where I was looking up my family at a town board. I just looked up my e-mail address and it is at some site I don't understand the language or what's going on! I know my address has been grabbed before multiple times, but to see it in a thread at some board is kinda weird.

Yeah, I know I say that and I use a picture of myself in my avatar. A few years old and I'm twisting my face...but my brother would notice and tease me until the day I die. If he did I guess I could just egg his car continually.

That site set off all kinds of warning bells for me. So I asked a friend of mine who speaks German (the site is actually in Flemish/Dutch, but the two are similar) to confirm that it was what I think it is. She agrees that it looks like a spammer/phisher website. (If Saskia is around the forum these days, she could give a more exact translation of what exactly is on the site.)

Who knew they had forums? Although I suppose it makes sense.

Now, your email address is just on a list, not specifically targeted. So it's not that big a deal -- I imagine every person on this board gets tons of spam.

But yeah, that site gives me the willies.

Good grief! People need to join the twentieth century - especially since we are now in the twenty-first century.

I'm not worried about it. My married name is so common, it generated 48,500 hits on Google. And forget my maiden name. It's Johnson. The second most common last name in the US, last I heard. My online nick is extremely common, since it's also a real name (not mine. A variation is reserved for my somedayinthefuture daughter, if I ever have one). A few of my email addresses don't turn up much. Though I just googled my work address, and wonder what I was on about on a newsgroup...

Googling is the least of my problems. Considering I have my own domain whose email address I use, I have a personal website on there. Which links to my LJ, and links to here... hmm, wonder if I have every single work entry locked. And don't forget the picture gallery I have, with family pictures... heh

My husband's been looking for work lately, and the advice he got was, anything you've done for a church should be written down on your resume as "non-profit organization." If they ask you about it in an interview, you can choose how much to reveal, but you won't get it tossed in the trash immediately just because you're a religious nut

I never used to worry about being Googled. I've used my real name in lots of places. When I started looking for work, it did concern me a bit -- but then I figured, I haven't done anything to be ashamed of, and besides, my name's all over everything so it's too late to try to cover it up now

Actually, on my resume, under volunteer, I put organizing the Kerth awards -- which, if you didn't know, are a peer-based award system for an online amateur author's group. It was fun thinking up all the wording.

PJ

Volunteer work is important, whatever type it is. Ever been involved in fundraising? Buying equipment for your kids' school, or your church's social club? Or been on the Archive/MBs fundraising committee? How much was raised? That's all very relevant, and employers are interested.


Wendy

I worry about this. As a teenager I was thrilled to death to have my name on the internet. I knew it was me, because I'm the only person with my full name in the entire world--no joke.

Then I got into a profession that considers this sort of writing to be, if not a complete crime against humanity, definitely not a bonus for the career. I just hope nobody googles me until my professional activities outweigh my fanfiction. I removed my name from several prominent places (like the Archive). No one can actually access my stories anymore, but it's still coming up when other fanfic writers referred to me in their stories OR in sites that are no longer maintained but still exist. Still working on that.

On the plus side, I recently discovered that I have a second cousin who shares my same first and last name (with a different middle name). I am now planning to blame every citation of me that I'm not thrilled about on her. I feel it's somewhat evil, but she's a horse trainer so I doubt the horses care if she wrote fanfic in the past!

This puts a whole new spin on the idea of anxiety of authorship.

Until this thread I'd never been interested in Googling names. But you got me curious. <G> So I Google'd LabRat. My, the things I've done in my life!

Sadly, refining the search to Doc Klein's Labrat only brought up several Fanfic Archive references.

Personally, I just have this thing about people knowing too much about me that they don't need to know. Read government, there. So I just like to use a nick whenever I can, just on basic principle.

LabRat

Some of those things wouldn't involve running around on a little wheel, would they

ML

Hush! /me kicks the wheel under the straw and whistles innocently.

LabRat (trying to kick the habit...)

Well, actually I'm not really concerned about what might be found about me in the net... I do this from time to time but I hardly find anything that could be of any harm... at most, it'd be embarassing

S, googling my real name, my homepage is the first thing.
Then there are some stupid "i'd like to find some guys who I went to school with" pages... these are actually boards where I could delete my traces
It goes on with university stuff, several boards I use (university, autism, the Sims, loosing weight (yikes...speaking of embarassment...)) ... err... a curriculum vitae of me

Well... I'm only a student yet, so the worst that could happen, were tutors googling me of who I wish to have better things to do with their time

Bye,

Jana